Free Flight, Free Speech

https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic. ... &start=465

This conversation has turned interesting.....

"In 15 years, that leaves plenty of time to do everything. Knowing that still on average it takes me about 5 full days to create a usable, organized model with a basic but correct flight model and sufficient but upgradeable instruments."

Wait a minute !

15 years = 5475 days
planes = 320

5475/320 = 17.1 days per plane

I've spent longer on just a piston engine code.

People would need to spend months and months on one of his planes, that he openly admits he only spends 5 days on..... He vetoes their work/direction and then he talks about respect.

Oh. Bomber... Your Huey is famous? Never thought of that.
Good job achieving to call attention to the masses!

I agree with the idea that your UH-1 JSBsim is on a different repo because the license is cc and I preferred keeping them different.
In the same line of ideas, others might had argued that they could actually coexist in a single repo (helijah calling them "directories") only if every file carries a license notice. This could be a point of long contention, and I had not been able to determine a position to prevail. However, important to note, it seems that many people had successfully used your patch and modify their UH-1 copies, made it work and test the JSBsim FDM. In other words, my presenting the repository strictly as a patch has actually worked well for many. It might not be ideal single-download, plug to play. But at the same time, it does not appear to be a insurmountable hurdle to just patch a copy of an existing plane.

The other part of the topic is a bit strange, because it deals with "ownership", more specifically in the "Flightgear" sense of ownership

An owner is a person who has committed to the creation or maintainance of an aircraft. That ownership entitles them to the ability to tightly control what will occur to that plane in terms of development. And since "official"(?) FG is a SVN repo, there are no more than a single copy of it, which is controlled by the owners of FG infrastructure. Any fork on SVN is not an actual repo. However, they also stated that the content is GPL, which might allow redistribution of variants. What occurs in those variants should be no-one business, but the fork's owner. Thus the strict "ownership" should crumble. It's like, everyone owns its own files on each own computer, but what happens in other's falls in others' control (and ownership). If I decide to delete the Yasim file on the copies I control, that should be left up to me. That decision over a centralized SVN repository is not so clear, thou. For someone like helijah to suddenly loose his favorite FDM engine (the Silly YAsim file he creates) in the central repository is a grave situation. He cannot claim ownership, but I totally see his pain.

And then there is the time factor that bomber wants to talk. Doesnt it goes both ways? Shouldn't it be a minimal amount of modification effort that allows a person to claim stake? An "N" of lines. a "t" of time. a "F(Y)" of functionality? Finding that critical minimum is a though call. But saying the creation of 3d model does not reach such critical minimum is surprising. Saying that the creation of a FDM (functional or not) does not reach it either if surprising likewise. Calling a number of "t" that is too short for being of significant contribution is also cumbersome -- more if we think, per example some can do an FDM in days, others like me fail to make it fly in years. one could presume the most effective developer could call the achievement in hours time.

Certainly an interesting thread with many open questions.

But respect? That is not one of the interesting ones in there.

He's claiming to actively maintain over 300 planes and in an open source community development, vetoes others work... now that can't be right.

With my son I tested some Helijah's WW2 fighters. They are absolutly poor, if real warbirds would fly like in FG, then no one pilot died in non battle accidents.
No stall, no spin, no P - factor, no engine torque counter effect etc. He do not need tune FDM, it is enough copy - paste, modify 2 or 3 parameters and all is OK. All that planes fly like Alladin's magic carpet, not planes.

Then I made very funny MP test - simulated dogfight Helijah's FG P40 vs P3D A2A P40 via swift and private FSD server. FG P40 won. Because that plane can't stall and was able made tight turns without significant speed drop, P3D P40 many times fall to spin. Take off in P3D P40 was very difficult, all low speed tight turns was on the edge of the flight envelope with high risk of the spin. FG P40 driven by YASIM was able to make turn in bank angle 90 degs at 80 KIAS and still can fly.

Result : Helijah's P40 is flying carpet, not airplane. I'm not surprissed that he can make 1 "airplane" in 18 days.
Similar flight characteristic has his P39 and many more warbirds.

If all his "airplanes" behave similar, then half of the planes in FG are not simulation, but stupid arcade game.

I dont disagree with V12 arguments about Helijahs FDMs at all.

Been saying it for years

Unless the community stops and reassesses what it wants from it's flight models nothing will change.

Over the year due to covid and my laptop being over ten years old I've scaled down my input/output of flight modelling.

I can't understand why I can't get people interested in accurate flight models. Folk don't join in or enter into discussions and they most certainly have little intention of team working preferring to do their own thing.

For once, I am interested in FDMs development

I have been crashing myserably on any attempt thou

The major problem I encounter in mentoring flight modelers is the overwhelming desire by the 'student' to want to fly..... it's so god damn infuriating that with a fraction of the data needed to create a flight model they're trying to fly and then commenting on how it's not flying correctly.

Well no shit Sherlock !

So flight modeling made easier would be to create a series of tabulated pages that a person works through, supplying the data needed by simple measuring, distances and locations and once a 2d airfoil table is provided out pops your completed flight model...

No programming required.