0xdeadbeef
New member
In case someone is interested, I made a list of all the bugs that I reported over the last years and which still were in the last version of G3.5 to check if they are still in G4. Also I checked all improvement suggestions I made during the life cycle of G3 and checked if they were implemented (yet) in G4:
Bugs
1) Effectiveness for "native" control surfaces is much higher than that of wings (same airfoil/shape/size) on movable pods. Also e.g. rudder effectiveness seems to be influenced by size of vertical tail.
-> Not fixed. Indeed it even got worse since effectiveness of native control surfaces was further increased.
2) If a plane (e.g. one of the flatouts) lands on its back, it will slide around on its back, with the propeller reaching into the ground. This will however not stop the propeller - in some cases, the plane will be ripped apart after a while without obvious reason.
-> Fixed.
3) Some objects can be passed in one direction, but not in the other. E.g. if you scale the "Car Port Double" to e.g. 400%, a plane can fly though the glass windows from bottom to top, but vice versa the collision works ok (so it's obviously not the depth).
-> Not fixed.
4) Under some circumstances, a very subtle collision will result in collision forces some orders of magnitude too high. E.g. a plane will be ripped apart or catapulted to the horizon with full speed after slightly touching the ground, ceiling or an object.
-> Not fixed? Not so easy to reproduce any more, since #2 was fixed.
5) If a recording started when the plane is already damaged, the plane will be reset to ground.
-> Not fixed.
6) Heli canopies cast a shadow on the rotor blade from below.
-> Fixed.
7) Coax helis move diagonally instead of fwd/bwd since 3.50.044. E.g. they drift to the left when flying forward and right when flying backward. This is extremely visible with the Twister by Tony Elms, but also with the Heli-Max Axe EZ.
-> Not fixed.
8) With metric units, wind speed and airspeed are shown in different units (one in "kph", one in "mph"). Besides I still would like to see the common abbreviation "km/h" (kilometers per hour) for both. "kph" is not commonly used and could be confused with "knots per hour", "mph" could be confused with "miles per hour".
Furthermore m/s is much less accurate then km/h (step size for page up/down is much too high for m/s).
-> Not fixed.
9) Main window is not refreshed when opening the aircraft editor in a small window and moving it around.
-> Not fixed
10) Parts of an aircraft (~CANOPY ?) disappear when you look at it through a transparent object (e.g. carport)
-> Not fixed
12) Shadows are cast though solid objects e.g. tables.
-> Not fixed
13) Reproducable "unexpected error" when quickly switching planes (Alt,A,1) in full screen mode with vsync and shadow optimization on.
-> Fixed? Couldn't reproduce this with G4.
Improvement suggestions
1) Pan view with right or middle mouse button. In the aircraft editor (upper pane) there doesn't seem to be a way at all to pan, in the airport editor you have to switch to pan mode and back. Since the middle mouse putton is used in Gmax/3dSMax to drag around the view, I'd like to see this in the G3 editors as well.
Another idea would be to have little pivot/pan/zoom icons like in Cinema4D: as long as the mouse button is pressed over one of the icons, any mouse movement is used for panning, rotating or zooming the view (ok, zooming is not really needed for people with a mouse wheel).
-> Not done
2) Copy/Paste: while the airport editor has at least the "move here"/"copy here" feature (though this is not really compliant to windows conventions), there is no way to copy or move a component in the aircraft editor. It would be nice if you could drag coponents from one hierarchy level to another or at least copy/move them.
In the airport editor, I would prefer a windows compliant copy/paste behaviour including group selection with shift/alt and selection by an selection rectangle (left mouse drag).
-> Not done (though airport editor seems to have copy/cut/paste now)
3) Jump to characters in list boxes: some of the list boxed in the aircraft editor are very large (e.g. airfoil), so it would be nice if you could jump to e.g. to airfoils starting with "N" by typing "N" on the keyboard. This works in most applications and also in the airport editor's object selection tree view btw.
-> Done
4) Talking of the airport editor's object selection tree view: I don't see why it is empty if no object is selected. I understand this is because when just clicking on the "floor", you also lose the folder selection on the left side, but why is that? I would prefer if the folder selection on the left side was not influenced by not selecting an object. This is especially bothering since you have to switch to pan/pivot view all the time (see #1).
-> Partly Done (folder selection is still lost and object palette box is empty at startup though)
5) When moving objects in the airport editor, it would be great to have this little x/y/z axis thingie that you have in almost all 3D editors (Cinema4D, GMax, 3DSMax) for moving objects around. So you can click on the x-axis and then drag the object around to change the x coordinates and so on.
-> Not done
6) While I understand that implementing all the features of Reflex' very nice scenery editor would be a major effort, I think that adding some basic polygon editing would be a great thing. For a start, you could limit it to triangles where you could move all three edge points. I think the effort for this would still be acceptable compared to the benefits. This would also allow photofield airports with uneven floor. In a next step you could add stuff like friction/bumpiness coefficients and things like that to polygons. This way it would be possible to simulate bumpy floors, grass etc. and it would be even a first step towards water.
-> Not done (even though water is implemented)
7) Though this is not really needed, it would be nice if you could use the pilot spawn view also as edit view. When arranging things in photofields, it would be easier to select/move objects in the pilot spawn view than it is in the normal view. As an alternative, there could be a setting to synchronize the editor view to the pilot spawn view, so when dragging/rotating the pilot spawn view, this would be refelcted in the editor view (which of course would be centered to the pilot as well). Anyway it would be helpful if the currently selected object would be visible in the pilot spawn view even if it is only a depth buffer object. Selected objects could appear in some clearily visible color like yellow or whatever.
-> Not done
8) It should be possible to scale at least basic collision objects (cube, sphere etc.) in each direction independently. Would be great though if this was possible for any object.
-> Not done
9) As long as it's not possible to import new objects (which of course would be nice as well), it would be a first step if we could at least map textures to primitives like boxes. Thus it would be possible to use custom floor or wall textures in 3D fields.
-> Not done
10) Importing custom 3D objects would be nice. This would also be an alternative way of creating complex collision meshes for photofields. Then again, I'd still prefer the polygon painting method for this.
-> Not done
11) not exactly an editor suggestion, but related: it would be nice if there was an additional alpha stencil for the photofields. Thus it would be possible to make the aircraft partly visible if it's behind (partly) transparent objects. E.g. glass, nets or wire netting fences. So if a pixel of the aircraft should be invisible because of z culling, it's alpha blended with the background: e.g. for an alpha value of 255, the plane pixel is completely visible, for an alpha value of 0, it's completely covered by the background graphics. Though this simple approach would fail with more than one depth player (e.g. a solid block behind a glass window and the aircraft could be either behind or before the block), it would improve visual quality in quite some scenerios (e.g. football nets and security fences). For a perfect solution, you would need to be able to map the alpha stencil to collision objects.
I think that Reflex handles it similar to that (dunno how perfectly though). At least some of the photofields there have additional bitmaps which pretty mich look like alpha stencils.
-> Not done
12) Make it possible to use other aircrafts in trainers
-> Done (though only via console)
13) Introduce servo controlled Pivots without aerodynamic properties to use for servo arms etc. instead of moving pods.
-> Not done
14) Permanently record the last flight. Like when you reset the aircraft, the default recording is also reset but if you decide later on that you would have liked to record this, you can just hit a key and store this default recording to a file. Kinda like time shift on a digital video recorder (PVR) which can be converted to a recording.
-> Not done
15) Allow setting of AA/AF settings inside the sim.
-> Not done
16) Allow changing of airport/aircraft in full screen mode without (automatic) switching to windows mode.
-> Not done (well, the behavior improved, but it's not staying in full screen mode)
17) Consider size of an aircraft for auto zoom modes to improve visibility of small aircrafts.
-> Not done
So, lots of place for improvement...
Bugs
1) Effectiveness for "native" control surfaces is much higher than that of wings (same airfoil/shape/size) on movable pods. Also e.g. rudder effectiveness seems to be influenced by size of vertical tail.
-> Not fixed. Indeed it even got worse since effectiveness of native control surfaces was further increased.
2) If a plane (e.g. one of the flatouts) lands on its back, it will slide around on its back, with the propeller reaching into the ground. This will however not stop the propeller - in some cases, the plane will be ripped apart after a while without obvious reason.
-> Fixed.
3) Some objects can be passed in one direction, but not in the other. E.g. if you scale the "Car Port Double" to e.g. 400%, a plane can fly though the glass windows from bottom to top, but vice versa the collision works ok (so it's obviously not the depth).
-> Not fixed.
4) Under some circumstances, a very subtle collision will result in collision forces some orders of magnitude too high. E.g. a plane will be ripped apart or catapulted to the horizon with full speed after slightly touching the ground, ceiling or an object.
-> Not fixed? Not so easy to reproduce any more, since #2 was fixed.
5) If a recording started when the plane is already damaged, the plane will be reset to ground.
-> Not fixed.
6) Heli canopies cast a shadow on the rotor blade from below.
-> Fixed.
7) Coax helis move diagonally instead of fwd/bwd since 3.50.044. E.g. they drift to the left when flying forward and right when flying backward. This is extremely visible with the Twister by Tony Elms, but also with the Heli-Max Axe EZ.
-> Not fixed.
8) With metric units, wind speed and airspeed are shown in different units (one in "kph", one in "mph"). Besides I still would like to see the common abbreviation "km/h" (kilometers per hour) for both. "kph" is not commonly used and could be confused with "knots per hour", "mph" could be confused with "miles per hour".
Furthermore m/s is much less accurate then km/h (step size for page up/down is much too high for m/s).
-> Not fixed.
9) Main window is not refreshed when opening the aircraft editor in a small window and moving it around.
-> Not fixed
10) Parts of an aircraft (~CANOPY ?) disappear when you look at it through a transparent object (e.g. carport)
-> Not fixed
12) Shadows are cast though solid objects e.g. tables.
-> Not fixed
13) Reproducable "unexpected error" when quickly switching planes (Alt,A,1) in full screen mode with vsync and shadow optimization on.
-> Fixed? Couldn't reproduce this with G4.
Improvement suggestions
1) Pan view with right or middle mouse button. In the aircraft editor (upper pane) there doesn't seem to be a way at all to pan, in the airport editor you have to switch to pan mode and back. Since the middle mouse putton is used in Gmax/3dSMax to drag around the view, I'd like to see this in the G3 editors as well.
Another idea would be to have little pivot/pan/zoom icons like in Cinema4D: as long as the mouse button is pressed over one of the icons, any mouse movement is used for panning, rotating or zooming the view (ok, zooming is not really needed for people with a mouse wheel).
-> Not done
2) Copy/Paste: while the airport editor has at least the "move here"/"copy here" feature (though this is not really compliant to windows conventions), there is no way to copy or move a component in the aircraft editor. It would be nice if you could drag coponents from one hierarchy level to another or at least copy/move them.
In the airport editor, I would prefer a windows compliant copy/paste behaviour including group selection with shift/alt and selection by an selection rectangle (left mouse drag).
-> Not done (though airport editor seems to have copy/cut/paste now)
3) Jump to characters in list boxes: some of the list boxed in the aircraft editor are very large (e.g. airfoil), so it would be nice if you could jump to e.g. to airfoils starting with "N" by typing "N" on the keyboard. This works in most applications and also in the airport editor's object selection tree view btw.
-> Done
4) Talking of the airport editor's object selection tree view: I don't see why it is empty if no object is selected. I understand this is because when just clicking on the "floor", you also lose the folder selection on the left side, but why is that? I would prefer if the folder selection on the left side was not influenced by not selecting an object. This is especially bothering since you have to switch to pan/pivot view all the time (see #1).
-> Partly Done (folder selection is still lost and object palette box is empty at startup though)
5) When moving objects in the airport editor, it would be great to have this little x/y/z axis thingie that you have in almost all 3D editors (Cinema4D, GMax, 3DSMax) for moving objects around. So you can click on the x-axis and then drag the object around to change the x coordinates and so on.
-> Not done
6) While I understand that implementing all the features of Reflex' very nice scenery editor would be a major effort, I think that adding some basic polygon editing would be a great thing. For a start, you could limit it to triangles where you could move all three edge points. I think the effort for this would still be acceptable compared to the benefits. This would also allow photofield airports with uneven floor. In a next step you could add stuff like friction/bumpiness coefficients and things like that to polygons. This way it would be possible to simulate bumpy floors, grass etc. and it would be even a first step towards water.
-> Not done (even though water is implemented)
7) Though this is not really needed, it would be nice if you could use the pilot spawn view also as edit view. When arranging things in photofields, it would be easier to select/move objects in the pilot spawn view than it is in the normal view. As an alternative, there could be a setting to synchronize the editor view to the pilot spawn view, so when dragging/rotating the pilot spawn view, this would be refelcted in the editor view (which of course would be centered to the pilot as well). Anyway it would be helpful if the currently selected object would be visible in the pilot spawn view even if it is only a depth buffer object. Selected objects could appear in some clearily visible color like yellow or whatever.
-> Not done
8) It should be possible to scale at least basic collision objects (cube, sphere etc.) in each direction independently. Would be great though if this was possible for any object.
-> Not done
9) As long as it's not possible to import new objects (which of course would be nice as well), it would be a first step if we could at least map textures to primitives like boxes. Thus it would be possible to use custom floor or wall textures in 3D fields.
-> Not done
10) Importing custom 3D objects would be nice. This would also be an alternative way of creating complex collision meshes for photofields. Then again, I'd still prefer the polygon painting method for this.
-> Not done
11) not exactly an editor suggestion, but related: it would be nice if there was an additional alpha stencil for the photofields. Thus it would be possible to make the aircraft partly visible if it's behind (partly) transparent objects. E.g. glass, nets or wire netting fences. So if a pixel of the aircraft should be invisible because of z culling, it's alpha blended with the background: e.g. for an alpha value of 255, the plane pixel is completely visible, for an alpha value of 0, it's completely covered by the background graphics. Though this simple approach would fail with more than one depth player (e.g. a solid block behind a glass window and the aircraft could be either behind or before the block), it would improve visual quality in quite some scenerios (e.g. football nets and security fences). For a perfect solution, you would need to be able to map the alpha stencil to collision objects.
I think that Reflex handles it similar to that (dunno how perfectly though). At least some of the photofields there have additional bitmaps which pretty mich look like alpha stencils.
-> Not done
12) Make it possible to use other aircrafts in trainers
-> Done (though only via console)
13) Introduce servo controlled Pivots without aerodynamic properties to use for servo arms etc. instead of moving pods.
-> Not done
14) Permanently record the last flight. Like when you reset the aircraft, the default recording is also reset but if you decide later on that you would have liked to record this, you can just hit a key and store this default recording to a file. Kinda like time shift on a digital video recorder (PVR) which can be converted to a recording.
-> Not done
15) Allow setting of AA/AF settings inside the sim.
-> Not done
16) Allow changing of airport/aircraft in full screen mode without (automatic) switching to windows mode.
-> Not done (well, the behavior improved, but it's not staying in full screen mode)
17) Consider size of an aircraft for auto zoom modes to improve visibility of small aircrafts.
-> Not done
So, lots of place for improvement...
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