Wednesday, December 11, 2013

FGx Globe R5: New Globe Type, More Aircraft, More Thumbnails



For the past several weeks I have been working on the FGx project. I think FGx stands for Flight Gear Extras. The effort includes the design, style and content of the web pages hosted on GitHub as well as FGx Globe. FGx Aircraft Overview and FGx Airports Runways Navaids.

I have been communicating almost entirely with the other members of the project via the FGx Google Group but realize this is silly because it's *you* I should be talking to. 

All of this work is in need of feedback and comments and suggestions.

The screen grab above is from FGx Globe. It's showing aircraft that are currently being flown by people using the FlightGear flight simulator.  Of course the globe is in 3D and so you can zoom, pan and rotate the globe. Move your mouse over an aircraft and a window pops up with the flight details and a thumbnail image of the plane. Open the Crossfeed tab, click on a flight and a separate window opens showing the aircraft flying over a 2D map. And there's much more; please explore the tabs. The main thing missing in the tabs is the credits and licensing data for all the tools used to build this app, but this info is being added slowly but surely.  

So FGx Globe is in a good enough state - but just for the moment.

Coming up will be fixing the issues with all the aircraft in FGx Aircraft. Some craft are missing, some are missing just a few bits (like wings or propellers ;-), and others have extra bits such as light shields or parachutes. Once that is done, we nee to see if we can reattach all the logos and paint jobs.

Once the planes are in order, we can come back to FGx Globe and decide then next big thing which is what happens when you zoom way in? How do you get to the place where you can see the planes taking off and landing at the airports? Should the next step be inside FGx Globe or should you transition to a different app. I will be looking into both possibilities in upcoming posts.

In the mean time, happy globe-trotting!