Create addon for aircraft -- opinions?

[Octal450]

I have an MD-88 for flightgear. It is quite nice right now, just needs more cockpit and a bit system work.

I am also in the process of building an MD-90. The 88 and 90 use the same flightdeck, systems etc in real life, and in FG.

I hate porting over every change I make to difference models, so I am thinking build on the MD-88.

Make an MD-90 expansion pack which contains MD-90 specific things, 3D model and its file, yasim file, -set file, and have it use the cockpit and systems from the MD-88s folder? That way if I update the 88, the 90 gets the update to, and I could use the same method to make an MD-87 (shorter MD-88).

So basically like expansion packs?

Good idea or bad?

I plan to make an MD-82 in the same way in the future (MD-82 is older cockpit and slighly changed engines from MD-88)

So far, 6 people I asked in the FGFS VIP Facebook, and in Mumble say its a good idea.

Regards,

[IAHM-COL]

Examples before you:

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/JPack

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS-NONGPL/DavePack

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/ExpansionPack

You can consider not only create a pack, but maybe using one already made?
Keep in mind you will be creating dependencies to your aircraft by creating such "library", so it comes to a price. But it brings advantages.

[jwocky]

The problem is, people hate to depend on such a library. My JPack has stuff in it that was used by dozens of planes. But instead of just linking it, people rather copied "to stay independent". The result is, there must be around 20 planes, at least, still running on an outdated SYS7 autopilot and I have no way to find them and to update them and in many cases, the maintainers of those planes aren't even here anymore and thus, won't give me a holler to look at their planes. So, such a library is technically a good solution, but it's a bit hard to make people actually use it, which in consequence means, they hold intentionally up a big maintenance effort to stay "independent" and I use JPack for the planes I build. Which in this case is even connected to another problem because our dear core devs don't fix a bug, that prevents JPack planes from being visible in the launcher. This old bug allowed them to shun me once more.

[IAHM-COL]

Oh speaking of that bug, I heard a solution for the Launcher problem that we should give a try

[IAHM-COL]

@JWocky

Something to try out. The rumor is this fixes launcher issue

Wayne (wlbragg) pointed out that it was the use of an absolute path when
including the keyboard.xml file which caused the problem:

- <keyboard include="Aircraft/Parachutist/keyboard.xml"/>
+ <keyboard include="keyboard.xml"/>

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a bug or not (it does
work otherwise).

The point being the launcher is not smart enough to understand absolute paths on the calls of the Keyboard.xml file

[Octal450]

I have decided to use add an MD-82 inside the MD-88 folder, and the MD-90 is still a seperate plane.

Cheers.

[jwocky]

Well, the problem is, if you point to another directory outside of your current aircraft project, Waldo's solution points reliable to the wrong file. Example, if you add a parachutist to a C-141 that way, "keyboard.xml" points not to "Aircraft/parachutist/keyboard.xml" but to "Aircraft/C-141/keyboard.xml". So, any "solution" pointing reliable on the wrong location can't be anything but a bug.

[IAHM-COL]

Good point.
This is not a fixed bug, it is a workaround, and we may used in the interim.

[jwocky]

Well, it is a workaround that guaranttes nothing works, whether around nor otherwise ... so, we can't use it as interim.

[IAHM-COL]

ok. (bummer. I had a light of hope!)

We are down to infinite time for them to care about this bug !! :S