What's involved in the 'programming' part of developing a plane?

[tsedge]

Hi,

There's plenty of discussions I've seen here about 3d modeling, but not much about the programming.  Once visuals are done there's often talk of the plane being queued up for programming magic to take place.

I am a programmer by trade and so I am curious what is involved.  I lack any artistic ability but perhaps could contribute on the programming side.  I'm not a pilot though, so perhaps I don't have the necessary knowledge.

What is involved?

What language(s)?

What tools?

How much knowledge of aircraft?

Many thanks,

Tom.  

[nilsh]

I can't answer your question, but I do know someone who might want someone to build a plugin for his 767, which is in development.

The dev. post is http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=38988.

It's freeware, so you won't get paid. The head of the project is Kieran, the post starter.

Nils

[Goran_M]

I could use a programmer for the FMC in the Hawker 4000.

It will be payware and if it sells well and the programming is high standard, I will have no issue about paying someone who can do it.

Let me know if you're up to the task.

Goran

[Ben Russell]

Free Language choices:

- C/C++

- Delphi/Free (Obj) Pascal

- Python, with a third party plugin. (Sandy Barbour's)

This is a great choice for learning/prototyping but users sometimes have trouble installing it properly.

- One or two others.

I'm very close to completing my Lua scripting plugin which is designed to make a lot of common plugin tasks very easy.

I also have a .NET bindings plugin that I aim to finish one day.

See the SDK site for more information:

http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/Main_Page

The SDK is powerful and pretty easy to work with once you grasp the concepts.

There are always lateral thinking exercises to do to achieve what you really want though.

Tools:

Anything that can build a normal C-style .dll, .so, bundle or dylib.

The gcc toolchain works nicely on all three platforms.

Visual Basic 6 is out. As are all the .NET "Assembly style" .dlls, without a wrapper.

OpenGL for drawing.

There's no audio SDK calls so it's kinda roll-your-own, most people use OpenAL or Direct-Sound depending on how much compatability they want.

Plugins for aircraft can range from the mundane to the very complex.

Hope that helps somewhat.

[tsedge]

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys. 

Indi: Thanks for explaining the tools and skills.  That's much clearer now.  My C/C++ is a bit rusty but I've looked at the Plugin SDK site and it looks straightforward enough to get started, though I'm sure things get much trickier when you get into the fine detail.  I'm using a MacBook so could probably use XCode to do the trick there, though I'm not sure about compiling for Windows/Linux.

Nils: Thanks for the link.  I'll read through that long thread and see what is being discussed to get a better idea and what Kieran needs.

Goran: That sounds like a great opportunity but it might be a big ask for me to start my X-Plane work with an FMC.  I don't really know how much work that would take.  I guess it depends what you need.  I'm aware that uFMC and vasFMC have taken years and many people to get where they are.

Mind you I have been wondering whether a generic FMC toolkit plugin would be useful to let people easily create their own FMCs and tweak for different models.  I suppose it could include a customizable autopilot if there'd be a demand for that.  Airbus and Boeing FMC styles are well covered by uFMC/vasFMC, but what about the rest?  Do they vary a lot or are their just one or two main types that aircraft manufacturers use?

I think I'd best find a small project to get me going so I can learn the basics and all about what's involved.

Thanks,

Tom.

[GuitarCrazyo]

My guess is that youll see 1 or 2 of these 10 technologies succeed and the others will fail. Same with any emerging technology or standard remember VHS vs. Beta?