Comments on: Three Levels of Lua https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/ Developer resources for the X-Plane flight simulator Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:49:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 By: Morgan https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6983 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:49:10 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6983 Any idea of when new OSM data will be cut? Or the ability to add our own water?

]]> By: Ben Supnik https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6979 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:35:36 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6979 In reply to Christer.

I think “Lua is poorly designed from scratch” is a very sweeping statement and probably not fair to Lua or the LuaJIT team.

]]> By: Christer https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6976 Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:33:23 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6976 The Lua system is not designed for 64-bit. If it were designed for 64-bit, it should have not any limitation regarding memory, i.e. be able to store data anywhere in RAM, not just the lower part as current Lua is demanding. I think Lua is poorly designed from scratch, otherwise it shouldn’t behave like this.

I’ve seen several ports from 32-bit to 64-bit without memory issues like Lua has.

Just my point of view.

]]> By: Ben Supnik https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6971 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:22:46 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6971 In reply to vonhinx.

Maintained by LR is a double-edged sword. You guys have been waiting for a new sound system from us for … how long? LR is a bottleneck because there’s one of us and a gajillion of you.

The other double-edged sword is deploy-per-plane vs deploy-everywhere – I am actually a fan of deploy-per-plane because it makes versioning a million times easier. If the plugin is global, it must remain compatible with all past versions, no matter what new feature is desired. Eventually you end up with a ‘major version’ upgrade that breaks things to avoid huge backward-compatibility costs.

By comparison, if the plugin is per-plane, then that version _never_ breaks even if other planes use newer technology.

Cheers
Ben

]]> By: Fellbatzen https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6969 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:40:27 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6969 Just to give you a recent example about how suitable LUA can be for huge development projects: The PC game “Natural Selection 2” is almost entirely written in LUA, not just the game logic, but the whole engine, as far as I know. It is probably one of the most moddable commercial games ever made, because the source code and editors are delivered with the game. I think they’ve optimized the speed how the LUA code is executed on the low level as well. And we’re not talking about a little 2D jump’n’run here, this is a triple-A 3D engine with full dynamic lighting and stuff like that. Maybe that changes your point of view about LUA a bit. 🙂

]]> By: Mario Donick https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6968 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:47:24 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6968 You should really try to avoid fundamental changes that would make current complex planes broken. The increasing instability of the development cycle is what keeps more developers from working for XP, and also for users it’s a test for patience. I really love XP, and I try to spread the word about it, but sometimes I just wish for a Sim that is simply working, without fearing that it might be broken soon again.

Take the Carenado A36 for example, which has a Lua driven avionics. I don’t want to be in its developers skin when you tell the public: sorry, you have to rework your plane again, because we did not tell you in advance of our plans. This feel of uncertainty is really bad.

]]> By: “Three Levels of Lua” by Ben Supnik | Aerosoft Sim News https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6967 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 07:53:51 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6967 […] and additional information can be found at the dedicated X-Plane Ben Supnik’s web page. Share […]

]]> By: vonhinx https:/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/#comment-6966 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 07:37:59 +0000 http://xplanedev.wpengine.com/?p=4766#comment-6966 XP needs a scripting system. Further disadvantages to the multiple Lua plugins are that they aren’t maintained by Laminar hence subject to the availability of their authors (some might view that as a good thing); it’s not system-wide (the plugin must be dropped into every aircraft folder), and yeah, it isn’t tied in very well with XP technology like graphics.

All modellers want to do is add custom behaviors specific to a particular aircraft and fill in the some of the holes of the sim: 3D rain, sound for significant events and switch types, damage modelling and whatnot. I like what the SDK can do with the XP’s limited FMS when tied-in to Lua. It’s easy to do custom FMS displays, insert or delete waypoints, find navaids or frequencies. However, parsing large files and doing heavy maths to find intercept points, or overriding the autopilot to add missing FMS functions like heading to altitude or DME might be better done in C++ by Laminar with SDK hooks for high level abstract languages like Lua.

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