Re: How to view the flight data format from flight gear

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 3:20 AM, Kees Lemmens
<[email protected]>wrote:

> Ji,
>
> Just wondering : why are some of you using an Open Source Flight Simulator
> only to connect it to one of the most expensive (read least value for
> money)
> mathematical software packages in the world ?
>
> You could at least consider trying to hookup to Octave (an Open Source
> Matlab
> lookalike), Scilab or Numpy/Scipy instead : that would fit the ideas behind
> Flightgear a lot better ;-)
>
> I suggest the people who want to connect to Matlab to try a commercial
> simulator like MS-FlightSimulator instead ...
>

To be fair, many people using matlab are students or work for larger
companies that have purchased this software already.  I'm a big open source
fan, but one matlab script I have here ran about 1/10th the speed in octave
-- although octave did produce correct results (within the margins of
floating point rounding variations.)  If you are working with large data
sets or you are working on your code and need to iteratively run/test/edit
many times, that extra speed may be worth the cost of the package -- but
everyone's situation is different, and everyone is working on different
problems with different data.  Many people (myself usually too) have more
time than money.

I used to be more of a software/platform/os advocate than I am now -- I've
come to think that if a person is happy and comfortable and productive with
the tools they are using, then that is a good thing -- of course as long as
that includes FlightGear. :-)  I see no evil in purchasing software if it
helps you get a task done.  Personally I run Linux and use open-source
tools almost exclusively, but there are times when a commercial package
does work better or offers some feature that an open-source package does
not.  There are other times when an open-source solution works best.

If someone is looking for a tool or a solution to a problem, that's
definitely the time to suggest open-source alternatives in my view.  But if
someone is settled in and happy, let them work in peace. :-)

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org - http://gallinazo.flightgear.org

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