Hey Eco-geeks, I'm hoping to gauge the level of available person-power for openfoam (open source flow dynamics) and possibly some diy laser/camera stuff to build models with so that folks *might* be able to scan their existing cars in and do some virtual mods and determine the effects. As well as enabling folks to actually simulate things like vortex generators instead of speculating endlessly. If there's interest (as in people willing and able to help, and willing to work on a convergent solution so that it IS more comprehendable to a larger audience, not the "I think you should test all my ideas for me" variety of help) then speak up.
There is a huge pile of stuff to sort through, but the benefits to modders could be substantial if it can be made coherent.
Here is an example of laser scanning, so the concept works, but we need something open, and high resolution. There needs to be some more brainstorming on the acquisition side, as well as how to modify a model, but in the end it needs to work with openfoam (and be open source).
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ing-10011.html
Also there is waaay to much stuff to sort through without adding divergent platform complications or various branches and etc. So contributors would be asked to focus on one platform for starters, i.e. ubuntu (I have to use virtualbox FYI). And we should agree on what version of what to sort out first, and yadda yadda to keep tail chasing and self inflicted problems to a minimum.
There likely aren't enough people to diverge AND focus on helping the larger audience, but it should still be somewhat democratic among the contributors (keeping the larger audience, the target end users, in mind) as to how we sort out the specific versions of the tooling.
This isn't going to be a big creative effort, this is going to be an exercise in cutting out all the chaff and a lot of testing and some repackaging and documenting and creating examples and lots of explaining things in the forum and perhaps the wiki and whatever else I am forgetting.
C++/unix/java would be most helpful, need some aerodynamic gurus to validate the results too and probably explain a few things, a few victims to try to make sense out of the "dumbed down" version, etc. The hope is by limiting the options/parameters to a few use cases specific to land vehicles that we can put a simpler front end on it without a paralyzing array of options.
Thoughts?