FlightGear: amazing open source flight simulator

[gsagostinho]

Hello all,

Since I have been advertising Oolite in the FlightGear forum, I decided to reciprocate it here Actually, before being bitten by the "Oolite bug", I spent almost all my gaming time with FlightGear.

So for those who don't know it, FlightGear is a open source flight simulator with tons of aircraft and the whole globe to fly around. It has very realistic flight models, a fantastic weather simulation, and some of the aircraft have systems as complex as in the real life (I have been involved in the development of the new Cessna 172, which will be the default plane from FlightGear 3.6 onwards). A new version 3.6 will be released later this month containing many improvements, particularly to the visual of the game.

Here are some screenshots (I only fly single engine planes, but there are tons of high quality airliners, military jets, WWII airplanes, helicopters, etc.):

















For those interested, check FlightGear's official page or the FlightGear forum as well.

Cheers,
Gilberto

[spud42]

thanks for this..... going to d/l now....

[Griff]

Wow, that looks stunning!

[gsagostinho]

I am glad you guys like it! These images were made with what will be the default FlightGear 3.6 (although the main difference you will see from the current 3.4 and the images above is that the default aircraft - the Cessna 172 - is worse looking and much less complex). Just some few notes for people who aren't familiar with flight simulators:

- unlike any other type of games, flight simulators tend to require a more complex setup. Setting it up for it to look and behave as one want can be a little bit time consuming.
- it's obviously better to use a joystick to fly, but using a mouse is also fine in FlightGear. Keyboard is a no-no in my opinion, but I've seen people using it.
- don't get frustrated if you can't even start an aircraft, as I wrote some of them have very similar-to-identical real life systems and so this can be tricky in the beginning. Thankfully there is a built-in "cheat" called autostart
- that all said, if any of you try it and find some problems, feel free to let me know about it or also to post on the FlightGear forum. People there are as friendly as you all here

Enjoy it!

[MSA-S23]

Well said, Gsagostinho, well said.

Yes, the simulator is all free and open-source, looks amazing, and it's fun (and addictive) just like Oolite. I am also from FG, but after finding that Gilberto plays Oolite as well, I'd join the forums with him and support FG. (and talk with some other Oolite players about the Ooniverse!)

Enjoy!

MSA-S23

P.S. Gsagostinho, I think they're using the exact same smiley code as FG does, how about you?

[gsagostinho]

Hey MSA-S23, welcome to the forum

P.S. Gsagostinho, I think they're using the exact same smiley code as FG does, how about you?

Yep. Actually, besides the layout of the forum, everything is identical to what we have over there, so I guess you will feel at home here.

By the way, if you feel like, you can introduce yourself here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13795

[Layne]

Yes, the simulator is all free and open-source, looks amazing, and it's fun (and addictive) just like Oolite. I am also from FG, but after finding that Gilberto plays Oolite as well, I'd join the forums with him and support FG. (and talk with some other Oolite players about the Ooniverse!)

Welcome to flying outside of an atmosphere, MSA-S23! Those are some mighty sharp looking weather effects in those screenshots. If I had a joystick, I'd be tempted to take a spin and see the clouds in an up-close and invade-their-personal-space sort of style. Cumulonimbus, for thee I pine!

Enjoy your tour of the galaxy, commander!

[pagroove]

I am a member of a team that makes The Netherlands scenery for Flight Simulator http://www.nl-2000.com/nuke/. But I have also Flightgear installed on my Mac. For an open source sim it gets better with every release.

[gsagostinho]

I am a member of a team that makes The Netherlands scenery for Flight Simulator http://www.nl-2000.com/nuke/.

Your sceneries look fantastic! It's really a great work

But I have also Flightgear installed on my Mac. For an open source sim it gets better with every release.

I use to fly with Microsoft FS long time ago, then I switched to X-Plane 10 and since some 6 months or more I am using mainly FlightGear (as I also find it fun to develop new content for it). The problem of FlightGear isn't the fact that it's open source in my view, but mostly because there are much fewer developers (all of which working only on their spare time) than probably in a single addon company such as PMDG (at least when thinking in man-hours). Also, since we must stick to a GPL license it's often very difficult to find content that we can use. I work mainly with textures and sounds and I have had so many difficulties finding interesting source materials in friendly licenses. Lastly, we try the best we can to keep folks with old computers participating in the project: if we would really push the GPU and CPU requirements most of our users and developers would be left behind. These are, in my opinion, the major things that hold FlightGear back.

You could also complain about it's GUI (and of course it has it's quirks) but once set up it has some very neat features. The Advanced Weather system is for instance extremely well made, we take terrain, time of the day and the type of landclass into account in order to generate the weather. Also, the ambition with our new default Cessna 172 is to have a study-level aircraft, and right now it even the circuit breakers working for instance (a trivial addition to program, of course, but one that is missing from any default C172 in other sims as far as I know) and a fully functional priming system. Our sky colours depend on the weather and are generated by mathematical functions as opposed to simply have a texture file displayed (such as in X-Plane). This allows some neat tricks: you can set the level of pollution for instance, which will affect the haze but also the colours of the sky, making daylight sky more washed out and sunsets more orange.

Some people tend to judge the "realism" of a simulator by how it looks, and then they compare Flightgear with FSX (and tons of expensive addons) and they never bother to even try our simulator. But as far as I know, FlightGear is capable of extremely realistic FDMs! But when it comes to graphics it is also evolving rapidly. It's just a pity that so many users have already a pre-conceived image of this simulator (myself included before I really gave it a try), and so it always make me happy to see someone that uses another platform having our program installed on their computers and giving it a go from time to time

[gsagostinho]

The FlightGear development team is delighted to announce the v2016.1 “San Francisco” release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bugfixes.

Download FlightGear v2016.1 for free from http://www.FlightGear.org/download

Have any questions or need help with something? Try FlightGear's official forum at forum.FlightGear.org/

FlightGear – Fly Free!

[MSA-S23]

Congratulations on another wonderful release!!!

Cheers,
Ash

[spud42]

looking good, i am downloading it now.

under about flight gear is a link to a flightgear youtube channel. great idea BUT there is only 1 video and its 3 years old.... time for an update??
would like to see it in action before i install.

[gsagostinho]

@spud42 Yes, you are right, that youtube channel is almost abandoned. Lately there were some efforts to create video material for the new release, but it isn't finished yet. Here is a link for it, together with a couple more videos by other users:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwFSm3zYfCs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSYOdx4s0xo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlbUS8ovpk

[Fritz]

Sadly, the majority of the many plane projects seem abandoned too, at least the Wiki gives me that impression. My favourite plane, the DC-3/C-47 (shown in the first video at 3:11), has a bug that was noted years ago, but nothing has changed, even with the new version.

[gsagostinho]

@Fritz Yes, that is unfortunately true, but you have to keep in mind that there are literally hundreds of aeroplanes for FlightGear. Some of them aren't finished models, others were created more than a decade ago and therefore are not up to the standards of more actual planes, and others are simply unmaintained. It surprises me though that you point the DC-3 as one of such, as I thought it was a well maintained aircraft. Which bug is this you are talking about? You know, I am a developer of some aircraft and scenery textures myself and it's difficult to find time to go after every bug report. Also, sometimes some reports simply get forgotten/lost, which is a pity. In the case of our Cessna 172P, for instance, in more or less a year since our project of revamping the plane started we solved and closed 350 issues, but still have 78 opened. It always seem that for every issue you solve, two new ones are opened...

About the DC3, I know that Pattern has a fork of it which may (or may not) have this problem solved. I haven't compared his version to what is on FGADDON, but you can give it a try: http://pattenflightgear.wifeo.com/douglas-dc3-c47.php

And for those who are new to FlightGear, here are a couple of recommendations of good planes with nice 3D cockpits:


===general aviation===
Cessna 172P
Cessna 182S (from https://github.com/HHS81/c182 )
Cessna 337G
Piper J3 Cub
Robin DR400 Dauphin
Cap 10B and 10C

===larger propeller aircraft===
Douglas DC-3
DeHavilland DHC6-300 Twin Otter
Beechcraft B1900D
Extra 500
Aerostar Super 700

===airliners===
Boeing 777
Boeing 707
Airbus A320 NEO (from http://wiki.flightgear.org/Airbus_A320neo )
Boeing 757

===military===
McDonnel Douglas F-15C and F-15D (from http://wiki.flightgear.org/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle )
Grumman F-14B
General Dynamics F-16
Fairchild A-10
IAR-80
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IX

===gliders===
Schleicher ASK-13
Glaser-Dirks DG-101G

===helicopters===
Eurocopter EC135
Eurocopter EC130
Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion
Allouette 2

And last, but certainly not least, the amazing Space Shuttle Atlantis (see http://wiki.flightgear.org/Space_Shuttle ).

Note that this list will surely leave lots of good planes unmentioned since it just reflects the planes I tried myself and from the top of my memory.

If anyone would be interested, I can also prepare a list of interesting airports and sceneries, since this also varies a lot in terms of quality.

Cheers,
Gilberto