Found no other relevant documentation on the DMG, just some bible quotes, which were absolutely no use under the circumstances (praying DIDN'T help.).įrankly, if this software is actually used by anyone in the groves of academe doing serious research, I'm never flying again! For now, I'd suggest sticking with Warbirds or X-Plane they may not be open source, but they work. The other problems I can forgive as development issues, but this is just plain carelessness. Installation: "Drag the FlightGear folder to Applications" say the (rather meagre) installation notes: this I tried, and got a permissions error. Its harder to make a comment on the flight models, since my machine (eMac 700MHz, 32MB nVidia, fine according to the limited system specs on the HTML manual pages) couldn't manage more than about 8 fps (guessing, the fps display didn't seem to work), and the poor UI design meant that changing the settings was too much of a chore*. For me, detecting collisions with ground objects is a major part of the "simulation" aspect of any flight sim. Physics: I managed to roll through the terminal building on a take-off run, did an inverted loop (in a 707!) and flew straight through the ground, which then disappeared leaving only a black dot. Major settings like screen resolution and controller options seem to be inaccessable from inside the game. Not just the "ported-from-UNIX-ugly-but-works" style, I mean pull-down menus that don't do anything except tell you to use an XML editor to edit the preference files (hacking is fun, but shouldn't be mandatory). Stability: takes a long time to load (about 2 minutes) and appears to be the pizza of death, but after the screen changes resolution and aspect ratio a few times it seems to work reasonably well (is the splash screen supposed to tear up like that?). Sound: Good, but then flight sims aren't the most complex soundtracks on the planet. Graphics: OK close to MSFS (pretty good for freeware, in other words). Our approach brings its own unique challenges and difficulties, but we are confident (and other similarly structured projects have demonstrated) that in the long run we can outclass the commercial “competition.I'm not sure this should even be a beta release yet.įirst the good news. Contrast this with the traditional approach of commercial software vendors, who are limited by the collective ability of the people they can hire and pay. In doing so, we are able to take advantage of the efforts of tremendously talented people from around the world. Interests range from building a realistic home simulator out old airplane parts, to university research and instructional use, to simply having a viable alternative to commercial PC simulators.įlight Gear and its source code have intentionally been kept open, available, and free. This is truly a global effort with contributors from just about every continent. There are a wide range of people interested and participating in this project. The Flight Gear project is striving to fill these gaps. Many people involved in education and research could use a spiffy flight simulator frame work on which to build their own projects however, commercial simulators do not lend themselves to modification and enhancement. There are so many people across the world with great ideas for enhancing the currently available simulators who have the ability to write code, and who have a desire to learn and contribute. A big problem with these simulators is their proprietariness and lack of extensibility. The idea for Flight Gear was born out of a dissatisfaction with current commercial PC flight simulators. Among the many goals of this project are the quest to minimize short cuts and “do things right”, the quest to learn and advance knowledge, and the quest to have better toys to play with. It is being developed through the gracious contributions of source code and spare time by many talented people from around the globe. We hope that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas.įlightGear is a free flight simulator project. There are many exciting possibilities for an open, free flight sim. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing. The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated and open flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, pilot training, as an industry engineering tool, for DIY-ers to pursue their favorite interesting flight simulation idea, and last but certainly not least as a fun, realistic, and challenging desktop flight simulator. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License. It supports a variety of popular platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and is developed by skilled volunteers from around the world. FlightGear is an open-source flight simulator.
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