FlightGear, a free flight simulator
Oct. 14th, 2024 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinI don't think I posted about it back then, but one of the things I did when I was messing around with flight sims a few years ago was to download FlightGear, a sim that is actually free and open-source (more precisely it is GPL'd free software). It's been around since the 1990s, slowly being developed, and it does show its age, but you can't beat the price:
When I tried it a few years ago, it seemed a bit awkward and glitchy, and I had no luck using it to fly anywhere other than its default low-res rendition of Hawaii. It's matured a little more since then (and my computer is more capable), and there's an automatic-scenery-download feature you can use to get world scenery for anywhere on the planet, though it doesn't download fast enough to stream and teleporting to a new airport will likely trap you in a gray void for a while. The autogen scenery makes many areas look kind of post-apocalyptic, in the manner of X-Plane with the specs turned way down, and its imagery of urban areas is schematic at best, but the airports are there.
It also now recognizes game controllers without much trouble, though the default mappings for the DualShock needed work much as with X-Plane (a centering analog stick is really not appropriate for controlling a throttle). With the controller set up correctly, FlightGear is actually fun to use.
The keyboard mappings seem inspired by the original subLogic/Microsoft Flight Simulator from the 1980s. Of course I had to take off from Oakland International and fly over San Francisco, the default area from Atari ST FSII.
It is still a bit glitchy--at one point my Cessna refused to budge from the runway even with the propeller going at full throttle, and after several attempts to check all possible ways I could have accidentally left the wheel brakes on, I Googled it and found a discussion of a known bug that causes this to happen sometimes until you toggle "Enable damage" on and off. The discussion was from several years ago, so, yeah. Some things happen slowly.
The frame rate it manages with the above settings is also kind of stuttery by modern standards, even on my new computer. X-Plane does much better with that. It is apparently possible to use it with a multi-monitor display, but it takes a lot of messing with configuration files and it was more than I was willing to do.
A charming detail is that the Cessna's engine will die if you just go immediately to full throttle after starting it--you have to handle it with realistic care, going easy on the throttle at first and ideally manipulating the fuel-air mixture and such. This is a bit annoying if you're just starting out but I kind of admire their insistence on that. The initial download only gives you the Cessna 172; there's a big library of free plane models you can download and install, but I haven't tried them. There are also a lot of scenery add-ons to make the local area of your choice look nicer.
FlightGear looks like a thing from a bygone age, and it isn't going to replace paid sims for me, but if you want something that costs $0 and actually models an airplane with some care, I doubt you can do better.
When I tried it a few years ago, it seemed a bit awkward and glitchy, and I had no luck using it to fly anywhere other than its default low-res rendition of Hawaii. It's matured a little more since then (and my computer is more capable), and there's an automatic-scenery-download feature you can use to get world scenery for anywhere on the planet, though it doesn't download fast enough to stream and teleporting to a new airport will likely trap you in a gray void for a while. The autogen scenery makes many areas look kind of post-apocalyptic, in the manner of X-Plane with the specs turned way down, and its imagery of urban areas is schematic at best, but the airports are there.
It also now recognizes game controllers without much trouble, though the default mappings for the DualShock needed work much as with X-Plane (a centering analog stick is really not appropriate for controlling a throttle). With the controller set up correctly, FlightGear is actually fun to use.
The keyboard mappings seem inspired by the original subLogic/Microsoft Flight Simulator from the 1980s. Of course I had to take off from Oakland International and fly over San Francisco, the default area from Atari ST FSII.
It is still a bit glitchy--at one point my Cessna refused to budge from the runway even with the propeller going at full throttle, and after several attempts to check all possible ways I could have accidentally left the wheel brakes on, I Googled it and found a discussion of a known bug that causes this to happen sometimes until you toggle "Enable damage" on and off. The discussion was from several years ago, so, yeah. Some things happen slowly.
The frame rate it manages with the above settings is also kind of stuttery by modern standards, even on my new computer. X-Plane does much better with that. It is apparently possible to use it with a multi-monitor display, but it takes a lot of messing with configuration files and it was more than I was willing to do.
A charming detail is that the Cessna's engine will die if you just go immediately to full throttle after starting it--you have to handle it with realistic care, going easy on the throttle at first and ideally manipulating the fuel-air mixture and such. This is a bit annoying if you're just starting out but I kind of admire their insistence on that. The initial download only gives you the Cessna 172; there's a big library of free plane models you can download and install, but I haven't tried them. There are also a lot of scenery add-ons to make the local area of your choice look nicer.
FlightGear looks like a thing from a bygone age, and it isn't going to replace paid sims for me, but if you want something that costs $0 and actually models an airplane with some care, I doubt you can do better.