diff --git a/Docs/InstallGuide/html/getstart.html b/Docs/InstallGuide/html/getstart.html index 37b544663..8626d70d7 100644 --- a/Docs/InstallGuide/html/getstart.html +++ b/Docs/InstallGuide/html/getstart.html @@ -4,9 +4,9 @@ FlightGear Flight Simulator - Installation and Getting Started - + - + @@ -22,47 +22,47 @@

FlightGear Flight Simulator - Installation and Getting Started

-
Michael Basler (pmb@epost.de) -
-
including contributions by -
Martin Spott () and Martin Spott (Martin.Spott@uni-duisburg.de), -
) +
+
including contributions by +
Bernhard Buckel (buckel@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de), -
Curt Olson (curt@flightgear.org), -
Jon Berndt (jsb@hal-pc.org), -
Darrell Walisser dwaliss1@purdue.edu dwaliss1@purdue.edu, +
and others -

Getting Started version 0.5
+class="ptmr7t---120">Getting Started version 0.51
February, 15th, 2002
+class="ptmr7t---120">February, 16th, 2002
This documentation was written for FlightGear version 0.7.9.
-

Contents

- Installation +
+ Contents +
Preface +
Installation
1 Want to have a free flight? Take Want to have a free flight? Take FlightGear!
 1.1 Yet another Flight Simulator? +href="getstartch1.html#x5-50001.1" name="QQ2-5-5">Yet another Flight Simulator?
 1.2 System requirements +href="getstartch1.html#x5-60001.2" name="QQ2-5-6">System requirements
 1.3 Which version should I use? +href="getstartch1.html#x5-70001.3" name="QQ2-5-7">Which version should I use?
 1.4 Flight models +href="getstartch1.html#x5-80001.4" name="QQ2-5-8">Flight models
 1.5 To whom this guide is addressed and how it is organized +href="getstartch1.html#x5-90001.5" name="QQ2-5-9">To whom this guide is addressed and how it is organized
2 Building the plane: Compiling the program +href="getstartch2.html#x6-100002" name="QQ2-6-10">Building the plane: Compiling the program
 2.1 Getting a development environment under Windows +href="getstartch2.html#x6-110002.1" name="QQ2-6-11">Getting a development environment under Windows
 2.2 Compiling Compiling FlightGear under Linux/Windows
 2.3 Compiling Compiling FlightGear under Mac OS 10.1
 2.4 Compiling on other systems +href="getstartch2.html#x6-140002.4" name="QQ2-6-14">Compiling on other systems
 2.5 Installing the base package +href="getstartch2.html#x6-150002.5" name="QQ2-6-15">Installing the base package
 2.6 For test pilots only: Building the CVS snapshots +href="getstartch2.html#x6-160002.6" name="QQ2-6-16">For test pilots only: Building the CVS snapshots
3 Preflight: Installing Preflight: Installing FlightGear
 3.1 Installing the binary distribution on a Windows system +href="getstartch3.html#x7-180003.1" name="QQ2-7-18">Installing the binary distribution on a Windows system
 3.2 Installing the binary distribution on a Macintosh system +href="getstartch3.html#x7-190003.2" name="QQ2-7-19">Installing the binary distribution on a Macintosh system
 3.3 Installing the binary distribution on a Debian Linux system +href="getstartch3.html#x7-200003.3" name="QQ2-7-20">Installing the binary distribution on a Debian Linux system
 3.4 Installing the binary distribution on a SGI IRIX system +href="getstartch3.html#x7-210003.4" name="QQ2-7-21">Installing the binary distribution on a SGI IRIX system
 3.5 Installing add-on scenery +href="getstartch3.html#x7-220003.5" name="QQ2-7-22">Installing add-on scenery
 3.6 Installing documentation +href="getstartch3.html#x7-230003.6" name="QQ2-7-23">Installing documentation
Flying with Flying with FlightGear
4 Takeoff: How to start the program +href="getstartch4.html#x9-250004" name="QQ2-9-25">Takeoff: How to start the program
 4.1 Launching the simulator under Unix/Linux +href="getstartch4.html#x9-260004.1" name="QQ2-9-26">Launching the simulator under Unix/Linux
 4.2 Launching the simulator under Windows +href="getstartch4.html#x9-270004.2" name="QQ2-9-27">Launching the simulator under Windows
 4.3 Launching the simulator under Mac OS X +href="getstartch4.html#x9-280004.3" name="QQ2-9-28">Launching the simulator under Mac OS X
 4.4 Command line parameters -
  4.4.1 General Options -
  4.4.2 Features -
  4.4.3 Flight model -
  4.4.4 Aircraft model directory (Only for the UIUC Flight Dynamics Model) +href="getstartch4.html#x9-290004.4" name="QQ2-9-29">Command line parameters +
5 In-flight: All about instruments, keystrokes and menus +
 5.1 Starting the engine -
  4.4.5 Initial Position and Orientation -
  4.4.6 Rendering Options -
  4.4.7 HUD Options -
  4.4.8 Time Options -
  4.4.9 Network Options -
  4.4.10 Route/Waypoint Options -
  4.4.11 IO Options -
  4.4.12 Debugging options -
  4.4.13 Joystick properties -
5 In-flight: All about instruments, keystrokes and menus -
 5.1 Starting the engine
 5.2 Keyboard controls +href="getstartch5.html#x10-450005.2" name="QQ2-10-45">Keyboard controls
 5.3 Menu entries +href="getstartch5.html#x10-460005.3" name="QQ2-10-46">Menu entries
 5.4 The Instrument Panel +href="getstartch5.html#x10-470005.4" name="QQ2-10-47">The Instrument Panel
 5.5 The Head Up Display +href="getstartch5.html#x10-480005.5" name="QQ2-10-48">The Head Up Display
 5.6 Mouse controlled actions +href="getstartch5.html#x10-490005.6" name="QQ2-10-49">Mouse controlled actions
 5.7 Some further reading for pilot students +href="getstartch5.html#x10-500005.7" name="QQ2-10-50">Some further reading for pilot students
Appendices +href="getstartpa3.html#x11-51000III" name="QQ2-11-51">Appendices
A Landing: Some further thoughts before leaving the plane +href="getstartap1.html#x12-52000A" name="QQ2-12-52">Missed approach: If anything refuses to work
 A.1 A not so Short History of FlightGear +href="getstartap1.html#x12-53000A.1" name="QQ2-12-53">FlightGear Problem Reports
 A.2 Those, who did the work +href="getstartap1.html#x12-54000A.2" name="QQ2-12-54">General problems
 A.3 What remains to be done +href="getstartap1.html#x12-55000A.3" name="QQ2-12-55">Potential problems under Linux +
 A.4 Potential problems under Windows
B Missed approach: If anything refuses to work +href="getstartap2.html#x13-57000B" name="QQ2-13-57">Some words on OpenGL graphics drivers
 B.1 FlightGear Problem Reports +href="getstartap2.html#x13-58000B.1" name="QQ2-13-58">NVIDIA chip based cards under Linux
 B.2 General problems +href="getstartap2.html#x13-59000B.2" name="QQ2-13-59">NVIDIA chip based cards under Windows
 B.3 Potential problems under Linux +href="getstartap2.html#x13-60000B.3" name="QQ2-13-60">3DFX chip based cards under Windows
 B.4 Potential problems under Windows +href="getstartap2.html#x13-61000B.4" name="QQ2-13-61">An alternative approach for Windows users +
 B.5 3DFX chip based cards under Linux +
 B.6 ATI chip based cards under Linux +
 B.7 Building your own OpenGL support under Linux +
 B.8 OpenGL on MacIntosh
C Some words on OpenGL graphics drivers +href="getstartap3.html#x14-66000C" name="QQ2-14-66">Landing: Some further thoughts before leaving the plane
 C.1 NVIDIA chip based cards under Linux +href="getstartap3.html#x14-67000C.1" name="QQ2-14-67">A not so Short History of FlightGear
 C.2 NVIDIA chip based cards under Windows +href="getstartap3.html#x14-68000C.2" name="QQ2-14-68">Those, who did the work
 C.3 3DFX chip based cards under Windows -
 C.4 An alternative approach for Windows users -
 C.5 3DFX chip based cards under Linux -
 C.6 ATI chip based cards under Linux -
 C.7 Building your own OpenGL support under Linux -
 C.8 OpenGL on MacIntosh +href="getstartap3.html#x14-69000C.3" name="QQ2-14-69">What remains to be done
Index +href="getstartap3.html#Q1-14-71">Index +
Index
-

Preface

-

FlightGear is a free Flight Simulator developed co-operatively over the Internet by a -group of Flight Simulation and Programming Enthusiasts. This ”Installation and -Getting Started” is meant to give beginners a guide in getting the program up and -running. It is not intended to be a complete documentation of all the features -and add-ons of FlightGear, but just of those aspects necessary to get into the -air. -

This guide is split into two parts. The first one describes how to install the program -while the second one details on how to actually fly with FlightGear. -

In more detail, the chapters concentrate on the following aspects: -

Part I: Installation -

Chapter 1, Want to have a free flight? Take FlightGear, introduces the concept, -describes the system requirements, and classifies the different versions available. -

Chapter 2, Building the plane: Compiling the program, explains how to build (compile -and link) the simulator. Depending on your platform this may or may not be required. -Generally, there will be executable programs (binaries) available for several -platforms. Those on such systems who want to take off immediately, without going -through the potentially troublesome process of compiling, may skip that Chapter. -

In Chapter 3, Preflight: Installing FlightGear, you will find instructions for installing the -binaries in case you did not build them yourself as specified in the previous Chapter. You -will need to install scenery, textures, and other support files collected in the base -package. -

Part II: Installation -

The following Chapter 4, Takeoff: How to start the program, describes how to actually -start the program installed program. It includes an overview on the numerous command -line options as well as configuration files. -

Chapter 5, In-flight: All about instruments, keystrokes and menus, describes how to - - - -operate the program, i. e. how to actually fly with FlightGear. This includes a (hopefully) -complete list of pre-defined keystroke commands, an overview on the menu entries, -detailed descriptions of instrument panel and HUD (head up display) as well as hints on -using the mouse functions. -

In Appendix A, Landing: Some further thoughts before leaving the plane, we would like -to give credit to those who deserve it, sketch an overview on the development of -FlightGearand point out what remains to be done. -

In Appendix B, Missed approach: If anything refuses to work, we try to give you a hand -in case of some common problems faced with FlightGear. -

The final chapter C, OpenGL graphics drivers, describes some special problems you may -entounter in case your system lacks support for the graphics engine called OpenGL -which FlightGear is based on. -

Accordingly, we suggest reading the Chapters as follows: -

- - - - - - - - - - -
Installation
Users of binary distributions (notably under Windows): 3
Installation under Linux/UNIX: 2, 3
Installation under MacIntosh: 3
Operation
Program start (all users): 4
Keycodes, Panel, Mouse. . . (all users): 5
Troubleshooting
Generally B
Graphics problems: C
Optionally 1, A
-
-

While this introductory guide is meant to be self contained, we stronly suggest having a -look into further documentation, notably in case of trouble: -

    -
  • For additional hints on troubleshooting and more, see the FAQ at -

    http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/FlightGear-FAQ.html, -

    The FAQ contains a host of valuable information, notably on rapidly - changing flaws and additional reading, thus we strongly suggest consulting - it joiontly with our guide. -

    • -
  • A handy leaflet on operation for printout is available at - - - -

    http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/InstallGuide/FGShortRef.html, -

    • -
  • Additional user documentation on special aspects is available within the base - package under the directory /FlightGear/Docs.
-

Finally: -

We know, most people hate reading manuals. If you are sure the graphics driver for -your card supports OpenGL (check documentation; for instance all NVIDIA Windows -and Linux drivers for TNT/TNT2/Geforce/Geforce2/Geforce3 do) and if you are using -one of the following operating systems: -

    -
  • Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, -
    • -
  • Macintosh Mac OSX -
    • -
  • Debian Linux -
    • -
  • SGI Irix
-

you can possibly skip at least Part I of this manual and exploit the pre-compiled -binaries. These as well as instructions on how to set them up can be found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/. -

In case of running FlightGear on Linux you may also get Binareis bundled with your -distrinbution. Several vendoes already include FlightGear binaries into their -distributions. -

Just download them, install them according to the description and run them via the -attached script runfgfs or batch file runfgfs.bat, resp. -

There is no guarantee for this approach to work, though. If it doesn’t, don’t give up, -but have a closer look into the present manual, notably Section 3, as well as into the -FAQ. - - - - - - -

Part I
Installation

- - - -

Chapter 1
Want to have a free flight? Take FlightGear!

-

1.1 Yet another Flight Simulator?

-

Did you ever want to fly a plane yourself, but lacked the money or ability to do so? Are -you a real pilot looking to improve your skills without having to take off? Do you want to -try some dangerous maneuvers without risking your life? Or do you just want to have fun -with a more serious game not killing any people? If any of these questions applies, PC -flight simulators are just for you. -

You already may have some experience using Microsoft’s © Flight Simulator or any -other of the commercially available PC flight simulators. As the price tag of those is -usually within the $50 range buying one of them should not be a serious problem given -that running any serious PC flight simulator requires a hardware within the $1500 range, -despite dropping prices, at least. -

Why then that effort of spending hundreds or thousands of hours of programming to -build a free simulator? Obviously there must be good reason to do so: -

    -
  • All of the commercial programs have a serious drawback: They are made - by a small group of developers defining their properties - often quite inert - and not listening too much to the customer. Anyone ever trying to contact - Microsoft will immediately agree. -
    • -
  • Commercial PC flight simulators usually try to cover a market segment as - broad as possible. For obvious reason, most of them want to serve the serious - pilot as well as the beginner and the gamer. The result is a compromise. As - FlightGear is free, there is no need for such compromise; it just can be given - the properties its users want. It defines itself via building. -
    • -
  • Building a flight simulator is a challenge to the art of programming. - Contributing to that project makes you belong to those being able to - contribute to serious, ambitious and advanced software projects. -
    • -
  • It is fun. Not only is it fun to write the code (. . . or documentation. . . ) but - also to belong to that - temporarily changing - club of clever people on the - net having discussed, struggled and finally succeeded in creating that project. - Even reading the FlightGear mailing lists is informative and fun for itself.
-

The above-mentioned points make FlightGear superior to its competitors in several - - - -respect. FlightGear aims to be a civilian, multi-platform, open, user-supported, -user-extensible platform. -

-

Fig. 1: FlightGear under UNIX: Bad approach to San Francisco International - by one of -the authors of this manual. . . -

    -
  • Civilian: The project is primarily aimed at civilian flight simulation. It - should be appropriate for simulating general aviation as well as civilian - aircraft. It is not a shoot’m-up game. However, in keeping with the open - concept of development, this naturally does not exclude someone taking the - code and integrating say weapon systems, for instance. -
    • -
  • Multi-platform: The developers are attempting to keep the code as - platform-independent as possible. This is based on their observation that people - interested in flight simulations run quite a variety of computer hardware and - operating systems. The present code supports the following Operating - Systems: -
      -
    • Linux (any distribution and platform), - - - -
      • -
    • Windows NT/2000/XP (Intel/AMD platform), -
      • -
    • Windows 95/98/ME, -
      • -
    • BSD UNIX, -
      • -
    • SGI IRIX, -
      • -
    • Sun-OS, -
      • -
    • Macintosh.
    -

    At present, there is no known flight simulator - commercial or free - supporting - such a broad range of platforms. -

    • -
  • Open: The project is not restricted to a static or elite cadre of developers. Anyone - who feels he or she is able to contribute is most welcome. The code (including - documentation) is copyrighted under the terms of the GPL (Gnu Public - License). -

    The GPL is often misunderstood. In simple terms it states that you can copy and - freely distribute the program(s) so licensed. You can modify them if you like. You - are even allowed to charge as much money for the distribution of the modified or - original program as you want. However, you must distribute it complete with the - entire source code and it must retain the original copyrights. In short: -

    ”You can do anything with the software except make it non-free”.
    -

    The full text of the GPL can be obtained from -

    http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. -

    • -
  • User-supported, user-extensible: Contrary to various commercial simulators - available, scenery and aircraft format, internal variables, etc. are user - accessible and documented from the beginning. Even without an explicit - development documentation (which naturally has to be written at some - point) this is guaranteed by supplying the source code. It is the goal of the - - - - developers to build a basic engine to which scenery designers, panel engineers, - maybe adventure or ATC routine writers, sound artists, and others can (and - are solicited to) add. It is our hope, that the project will benefit from the - creativity and ideas of the hundreds of talented ”simmers” around the - world.
-

Without doubt, the success of the Linux project initiated by Linus Torvalds inspired -several of the developers. Not only has it shown that distributed development of even -highly sophisticated software projects over the Internet is possible. -

1.2 System requirements

- -

In comparison to other recent flight simulators the system requirements for FlightGear -are not extravagant. A decent PII/400 or something in that range should be sufficient, -given you have a proper 3-D graphics card. On the other hand, any modern -UNIX-type workstation with a 3D graphics card will handle FlightGear as -well. -

One important prerequisite for running FlightGear is a graphics card whose driver -supports OpenGL. If you don’t know what OpenGL is, the overview given at the -OpenGL web site -

http://www.opengl.org -

says it best: ”Since its introduction in 1992, OpenGL has become the industry’s most -widely used and supported 2-D and 3-D graphics application programming interface -(API)...”. -

FlightGear does not run (and will never run) on a graphics board supporting -Direct3D only. Contrary to openGL, Direct3D is a propriatary interface, being restricted -to the Windows operating system. -

You may be able to run FlightGear on a computer that features a 3-D video card -not supporting hardware accelerated OpenGL - and even on systems without -3-D graphics hardware at all. However, the absence of hardware accelerated -OpenGL support can force even the fastest machine to its knees. The typical -signal for missing hardware acceleration are frame rates below 1 frame per -second. -

Any more recent 3-D graphics featuring hardware OpenGL will do. For Windows -video card drivers that support OpenGL, visit the home page of your video card -manufacturer. You should note, that sometimes OpenGL drivers are provided by the -manufacturers of the graphics chip instead of by the makers of the board. If you are -going to buy a graphics card for running FlightGear, one based on a NVIDIA chip (TNT - - - -X/Geforce X) might be a good choice. -

To install the executable and basic scenery, you will need around 50 MB of free disk -space. In case you want/have to to compile the program yourself you will need additional -about 500 MB for the source code and for temporary files created during compilation. -This does not yet include the development environment, which possibly may have to be -installed under Windows yet, and which amounts to additional around 300 MB, -depending on the installed packages. -

For the sound effects any capable sound card should suffice. Based on its flexible -concept, FlightGear supports a wide range of joysticks or yokes as well esd rudder -pedals under Linux as well as under Windows. -

FlightGear is being developed primarily under Linux, a free UNIX clone (together -with lots of GNU utilities) developed cooperatively over the Internet in much the same -spirit as FlightGear itself. FlightGear also runs and is partly developed under several -flavors of Windows. Building FlightGear is possible on a Macintosh (OSX) and on -several UNIX/X11 workstations, as well. Given you have a proper compiler installed, -FlightGear can be built under all of these platforms. The primary compiler -for all platforms is the free GNU C++ compiler (the Cygnus compiler under -Win32). -

If you want to run FlightGear under Mac OS X we suggest a Power PC G3 300 MHz -or better. As a graphics card we would suggersr an ATI Rage 128 based card as a -minimum. Joysticks are supported under Mac OS 9.x only; there is no joystick support -under Max OSX available (yet). -

1.3 Which version should I use?

- -

Concerning the FlightGear source code there exist two branches, a stable one and a -developmental branch. Even version numbers like 0.6, 0.8, and (someday hopefully) 1.0 -refer to stable releases, while odd numbers like 0.7, 0.9, and so on refer to developmental -releases. The policy is to only do bug fixes in the even versions, while new features are -generally added to odd-numbered versions which, after all things have stabilized, will -become the next stable release with a version number calculated by adding 0.1. -

To add to the confusion, there usually are several versions of the ”unstable” branch. -First, there is a ”latest official release” which the pre-compiled binaries are based on. It is -available from -

-

For developers there exist CVS snapshots of the source code, available from - - - -

ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Devel/Snapshots/. -

While theses are quite recent, they may still be sometimes a few days back behind -development. Thus, if you really want to get the very latest and greatest (and, at -times, buggiest) code, you can use a tool called anonymous cvs available from -

http://www.cvshome.org/ -

to get the recent code. A detailed description of how to set this up for FlightGear can be -found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/cvsResources/. -

Unfortunately, the system implemented above does not really work as it should. As a -matter of fact, the stable version is usually so much outdated, that it does not at all reflect -thee stated of development FlightGear has reached. Given that the recent developmental -versions on the other hands may contain bugs (. . . undocumented features), we -recommend using the ”latest official (unstable) release” for the average user. This is the -latest version named at -

http://www.flightgear.org/News/; -

usually this is also the version which the binary distributions available at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/ -

are based on. If not otherwise stated, all procedures in this ”Installation and Getting -Started” will be based on these packages. -

1.4 Flight models

- - -

Historically, FlightGear has been based on a flight model it inherited (together with the -Navion airplane) from LaRCsim. As this had several limitations (most important, -many characteristics were hard wired in contrast to using configuration files), -there were several attempts to develop or include alternative flight models. As a -result, FlightGear supports several different flight models, to be chosen from at -runtime. -

The most important one is the JSB flight model developed by Jon Berndt. Actually, -the JSB flight model is part of a stand-alone project called JSBSim, having its home at -

http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/. - - - -

Concerning airplanes, the JSB flight model at present provides support for a Cessna 172, -a Cessna 182, a Cessna 310, and for an experimental plane called X15. Jon and his -group are gearing towards a very accurate flight model, and the JSB model is -expected to become FlightGear’s default flight model some time in the near -future. -

As an interesting alternative, Christian Mayer developed a flight model of a hot air -balloon. Moreover, Curt Olson integrated a special slew mode called Magic Carpet, -which helps you to quickly fly from point A to point B. -

Recently, Andrew Ross contributed another flight model called YASim for Yet -another simulator. At present, it sports another Cessna 172, a Cessna 182 and a Boeing -747. This one is based on geometry information rather than aerodynamic coefficients. -Although it is not that sophisticated like e.g. JSBSim it is intended to be ”very somple to -use” and lets you fly many differnet airplanes. -

As a further alternative, there is the UIUC flight model, developed by a team from the -University of Illinois, independently from FlightGear in the beginning (while now using -it for their simulations). This project aims at studying the simulation of aircraft icing. Its -home is at -

http://amber.aae.uiuc.edu/ jscott/sis/. -

The UIUC provides a host of different aircraft including several Cessna C172, a Learjet -24, a Twin Otter and much more. To get an idea, you may check the folder -Aircraft-UIUC of the FlightGear path. -

Please note, that the UIUC models do not have a working gear. So you might -experience some difficulties when starting from a runway. At least the nose gear will be -too weak and the airplane will fall on it’s nose. This can be circumvented by pulling the -stick more than usual for a while. -

It is even possible to drive FlightGear’s scene display using an external FDM running -on a different computer - although this might not be a setup recommended to people just -getting in touch with FlightGear. -

1.5 To whom this guide is addressed and how it is organized

-

There is little, if any, material in this Guide that is presented here exclusively. You could -even say with Montaigne that we ”merely gathered here a big bunch of other men’s -flowers, having furnished nothing of my own but the strip to hold them together”. Most -(but fortunately not all) of the information can as well be obtained from the FlightGear -web site located at: -

http://www.flightgear.org/ -

Please, keep in mind that there are several mirrors to all FlightGear Web sites, being - - - -listed on this page. Sometimes it is preferred to download from them than from the -original place. -

However, a neatly printed manual is arguably preferable over loosely scattered Readme -files by some people, and those people may acknowledge the effort. -

This FlightGear Installation and Getting Started manual is intended to be a first step -towards a more complete FlightGear documentation (with the other parts, hopefully, to -be written by others). The target audience is the end-user who is not interested in -the internal workings of OpenGL or in building his or her own scenery, for -instance. It is our hope, that someday there will be an accompanying FlightGear -Programmer’s Guide (which could be based on some of the documentation found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Docs; -

a FlightGear Scenery Design Guide, describing the Scenery tools now packaged as -TerraGear; and a FlightGear Flight School, at least. -

As a supplement, we recommend reading the FlightGear FAQ to be found -at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/FlightGear-FAQ.html -

which has a lot of supplementary information to (and, at times, more recent than) the -present document. -

We kindly ask you to help me refine this document by submitting corrections, -improvements, and more. Any user is invited to contribute descriptions of -alternative setups (graphics cards, operating systems etc.). We will be more than -happy to include those into future versions of this Installation and Getting Started (of -course not without giving credit to the authors). -

While we intend to continuously update this document at least for the foreseeable -future, supposedly we will not be able to produce a new one for any single release of -FlightGear. While we are watching the mailing lists, it would help if developers adding -new functionality would send us a short note. - - - -

Chapter 2
Building the plane: Compiling the program

-

This central chapter describes how to build FlightGear on several systems. In case you -are on a Win32 (i. e. Windows95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP) platform or any of the other -platforms which binary executables are available for, you may not want to go though that -potentially troublesome process but skip that chapter instead and straightly -go to the next one. (Not everyone wants to build his or her plane himself or -herself, right?) However, there may be good reason for at least trying to build the -simulator: -

    -
  • In case you are on a UNIX/Linux platform there may be no pre-compiled - binaries available for your system. In practice it is common to install - programs like this one on UNIX systems by recompiling them. -
    • -
  • There are several options you can set during compile time only. -
    • -
  • You may be proud you did.
-

On the other hand, compiling FlightGear is not a task for novice users. Thus, if you’re a -beginner (we all were once) on a platform which binaries are available for, we -recommend postponing this task and just starting with the binary distribution to get you -flying. -

As you will notice, this Chapter is far from being complete. Basically, we describe -compiling for two operating systems only, Windows and Linux, and for only one -compiler, the GNU C compiler. FlightGear has been shown to be built under different -compilers (including Microsoft Visual C) as well as different systems (Macintosh) as -well. The reason for these limitations are: -

    -
  • Personally, we have access to a Windows machine running the Cygnus - compiler only. -
    • -
  • According to the mailing lists, these seem to be the systems with the largest - user base. -
    • -
  • These are the simplest systems to compile FlightGear on. Other compilers - may need special add-ons (workplace etc.) or even modification of the code. -
    • -
  • The GNU compiler is free in the same sense of the GPL as FlightGear is.
- - - -

You might want to check Section B, Missed approach, if anything fails during -compilation. In case this does not help we recommend sending a note to one of the -mailing lists (for hints on subscription see Chapter A). -

There are several Linux distributions on the market, and most of them should work. -Some come even bundled with (often outdated) versions of FlightGear. However, if you -are going to download or buy a distribution, Debian (Woody) is suggested by most -people. SuSE works well, too. -

Contrary to Linux/Unix systems, Windows usually comes without any development -tools. This way, you first have to install a development environment. On Windows, in a -sense, before building the plane you will have to build the plant for building planes. -This will be the topic of the following section, which can be omitted by Linux -users. -

2.1 Getting a development environment under Windows

-

There is a powerful development environment available for Windows and this -even for free: The Cygnus development tools, resp. Cygwin. Their home is at -

http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/, -

and it is always a good idea to check back what is going on there now and then. -

Nowadays, installing Cygwin is nearly automatic. First, make sure the drive you want -Cygwin, PLIB, SimGear and FlightGear to live on, has nearly 1 GB of free disk space. -Create a temporary directory and download the installer from the site named -above to that directory. (While the installer does an automatic installation of the -Cygnus environment, it is a good idea to download a new installer from time to -time.) -

Invoke the installer now. It gives you three options. To avoid having to download -stuff twice in case of a re-installation or installation on a second machine, we highly -recommended to take a two-step procedure. First, select the option Download -from Internet. Insert the path of your temporary directory, your Internet -connection settings and then choose a mirror form the list. Near servers might -be preferred, but may be sometimes a bit behind with mirroring. We found -

ftp://mirrors.rcn.net -

a very recent and fast choice. In the next windows the default settings are usually a good -start. Now choose Next, sit back and wait. -

If you are done, invoke the installer another time, now with the option Install -from local directory. After confirming the temporary directory you can - - - -select a root directory (acting as the root directory of your pseudo UNIX file -system). Cygnus does not recommend taking the actual root directory of a drive, -thus choose c:/Cygwin (while other drives than c: work as well). Now, all -Cygwin stuff and all FlightGear stuff lives under this directory. In addition, -select -

Default text file type: Unix -

You are free to isntall the compiler for all users or just for you. -

As a final step you should include the binary directory (for instance: -c:/Cygwin/bin) into your path by adding path=c:\Cygwin\bin in your -autoexec.bat under Windows 95/98/ME. Under WindowsNT/2000/XP, use the -Extended tab under the System properties page in Windows control -panel. There you’ll find a button Environment variables, where you can add -the named directory. -

Now you are done. Fortunately, all this is required only once. At this point you have a -nearly UNIX-like (command line) development environment. Because of this, the -following steps are nearly identical under Windows and Linux/Unix. -

2.2 Compiling FlightGear under Linux/Windows

-

A preminimary remark: For UNIX, make sure you have all necessary OpenGL libraries -first. Fortunately on all recent Linux distributions (i.e. SuSE-7.1) these are already put on -the right place. Be sure to install the proper package. Besides the basic X11 -stuff you want to have - SuSE as an example - the following packages: mesa, -mesa-devel, mesasoft, xf86_glx, xf86glu, xf86glu-devel, mesaglut, mesaglut-devel and -plib. -

Also you are expected to have a bunch of tools installed that are usually required to -compile the Linux kernel. So you may use the Linux kernel source package top -determine the required dependencies. The following packages might prove to be useful -when fiddling with the FlightGear sources: automake, autoconf, libtool, bison, flex and -some more, that are not required to build a Linux kernel. -

Please compare the release of the Plib library with the one that ships with your Linux -distribution. It might be the case that FlightGear requires a newer one that is not yet -provided by your vendor. -

Under Windows, the required libraries should have been installed with the Cygwin -installation above. -

The following steps are identical under Linux/Unix and under Windows with minor -modifications. Under Windows, just open the Cygwin icon from the Start menu or from -the desktop to get a command line. -

To begin with, the FlightGear build process is based on four packages which you - - - -need to built and installed in this order: -

    -
  • PLIB -
    • -
  • SimGear -
    • -
  • FlightGear Program -
    • -
  • FlightGear base (data - no compilation required)
-
    -
  1. First, choose an install directory for FlightGear. This will not be the one your - binaries will live in but the one for your source code and compilation files. - We suggest -

    cd:/usr/local/ -

    mkdir source -

    2. -
  2. Now, you have to install a support library PLIB which is absolutely essential - for the building process. PLIB contains most of the basic graphics rendering, - audio, and joystick routines. Download the latest stable version of PLIB - from -

    http://plib.sourceforge.net/ -

    to /usr/local/source. Change to that directory and unpack PLIB - using -

    tar xvfz plib-X.X.X.tar.gz. -

    cd into plib-X.X.X and run -

    ./configure -
    make -
    make install. -

    Under Linux, you have to become root for being able to make install, - for instance via the su command. -

    Confirm you now have PLIB’s header files (as ssg.h etc.) under - /usr/include/plib (and nowhere else). - - - -

    3. -
  3. Next, you have to install another library SimGear containing the basic - simulation routines. Get the most recent file SimGear-X.X.X.tar.gz - from -

    ftp://ftp.simgear.org/pub/simgear/Source/ -

    Download it to /usr/local/source. Change to that directory and - unpack SimGear using -

    tar xvfz SimGear-X.X.X.tar.gz. -

    cd into SimGear-X.X.X and run -

    ./configure -
    make -
    make install -

    Again, under Linux, you have to become root for being able to make - install, for instance via the su command. -

    4. -
  4. Now, you’re prepared to - build FlightGear itself, finally. Get FlightGear-X.X.X.tar.gz from -

    ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Source/ -

    and download it to /usr/local/source. Unpack FlightGear using -

    tar xvfz FlightGear-X.X.X.tar.gz. -

    cd into FlightGear-X.X.X and run -

    ./configure -

    configure knows about numerous options, with the more relevant ones to be - specified via switches as -

      -
    • --with-network-olk: Include Oliver Delise’s multi-pilot - networking support, -
      • -
    • --disable-network-olk: Disable Oliver Delise’s multi-pilot - networking support, - - - -
      • -
    • --with-old-weather: Include original/simple weather - subsystem, -
      • -
    • --with-x: Use the X Window system (Linux only) -
      -
      • -
    • --prefix=/XXX: Install FlightGear in the directory XXX.
    -

    A good choice would be --prefix=/usr/local/FlightGear. In this case - FlightGear’s binaries will live under /usr/local/FlightGear/bin. (If you - don’t specify a --prefix the binaries will go into /usr/local/bin while - the base package files are expected under /usr/local/lib/FlightGear.) -

    Assuming configure finished successfully, run -

    make -
    make install. -

    Again, under Linux, you have to become root for being able to make install, - for instance via the su command. -

    Note: You can save a significant amount of space by stripping all the debugging - symbols off the executable. To do this, make a -

    cd /usr/local/FlightGear/bin -

    to the directory in the install tree where your binaries live and run -

    strip *.

-

This completes building the executable and should result in a file fgfs (Unix) or -fgfs.exe (Windows) under /usr/local/FlightGear/bin -

Note: If for whatever reason you want to re-build the simulator, use the command make -distclean either in the SimGear-X.X.X or in the FlightGear-X.X.X directory -to remove all the build. If you want to re-run configure (for instance because of -having installed another version of PLIB etc.), remove the files config.cache from -these same directories before. -

2.3 Compiling FlightGear under Mac OS 10.1

-

For compiling under Mac OS 10.1 you will need - - - -

    -
  • Mac OS 10.1 with 10.1 developer tools installed. -
    • -
  • 500MB disk (conservative estimate, might be a little less). -
    • -
  • Fearlessness of command line compiling.
-

This will need a bit more bravery than buidling under Windows or Linux. First, there are -less poeple who tested it under sometimes strange configurations. Second, the -process as described here itself nees a touch more experience by using CVS -repositories. -

First, download the development files. They are intended to simplify the build -process as much as possible: -

http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/ walisser/fg/fgdev.tar.gz -

Once you have this extracted, make sure you are using tcsh, since the setup script -requires it. -

    -
  1. Setup the build environment: -
    cd fgdev -
    source bin/prepare.csh -
    2. -
  2. Install automake/aclocal build tools -
    cd $BUILDDIR/src/automake-1.4-p4 -
    ./configure --prefix=$BUILDDIR -
    make install -
    3. -
  3. Build PLIB -
    cd $BUILDDIR/src/plib-1.4.2 -
    aclocal -
    automake -
    ./configure --prefix=$BUILDDIR --with-GL=$BUILDDIR -
    make install -
    4. -
  4. Get the SimGear sources -
    cd $BUILDDIR/src -
    setenv CVSROOT :pserver:cvs@cvs.hfrl.umn.edu: - - - -
    /var/cvs/SimGear-0.0 (one line) -
    cvs login -
    # Enter ”guest” for password -
    cvs -z3 checkout SimGear -
    -
    5. -
  5. Build SimGear -
    cd $BUILDDIR/src/SimGear -
    cp ../$PLIB/install-sh ./ -
    cp ../$PLIB/mkinstalldirs ./ -
    aclocal -
    automake -
    autoconf -
    ./configure --prefix=$BUILDDIR --host=powerpc -
    make install -
    cd $BUILDDIR/lib -
    ranlib libmk4.a -
    -
    6. -
  6. Get the FlightGear sources cd $BUILDDIR/src -
    setenv CVSROOT :pserver:cvs@cvs.hfrl.umn.edu: -
    /var/cvs/FlightGear-0.7 (one line!) -
    cvs login -
    #enter ”guest” for password -
    cvs -z3 checkout FlightGear -
    7. -
  7. Build FlightGear -
    cd $BUILDDIR/src/FlightGear -
    cp ../$PLIB/install-sh ./ -
    cp ../$PLIB/mkinstalldirs ./ -
    aclocal -
    automake -
    autoconf -
    ./configure --prefix=$BUILDDIR --includedir= -
    $BUILDDIR --with-threads --without-x (one line) -
    patch -p0 < ../jsb.diff -
    8. - - - -
  8. Get the base data files (if you don’t have them already) -
    cd $BUILDDIR -
    setenv CVSROOT :pserver:cvsguest@rockfish.net: -
    /home/cvsroot (one line) -
    cvs login -
    #password is ”cvsguest” -
    cvs -z3 checkout fgfsbase -
    9. -
  9. Move data files (if you have them already) -
    just make a symlink or copy data files to ”fgfsbase” in $BUILDDIR -
    10. -
  10. Run FlightGear -
    cd $BUILDDIR -
    src/FlightGear/src/Main/fgfs
-

2.4 Compiling on other systems

-

Compiling on other Unix systems - at least on IRIX and on Solaris, is pretty similar to -the procedure on Linux - given the presence of a working GNU C compiler. Especially -IRIX and also recent releases of Solaris come with the basic OpenGL libraries. -Unfortunately the ”glut” libraries are mostly missing and have to be installed separately -(see the introductory remark to this chapter). As compilation of the ”glut” sources is not -a trivial task to everyone, you might want to use a prebuilt binary. Everything you need is -a static library ”libglut.a” and an include file ”glut.h”. An easy way to make them usable -is to place them into /usr/lib/ and /usr/include/GL/. In case you insist -on building the library yourself, you might want to have a look at FreeGLUT -

http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/ -

which should compile with minor tweaks. Necessary patches might be found in -

ftp://ftp.uni-duisburg.de/X11/OpenGL/freeglut_portable.patch -

Please note that you do not want to create 64 bit binaries in IRIX with GCC (even if your -CPU is a R10/12/14k) because GCC produces a broken ”fgfs” binary (in case the -compiler does’nt stop with ”internal compiler error”). Things might look better if Eric -Hofman manages to tweak the FlightGear sources for proper compiling with MIPSPro -compiler (it’s already mostly done). - - - -

There should be a workplace for Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC6) included in the -official FlightGear distribution. Macintosh users find the required CodeWarrior files as a -.bin archive at -

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~ walisser/fg/. -

Numerous (although outdated, at times) hints on compiling on different systems are -included in the source code under docs-mini. -

2.5 Installing the base package

-

If you succeede in performing the steps named above, you will have a directory holding -the executables for FlightGear. This is not yet sufficient for performing FlightGear, -though. Besides those, you will need a collection of support data files (scenery, -aircraft, sound) collected in the so-called base package. In case you compiled -the latest official release, the accompanying base package is available from -

ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Shared/fgfs-base-X.X.X.tar.gz. -

This package is usually quite large (around 25 MB), but must be installed for -FlightGear to run. There is no compilation required for it. Just download it to -/usr/local and install it with -

tar xvfz fgfs-base-X.X.X.tar.gz. -

Now you should find all the FlightGear files under /usr/local/Flightgear in the -following directory structure:: -

/usr/local/Flightgear -

/usr/local/Flightgear/Aircraft -

/usr/local/Flightgear/Aircraft-uiuc -

. . . -

/usr/local/Flightgear/bin -

. . . -

/usr/local/Flightgear/Weather. -

2.6 For test pilots only: Building the CVS snapshots

-

It you are into adventures or feel you’re an advanced user, you can try one of the recent -bleeding edge snapshots at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/. -

In this case you have to get the most recent Snapshot from SimGear at -

http://www.simgear.org/downloads.html - - - -

as well. But be prepared: These are for development and may (and often do) contain -bugs. -

If you are using these CVS snapshots, the base package named above will usually not -be in sync with the recent code and you have to download the most recent developer’s -version from -

http://rockfish.net/fg/. -

We suggest downloading this package fgfs_base-snap.X.X.X.tar.gz to a -temporary directory. Now, decompress it using -

tar xvfz fgfs_base-snap.X.X.X.tar.gz. -

Finally, double-check you got the directory structure named above. - - - -

Chapter 3
Preflight: Installing FlightGear

-

You can skip this Section if you built FlightGear along the lines described in the -previous Chapter. If you did not and you’re jumping in here, your first step will consist in -installing the binaries. At present, there are pre-compiled binaries available -for -

    -
  • Windows (any flavor), -
    • -
  • Macintosh OSX, -
    • -
  • Debian Linux, -
    • -
  • SGI Irix.
-

3.1 Installing the binary distribution on a Windows system

- -

The following supposes you are on a Windows (95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP) system. -Installing the binaries is quite simple. Go to -

ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Win32/ -

and download the three files fgfs-base-X.X.X.zip, fgfs-manual-X.X.X.zip, -and fgfs-win32-bin-X.X.X.zip from -

ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Win32/ -

to a drive of your choice. Windows XP includes a program for unpacking *.zip files. If -you are working under an older version of Windows, we suggest getting Winzip from -

http://www.winzip.com/. -

For a free alternative, you may consider unzip from Info-ZIP, -

http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/ -

Extract the files named above. If you choose drive c: you should find a file -runfgfs.bat under c:/Flightgear now. Double-clicking it should invoke the -simulator. -

In case of doubt about the correct directory structure, see the summary at the end of -chapter 2. - - - -

3.2 Installing the binary distribution on a Macintosh system

- -

If your Macintosh is running the conventional Mac OS 9 or earlier, there are versions up -to FlightGear 0.7.6 available being provided courtesy Darrell Walisser). Download the -file FlightGear_Installer_0.X.X.sit from the corresponding subdirectory -under -

http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/ walisser/fg/. -

This file contains the program as well as the required base package files (scenery etc.). -For unpacking, use Stuffit Expander 5.0 or later. -

The latest build available for Mac OS 9.x is 0.7.6, located in the same place. -The base package is part of the download for Mac OS 9.x, but not for Mac -OSX. -

Alternatively, if you are running Mac OS X, download fgfs-0.X.X.gz from the -same site named above. The Mac OS X builds are in a gzip file in the same -directory. There is a readme file in the directory to help people identify what to -download. -

Mac OS X requires that you first download the base package. Then extract it -with -

tar -zxvf fgfs-base-X.X.X.tar.gz -
gunzip fgfs-X.X.X.-date.gz -

Note that there is no runfgfs script for Mac OS X yet. -

3.3 Installing the binary distribution on a Debian Linux system

- -

Download the file flightgear_0.7.6-6_i386.deb (being provided courtesy Ove -Kaaven) from any of the Debian mirror sites listed at -

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/flightgear.html. -

Like any Debian package, this can be installed via -

dpkg --install flightgear_0.7.6-6_i386.deb. -

After installation, you will find the directory /usr/local/Flightgear containing -the script runfgfs to start the program. -

3.4 Installing the binary distribution on a SGI IRIX system

- - - - -

If there are binaries available for SGI IRIX systems, download all the required files -(being provided courtesy Erik Hofman) from -

http://www.a1.nl/ ehofman/fgfs/ -

and install them. Now you can start FlightGear via running the script -
/usr/local/FlightGear/bin/gofgfs. -

3.5 Installing add-on scenery

- - -

There is a complete set of scenery files worldwide available created by Curt Olson which -can be downloaded via a clickable map at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/world-scenery.html -

Moreover, Curt provides the complete set of US Scenery on CD-ROM for those who -really would like to fly over all of the USA. For more detail, check the remarks on the -downloads page above. -

For installing these files, you have to unpack them under /Flightgear/Scenery. -Do not de-compress the numbered scenery files like 958402.gz! This will be done by -FlightGear on the fly. -

As an example, consider installation of the scenery package w120n30 containing the -Grand Canyon Scenery. -

After having installed the base package, you should have ended up with the following -directory structure: -

/usr/local/FlightGear/Scenery -

/usr/local/FlightGear/w130n30 -

/usr/local/FlightGear/w130n30/w122n37 -
/usr/local/FlightGear/Scenery/w130n30/w123n37 -

with the directories w122n37 and w123n37m, resp. containing numerous *.gz files. -Installation of the Grand Canyon scenery adds to this the directories -

/usr/local/FlightGear/w120n30/w112n30 -
/usr/local/FlightGear/w120n30/w112n31 -
... -
/usr/local/FlightGear/w120n30/w120n39. -

3.6 Installing documentation

- - - - -

Most of the packages named above include the complete FlightGear documentation -including a .pdf version of this Installation and Getting Started Guide intended for pretty -printing using Adobe’s Acrobat Reader being available from -

http://www.adobe.com/acrobat -

Moreover, if properly installed, the .html version can be accessed via FlightGear’s help -menu entry. -

Besides, the source code contains a directory docs-mini containing numerous -ideas on and solutions to special problems. This is also a good place for further -reading. - - - - - - -

Part II
Flying with FlightGear

- - - -

Chapter 4
Takeoff: How to start the program

-

4.1 Launching the simulator under Unix/Linux

- - -

Under Linux (or any other flavor of Unix), FlightGear will be invoked by -

runfgfs --option1 --option2..., -

where the options will be described in Section 4.4 below. -

If something strange happens while using this shell script, if you want to do some -debugging (i.e. using ”strace”) or if you just feel nice to be ”keen”, then you can start -FlightGear directly by executing the ”fgfs” binary. In this case you should at least add -one variable to your environment, which is needed to locate the (mostly) shared library -built from the sources of the SimGear package. Please add the respective directory to -your LD_LIBRARY_PATH. You can do so with the following on Bourne shell -(compatibles): - - - - 
- LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/FlightGear/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
- export LD_LIBRARY_PATH/
-
-
-

or on C shell (compatibles): - - - - 
- setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH
- /usr/local/FlightGear/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
-
-
-

Besides this (used by the dynamic linker) ”fgfs” knows about the following environment -variable -

FG_ROOT: root directory for the FlightGear base package; this corresponds to the ---fg-root=path option as described in Sec. 4.4.1 -

4.2 Launching the simulator under Windows

- - -

Before starting the simulator, you may want to adaprt the file webrun.bat situated in -the main FlightGear directory. Open the file with an editor -

In Windows explorer, change to the directory /FlightGear and double-click -runfgfs.bat. - - - -

-

Fig. 3: Ready for takeoff. Waiting at the default startup position at San Francisco Itl., -KSFO. -

Alternatively, if for one or the other reason the batch file does not work or is missing, -you can open an MS-DOS shell, change to the directory where your binary resides -(typically something like c:/FlightGear/bin where you might have to substitute -c: in favor of your FlightGear directory), set the environment variable via (note the -backslashes!) -

SET FG_ROOT=c:\FlightGear\bin -

and invoke FlightGear (within the same MS-DOS shell, as environment settings are only -valid locally within the same shell) via -

fgfs --option1 --option2.... -

Of course, you can create your own runfgfs.bat with Windows Editor using -the two lines above. -

For getting maximum performance it is recommended to minimize (iconize) the text -output window while running FlightGear. - - - -

4.3 Launching the simulator under Mac OS X

- - -

Say you downloaded the base package and binary to yout home directory. Then you can -open Terminal.app and execute the following sequence: -

setenv FG_ROOT  /fgfs-base-X.X.X ./fgfs-X.X.X.-date -
--option1 -- option 2 (one line) -

or -

./fgfs-X.X.X-version-date --fg-root=~/ fgfs-base-X.X.X -
--option1 --option2. (one line) -

4.4 Command line parameters

- -

Following is a list and short description of the numerous command line options available -for FlightGear. If you are running FlightGear under Windows you can include these into -runfgfs.bat. -

However, in case of options you want to re-use continually (like joystick settings) -it is recommended to include them into a file called .fgfsrc under Unix -systems and system.fgfsrc, resp. under Windows. This file has to be in -the top FlightGear directory (for instance /usr/local/Flightgear). As it depends -on your preferences, it is not delivered with FlightGear, but can be created -with any text editor (notepad, emacs, vi, if you like). Examples for such a file -(including a detailed description on the configuration of joysticks) can be found at -

http://rockfish.net/shell/aboutjoy.txt. -

4.4.1 General Options

-
    -
  • --help, -h: Gives a small help text, kind of a short version of this Section. -
    • -
  • --fg-root=path: Tells FlightGear where to look for its data files if you - didn’t compile it with the default settings. -
    • - - - -
  • --fg-scenery=path: Allows specification of a path to the scenery - directorypath , in case scenery is not at the default position under -
    /Flightgear/Scenery; this might be especially useful in case you - have scenery on a CD-ROM. -
    • -
  • --disable-game-mode: Disables full screen display. -
    • -
  • --enable-game-mode: Enables full screen display. -
    • -
  • --disable-splash-screen: Turns off the rotating 3DFX logo when - the accelerator board gets initialized (3DFX only). -
    • -
  • --enable-splash-screen: If you like advertising, set this! -
    • -
  • --disable-intro-music: No audio sample is being played when - FlightGear starts up. Suggested in case of trouble with playing the intro. -
    • -
  • --enable-intro-music: If your machine is powerful enough, enjoy - this setting. -
    • -
  • --disable-mouse-pointer: Disables mouse interface. -
    • -
  • --enable-mouse-pointer: Enables mouse interface. Useful in full - screen mode for old Voodoo/VoodooII based cards. -
    • -
  • --disable-freeze: This will put you into FlightGear with the engine - running, ready for Take-Off. -
    • -
  • --enable-freeze: Starts FlightGear in frozen state. -
    • -
  • --disable-fuel-freeze: Fuel is consumde normally. - - - -
    • -
  • --enable-fuel-freeze: Fuel tank quntity is forced to remain - constant. -
    • -
  • --disable-tod-freeze: Time of day advances normally. -
    • -
  • --enable-tod-freeze: Do not advance time of day. -
    • -
  • --control-mode: Specify your control device (joystick, keyboard, - mouse) Defaults to joystick (yoke). -
    • -
  • --disable-auto-coordination: Switches auto coordination - between aileron/rudder off (default). -
    • -
  • --enable-auto-coordination: Switches auto coordination between - aileron/rudder on (recommended without pedals). -
    • -
  • --browser-app=/path/to/app: specify location of your web - browser. Example: --browser-app= -
    ''C:\Programme\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe'' (Note - the ” ” because of the broken word Internet Explorer!). -
    • -
  • --prop:name=value: set property name to value -
    Example: --prop:/engines/engine0/running=true for starting - with running engines. Another example: -
    --aircraft=c172 -
    --prop:/consumables/fules/tank[0]/level-gal=10 -
    --prop:/consumables/fules/tank[1]/level-gal=10 -
    filles the Cessna for a short flight. -
    • -
  • --config=path: Load additional properties from the given path. - Example: runfgfs --config=./Aircraft/X15-set.xml -
    • -
  • --units-feed: Use feet for distances. - - - -
    • -
  • --units-meters: Use meters for distances.
-

4.4.2 Features

-
    -
  • --disable-hud: Switches off the HUD (Head Up Display). -
    • -
  • --enable-hud: Turns the HUD on. -
    • -
  • --enable-anti-alias-hud: Turns on anti-alised HUD lines for better - quality, if hardware supports this. -
    • -
  • --disable-anti-alias-hud: Turns off anti-aliased HUD lines. -
    • -
  • --enable-panel: Turns the instrument panel on (default). -
    • -
  • --disable-panel: Turns the instrument panel off. -
    • -
  • --disable-sound: Self explaining. -
    • -
  • --enable-sound: See above.
-

4.4.3 Flight model

-
    -
  • --aircraft=name of aircraft - definition file Example: --aircraft=c310. For possible choices check - the directory /FlightGear/Aircraft. Do not include the extension - ''-set.xml'' into the aircraft name but use the remaining beginning of - the respective file names for choosing an aircraft. This way flight model, - panel etc. are all loaded in a consistent way. -
    • -
  • --fdm=abcd Select the core flight model. Options are jsb, larcsim, - - - - yasim, magic, balloon, external, ada, - null. Default value is jsb (JSBSim). larcsim is the flight model which - FlightGear inherited from the LaRCSim simulator. yasim ist Any Ross’ Yet - Another Flight Dynamics Simulator. Magic is a slew mode. Balloon is a hot - air balloon. External refers to remote control of the simulator. Null selects no - flight synamics model at all. The UIUC flight model is not chosen this way - but via the next option! For further information on flight models cf. Section - 1.4 and below. -
    • -
  • --aero=abcd Specifies the aircraft model to load. Default is a Cessna c172. - Alternatives available depend on the flight model chosen. -
    • -
  • --model-hz=n Run the Flight Dynamics Model with this rate (iterations - per second). -
    • -
  • --speed=n Run the Flight Dynamics Model this much faster than real - time. -
    • -
  • --notrim Do NOT attempt to trim the model when initializing JSBSim. -
    • -
  • --on-ground: Start up at ground level (default). -
    • -
  • --in-air: Start up in the air. Naturally, you have to specify an initial - altitude as below for this to make sense. This is a must for the X15. -
    • -
  • --wind=DIR@SPEED: Specify wind coming from the direction DIR (in - degrees) at speed SPEED (knots).
-

4.4.4 Aircraft model directory (Only for the UIUC Flight Dynamics Model)

-
    -
  • --aircraft-dir=path: Aircraft directory relative to the root-path, - defined via $FG_ROOT or --fg-root.
-

Remark: The difference in the handling of UIUC models has historic reasons. These - - - -models use the LaRCsim FDM. As this FDM isn’t the default FDM any more you have -to specify it manually. Also the airplane description needs manual interaction as you -have to specify the directory by hand where the specific aircraft data resides. So you have -to use the following for flying the ’TwinOtter’: -

fgfs --fdm=larcsim --aero=uiuc -

--aircraft-dir=Aircraft-uiuc/TwinOtter -

Fortunately work has been done to simplificate this. At least those airplanes can be -flown easily by using an appropriate ’--aircraft’-string. These are the following: -

--aircraft=747-uiuc, --aircraft=beech99-uiuc, -
--aircraft=c172-uiuc, --aircraft=c310-uiuc -

If time permits the remaining aircrafts will be adjusted soon. Please have a -look at $FG_ROOT/Aircraft-uiuc for the avaliable aircrafts provided -by the UIUC model collection. Also please read the notes in Section 1.4 on -UIUC. -

4.4.5 Initial Position and Orientation

-
    -
  • --airport-id=ABCD: If you want to start directly at an airport, enter its - international code, i.e. KJFK for JFK airport in New York etc. A long/short - list of the IDs of the airports being implemented can be found in /Flight - Gear/Airports. You only have to unpack one of the files with gunzip. - Keep in mind, you need the terrain data for the relevant region, though! -
    • -
  • --offset-distance=nm: Here you can specify the distance to - threshold in nm. -
    • -
  • --offset-azimuth=deg: Here you can specify the heading to threshold - in degrees. -
    • -
  • --lon=degrees: This is the startup longitude in degrees (west = -). -
    • -
  • --lat=degrees: This is the startup latitude in degrees (south = -). -
    • - - - -
  • --altitude=feet: This is useful if you want to start in free flight in - connection with --in-air. Altitude specified in feet unless you choose - --units-meters. -
    • -
  • --heading=degrees: Sets the initial heading (yaw angle) in degrees. -
    • -
  • --roll=degrees: Sets the startup roll angle (roll angle) in degrees. -
    • -
  • --pitch=degrees: Sets the startup pitch angle (pitch angle) in degrees. -
    • -
  • --uBody=feet per second: Speed along the body X axis in feet per second, - unless you choose --units-meters. -
    • -
  • --vBody=feet per second: Speed along the body Y axis in feet per second, - unless you choose --units-meters. -
    • -
  • --wBody=feet per second: Speed along the body Z axis in feet per second, - unless you choose --units-meters. -
    • -
  • --vc=knots: Allows specifying the initial airspeed in knots (only in - connection with --fdm=jsb). -
    • -
  • --mach=num: Allows specifying the initial airspeed as Mach number (only - in connection with --fdm=jsb).
-

4.4.6 Rendering Options

-
    -
  • --bpp=depth: Specify the bits per pixel. -
    • -
  • --fog-disable: To cut down the rendering efforts, distant regions are - vanishing in fog by default. If you disable fogging, you’ll see farther but your - frame rates will drop. - - - -
    • -
  • --fog-fastest: The scenery will not look very nice but frame rate will - increase. -
    • -
  • --fog-nicest: This option will give you a fairly realistic view of flying - on a hazy day. -
    • -
  • --enable-clouds: Enable cloud layer (default). -
    • -
  • --disable-clouds: Disable cloud layer. -
    • -
  • --clouds-asl=xxx: Specify altitude of cloud layer above sea level. -
    • -
  • --fov=xx.x: Sets the field of view in degrees. Default is 55.0. -
    • -
  • --disable-fullscreen: Disable full screen mode (default). -
    • -
  • --enable-fullscreen: Enable full screen mode. -
    • -
  • --shading-flat: This is the fastest mode but the terrain will look ugly! - This option might help if your video processor is really slow. -
    • -
  • --shading-smooth: This is the recommended (and default) setting - - things will look really nice. -
    • -
  • --disable-skyblend: No fogging or haze, sky will be displayed using - just one color. Fast but ugly! -
    • -
  • --enable-skyblend: Fogging/haze is enabled, sky and terrain look - realistic. This is the default and recommended setting. -
    • -
  • --disable-textures: Terrain details will be disabled. Looks ugly, but - might help if your video board is slow. - - - -
    • -
  • --enable-textures: Default and recommended. -
    • -
  • --enable-wireframe: If you want to know how the world of - FlightGear looks like internally, try this! -
    • -
  • --disable-wireframe: No wireframe. Default. -
    • -
  • --geometry=WWWxHHH: Defines the size of the window used, i.e. - WWWxHHH can be 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768. -
    • -
  • --view-offset=xxx: Allows setting the default forward view direction - as an offset from straight ahead. Possible values are LEFT, RIGHT, - CENTER, or a specific number of degrees. Useful for multi-window display. -
    • -
  • --visibility=meters: You can specify the initial visibility in meters - here. -
    • -
  • --visibility-miles=miles: You can specify the initial visibility in - miles here.
-

4.4.7 HUD Options

-
    -
  • --hud-tris: HUD displays the number of triangles rendered. -
    • -
  • --hud-culled: HUD displays percentage of triangles culled.
-

4.4.8 Time Options

-
    -
  • --time-offset=[+-]hh:mm:ss: Offset local time by this amount. -
    • -
  • --time-match-real: Synchronize real-world and FlightGear time. - - - -
    • -
  • --time-match-local: Synchronize local real-world and FlightGear - time. -
    • -
  • --start-date-gmt=yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss: Specify a starting time and - date. Uses your system time. -
    • -
  • --start-date-gmt=yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss: Specify a starting time and - date. Time is Greenwich Mean Time. -
    • -
  • --start-date-lat=yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss: Specify a starting time and - date. Uses local aircraft time.
-

4.4.9 Network Options

-
    -
  • --httpd=port Enable http server on the specified port. -
    • -
  • --enable-network-olk: Enables Oliver Delises’s Multipilot mode. -
    • -
  • --enable-network-olk: Disables Oliver Delises’s Multipilot mode - (default). -
    • -
  • --net-hud: HUD displays network info. -
    • -
  • --net-id=name: Specify your own callsign
-

4.4.10 Route/Waypoint Options

-
    -
  • --wp=ID[@alt]: Allows specifying a waypoint for the GC autopilot; it is - possible to specify multiple waypoints (i.e. a route) via multiple instances of - this command. - - - -
    • -
  • --flight-plan=[file]: This is more comfortable if you have several - waypoints. You can specify a file to read them from.
-

These options are rather geared to the advanced user who knows what he is -doing. -

4.4.11 IO Options

-
    -
  • --gamin=params: Open connection using the Garmin GPS protocol. -
    • -
  • --joyclient=params: Open connection to an Agwagon joystick. -
    • -
  • --native-ctrls=params: Open connection using the FG NAtive - Controls protocol. -
    • -
  • --native-fdm=params: Open connection using the FG Native FDM - protocol. -
    • -
  • --native=params: Open connection using the FG Native protocol. -
    • -
  • --nmea=params: Open connection using the NMEA protocol. -
    • -
  • --opengc=params: Open connection using the OpenGC protocol. -
    • -
  • --props=params: Open connection using the interactive property - manager. -
    • -
  • --pve=params: Open connection using the PVE protocol. -
    • -
  • --ray=params: Open connection using the RayWoodworth motion chair - protocol. -
    • -
  • --rul=params: Open connection using the RUL protocol. - - - -
    • -
  • --atc610x: Enable atc610x interface.
-

4.4.12 Debugging options

-
    -
  • --trace-read=params: Trace the reads for a property; multiple - instances are allowed. -
    • -
  • --trace-write=params: Trace the writes for a property; multiple - instances are allowed.
-

4.4.13 Joystick properties

Could you imagine a pilot in his or her Cessna controlling -the machine with a keyboard alone? For getting the proper feeling of flight you will -need a joystick/yoke plus rudder pedals, right? However, the combination of -numerous types of joysticks, flightsticks, yokes, pedals etc. on the market with the -several target operating systems, makes joystick support a nontrivial task in -FlightGear. -

All of FlightGear’s joystick (as well as keyboard) properties are written in plain ASCII -files, thus anyone can adapt them, if necessary. Fortunately, there is a tool available -now, which takes most of the burden form the average user who, maybe, is -not that experienced with XML, the language which these files arwe written -in. -

For configuring your joystick, open a command shell (command promt(DOS shell -under windows, to be foiund unter Start—All programs—Accessories). Change to the -directory /FlightGear/bin via e.g. (modify to your path) -

cd c:\FlightGear\bin -

and invoke the tool fgjs via -

fgjs -

on a UNIX/Linux machine, or via -

fgjs.exe -

on a Windows machine. The program will tell you which joysticks, if any, where -detected. Now follow the commands given on screen, i.e. move the axis and press the -buttons as required. Be careful, a minor touch already ”counts” as a movement. -Check the reports on screen. If you feel something went wrong, just re-start the -program -

After you are done with all the axis/switches, the directory above will hold a file -called fgfsrc.js. If the FlightGear base directory FlighGear does not already - - - -contain an options file .fgfsrc (under UNIX)/system.fgfsrc (under Windows) -mentioned above, just copy -

fgfsrc.js into .fgfsrc (UNIX)/system.fgfsrc (Windows) -

and place it into the directory FlightGear base directory FlighGear. In case you -already wrote an options file, just open it as well as fgfsrc.js with an editor and copy -the entries from fgfsrc.js into .fgfsrc/system.fgfsrc. One hint: The output -of fgjs is UNIX formatted. As a result, Windows Editor may not display it the proper -way. I suggest getting an editor being able to handle UNIX files as well. My favorite -freeware file editor for that purpose, although somewhat dated, is PFE still, to be -obtained from -

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/. -

The the axis/button assignment of fgjs should, at least, get the axis assignments -right, its output may need some tweaking. There may be axis moving the opposite -way the should, the dead zones may be too small etc. For instance, I had to -change -

--prop:/input/joysticks/js[1]/axis[1]/binding/factor=-1.0 -

into -

--prop:/input/joysticks/js[1]/axis[1]/binding/factor=1.0 -

(USB CH Flightsim Yoke under Windows XP). Thus, here is a short introduction into -the assignments of joystick properties. -

Basically, all axes settings are specified via lines having the following structure: -

--prop:/input/joysticks/js[n]/axis[m] -
/binding/command=property-scale -
--prop:/input/joysticks/js[n]/axis[m] -
/binding/property=/controls/steering option -
--prop:/input/joysticks/js[n]/axis[m] -
/binding/dead-band=db --prop:/input/joysticks/js[n]/axis[m] -
/binding/offset=os --prop:/input/joysticks/js[n]/axis[m] -
/binding/factor=fa -

where - - - -

- - - - - - -
n = number of device (usually starting with 0)
m = number of axis (usually starting with 0)
steering option = elevator, aileron, rudder, throttle, mixture, pitch
dead-band = range, within which signals are discarded;
useful to avoid jittering for minor yoke movements
offset = specifies, if device not centered in its neutral position
factor = controls sensitivity of that axis; defaults to +1,
with a value of -1 reversing the behavior
-
-

You should be able to at least get your joystick working along these lines. Concerning all -the finer points, for instance, getting the joystick buttons working, John Check has -written a very useful README being included in the base package to be found -under FlightGear/Docs/Readme/Joystick.html. In case of any -trouble with your input device, it is highly recommended to have a look into this -document. - - - -

Chapter 5
In-flight: All about instruments, keystrokes and menus

-

The following is a description of the main systems for controlling the program and -piloting the plane: Historically, keyboard controls were developed first, and you can still -control most of the simulator via the keyboard alone. Later on, they were supplemented -by several menu entries, making the interface more accessible, particularly for beginners, -and providing additional functionality. -

For getting a real feeling of flight, you should definitely consider getting a joystick or -- preferred - a yoke plus rudder pedals. In any case, you can specify your device of -choice for control via the --control-mode option, i.e. select joystick, keyboard, -mouse. The default setting is joystick. Concerning instruments, there are again two -alternatives: You can use the panel or the HUD. -

A short leaflet based on this chapter can be found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/InstallGuide/FGShortRef.html. -

A version of this leaflet can also be opened via FlightGear’s help menu. -

5.1 Starting the engine

- -

Depending on your situation, when you start the simulator the engines may be on or off. -When they are on you just can go on with the start. When they are off, you have to start -them first. The ignition switch for starting the engine is situated in the lower left corner -of the panel. It is shwon in Fig. 4. -

-

Fig. 4: The ignition switch. -

It has five positions: ”OFF”, ”L”, ”R”, ”BOTH”, and ”START”. The extreme right -position is for starting the engine. For starting the engine, put it onto the position -”BOTH” using the mouse first. - - - -

Keep in mind that the mixture lever has to be at 100 % (all the way in) for starting -the engine - otherwise you will fail. In addition, advance the throttle to about -25 %. -

Operate the starter using the SPACE key now. When pressing the SPACE key you -will observe the ignition switch to change to the position ”START” and the engine to -start after a few seconds. Afterwards you can bring the throttle back to idle (all the way -out). -

In addition, have a look if the parking brakes are on (red field lit). If so, press the ”B” -button to release them. -

5.2 Keyboard controls

- -

While joysticks or yokes are supported as are rudder pedals, you can fly FlightGear -using the keyboard alone. For proper control of the plane during flight via the keyboard -(i) the NumLock key must be switched on (ii) the FlightGear window must -have focus (if not, click with the mouse onto the graphics window). Several -of the keyboard controls might be helpful even in case you use a joystick or -yoke. -

After activating NumLock the following main keyboard controls for driving the -plane should work: - -

Tab. 1: Main keyboard controls for FlightGear on the numeric keypad with activated -NumLock key:. -

- - - - - - -
Key Action
Pg Up/Pg Dn Throttle
Left Arrow/Right Arrow Aileron
Up Arrow/Down Arrow Elevator
Ins/Enter Rudder
5 Center aileron/elevator/rudder
Home/End Elevator trim
-

For changing views you have to de-activate NumLock. Now Shift + <Numeric -Keypad Key> changes the view as follows: -

Tab. 2: View directions accessible after de-activating NumLock on the numeric keypad. -

- - - - - - - - -
Numeric Key View direction
Shift-8 Forward
Shift-7 Left/forward
Shift-4 Left
Shift-1 Left/back
Shift-2 Back
Shift-3 Right/back
Shift-6 Right
Shift-9 Right/forward
-

Besides, there are several more options for adapting display on screen: - - - -

Tab. 3: Display options -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Key Action
P Toggle instrument panel on/off
s Cycle panel style full/mini
Shift-F5/F6 Shift the panel in y direction
Shift-F7/F8 Shift the panel in x direction
Shift-F3 Read a panel from a property list
i/I Minimize/maximize HUD
h/H Change color of HUD/toggle HUD off
forward/backward
Ctrl + O/P Tilt view down/up
x/X Zoom in/out
v Cycle view modes
W Toggle full screen mode on/off (3dfx only)
z/Z Change visibility (fog) forward/backward
F8 Toggle fog on/off
F2 Refresh Scenery tile cache
F4 Force Lighting update
F9 Toggle texturing on/off
F10 Toggle menu on/off
-

The autopilot is controlled via the following keys: -

Tab. 4: Autopilot and related controls. -

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Key Action
Ctrl + A Altitude hold toggle on/off
Ctrl + G Follow glide slope 1 toggle on/off
Ctrl + H Heading hold toggle on/off
Ctrl + N Follow NAV 1 radial toggle on/off
Ctrl + S Autothrottle toggle on/off
Ctrl + T Terrain follow toggle on/off
Ctrl + U Add 1000 ft. to your altitude (emergency)
F6 Toggle autopilot target:
current heading/waypoint
F11 Autopilot altitude dialog
F12 Autopilot heading dialog
-

Ctrl + T is especially interesting as it makes your Cessna 172 behave like a cruise - - - -missile. Ctrl + U might be handy in case you feel you’re just about to crash. (Shouldn’t -real planes sport such a key, too?) -

In case the autopilot is enabled, some of the numeric keypad keys get a special -meaning: -

Tab. 5: Special action of keys, if autopilot is enabled. -

- - - -
Key Action
8 / 2 Altitude adjust
0 / , Heading adjust
9 / 3 Auto Throttle adjust
-

There are several keys for starting and controlling the engine : -

Tab. 6: Engine control keys -

- - - - - - - - -
Key Action
SPACE Fire starter on selected engine(s)
! Select 1st engine
@ Select 2nd engine
# Select 3rd engine
$ Select 4th engine
{ Decrease Magneto on Selected Engine
} Increase Magneto on Selected Engine
~ Select all Engines
-

Beside these basic keys there are miscelleneous keys for special actions; some of these -you’ll probably not want to try during your first flight: -

Tab. 7: Miscellaneous keyboard controls. - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Key Action
B Toggle parking brake on/off
b Apply/release all brakes
g Toggle landing gear down
, Left gear brake (useful for differential braking)
. Right gear brake (useful for differential braking)
]/[ Extend/Retract flaps
p Toggle pause on/off
a/A Speed up/slow down (time acceleration)
t/T Time speed up/slow down
m/M Change time offset (warp) used by t/T forward/backward
Shift-F2 Save current flight to fgfs.sav
Shift-F1 Restore flight from fgfs.sav
F3 Save screen shot under fgfs-screen.ppm
Shift-F4 Re-read global preferences from preferences.xml
Shift-F10 Toggle data logging of FDM on/off
ESC Exit program
-

Note: If you have difficulty processing the screenshot fgfs-screen.ppm on a -windows machine, just recall that simply pressing the ”Print” key copies the screen to the -clipboard, from which you can paste it into any graphics program. -

Finally: Starting from FlightGear 0.7.7 these key bindings are no longer hard -coded, but user-adjustable. You can check and change these setting via the file -keyboard.xml to be found in the main FlightGear directory. This is a human -readable plain ASCII file. Although it’s perhaps not the best idea for beginners to -start just with modifying this file, more advanced users will find it useful to -change key bindings according to what they like (or, perhaps, know from other -simulators). -

5.3 Menu entries

- -

By default, the menu is disabled after starting the simulator (you don’t see a menu in a -real plane, do you?). You can turn it on either using the toggle F10 or just by moving -the mouse pointer to the top left corner of the display. In casse you want the -menu to disappear just hit F10 again or move the mouse to the bottom of the -screen. -

At present, the menu provides the following functions. -

    - - - -
  • File -
      -
    • Save flight Saves the current flight, by default to fgfs.sav. -
      • -
    • Load flight Loads the current flight, by default from fgfs.sav. -
      • -
    • Reset Resets you to the selected starting position. Comes handy in case - you got lost or something went wrong. -
      • -
    • Hires Snap Shot Saves a high resolution Screen Shot under -
      fgfs-screen-XXX.ppm. -
      • -
    • Snap Shot Saves a normal resolution Screen Shot under -
      fgfs-screen-XXX.ppm. -
      • -
    • Exit Exits the program.
    -
    • -
  • View -
      -
    • Toggle Panel Toggles instrument panel on/off. -
      • -
    • Pilot Offset Allows setting a different viewpoint (useful for R/C - flying). -
      • -
    • HUD Alpha Toggles antialiasing of HUD lines on/off. -
      • -
    • Properties Provies access to numerous properies managed via - FlightGear’s property manager. This is actually a quite powerful tool - allowing to set all the values in the property tree. Obviously, this is a - good place to crash the program by entering a ”bad” value.
    -
    • -
  • Environment -
      -
    • Goto Airport Enter the airport ID. For details on how to get the IDs - see Section 4.4.5.
    - - - -
    • -
  • Autopilot -
      -
    • Set Heading Sets heading manually. -
      • -
    • Set Altitude Sets altitude manually. -
      • -
    • Add Waypoint Adds Waypoint to waypoint list. -
      • -
    • Skip Current Waypoint Self explaining. -
      • -
    • Clear Route Clears current route. -
      • -
    • Adjust AP Settings Allows input of several Autopilot parameters. -
      • -
    • Toggle HUD format Toggles figures of latitude/longitude in HUD.
    -
    • -
  • Network (supposes compile option --with-network-olk) -
      -
    • Toggle Display Toggle call sign etc. on/off. -
      • -
    • Enter Callsign Enter your call sign. -
      • -
    • Scan for Daemons Scan for daemons on the net. -
      • -
    • Register for FGD Register for FlightGear Daemon. -
      • -
    • Unregister for FGD Unregister from FlightGear Daemon.
    -
    • -
  • Help -
      -
    • Help Should bring up this FlightGear Getting Started Guide. At present - not yet fully implemented. Under windows this works via a batch file - webrun.bat under /flightgear. If you intend to use that feature - you may have to edit webrun.bat. Under UNIX a comparable shell - script might do.
    - - - -
-

5.4 The Instrument Panel

-

The Cessna instrument panel is activated by default when you start FlightGear, but can -be de-activated by pressing the ”P” key. While a complete description of all the functions -of the instrument panel of a Cessna is beyond the scope of this guide, we will at least try -to outline the main flight instruments or gauges. -

All panel levers and knobs can be operated with the mouse To change a control, -just click with the left/middle mouse button on the corresponding knob/lever. -

-

Fig. 5: The panel. -

Let us start with the most important instruments any simulator pilot must know. In -the center of the instrument panel (Fig. 5), in the upper row, you will find the artificial -horizon (attitude indicator) displaying pitch and bank of your plane. It has pitch marks as -well as bank marks at 10, 20, 30, 60, and 90 degrees. -

Left to the artificial horizon, you’ll see the airspeed indicator. Not only does it - - - -provide a speed indication in knots but also several arcs showing characteristic velocity -rages you have to consider. At first, there is a green arc indicating the normal -operating range of speed with the flaps fully retracted. The white arc indicates -the range of speed with flaps in action. The yellow arc shows a range, which -should only be used in smooth air. The upper end of it has a red radial indicating -the speed you must never exceeded - at least as long as you wan’t brake your -plane. -

Below the airspeed indicator you can find the turn indicator. The airplane in the -middle indicates the roll of your plane. If the left or right wing of the plane is aligned -with one of the marks, this would indicate a standard turn, i.e. a turn of 360 degrees in -exactly two minutes. -

Below the plane, still in the turn indicator, is the inclinometer. It indicates if rudder -and ailerons are coordinated. During turns, you always have to operate aileron and rudder -in such a way that the ball in the tube remains centered; otherwise the plane is skidding. -A simple rule says: ”Step onto the ball”, i.e. step onto the left rudder pedal in case the -ball is on the l.h.s. -

If you don’t have pedals or lack the experience to handle the proper ratio -between aileron/rudder automatically, you can start FlightGear with the option ---enable-auto-coordination. -

To the r.h.s of the artificial horizon you will find the altimeter showing the height -above sea level (not ground!) in hundreds of feet. Below the altimeter is the -vertical speed indicator indicating the rate of climbing or sinking of your plane in -hundreds of feet per minute. While you may find it more convenient to use then -the altimeter in cases, keep in mind that its diplay usually has a certain lag in -time. -

Further below the vertical speed indicator is the RPM (rotations per minute) -indicator, which displays the rotations per minute in 100 RPMs. The green arc marks the -optimum region for long-time flight. -

The group of the main instruments further includes the gyro compass being situated -below the artificial horizon. Besides this one, there is a magnetic compass sitting on top -of the panel. -

Four of these gauges being arranged in the from of a ”T” are of special importance: -The air speed indicator, the artificial horizon, the altimeter, and the compass should be -scanned regularly during flight. -

Besides these, there are several supplementary instruments. To the very left you will -find the clock, obviously being an important tool for instance for determining turn -rates.Below the clock there are several smaller gauges displaying the technical state of -your engine. Certainly the most important of them is the fuel indicator - as any pilot -should know. -

The ignition switch is situated in the lower left corner of the panel (cf. Fig. 4). It has - - - -five positions: ”OFF”, ”L”, ”R”, ”BOTH”, and ”START”. The first one is obvious. ”L” -and ”R” do not refer to two engines (actually the Cessna does only have one) but -to two magnetos being present for safety purposes. The two switch positions -can be used for test puposes during preflight. During normal flight the switch -should point on ”BOTH”. The extreme right position is for starting the engine -using a battery-powered starter (to be operated with the SPACE key in flight -gear). -

Like in most flight simulators, you actually get a bit more than in a real plane. The -red field directly below the gyro compass displays the state of the brakes, i.e., it is lit in -case of the brakes being engaged. The instruments below indicate the position of -youryoke. This serves as kind of a compensation for the missing forces you feel while -pushing a real yoke. Three of the arrows correspond to the three axes of your yoke/pedal -controlling nose up/down, bank left/right, rudder left/right, and throttle. (Keep in mind: -They do not reflect the actual position of the plane!) The left vertical arrow indicates -elevator trim. -

The right hand side of the panel is occupied by the radio stack. Here you find two -VOR receivers (NAV), an NDB receiver (ADF) and two communication radios -(COMM1/2) as well as the autopilot. -

The communication radio is used for communication with air traffic facilities; it is -just a usual radio transceiver working in a special frequency range. The frequency is -displayed in the ”COMM” field. Usually there are two COM transceivers; this way you -can dial in the frequency of the next controller to contact while still being in contact with -the previous one. -

The COM radio can be used to display STIS messages as well. For this purpose, just -to dial in the ATIS frequency of the relevant airport. -

The VOR (Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Range) receiver is used for course -guidance during flight. The frequency of the sender is displayed in the ”NAV” field. In a -sense, a VOR acts similarly to a light house permitting to display the position of the -aircraft on a radial around the sender. It transmits one omni-directional ray of radio -waves plus a second ray, the phase of which differs from the first one depending on its -direction (which may be envisaged as kind of a ”rotating” signal). The phase difference -between the two signals allows evaluating the angle of the aircraft on a 360 -degrees circle around the VOR sender, the so-called radial. This radial is then -displayed on the gauges NAV1 and NAV2, resp., left to frequency field. This way it -should be clear that the VOR dispaly, while indicating the position of the aircraft -relative to the VOR sender, does not say anything about the orientation of the -plane. -

Below the two COM/NAV devices is an NDB receiver called ADF (automatic -direction finder). Again there is a field displaying the frequency of the facility. The ADF -can be used for navigation, too, but contrary to the VOR does not show the - - - -position of the plane in a radial relative to the sender but the direct heading from -the aircraft to the sender. This is displayed on the gauge below the two NAV -gauges. -

Above the COMM1 display you will see three LEDs in the colors blue, amber, and -white indicating the outer, middle, and, inner, resp. marker beakon. These show the -distance to the runway threshold during landing. They to not require the input of a -frequency. -

Below the radios you will find the autopilot. It has five keys for WL = ”Wing-Leveler”, -”HDG” = ”Heading”, NAV, APR = ”Glide-Slope”, and ALT = ”Altitude”. These keys -when engaged hold the corresponding property. -

A detailed description of the workings of these instruments and their use for -navigation lies beyond this Guide; if you are interested in this exciting topic, we suggest -consulting a book on instrument flight (simulation). Besides, this would be material for a -yet to be written FlightGear Flight School. -

It should be noted, that you can neglect these radio instruments as long as you are -strictly flying according to VFR (visual flight rules). For those wanting to do IFR -(instrument flight rules) flights, it should be mentioned that FlightGear includes a huge -database of navaids worldwide. -

Finally, you find the throttle, mixture, and flap control in the lower right of the panel -(recall, flaps can be set via [ and ] or just using the mouse). -

As with the keyboard, the panel can be re-configured using configuration files. As -these have to be plane specific, they can be found under the directory of the -corresponding plane. As an example, the configuration file for the default Cessna C172 -can be found at FlightGear/Aircraft/c172/Panels as c172-panel.xml. The -accompanying documentation for customizing it (i.e. shifting, replacing etc. gauges and -more) is contained in the file README.xmlpanel written by John Check, to be found -in the source code in the directory docs-mini. - - - -

-

Fig. 6: The HUD, or Head Up Display. -

5.5 The Head Up Display

-

At current, there are two options for reading off the main flight parameters of the plane: -One is the instrument panel already mentioned, while the other one is the HUD (Head -Up Display) . Neither are HUDs used in usual general aviation planes nor in civilian -ones. Rather they belong to the equipment of modern military jets. However, some might -find it easier to fly using the HUD even with general aviation aircraft. Several Cessna -pilots might actually love to have one, but technology is simply too expensive for -implementing HUDs in general aviation aircraft. Besides, the HUD displays several -useful figures characterizing simulator performance, not to be read off from the -panel. -

The HUD shown in Fig. 6 displays all main flight parameters of the plane. In -the center you find the pitch indicator (in degrees) with the aileron indicator -above and the rudder indicator below. A corresponding scale for the elevation -can be found to the left of the pitch scale. On the bottom there is a simple turn -indicator. -

There are two scales at the extreme left: The inner one displays the speed (in kts) - - - -while the outer one indicates position of the throttle. The Cessna 172 takes off at around -55 kts. The two scales on the extreme r.h.s display your height, i. e. the left one shows the -height above ground while the right of it gives that above zero, both being displayed in -feet. -

Besides this, the HUD delivers some additions information. On the upper left you -will find date and time. Besides, latitude and longitude, resp., of your current position are -shown on top. -

You can change color of the HUD using the ”H” or ”h” key. Pressing ethe toggle -”i/I” minimizes/maximizes the HUD. -

5.6 Mouse controlled actions

-

Besides just clicking the menues, your mouse has got certain valuable functions in -FlightGear. -

There are three mouse modi. In the normal mode (pointer curser) panel’s controls can -be operated with the mouse. To change a control, click with the left/middle mouse button -on the corresponding knob/lever. While the left mouse button leads to small -increments/decrements, the middle one makes greater ones. Clicking on the left hand -side of the knob/lever decreases the value, while clicking on the right hand side increases -it. -

Right clicking the mouse activates the simulator control mode (cross hair cursor). -This allows control of aileron/elevator via the mouse in absence of a joystick/yoke -(enable --enable-auto-coordination in this case). If you have a joystick you -certainly will not make use of this mode -

Right clicking the mouse another time activates the view control mode (arrow -cursor). This allows changing direction of view, i.e. pan and tilt the view, via the -mouse. -

Right clicking the mouse once more resets it into the initial state. -

If you are looking for some interesting places to discover with FlightGear (which -may or may not require downloading additional scenery) you may want to check -

http://www.flightgear.org/Places/. -

There is now a menu entry for entering directly the airport code of the airport you want to -start from. -

Finally, if you’re done and are about to leave the plane, just hit the ESC key or use -the corresponding menu entry to exit the program. It is not suggested to simply ”kill” the -simulator by clicking the text window. - - - -

5.7 Some further reading for pilot students

-

In view of that fact, that there is not yet a FlightGear specific flight course, here are -some useful hints to texts for those who want to learn piloting a plane. -

First, a quite comprehensive manual is the Aeronautical Information Manual, -published by the FAA, and being online available at -

http://www.faa.gov/ATPubs/AIM/. -

This is the Official Guide to Basic Flight Information and ATC Procedures by the FAA. It -contains a lot of information on flight rules, flight safety, navigation, and more. If -you find this a bit too hard reading, you may prefer the FAA Training Book, -

http://avstop.com/AC/FlightTraingHandbook/, -

which covers all aspects of flight, beginning with the theory of flight and the -working of airplanes, via procedures like takeoff and landing up to emergency -situations. This is an ideal reading for those who want to learn some basics -on flight but don’t (yet) want to spend bucks on getting a costly paper pilot’s -handbook. -

While the handbook mentioned above is an excellent introduction on VFR (visual -fligtht rules), it does not include flying according to IFR (instrument flight rules). -However, an excellent introduction into navigation and flight according to Instrument -Flight Rules written by Charles Wood can be found at -

http://www.navfltsm.addr.com/. -

Another comprehensive but yet readable text is John Denker’s ”See how it flies”, -available at -

http://www.monmouth.com/ jsd/how/htm/title.html. -

This is a real online text book, beginning with Bernoulli’s principle, drag and power, and -the like, with the later chapters covering even advanced aspects of VFR as well as IFR -flying - - - - - - -

Part III
Appendices

- - - - -

Appendix A
Landing: Some further thoughts before leaving the plane

-

A.1 A not so Short History of FlightGear

-

Alls this project goes back to a discussion among a group of net citizens in 1996 -resulting in a proposal written by David Murr who, unfortunately, dropped out of the -project (as well as the net) later. The original proposal is still available from the -FlightGear web site and can be found under -

http://www.flightgear.org/proposal-3.0.1. -

Although the names of the people and several of the details have changed over time, the -spirit of that proposal has clearly been retained up to the present time. -

Actual coding started in the summer of 1996 and by the end of that year -essential graphics routines were completed. At that time, programming was mainly -performed and coordinated by Eric Korpela from Berkeley University. Early code ran -under Linux as well as under DOS, OS/2, Windows 95/NT, and Sun-OS. This -was found to be quite an ambitious project as it involved, among other things, -writing all the graphics routines in a system-independent way entirely from -scratch. -

Development slowed and finally stopped in the beginning of 1997 when Eric was -completing his thesis. At this point, the project seemed to be dead and traffic on the -mailing list went down to nearly nothing. -

It was Curt Olson from the University of Minnesota who re-launched the project in -the middle of 1997. His idea was as simple as it was powerful: Why invent the -wheel a second time? There have been several free flight simulators available -running on workstations under different flavors of UNIX. One of these, LaRCsim -(developed by Bruce Jackson from NASA), seemed to be well suited to the -approach. Curt took this one apart and re-wrote several of the routines such as to -make them build as well as run on the intended target platforms. The key idea in -doing so was to exploite a system-independent graphics platform: OpenGL. - - - -

-

Fig. 7: LaRCsim’s Navion is still available in FlightGear. -

In addition, a clever decision on the selection of the basic scenery data was made -in the very first version. FlightGear scenery is created based on satellite data -published by the U. S. Geological Survey. These terrain data are available from -

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html -

for the U.S., and -

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/gtopo30/gtopo30.html, -

resp., for other countries. Those freely accessible scenery data, in conjunction with -scenery building tools included with FlightGear, are an important feature enabling -anyone to create his or her own scenery. -

This new FlightGear code - still largely being based on the original LaRCsim code - -was released in July 1997. From that moment the project gained momentum again. Here -are some milestones in the more recent development history: -

    -
  • The display of sun, moon and stars have been a weak point for PC flight - simulators for a long time. It is one of the great achievements of FlightGear - to include accurate modeling and display of sun, moon, and planets very - early. The corresponding astronomy code was implemented in fall 1997 by - Durk Talsma. -
    • -
  • Texture support was added by Curt Olson in spring 1998. This marked a - significant improvement in terms of reality. You may recall that Microsoft - - - - Flight Simulator had non-textured scenery up until version 4.0. Some - high-quality textures were submitted by Eric Mitchell for the FlightGear - project. -
    • -
  • A HUD (head up display) was added based on code provided by Michele - America and Charlie Hotchkiss in the fall of 1997 and was improved later by - Norman Vine. While not generally available for real Cessna 172, the HUD - conveniently reports the actual flight performance of the simulation and may - be of further use in military jets later. -
    • -
  • After improving the scenery and texture support frame rate dropped down to - a point where FlightGear became unflyable in spring 1998. This issue was - resolved by exploiting hardware OpenGL support, which became available - at that time, and implementing view frustrum culling (a rendering technique - that ignores the part of the scenery not visible in a scene), done by Curt - Olson. Taking these measures made FlightGear flyable again as long as they - included a 3-D graphics board that featured hardware OpenGL support. With - respect to frame rate one should keep in mind that the code, at present, is in - no way optimized, which leaves room for further improvements. -
    • -
  • A rudimentary autopilot implementing heading hold was contributed by Jeff - Goeke-Smith in April 1998. It was improved by the addition of an altitude - hold and a terrain following switch in October 1998 and further developed - by Norman Vine later. -
    • -
  • The basis for a menu system was laid based on another library, the Portable - Library PLIB, in June 1998. After having been idle for a time, the first - working menu entries came to life in spring 1999. -

    PLIB underwent rapid development later. It has been distributed as a - separate package by Steve Baker with a much broader range of applications - in mind, since spring 1999. It has provided the basic graphics rendering - engine for FlightGear since fall 1999. -

    • -
  • Friedemann Reinhard developed early instrument panel code, which was - added in June 1998. Unfortunately, development of that panel slowed down - later, partly because of OpenGL compatibility problems. Finally, David - - - - Megginson decided to rebuild the panel code from scratch in January 2000. - This led to a rapid addition of new instruments and features to the panel, - resulting in nearly all main instruments being included until spring 2001. A - handy minipanel was added in summer 2001. -
    • -
  • A fully operational radio stack and working radios were added to the panel - by Curt Olson in spring 2000. A huge database of Navaids contributed by - Robin Peel allows IFR navigation since then. -
    • -
  • In 1998 there was basic audio support, i. e. an audio library and - some basic background engine sound. This was later integrated into the - above-mentioned portable library, PLIB. This same library was extended to - support joystick/yoke/rudder in October 1999, again marking a huge step in - terms of realism. To adapt on different joystick, configuration options were - introduced in fall 2000. -
    • -
  • In September 1998 Curt Olson succeeded in creating a complete terrain - model for the U.S. The scenery is available worldwide via a clickable map - at: -

    http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/world-scenery.html. -

    • -
  • Networking/multiplayer code has been integrated by Oliver Delise and Curt - Olson starting fall 1999. This effort is aimed at enabling FlightGear to run - concurrently on several machines over a network, either an Intranet or the - Internet, coupling it to a flight planner running on a second machine, and - more. There emerged several approaches for remotely controlling FlightGear - over a Network during 2001. Notably there was added support working - together wirth the ”Atlas” moving map program. Besides, an embedded - HTTP server developed late in 2001 by Curt Olson can now act a property - manager for external programs. -
    • -
  • Christian Mayer, together with Durk Talsma, contributed weather code in the - winter of 1999. This included clouds, winds, and even thunderstorms. -
    • -
  • Manually changing views in a flight simulator is in a sense always ”unreal” - - - - but nonetheless required in certain situations. A possible solution was - supplied by Norman Vine in the winter of 1999 by implementing code for - changing views using the mouse. Alternatively, you can use a hat switch for - this purpose, today. -
    • -
  • Finally, LaRCsims Navion was replaced as the default aircraft when the - Cessna 172 was stable enough in February 2000 - a move most users will - welcome. There are now several flight model options to choose from at - runtime: a modified and improved LaRCsim Cessna 172 developed by Tony - Peden, Jon Berndt’s X15, and Christian Mayer’s hot air balloon. Jon Berndt - has invested a lot of time in a more realistic and versatile flight model with - a more powerful aircraft configuration method. JSBSim, as it has come to - be called, may eventually replace LaRCsim as the default flight dynamics - model (FDM), and it is planned to include such features as fuel slosh effects, - turbulence, complete flight control systems, and other features not often - found all together in a flight simulator. As an alternative, Andy Ross added - another flight dynamics model called YASim (Yet Another Flight Dynamics - Simulator) which aims at simpliciy of use, by the end of 2001. This one - bought us flight modles for a 747, an A4, and a DC-3. -
    • -
  • The scenery was further improved by adding geographic features including - lakes, rivers, and coastlines later, an effort still going on. Since the end of - 2000, there was again stronger focus on scenery. Textured runways were - added by Dave Cornish in spring 2001. Light textures add to the visual - impression at night. To cope with the constant growth of scenery data, a - binary scenery format was introduced in spring 2001. -
    • -
  • A property manager was implemented by David Megginson in fall - 2000. It allows parsing a file called .fgfsrc under UNIX/Linux and - system.fgfsrc under Windows for input options. This plain ASCII file - has proven useful in submitting the growing number of input options, and - notably the joystick settings. This has proven a useful concept, and joystick, - keyboard, and panel settings are no longer hard coded but set using *.xml - files since spring 2001 thanks to work mainly by David Megginson and John - Check. -
    • -
  • There was support added for static objects to the scenery in 2001, which - - - - permits placing buildung, static planes, trees and so on in the scenery. - However, despite a few profs systematic includion of these landmarks is still - missing. -
    • -
  • There was basic ATC support added in fall 2001 by David Luff. This is not - yet fully implemented, but displaying ATIS messages is already possible. -
    • -
  • A magneto switch with proper functions was added at the end of 2001 by - John Check and David Megginson.. Actually, several panels were vastly - improved during 2001 by John and others.
-

During development there were several code reorganization efforts. Various code -subsystems were moved into packages. As a result, presetnly code is organized as -follows: -

The base of the graphics engine is OpenGL, a platform independent graphics library. -Based on OpenGL, the Portable Library PLIB provides basic rendering, audio, joystick -etc. routines. Based on PLIB is SimGear, which includes all of the basic routines -required for the flight simulator as well as for building scenery. On top of SimGear there -are (i) FlightGear (the simulator itself), and (ii) TerraGear, which comprises the scenery -building tools. -

This is by no means an exhaustive history and most likely some people who have -made important contributions have been left out. Besides the above-named contributions -there was a lot of work done concerning the internal structure by: Jon S. Berndt, Oliver -Delise, Christian Mayer, Curt Olson, Tony Peden, Gary R. Van Sickle, Norman Vine, and -others. A more comprehensive list of contributors can be found in Chapter A as well as in -the Thanks file provided with the code. Also, the FlightGear Website contains a -detailed history worth reading of all of the notable development milestones at -

http://www.flightgear.org/News/ -

A.2 Those, who did the work

- -

Did you enjoy the flight? In case you did, don’t forget those who devoted hundreds of -hours to that project. All of this work is done on a voluntary basis within spare -time, thus bare with the programmers in case something does not work the -way you want it to. Instead, sit down and write them a kind (!) mail proposing -what to change. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the FlightGear mailing - - - -lists and contribute your thoughts there. Instructions to do so can be found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/mail.html. -

Essentially there are two lists, one of which being mainly for the developers and the other -one for end users. Besides, there is a very low-traffic list for announcements. -

The following names the people who did the job (this information was essentially taken -from the file Thanks accompanying the code). -

A1 Free Sounds (techie@mail.ev1.net) -
Granted permission for the flightgear project to use some of the sound effects from their -site. Homepage under -

-

Raul Alonzo (amil@las.es) -
Mr. Alonzo is the author of Ssystem and provided his kind permission for using the -moon texture. Parts of his code were used as a template when adding the texture. -Ssystem Homepage can be found at: -

http://www1.las.es/~ amil/ssystem. -

Michele America (nomimarketing@mail.telepac.pt) -
Contributed to the HUD code. -

Michael Basler (pmb@epost.de) -
Author of Installation and Getting Started. Flight Simulation Page at -

http://www.geocities.com/pmb.geo/flusi.htm -

Jon S. Berndt (jsb@hal-pc.org) -
Working on a complete C++ rewrite/reimplimentation of the core FDM. Initially he is -using X15 data to test his code, but once things are all in place we should be able to -simulate arbitrary aircraft. Jon maintains a page dealing with Flight Dynamics at: -

http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net -

Special attention to X15 is paid in separate pages on this site. Besides, Jon contributed -via a lot of suggestions/corrections to this Guide. -

Paul Bleisch (pbleisch@acm.org) -
Redid the debug system so that it would be much more flexible, so it could be easily -disabled for production system, and so that messages for certain subsystems could be -selectively enabled. Also contributed a first stab at a config file/command line parsing -system. - - - -

Jim Brennan (jjb@kingmont.com) -
Provided a big chunk of online space to store USA scenery for FlightGear. -

Bernie Bright (bbright@c031.aone.net.au) -
Many C++ style, usage, and implementation improvements, STL portability and much, -much more. Currently he is trying to create a BeOS port. Added threading support and a -threaded tile pager. -

Bernhard H. Buckel (buckel@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de) -
Contributed the README.Linux. Contributed several sections to earlier versions of -Installation and Getting Started. -

Gene Buckle (geneb@deltasoft.com) -
A lot of work getting FlightGear to compile with the MSVC++ compiler. Numerous -hints on detailed improvements. -

Ralph Carmichael (ralph@pdas.com) -
Support of the project. The Public Domain Aeronautical Software web site at -

http://www.pdas.com -

has the PDAS CD-ROM for sale containing great programs for astronautical -engineers. -

Didier Chauveau (chauveau@math.univ-mlv.fr) -
Provided some initial code to parse the 30 arcsec DEM files found at: -

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/gtopo30/gtopo30.html. -

John Check (j4strngs@rockfish.net) -
John maintains the base package CVS repository. He contributed cloud textures, wrote an -excellent Joystick howto as well as a panel howto. Moreover, he contributed new -instrument panel configurations. FlightGear page at -

http://rockfish.net/fg/. -

Dave Cornish (dmc@halcyon.com) -
Dave created new cool runway textures. -

Oliver Delise (delise@mail.isis.de) -
Started a FAQ, Documentation, Public relations. Working on adding some -networking/multi-user code. Founder of the FlightGear MultiPilot Project at -

http://www.isis.de/members/~ odelise/progs/flightgear. - - - -

Jean-Francois Doue -
Vector 2D, 3D, 4D and Matrix 3D and 4D inlined C++ classes. (Based on Graphics -Gems IV, Ed. Paul S. Heckbert) -

http://www.animats.com/simpleppp/ftp/public_html/topics/developers.html. -

Dave Eberly (eberly@magic-software.com) -
Contributed some sphere interpolation code used by Christian Mayer’s weather data -base system. On Dave’s web site there are tons of really useful looking code at -

http://www.magic-software.com. -

Francine Evans (evans@cs.sunysb.edu) -

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~evans/stripe.html -

Wrote the GPL’d tri-striper. -

Oscar Everitt (bigoc@premier.net) -
Created single engine piston engine sounds as part of an F4U package for FS98. They -are pretty cool and Oscar was happy to contribute them to our little project. -

Bruce Finney (bfinney@gte.net) -
Contributed patches for MSVC5 compatibility. -

Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler (zlib@gzip.org) -
Authors of the zlib library. Used for on-the-fly compression and decompression -routines, -

http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/. -

Mohit Garg (theprotean_1@hotmail.com) -
Contributed to the manual. -

Thomas Gellekum (tg@ihf.rwth-aachen.de) -
Changes and updates for compiling on FreeBSD. -

Neetha Girish (neethagirish@usa.net) -
Contributed the changes for the xml configurable HUD. -

Jeff Goeke-Smith (jgoeke@voyager.net) -
Contributed our first autopilot (Heading Hold). Better autoconf check for external -timezone/daylight variables. -

Michael I. Gold (gold@puck.asd.sgi.com) -
Patiently answered questions on OpenGL. - - - -

Habibe (habibie@MailandNews.com) -
Made RedHat package building changes for SimGear. -

Mike Hill (mikehill@flightsim.com) -
For allowing us to concert and use his wonderful planes, available form -

http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/mikehill/home.htm, -

for FlightGear. -

Erik Hofman (erik.hofman@a1.nl) -
Contributed SGI IRIX support and binaries. -

Charlie Hotchkiss (clhotch@pacbell.net) -
Worked on improving and enhancing the HUD code. Lots of code style tips and code -tweaks. -

Bruce Jackson (NASA) (e.b.jackson@larc.nasa.gov) -

http://dcb.larc.nasa.gov/www/DCBStaff/ebj/ebj.html -

Developed the LaRCsim code under funding by NASA which we use to provide the -flight model. Bruce has patiently answered many, many questions. -

Ove Kaaven (ovek@arcticnet.no) -
Contributed the Debian binary. -

Richard Kaszeta (bofh@me.umn.edu) -
Contributed screen buffer to ppm screen shot routine. Also helped in the early -development of the ”altitude hold autopilot module” by teaching Curt Olson the basics of -Control Theory and helping him code and debug early versions. Curt’s ”Boss” Bob -Hain (bob@me.umn.edu) also contributed to that. Further details available at: -

http://www.menet.umn.edu/ curt/fgfs/Docs/Autopilot/AltitudeHold/AltitudeHold.html. -

Rich’s Homepage is at -

http://www.menet.umn.edu/ kaszeta. -

Tom Knienieder (tom@knienieder.com) -
Ported the audio library first to OpenBSD and IRIX and after that to Win32. -

Reto Koradi (kor@mol.biol.ethz.ch) -

http://www.mol.biol.ethz.ch/~kor -

Helped with setting up fog effects. - - - -

Bob Kuehne (rpk@who.net) -
Redid the Makefile system so it is simpler and more robust. -

Kyler B Laird (laird@ecn.purdue.edu) -
Contributed corrections to the manual. -

David Luff (david.luff@nottingham.ac.uk) -
Contributed heavily to the IO360 piston engine model. -

Christian Mayer (flightgear@christianmayer.de) -
Working on multi-lingual conversion tools for fgfs as a demonstration of technology. -Contributed code to read Microsoft Flight Simulator scenery textures. Christian is -working on a completely new weather subsystem. Donated a hot air balloon to the -project. -

David Megginson (david@megginson.com) -
Contributed patches to allow mouse input to control view direction yoke. Contributed -financially towards hard drive space for use by the flight gear project. Updates to -README.running. Working on getting fgfs and ssg to work without textures. Also -added the new 2-D panel and the save/load support. Further, he developed new panel -code, playing better with OpenGL, with new features. Developed the property manager -and contributed to joystick support. -

Cameron Moore (lists@toad.bitstreet.net) -
FAQ maintainer. Reigning list administration. Provided man pages. -

Eric Mitchell (mitchell@mars.ark.com) -
Contributed some topnotch scenery textures being all original creations by him. -

Alan Murta (amurta@cs.man.ac.uk) -

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/alan/software/ -

Created the Generic Polygon Clipping library. -

Phil Nelson (phil@cs.wwu.edu) -
Author of GNU dbm, a set of database routines that use extendible hashing and work -similar to the standard UNIX dbm routines. -

Alexei Novikov (anovikov@heron.itep.ru) -
Created European Scenery. Contributed a script to turn fgfs scenery into beautifully -rendered 2-D maps. Wrote a first draft of a Scenery Creation Howto. -

Curt Olson (curt@flightgear.org) -
Primary organization of the project. - - - -
First implementation and modifications based on LaRCsim. -
Besides putting together all the pieces provided by others mainly concentrating on the -scenery subsystem as well as the graphics stuff. Homepage at -

http://www.menet.umn.edu/ curt/ -

noindent Brian Paul -
We made use of his TR library and of course of Mesa: -

http://www.mesa3d.org/brianp/TR.html, http://www.mesa3d.org -

Tony Peden (apeden@earthlink.net) -
Contributions on flight model development, including a LaRCsim based Cessna 172. -Contributed to JSBSim the initial conditions code, a more complete standard atmosphere -model, and other bugfixes/additions. His Flight Dynamics page can be found at: -

http://www.nwlink.com/~ apeden. -

Robin Peel (robin@cpwd.com) -
Maintains worldwide airport and runway database for FlightGear as well as X-Plane. -

Alex Perry (alex.perry@ieee.org) -
Contributed code to more accurately model VSI, DG, Alticude. Suggestions for -improvements of the layout of the simulator on the mailing list and help on -documentation. -

Friedemann Reinhard (mpt218@faupt212.physik.uni-erlangen.de) -
Development of an early textured instrument panel. -

Petter Reinholdtsen (pere@games.no) -
Incorporated the GNU automake/autoconf system (with libtool). This should streamline -and standardize the build process for all UNIX-like platforms. It should have little -effect on IDE type environments since they don’t use the UNIX make system. -

William Riley (riley@technologist.com) -
Contributed code to add ”brakes”. Also wrote a patch to support a first joystick with -more than 2 axis. -

Andy Ross (andy@plausible.org) -
Contributed a new configurable FDM called YASim (Yet Another Fligth Dynamics -Simulator, based on geometry information rather than aerodynamic coefficients. -

Paul Schlyter (pausch@saaf.se) -
Provided Durk Talsma with all the information he needed to write the astro code. Mr. - - - -Schlyter is also willing to answer astro-related questions whenever one needs to. -

http://welcome.to/pausch -

Chris Schoeneman (crs@millpond.engr.sgi.com) -
Contributed ideas on audio support. -

Phil Schubert (philip@zedley.com) -
Contributed various textures and engine modelling. -

http://www.zedley.com/Philip/index.htm. -

Jonathan R Shewchuk (Jonathan_R_Shewchuk@ux4.sp.cs.cmu.edu) -
Author of the Triangle program. Triangle is used to calculate the Delauney triangulation -of our irregular terrain. -

Gordan Sikic (gsikic@public.srce.hr) -
Contributed a Cherokee flight model for LaRCsim. Currently is not working and needs to -be debugged. Use configure --with-flight-model=cherokee to build the -cherokee instead of the Cessna. -

Michael Smith (msmith99@flash.net) -
Contributed cockpit graphics, 3-D models, logos, and other images. Project Bonanza -

http://members.xoom.com/ConceptSim/index.html. -

Durk Talsma (d.talsma@chello.nl) -
Accurate Sun, Moon, and Planets. Sun changes color based on position in sky. Moon has -correct phase and blends well into the sky. Planets are correctly positioned and have -proper magnitude. Help with time functions, GUI, and other things. Contributed 2-D -cloud layer. Website at -

http://people.a2000.nl/dtals. -

UIUC - Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering -
Contributed modifications to LaRCsim to allow loading of aircraft parameters -from a file. These modifications were made as part of an icing research project. -

Those did the coding and made it all work: -
Jeff Scott jscott@students.uiuc.edu -
Bipin Sehgal bsehgal@uiuc.edu -
Michael Selig m-selig@uiuc.edu - - - -

Moreover, those helped to support the effort: -
Jay Thomas jthomas2@uiuc.edu -
Eunice Lee ey-lee@students.uiuc.edu -
Elizabeth Rendon mdfhoyos@md.impsat.net.co -
Sudhi Uppuluri suppulur@students.uiuc.edu -

U. S. Geological Survey -

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html -

Provided geographic data used by this project. -

Mark Vallevand (Mark.Vallevand@UNISYS.com) -
Contributed some METAR parsing code and some win32 screen printing routines. -

Gary R. Van Sickle (tiberius@braemarinc.com) -
Contributed some initial GameGLUT support and other fixes. Has done some interesting -preliminary work on a binary file format. Check -

http://www.woodsoup.org/projs/ORKiD/fgfs.htm. -

Martin Spott (Martin.Spott@uni-duisburg.de) -
Co-Author of the ”Getting Started”. -

Norman Vine (nhv@yahoo.com) -
Provided more numerous URL’s to the ”FlightGear Community”. Many performance -optimizations throughout the code. Many contributions and much advice for the scenery -generation section. Lots of Windows related contributions. Contributed wgs84 distance -and course routines. Contributed a great circle route autopilot mode based on -wgs84 routines. Many other GUI, HUD and autopilot contributions. Patch to -allow mouse input to control view direction. Ultra hires tiled screen dumps. -

Roland Voegtli (webmaster@sanw.unibe.ch) -
Contributed great photorealistic textures. Founder of European Scenery Project for -X-Plane: -

http://www.g-point.com/xpcity/esp/ -

Carmelo Volpe (carmelo.volpe@mednut.ki.se) -
Porting FlightGear to the Metro Works development environment (PC/Mac). -

Darrell Walisser (dwaliss1@purdue.edu) -
Contributed a large number of changes to porting FlightGear to the Metro Works -development environment (PC/Mac). Finally produced the first Macintosh port. -Contributed to the Mac part of Getting Started, too. - - - -

Ed Williams (Ed_Williams@compuserve.com). -
Contributed magnetic variation code (impliments Nima WMM 2000). We’ve also -borrowed from Ed’s wonderful aviation formulary at various times as well. Website at -http://www.best.com/~ williams/index.html, -

Jean-Claude Wippler (jcw@equi4.com) -
Author of MetaKit - a portable, embeddible database with a portable data file format -used in FlightGear. Please see the following URL for more info: -

http://www.equi4.com/metakit -

Woodsoup Project -
-

http://www.woodsoup.org -

While FlightGear no longer uses Woodsoup servies we appreciate the support -provied to our project during the time they hosted us. Once they provided computing -resources and services so that the FlightGear project could have a real home. -

Robert Allan Zeh (raz@cmg.FCNBD.COM) -
Helped tremendously in figuring out the Cygnus Win32 compiler and how to link with -.dll’s. Without him the first run-able Win32 version of FlightGear would have been -impossible. -

A.3 What remains to be done

-

At first: If you read (and, maybe, followed) this guide until this point you may probably -agree: FlightGear, even in its present state, is not at all for the birds. It is already a flight -simulator which sports even several selectable flight models, several planes with -panels and even a HUD, terrain scenery, texturing, all the basic controls and -weather. -

Despite, FlightGear needs - and gets - further development. Except internal tweaks, -there are several fields where FlightGear needs basics improvement and development. A -first direction is adding airports, streets, and more of those things bringing scenery to real -life and belonging to realistic airports. Another task is further implementation of the -menu system, which should not be too hard with the basics being working now. A -lot of options at present set via command line or even during compile time -should finally make it into menu entries. Finally, FlightGear lacks any ATC until -now. -

There are already people working in all of these directions. If you’re a programmer -and think you can contribute, you are invited to do so. -

Achnowledgements

Obviously this document could not have been written without all - - - -those contributors mentioned above making FlightGear a reality. -

First, I was very glad to see Martin Spott entering the documentation effort. Martin -provided not only several updates and contributions (notably in the OpenGL section) on -the Linux side of the project but also several general ideas on the documentation in -general -

Besides, I would like to say special thanks to Curt Olson, whose numerous scattered -Readmes, Thanks, Webpages, and personal eMails were of special help to me and were -freely exploited in the making of this booklet. -

Next, Bernhard Buckel wrote several sections of early versions of that Guide and -contributed at lot of ideas to it. -

Jon S. Berndt supported me by critical proofreading of several versions of the -document, pointing out inconsistences and suggesting improvements. -

Moreover, I gained a lot of help and support from Norman Vine. Maybe, without -Norman’s answers I would have never been able to tame different versions of the Cygwin -- FlightGear couple. -

We were glad, our Mac expert Darrell Walisser contributed the section on -compiling under Mac OS X. In addition he submitted several Mac related hints and -fixes. -

Further contributions and donations on special points came from John Check, -(general layout), Oliver Delise (several suggestions including notes on that chapter), -Mohit Garg (OpenGL), Kyler B. Laird (corrections), Alex Perry (OpenGL), and Kai -Troester (compile problems). - - - - -

Appendix B
Missed approach: If anything refuses to work

-

In the following, I tried to sort some problems according to operating system, but if you -encounter a problem it may be a wise idea to look beyond ”your” operating system - just -in case. Besides, you may want to check the FAQ maintained by Cameron Moore -at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/FlightGear-FAQ.html. -

Moreover, the source code contains a directory docs-mini containing numerous -ideas on and solutions to special problems. This is also a good place for further -reading. -

B.1 FlightGear Problem Reports

- -

The best place to look for help are generally the mailing lists [FGFS-Devel] and -[FGFS-User]. Instructions for subscription can be found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/mail.html. -

Often it already helps browsing through the archive at -

http://www.menet.umn.edu/ curt/fgfs/search.html -

to detect someone had that very same problem a week ago. -

There are numerous helpful developers and users reading the lists, and usually -questions get answered quickly. However, messages of the type -

FlightGear does not compile on my system. What shall I do? -

are hard to answer without any further detail given, aren’t they? Here are some ideas on -important information which may be helpful (depending on the problem you have): -

    -
  • Operating system: (Linux Redhat 7.0. . . /Windows 98SE. . . ) -
    • -
  • Computer: (Pentium III, 1GHz. . . ) -
    • -
  • Graphics board/chip: (Diamond Viper 770/NVIDIA RIVA TNT2. . . ) -
    • -
  • Compiler/version: (Cygnus version 1.0. . . ) - - - -
    • -
  • Versions of relevant libraries: (PLIB 1.2.0, Mesa 3.0. . . ) -
    • -
  • Type of problem: (Linker dies with message. . . ) -
-

One final remark: Please avoid posting binaries to these lists! They are widely -distributed and there are users with low bandwith connections. Thanks. -

B.2 General problems

- -
    -
  • FlightGear runs SOOO slow. -
    If FlightGear says it’s running with something like 1 fps (frame per second) - or below you typically don’t have working hardware OpenGL support. There - may be several reasons for this. First, there may be no OpenGL hardware - drivers available for older cards. In this case it is highly recommended to get - a new board. -

    Second, check if your drivers are properly installed. Several cards need - additional OpenGL support drivers besides the ”native” windows ones. For - more detail check Appendix C. -

    • -
  • Either configure or make dies with not found PLIB headers or libraries. -
    Make sure you have the latest version of PLIB (> version 1.2) compiled and - installed. Its headers like pu.h have to be under /usr/include/plib - and its libraries like libplibpu.a under /lib. Double check there are - no PLIB headers/libraries sitting elsewhere! -

    Besides check careful the error messages of configure. In several cases - it says what is missing.

-

B.3 Potential problems under Linux

- -

Since we don’t have access to all possible flavors of Linux distributions, here are some -thoughts on possible causes of problems. (This Section includes contributions by Kai -Troester.) - - - -

    -
  • Wrong library versions -
    This is a rather common cause of grief especially when you prefer to install - the libraries needed by FlightGear by hand. Be sure that especially the Mesa - library contains support for the 3DFX board and that GLIDE libraries are - installed and can be found. If a ldd `which fgfs` complains about - missing libraries you are in trouble. -

    You should also be sure to keep always the latest version of PLIB on your - system. Lots of people have failed miserably to compile FlightGear just - because of an outdated plib. -

    • -
  • Missing permissions -
    FlightGear needs to be setuid root in order to be capable of accessing an - accelerator board (or a special kernel module as described earlier in this - document) based on 3DFX chips. So you can either issue a -

    chown root.root /usr/local/bin/fgfs ; -
    chmod 4755 /usr/local/bin/fgfs -

    to give the FlightGear binary the proper rights or install the 3DFX module. - The latter is the “clean” solution and strongly recommended! -

    • -
  • Non-default install options -
    FlightGear will display a lot of diagnostics when being started up. If it - complains about bad looking or missing files, check that you installed - them in the way they are supposed to be, i.e. latest version and proper - location. The canonical location FlightGear wants its data files under - /usr/local/lib. Be sure to grab the latest versions of everything that - might be needed! -
    • -
  • Compile problems in general -
    Make sure you have the latest (official) version of gcc. Old versions of gcc - are a frequent source of trouble! On the other hand, recent versions of the - RedHat 7.0 reportedly have certain problems compiling FlightGear as they - include a preliminary version of GCC. -
    • -
  • Problems with linking -
    There may be several reasons; however in case you get a message like - - - -

    libmk4.so.0: cannot open shared object file -

    the reason is a missing library package called Metakit. This is provided with - Simgear in packed form. Unpack and install it first.

-

B.4 Potential problems under Windows

- -
    -
  • The executable refuses to run. -
    You may have tried to start the executable directly either by double-clicking - fgfs.exe in Windows explorer or by invoking it within a MS-DOS - shell. Double-clicking via explorer does never work (except you set the - environment variable FG_ROOT in autoexec.bat or otherwise). Rather - double-click runfgfs.bat. For more detail, check Chapter 4. -

    Another cause of grief might be you did not download the most recent - versions of the base package files required by FlightGear, or you did not load - any of them at all. Have a close look at this, as the scenery/texture format is - still under development and may change frequently. For more detail, check - Chapter 3. -

    Next, if you run into trouble at runtime, do not use windows utilities for - unpacking the .tar.gz. If you did, try it in the Cygnus shell with tar - xvfz instead. -

    • -
  • FlightGear ignores the command line parameters. -
    There is a problem with passing command line options containing a ”=” to - windows batch files. Instead, include the options into runfgfs.bat. -
    • -
  • I am unable to build FlightGear under MSVC/MS DevStudio. -
    By default, FlightGear is build with GNU C++, i. e. the Cygnus compiler - for Win32. For hints or Makefiles required for MSVC for MSC DevStudio - have a look into -

    ftp://www.flightgear.org/pub/flightgear/Source/. -

    In principle, it should be possible to FlightGear with the project files - provided with the code. - - - -

    • -
  • Compilation of FlightGear dies. -
    There may be several reasons for this, including true bugs. However, before - trying to do anything else or report a problem, make sure you have the latest - version of the Cygwin compiler, as described in Section 2. In case of doubt, - start setup.exe anew and download and install the most recent versions - of bundles as they possibly may have changed.
- - - - -

Appendix C
Some words on OpenGL graphics drivers

-

FlightGear’s graphics engine is based on a graphics library called OpenGL. Its primary -advantage is its platform independence, i. e., programs written with OpenGL support can -be compiled and executed on several platforms, given the proper drivers having been -installed in advance. Thus, independent of if you want to run the binaries only or if you -want to compile the program yourself you must have some sort of OpenGL support -installed for your video card. -

A good review on OpenGL drivers can be found at -

http://www.flightgear.org/Hardware. -

Specific information is collected for windows at -

http://www.x-plane.com/SYSREQ/v5ibm.html -

and for Macintosh at -

http://www.x-plane.com/SYSREQ/v5mac.html. -

An excellent place to look for documentation about Linux and 3-D accelerators is the -Linux Quake HOWTO at -

http://www.linuxquake.com. -

This should be your first aid in case something goes wrong with your Linux 3-D -setup. -

Unfortunately, there are so many graphics boards, chips and drivers out there that we -are unable to provide a complete description for all systems. Given the present market -dominance of NVIDIA combined with the fact that their chips have indeed been proven -powerful for running FlightGear, we will concentrate on NVIDIA drivers in what -follows. -

C.1 NVIDIA chip based cards under Linux

-

Recent Linux distributions include and install anything needed to run OpenGL programs -under Linux. Usually there is no need to install anything else. -

If for whatever reason this does not work, you may try to download the most recent -drivers from the NVIDIA site at -

http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html -

At present, this page has drivers for all NVIDIA chips for the following Linux -distributions: RedHat 7.1, Redhat 7.0, Redhat 6.2, Redhat 6.1, Mandrake 7.1, Mandrake -7.2, SuSE 7.1, SuSE 7.0 in several formats (.rpm, .tar.gz). These drivers support OpenGL -natively and do not need any additional stuff. - - - -

The page named above contains a detailed README and Installation -Guide giving a step-by-step description, making it unnecessary to copy the material -here. -

C.2 NVIDIA chip based cards under Windows

-

Again, you may first try the drivers coming with your graphics card. Usually they should -include OpenGL support. If for whatever reason the maker of your board did not include -this feature into the driver, you should install the Detonator reference drivers made by -NVIDIA (which might be a good idea anyway). These are available in three -different versions (Windows 95/98/ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT) from -

http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/htmlmedia/detonator3.html -

Just read carefully the Release notes to be found on that page. Notably do not forget to -uninstall your present driver and install a standard VGA graphics adapter before -switching to the new NVIDIA drivers first. -

C.3 3DFX chip based cards under Windows

-

With the Glide drivers no longer provided by 3DFX there seems to be little chance to -get it running (except to find older OpenGL drivers somewhere on the net or -privately). All pages which formerly provided official support or instructions for -3DFX are gone now. For an alternative, you may want to check the next section, -though. -

C.4 An alternative approach for Windows users

-

There is now an attempt to build a program which detects the graphics chip on your -board and automatically installs the appropriate OpenGL drivers. This is called -OpenGL Setup and is presently in beta stage. It’s home page can be found at -

http://www.glsetup.com/. -

We did not try this ourselfes, but would suggest it for those completely -lost. -

C.5 3DFX chip based cards under Linux

- -

Notably, with 3DFX now having been taken over by NVIDIA, manufacturer’s support -already has disappeared. However with XFree86-4.x (with x at least being greater than 1) -Voodoo3 cards are known to be pretty usable in 16 bit colour mode. Newer cards should -work fine as well. If you are still running a version of Xfree86 3.X and run into problems, -consider an upgrade. The recent distributions by Debian or SuSE have been reported to -work well. -

C.6 ATI chip based cards under Linux

-

There is excellent support for ATI chips in XFree86-4.1 and greater. Lots of AGP boards -based on the Rage128 chip - from simple Rage128 board to ATI Xpert2000 - are pretty -usuable for FlightGear. Since XFree86-4.1 you can use early Radeon chips - up to -Radeon7500 with XFree86-4.2. -

C.7 Building your own OpenGL support under Linux

-

Setting up proper OpenGL support with a recent Linux distribution should be pretty -simple. As an example SuSE ships everything you need plus some small shell scripts to -adjust the missing bits automagically. If you just want to execute prebuilt binaries of -FlightGear, then you’re done by using the supplied FlightGear package plus the -mandantory runtime libraries (and kernel modules). The package manager will tell you -which ones to choose. -

In case you want to run a selfmade kernel, you want to compile FlightGear yourself, -you’re tweaking your X server configuration file yourself or you even run a homebrewn -Linux ”distribution” (this means, you want to compile everything yourself), this chapter -might be useful for you. -

Now let’s have a look at the parts that build OpenGL support on Linux. First there’s a -Linux kernel with support for your graphics adapter. -

Examples on which graphics hardware is supported natively by Open Source drivers -are provided on -

http://dri.sourceforge.net/status.phtml. -

There are a few graphics chip families that are not directly or no more than partly -supported by XFree86, the X window implementation on Linux, because vendors don’t -like to provide programming information on their chips. In these cases - notably -IBM/DIAMOND/now: ATI FireGL graphics boards and NVIDIA GeForce based cards - -you depend on the manufacturers will to follow the ongoing development of the XFree86 -graphics display infrastructure. These boards might prove to deliver impressing -performance but in many cases - considering the CPU’s speed you find in today’s -PC’s - you have many choices which all lead to respectable performance of -FlightGear. -

As long as you use a distribution provided kernel, you can expect to find all -necessary kernel modules at the approriate location. If you compile the kernel yourself, -then you have to take care of two submenues in the kernel configuration menue. You’ll -find them in the ”Character devices” menue. Please notice that AGP support is not -compulsory for hardware accelerated OpenGL support on Linux. This also works quite -fine with some PCI cards (3dfx Voodoo3 PCI for example, in case you still own one). -Although every modern PC graphics card utilizes the AGP ’bus’ for fast data -transfer. -

Besides ”AGP Support” for your chipset - you might want to ask your mainboard -manual which one is on - you defnitely want to activate ”Direct Rendering Manager” -for your garphics board. Please note that recent releases of XFree86 - namely -4.1.0 and higher might not be supported by the DRI included in older Linux -kernels. Also newer 2.4.x kernels from 2.4.8 up to 2.4.17 do not support DRI in -XFree86-4.0.x. -

After building and installing your kernel modules and the kernel itself this task might -be completed by loading the ’agpgart’ module manually or, in case you linked it into the -kernel, by a reboot in purpose to get the new kernel up and running. While booting your -kernel on an AGP capable mainboard you may expect boot messages like this one: -

> Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann -
> gpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: -439M -
> agpgart: Detected Via Apollo Pro chipset -
> agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe4000000 - If you don’t encounter such messages on Linux kernel boot, then you might have -missed the right chipset. Part one of activation hardware accelerated OpenGL support on -your Linux system is now completed. -

The second part consists of configuring your X server for OpenGL. This is not a big -deal as it simply consists of to instructions to load the appropriate modules on startup of -the X server. This is done by editing the configuration file /etc/X11/XF86Config. -Today’s Linux distributions are supposed to provide a tool that does this job -for you on your demand. Please make shure there are these two instructions: -

Load ''glx'' -
Load ''dri'' - - - -

in the ”Module” section your X server configuration file. If everything is right the X -server will take care of loading the appropriate Linux kernel module for DRI support of -your graphics card. The right Linux kernel module name is determined by the ’Driver’ -statement in the ”Device” section of the XF86Config. Please see four samples on how -such a ”Device” section should look like: -

Section ”Device” -

BoardName ”3dfx Voodoo3 PCI” -

BusID ”0:8:0” -

Driver ”tdfx” -

Identifier ”Device[0]” -

Screen 0 -

VendorName ”3Dfx” -

EndSection -

Section ”Device” -

BoardName ”ATI Xpert2000 AGP” -

BusID ”1:0:0” -

Driver ”ati” -

Option ”AGPMode” ”1” -

Identifier ”Device[0]” -

Screen 0 -

VendorName ”ATI” -

EndSection -

Section ”Device” -

BoardName ”ATI Radeon 32 MB DDR AGP” -

BusID ”1:0:0” -

Driver ”radeon” -

Option ”AGPMode” ”4” -

Identifier ”Device[0]” -

Screen 0 -

VendorName ”ATI” -

EndSection -

By using the Option ”AGPMode” you can tune AGP performance as long as the -mainboard and the graphics card permit. The BusID on AGP systems should always be -set to ”1:0:0” - because you only have one AGP slot on your board - whereas the PCI -BusID differs with the slot your graphics card has been applied to. ’lspci’ might be your -friend in desperate situations. Also a look at the end of /var/log/XFree86.0.log, which -should be written on X server startup, should point to the PCI slot where your card -resides. - -

This has been the second part of installing hardware accelerated OpenGL support on -your Linux box. -

The third part carries two subparts: First there are the OpenGL runtime libraries, -sufficient to run existing appliactions. For compiling FlightGear you also need the suiting -develoment headers. As compiling the whole X window system is not subject to this -abstract we expect that your distribution ships the necessary libraries and headers. In case -you told your package manager to install some sort of OpenGL support you are -supposed to find some OpenGL test utilities, at least there should be ’glxinfo’ or -’gl-info’. -

These commandline utilities are useful to say if the previous steps where successfull. -If they refuse to start, then your package manager missed something because he should -have known that these utilities usually depend on the existence of OpenGL runtime -libraries. If they start, then you’re one step ahead. Now watch the output of this tool and -and have a look at the line that starts with -

OpenGL renderer string: -

If you find something like -

OpenGL renderer string: FireGL2 / FireGL3 (Pentium3) -

or -

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Voodoo3 20000224 -

or -

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Radeon 20010402 AGP 4x -x86 -

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect -

mind the word ’Indirect’, then it’s you who missed something, because OpenGL gets -dealt with in a software library running solely on your CPU. In this case you might want -to have a closer look at the preceding paragraphs of this chapter. Now please make -shure all necessary libraries are at their proper location. You will need three -OpenGL libraries for running FlightGear. In most cases you will find them in -/usr/lib/: -

/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 -

/usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 -

/usr/lib/libglut.so.3 -

These may be the libraries itself or symlinks to appropriate libraries located in some -other directories. Depending on the distribution you use these libraries might be shipped -in different packages. SuSE for example ships libGL in package ’xf86_glx’, libGLU in - -’xf86glu’ and libglut in ’mesaglut’. Additionally for FlightGear you need libplib which is -part of the ’plib’ package. -

For compiling FlightGear yourself - as already mentioned - you need the appropriate -header files which often reside in /usr/include/GL/. Two are necessary for libGL and they -come in - no, not ’xf86glx-devel’ (o.k., they do but they do not work correctly) but in -’mesa-devel’: -

/usr/include/GL/gl.h -

/usr/include/GL/glx.h -

One comes with libGLU in ’xf86glu-devel’: -

/usr/include/GL/glu.h -

and one with libglut in ’mesaglut-devel’ -

/usr/include/GL/glut.h -

The ’plib’ package comes with some more libraries and headers that are too -many to be mentioned here. If all this is present and you have a comfortable -compiler environment, then you are ready to compile FlightGear and enjoy the -result. -

Further information on OpenGL issues of specific XFree86 releases is avaliable here: -

/DRI.html >http://www.xfree86.org/¡RELEASE NUMBER¿/DRI.html -

Additional reading on DRI: -

http://www.precisioninsight.com/piinsights.html -

In case you are missing some ’spare parts’: -

http://dri.sourceforge.net/res.phtml -

C.8 OpenGL on MacIntosh

-

OpenGL is pre-installed on Mac OS 9.x and later. You may find a newer version than the -one installed for Mac OS 9.x at -

www.apple.com/opengl -

You should receive the updates automatically for Mac OX 10.x. -

One final word: We would recommend that you test your OpenGL support with one -of the programs that accompany the drivers, to be absolutely confident that -it is functioning well. There are also many little programs, often available as -screen savers, that can be used for testing. It is important that you are confident -in your graphics acceleration because FlightGear will try to run the card as -fast as possible. If your drivers aren’t working well, or are unstable, you will -have difficulty tracking down the source of any problems and have a frustrating -time. - - - -

Index

-
.fgfsrc, 1, 2
-3DFX, 3, 4 -
-

- A1 Free Sounds, 5
-add-on scenery, 6
-ADF, 7
-Adler, Mark, 8
-Aeronautical Information Manual, 9
-aileron, 10, 11, 12
-aileron indicator, 13
-air traffic facilities, 14
-aircraft model, 15
-aircraft model directory, 16
-airport, 17, 18
-airport code, 19, 20, 21
-airport ID, 22
-airspeed indicator, 23
-Alonzo, Raul, 24
-altimeter, 25
-altitude hold, 26
-America, Michele, 27, 28
-anonymous cvs, 29
-anti-alised HUD lines, 30
-antialiasing, 31
-artificial horizon, 32
-astronomy code, 33
-ATC, 34
-ATI, 35
-attitude indicator, 36
-audio library, 37
-audio support, 38
-auto coordination, 39, 40
-autopilot, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46
-autopilot controls, 47, 48
-autothrottle, 49 -
-

- bank, 50
-base package, 51, 52
-    installation, 53, 54
-Basler, Michael, 55
-Berndt, Jon, S., 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
-binaries, 61, 62
-    Debian, 63
-    directory, 64
-    Macintosh, 65
-    pre-compiled, 66
-    SGI Irix, 67
-    Windows, 68
-binaries, pre-compiled, 69
-binary directory, 70
-binary distribution, 71
-bleeding edge snapshots, 72
-Bleisch, Paul, 73
-Boeing 747, 74
-brakes, 75, 76, 77
-branch, developmental, 78
-branch, stable, 79
-Brennan, Jim, 80
-Bright, Bernie, 81
-BSD UNIX, 82
-Buckel, Bernhard, 83, 84
-Buckle, Gene, 85 -
-

- callsign, 86
-Carmichael, Ralph, 87
-CD-ROM, 88
-Cessna, 89, 90
-Cessna 172, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96
-Cessna 182, 97, 98
-Cessna 310, 99
-Cessna C172, 100
-Chauveau, Didier, 101
-Check, John, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107
-Cherokee flight model, 108
-clock, 109
-cloud layer, 110
-clouds, 111, 112
-CodeWarrior, 113
-COMM1, 114
-COMM2, 115
-command line options, 116, 117
-communication radio, 118, 119
-compiler, 120
-compiling, 121
-    IRIX, 122
- - -    Linux, 123
-    MacIntosh, 124
-    other systems, 125
-    Solaris, 126
-    Windows, 127
-configure, 128
-contributors, 129
-control device, 130
-Cornish, Dave, 131, 132
-CVS snapshots, 133
-cvs, anonymous, 134
-Cygnus, 135, 136, 137
-    development tools, 138
-Cygwin
-    setup, 139 -
-

- Debian, 140, 141
-default settings, 142
-Delise, Oliver, 143, 144, 145, 146
-Denker, John, 147
-Detonator reference drivers, 148
-development environment, 149
-differential braking, 150, 151
-Direct3D, 152
-directory structure, 153
-disk space, 154, 155
-display options, 156
-distribution
-    binary, 157, 158
-documentation, 159
-    installation, 160
-DOS, 161
-Doue, Jean-Francois, 162 -
-

- Eberly, Dave, 163
-elevation indicator, 164
-elevator trim, 165
-engine
-    starting, 166
-engine controls, 167
-environment variable, 168
-environment variables, 169
-Evans, Francine, 170
-Everitt, Oscar, 171
-exit, 172, 173 -
-

- - - - FAA, 174
-FAA Training Book, 175
-FAQ, 176
-FDM, 177
-    external, 178
-field of view, 179
-Finney, Bruce, 180
-flaps, 181, 182
-flight dynamics model, 183, 184
-flight instrument, 185
-flight model, 186, 187, 188
-flight models, 189
-flight planner, 190
-flight schools, 191
-Flight simulator
-    civilian, 192, 193
-    free, 194
-    multi-platform, 195, 196
-    open, 197, 198
-    user-extensible, 199, 200
-    user-sported, 201
-    user-supported, 202
-FlightGear, 203
-    directory structure, 204
-    versions, 205
-FlightGear documentation, 206
-FlightGear Flight School, 207
-FlightGear Getting Started Guide, 208
-FlightGear Programmer’s Guide, 209
-FlightGear Scenery Design Guide, 210
-FlightGear Website, 211, 212
-fog, 213, 214
-fog effects, 215
-frame rate, 216, 217, 218, 219
-FreeBSD, 220
-FreeGLUT, 221
-frozen state, 222
-FS98, 223
-fuel indicator, 224
-full screen display, 225
-full screen mode, 226, 227 -
-

- Gailly, Jean-loup, 228
-GameGLUT, 229
-Garg, Mohit, 230, 231
-gauge, 232
-gear, 233
-Geforce, 234
- - - -Gellekum, Thomas, 235
-Girish, Neetha, 236
-GLIDE, 237
-GNU C++, 238
-Gnu Public License, 239
-Goeke-Smith, Jeff, 240, 241
-Gold, Michael, I., 242
-GPL, 243, 244, 245
-graphics card, 246
-graphics library, 247
-graphics routines, 248
-gyro compass, 249 -
-

- Habibe, 250
-haze, 251, 252
-head up display, 253, 254, 255
-heading hold, 256
-height, 257
-help, 258
-Hill, Mike, 259
-History, 260
-Hofman, Eric, 261
-Hofman, Erik, 262, 263
-hot air balloon, 264
-Hotchkiss, Charlie, 265, 266
-HUD, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276 -
-

- IFR, 277, 278
-inclinometer, 279
-initial heading, 280
-install directory, 281
-instrument flight rules, 282
-instrument panel, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287
-Internet, 288
-IRIX, 289 -
-

- Jackson, Bruce, 290, 291
-joystick, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297
-joystick settings, 298
-joysticks, 299
-JSBSim, 300 -
-

- Kaaven, Ove, 301, 302
-Kaszeta, Richard, 303
-key bindings
- - - -    configuration, 304
-keyboard, 305
-keyboard controls, 306, 307, 308, 309
-    miscellaneous, 310
-keyboard.xml, 311
-Knienieder, Tom, 312
-Koradi, Reto, 313
-Korpela, Eric, 314
-Kuehne, Bob, 315 -
-

- Laird, Kyler B., 316, 317
-landing gear, 318
-LaRCsim, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325
-latitude, 326
-Launching Flighgear
-    Mac OS X, 327
-    Windows, 328
-Launching Flightgear
-    Linux, 329
-leaflet, 330
-Learjet 24, 331
-Lee, Eunice, 332
-Linux, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346
-Linux distributions, 347
-load flight, 348
-longitude, 349
-Luff, David, 350, 351 -
-

- Mac OS 9, 352
-Mac OS X, 353
-Macintosh, 354, 355, 356
-magnetic compass, 357
-mailing lists, 358, 359
-map, clickable, 360
-marker, inner, 361
-marker, middle, 362
-marker, outer, 363
-Mayer, Christian, 364, 365, 366, 367
-Megginson, David, 368, 369, 370, 371
-menu, 372
-menu entries, 373
-menu system, 374
-MetaKit, 375
-Metro Works, 376
-Microsoft, 377, 378
-Mitchell, Eric, 379, 380
-mixture, 381
- - - -Moore Cameron, 382
-Moore, Cameron, 383
-mouse, 384
-mouse interface, 385, 386
-mouse, actions, 387
-MS DevStudio, 388
-MSVC, 389, 390
-multi-lingual conversion tools, 391
-multiplayer code, 392
-Murr, David, 393
-Murta, Alan, 394 -
-

- NAV, 395
-navaids, 396
-Navion, 397, 398
-NDB, 399, 400
-Nelson, Phil, 401
-network, 402
-network options, 403
-networking code, 404, 405
-networking support, 406, 407
-nightly snapshots, 408
-Novikov, Alexei, 409
-NumLock, 410
-NVIDIA, 411, 412, 413
-    drivers, 414
-    Linux drivers, 415
-    Windows drivers, 416 -
-

- offset, 417
-Olson, Curt, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428
-OpenGL, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, -448, 449
-    drivers, 450
-    libraries, 451
-OpenGL drivers, 452
-OpenGL Setup, 453
-Operating Systems, 454
-options
-    aircraft model directory, 455
-    debugging, 456
-    features, 457
-    flight model, 458
-    general, 459
-    HUD, 460
-    initial position, 461
-    IO, 462
- - - -    joystick, 463
-    network, 464
-    orientation, 465
-    rendering, 466
-    route, 467
-    time, 468
-    waypoint, 469
-options, configure, 470
-OS/2, 471 -
-

- panel, 472, 473, 474, 475
-    reconfiguration, 476
-parking brake, 477
-Paul, Brian, 478
-pause, 479
-pedal, 480
-Peden, Tony, 481, 482, 483
-Peel, Robin, 484
-permissions, 485
-Perry, Alex, 486, 487
-pitch, 488
-pitch indicator, 489
-places to discover, 490
-PLIB, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495, 496
-    header files, 497
-preferences, 498
-problem report, 499
-problems, 500
-    general, 501
-    Linux, 502
-    Windows, 503
-programmers, 504
-property manager, 505
-proposal, 506 -
-

- Quake, 507 -
-

- radio stack, 508
-README.xmlpanel, 509
-Reinhard, Friedemann, 510, 511
-Reinholdtsen, Petter, 512
-Rendon, Elizabeth, 513
-reset flight, 514
-Riley, William, 515
-Ross, Andy, 516, 517
-RPM indicator, 518
- - - -rudder, 519, 520, 521, 522
-rudder indicator, 523
-rudder pedals, 524, 525 -
-

- save flight, 526
-scenery, 527, 528
-    add-on, 529
-scenery directory
-    path, 530
-scenery subsystem, 531
-Schlyter, Paul, 532
-Schoenemann, Chris, 533
-Schubert, Phil, 534
-Scott, Jeff, 535
-screenshot, 536, 537, 538
-See how it flies, 539
-Sehgal, Bipin, 540
-Selig, Michael, 541
-SGI IRIX, 542
-SGI Irix, 543
-Shewchuk, Jonathan, 544
-Sikic, Gordan, 545
-SimGear, 546, 547, 548, 549
-Smith, Michael, 550
-snapshots, 551
-Solaris, 552
-sound card, 553
-sound effects, 554
-source code, 555
-speed, 556
-Spott, Martin, 557, 558
-Starting Flightgear
-    Linux, 559
-    Mac OS X, 560
-    Windows, 561
-starting time, 562
-startup latitude, 563
-startup longitude, 564
-startup pitch angle, 565
-startup roll angle, 566
-Stuffit Expander, 567
-Sun-OS, 568, 569
-SuSE, 570
-system requirements, 571, 572
-system.fgfsrc, 573, 574 -
-

- Talsma, Durk, 575, 576, 577
- - - -TerraGear, 578
-terrain, 579
-text books, 580
-texture, 581
-textures, 582, 583
-Thomas, Jay, 584
-throttle, 585, 586, 587
-thunderstorms, 588
-Tilt view, 589
-time, 590
-time offset, 591
-time options, 592
-TNT, 593
-Torvalds, Linus, 594
-triangle program, 595
-triangles, 596
-trim, 597
-Troester, Kai, 598
-turn indicator, 599, 600
-Twin Otter, 601 -
-

- U. S. Geological Survey, 602, 603
-UIUC, 604
-UIUC flight model, 605, 606
-UNIX, 607, 608, 609, 610
-Unix, 611 -
-

- Vallevand, Mark, 612
-van Sickle, Gary, R., 613, 614
-velocity rages, 615
-vertical speed indicator, 616
-VFR, 617, 618
-video card, 619
-view, 620
-view directions, 621, 622
-view frustrum culling, 623
-view modes, 624
-views, 625
-Vine, Norman, 626, 627, 628, 629, 630
-visibility, 631
-Visual C++, 632
-visual flight rules, 633
-Voegtli, Roland, 634
-Volpe, Carmelo, 635
-VOR, 636, 637 -
-

- - - - Walisser, Darrell, 638, 639, 640
-weapon systems, 641
-weather, 642
-weather subsystem, 643
-Williams, Ed, 644
-window size, 645
-Windows, 646, 647, 648, 649, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654
-Windows 95/98/ME, 655
-Windows 95/NT, 656
-Windows NT/2000/XP, 657
-winds, 658
-Wippler, Jean-Claude, 659
-wireframe, 660
-Wood, Charles, 661
-Woodsoup, 662
-workstation, 663, 664 -
-

- X15, 665, 666 -
-

- yoke, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671
-yokes, 672 -
-

- Zeh, Allan, 673
-zlib library, 674 -
-

- - - - +

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