FlightGear is a free Flight Simulator developed cooperatively 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 FlightGear up and running. It is not intended to provide complete documentation of all the features and add-ons of FlightGear but, instead, focuses on those aspects necessary to get into the air.
This guide is split into two parts. The first part describes how to install the program while the second part details on how to actually fly with FlightGear.
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 this 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: Flying with FlightGear
The following Chapter 4, Takeoff: How to start the program, describes how to actually start the 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 keyboard commands, an overview on the menu entries, detailed descriptions on the instrument panel and HUD (head up display), as well as hints on using the mouse functions.
In Appendix A, Missed approach: If anything refuses to work, we try to help you work through some common problems faced when using FlightGear.
The Appendix B, OpenGL graphics drivers, describes some special problems you may encounter in case your system lacks support for the OpenGL graphics API OpenGL which FlightGear is based on.
In the final Appendix C, 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.
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 | |
| General issues: | A |
| Graphics problems: | B |
| Optionally | 1, C |
While this introductory guide is meant to be self contained, we strongly suggest having a look into further documentation, especially in case of trouble:
http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/FlightGear-FAQ.html,
The FAQ contains a host of valuable information, especially on rapidly changing flaws and additional reading, thus we strongly suggest consulting it in conjunction with our guide.
http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/InstallGuide/FGShortRef.html,
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:
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 you are running FlightGear on Linux, you may also be able to get binaries bundled with your distribution. Several vendors already include FlightGear binaries into their distributions.
Just download them, install them according to the description and run them via the installed runfgfs script or the batch file runfgfs.bat, respectively.
There is no guarantee for this approach to work, though. If it doesn’t, don’t give up! Have a closer look through this guide notably Section 3 and be sure to check out the FAQ.