column width=”47%” padding=”6%” Download FlightGear 2018.3.2. Download (versions 7, 8, 10). Download (versions 10.8, 10.9, 10.10). Download FlightGear for Linux and other platforms on the./columncolumn width=”47%” padding=”0″ Download AircraftThe FlightGear base package includes only a few representative aircraft. In addition, the latest launcher includes a new “Aircraft Center” where you can select and download aircraft right within the simulator./columnendcolumnscolumn width=”47%” padding=”6%” Download SceneryFlightGear has a seamless, continuous oblate ellipsoid world available for you to explore.
Our terrain is based on 90m SRTM data and is very detailed. There are over 20,000 airports you can visit world wide. You can download 10×10 degree chunks of the world, run a utility called terrasync to fetch scenery as you fly (just in time), or purchase the entire world on a 3 DVD set./columncolumn width=”47%” padding=”0″ Download Source CodeHere’s the best part. Every line of source code for this project is available under the GPL license. Cockpit builders, researchers, do-it-yourselfers, industry groups, and students will all find FlightGear very open, very flexible, very adaptable, and very interfacable./columnendcolumnscolumn width=”47%” padding=”6%” FTP MirrorsIn the event that the primary FlightGear server is busy or slow we have a number of ftp mirror sites.
Note: many web browsers will report a failed login rather than a busy server./columncolumn width=”47%” padding=”0″ Purchase FlightGear DVD’s and GearThose who prefer the complete FlightGear set on physical media can purchase a ready to run version of FlightGear (OSX or Windows) as well as the entire world scenery set. A portion of the sales goes towards supporting the project and a portion is donated to charity./columnendcolumnscolumn width=”47%” padding=”6%”/columncolumn width=”47%” padding=”0″ Download Older Versions of FlightGear. Browse the for version 3.4 and newer. Version 3.2 and older:.
FlightGear Canada allows Canadian FlightGear users and developers to share and discuss Canadian FlightGear subjects and development. This release features a Trans-Provincial livery. View in 3D on the Liveries page and screenshots on the Screenshots page!
MacOSX Version 2.6 and earlier:/columnendcolumns.
Earth from spaceThe view from a spacecraft – dark blue oceans, the multi-colored landmasses, the blue ribbon of the atmosphere and brilliant white cloudbands during the day, long shadows and hues of orange and pink in the dawn zones and finally the gleaming lights of the planet’s cities and the faint strands of aurora in the sky.Few of us will ever have the chance to go to ISS and view the ‘pale blue marble’ from low Earth orbit – for real that is.VisualizationMatters are quite different in a simulation of course. Over the last years, Flightgear’s rendering engine for views from orbit called ‘Earthview’ has undergone a lot of improvements and additions, making it one of the best visualization tools available.Lots of work has gone into the visuals at night. For example, a fairly sophisticated model of Aurora Borealis and Australis colors the sky around the poles. Discover HawaiiThe first FG release in 2018 will move to the tropical island of Oahu, using Honolulu as the default airport.
In preparation, the islands of the Hawaii chain have received a makeover – textures for the typical shrub vegetation has been added, the terrain texturing has been improved and the airport layouts have been re-generated.There’s now a lot of new things to discover – fly to the ‘garden island’ of Kauai and look for waterfalls, search for the new highly detailed aircraft carrier ‘Harry S. Truman’ cruising close to Oahu, watch a sunrise from the summit of mighty Haleakala on Maui or discover an active lava fountain on the ‘big island’.Active volcanoesHave you ever seen a volcano eruption in a flightsim? This is your chance – in the upcoming release, you won’t only be able to see lava pools and volcanic smoke of Puu’Oo on Hawaii, but also see lava fountains of the Italian volcano Stromboli and even the mighty ash plumes blown high into the air by an eruption of Etna on Sicily. The activity of all these volcanoes can be adjusted from the Environment GUI.The current implementation is still limited, but in the future, volcanic ash might actually interfere with the weather and aircraft operations – just like in reality.Unprecedented vegetation detailUsing geometry shaders, the Atmospheric Light Scattering rendering framework now offers the option to see dense volumetric grass layers on the airport greenspaces, as well as rendering additional 3d layers of vegetation underneath the regular random trees and shrubs in regions where this is configured. This offers the eye a pleasantly high level of detail even at close range and adds much to the visuals.
While this technique might be heavy for older graphics cards, the performance on a modern high-performance graphics card is excellent.A helpful co-pilotHave you ever wanted to fly a helicopter, but didn’t manage to get it off the ground? The Alouette-III now comes with a helper (or flight instructor) for you – Amelia.Amelia (named after aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart) is an animated co-pilot capable of taking off, landing and hovering the helicoper for you, according to your instructions.
You can simply ask her to get the craft off the ground for you, then fly it a bit forward and then take over from her. Or, if you’re interested in operating the winch and doing rescue operations, she can hover over a spot and move slowly to the right spot according to your directions.New and updated aircraftA lot of development has happened for various aircraft – for instance the Robinson R44 helicopter has received a stunning new 3d model and many systems are now simulated in detail.Another great addition, both in terms of visuals and systems, is the new Cessna C-182. If you like single prop aircraft and want to see something more modern than the default C-172p, try it out – it makes for a great plane to do sightseeing in Hawaii!The carrier handling of the F-14b is now much more realistic, with arrestor wire effectivity dependent on speed at touchdown, more realistic low speed aerodynamics during the approach and correct ‘kneeling’ of aircraft when on the catapult – take the F-14 to the ‘Harry S. Truman’, and you won’t be disappointed!Lots of details have also been added to the Citation-II business jet and bugfixes, gear damage, a correct autopilot and an improved radar to the F-15.and much moreMuch more work going on behind the scenes:. improved usability and integration of the Flightgear launcher. fixes for AMD graphics cards rendering issues.
many other small bugfixes. improvements to the YaSim flight dynamics engine for better realismStay tuned as we launch the next release!
The Art of Hover FlightWhile most Flightgear users seem to mainly use GA aircraft or airliners, the simulation of helicopters is not only possible but comes with a nice degree of realism. This makes learning to fly a helciopter quite a challenge, but also very educational.Why not try it out?Piloting a helicopter is also a nice opportunity to see the terrain in a different way, because usually the view downward is much less restricted than in aircraft cockpits – here a good graphics card to support all the hires terrain texturing and the various vegetation and building overlays that can be enabled really pays off. And of course you can land pretty much anywhere you like, airports are no longer a must, any flat patch of terrain will do.
But there are also hundreds of helipads in the FG scenery, located on places like hospital rooftops or oil rigs.Ready for takeoff? Let’s take a quick look at some helicopters FG has to offer.Helicopter flightIf you’ve mastered flying normal aircraft and have the idea that helicopters can’t be so different, you’re likely wrong – helicopters are very different.Normal aircraft are usually dynamically stable – if they feel a perturbation, they return to a stable attitude. Helicopters reach this condition only when they accelerate, but just after takeoff and before landing they move through the air slowly, and they’re in fact dynamically unstable – any perturbation needs to be countered quickly with the controls, or it will grow and the pilot will lose control.Another thing that takes some time getting used to is that the body of a helicopter swings like a pendulum underneath the rotor. The pilot always needs to recognize when a motion is part of this oscillation and will dampen out on its own and when it is actually part of the flight dynamics.Yet perhaps the hardest thing to master for beginners is the torque of the rotor.
The rotating blades try to yank the helicopter around against their own motion, and only the action of the tail rotor prevents this – so pedals need to be used carefully to counter this effect.So how is a helicopter controlled?Unlike in an aircraft, the turbine RPM is usually not throttled. Rather, the angle of the main rotor blades is changed by the collective control- this provides upward/downward motion. The main rotor can be tilted by moving the stick, this provides a combination of forward and sideward motion. It is actually quite feasible to fly a helicopter sideward, or even backward if it is done slowly, only once the airstream becomes fast, the fuselage tries to align with the wind like for an aircraft. Finally, the pedals control the tail rotor action – they can be used both to stabilize the craft against the main rotor torque as well as swing the nose around into a new direction in hover flight.The final important ingredient to understanding helicopter flight is the ground effect.
If the air displaced by the main rotor can’t go anywhere quickly because there is terrain underneath, it forms a ‘cushion’ of air that keeps the helicopter afloat. The effectivity of this cushion decreases quickly with altitude, thus close to the ground the collective actually controls altitude rather than vertical speed.
Setting the rotor to displace more air pushes the helicopter upward, but then the ground effect decreases, so the craft settles at a new altitude.A helicopter is then taken off by hovering into the ground effect, then using the stick to induce a forward motion (which gradually causes more lift on the rotor blades), and only when it is faster than some minimum speed flown out of the ground effect region. Similarly, one can expect and anticipate the ground effect for a landing.While all these effects are there for any helicopter, the degree to which they make themselves felt differ quite a lot, and so every craft has to be learned separately.The Robinson R22If you were to attend real helicopter flight training, the Robinson R22 is the type of helicopter you would most likely encounter – it’s a low cost craft, popular throughout the world as a trainer or utility helicopter. The R22 has a low inertia rotor system, and the control inputs are transmitted directly by rods without hydraulic assistance. This means that the controls have to be moved very gently to avoid overcorrecting, and overall the helicopter reacts rather finnicky. This does seem to make it a bad choice for a trainer, except the idea seems to be that if a flight student masters the R22, she won’t have any problems with a heavier helicopter.The instrumentation is generally simple, giving the pilot an almost unhindered view through the windshield.In Flightgear, the R22 definitely exhibits the characteristics of the original counterpart. There’s lots of torque which is difficult to compensate, and you need to work a lot for even a halfway decent hover flight. Also, bringing the R22 into level flight with a good trim is far from trivial.The Alouette IIIThe Alouette III is an aging light utility helicopter, in service since 1960, mainly used by military forces around the world, used for tasks ranging from passenger transport to aerial ambulance and SAR.
Compared with the R22, it is a much heavier machine and hence considerably less skittish on the controls.In the Flightgear version, the startup and shutdown sequences are implemented and the instrument panel is largely functional. What takes a bit to get used to is that this helicopter has wheels rather than skids, which makes sometimes for a surprise when landing in sloped terrain.The Sikorsky S-76CAs a medium-sized utility helicopter, the Sikorsky S-76 dating to the 1980s comes with quite a bit of modern avionics aboard. Two turbines pack a lot of power, and the craft also features a retractable gear for better cruise performance.Unfortunately, the avionics of this helicopter is not fully implemented in FG, but it nevertheless is a nice classy craft to fly.The Chinook CH-47The mighty Chinook CH-47 is a heavy lifter used by the US Army since the 1960s, both for transport as well as for aerial assault purposes, inserting troops behind enemy lines.Unlike any of the helicopters above, the craft features counter-rotating twin rotors which removes the need for a tail rotor. This (and the large mass) make the flight fairly stable and the helicopter feels a bit sluggish at the controls.Unfortunately, many instruments are modeled in the panel but not actually working, which limits the experience somewhat.The Eurocopter EC 130A truly modern light utility helicopter, the Eurocopter EC 130 was introduced in 2001 and is in strong demand around the world.
It comes with a modern avionics set and (for its weight) a fairly powerful engine.In the simulation, the EC 130 is, hands down, one of the most stunning models with a photorealistic exterior utilizing pretty much every rendering effect available. Once in the cockpit, there is a detailed startup and shutdown procedure available that’s supported by the checklist system.
In addition, many different configurations and pieces of equipment (such as external baskets or a serchlight) can be chosen. Once you try it, you’ll love it.The Eurocopter EC 135Introduced in 1996, the EC-135 is another modern light utility helicopter used for multiple purposes ranging from medical transport and SAR to sightseeing. Powered by two turbines, it packs even more horsepowers than the EC-130.Both the interior and the exterior of this helicopter show in FG at photorealistic quality. The EC-135 is a truly remarkable piece of work, both in the flight characteristics and visually.Curious?Eager to try out helicopter flight now? While the R22 is what real flight students learn with, the craft is very hard to master without the helping hand of an instructor.
Since you’re not paying for simulated damage or flight hours, you might as well start with a heavy machine such as the Chinook to get a feeling for the basics of helicopter flight without the complication of rotor torque, and then move on to a ‘nice’ machine like the Alouette III before tackling the really hard craft.Don’t be discouraged by failures – you’ll probably crash the first dozen times before getting the ride off the ground properly, and it really takes a while to get the correct ‘feel’ for the controls such that good hover flight and precision landings are feasible. This is much harder than flying an airplane.For a good introduction to the techniques of helicopter flight in FG, see the. Outback flying with the Twin OtterIf you’re looking for a challenge away from busy airports, IFR flight and traffic controllers try flying up in the North for a while. Remote dirt airstrips, spectacular scenery, challenging mountain flights, tricky navigation in rough weather – Alaska offers all of this and more.In such a sparsely populated region, you need a special kind of plane – easy to maintain, with a short takeoff or landing distance and capable of taking a lot of punishment.
Such as the Twin Otter.Meet the planeThe de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is STOL-capable small passenger turboprop aircraft, ready to carry up to 19 people. The sturdy, non-retractable undercarriage, the short takeoff and the high rate of climb make the aircraft very suitable to serve small airstrips in remote and mountainous areas.
In addition, Twin Otters can be fitted with wheels, floats or skies, allowing them to operate even off reinforced runways.With a cruise speed of 150 kt, a service ceiling of 25.000 ft and a range of about 800 miles, the aircraft does not have the abilities of commercial jets, but its handling qualities more than make up for it.The Flightgear version of the Twin Otter has a lot to offer – starting from a spectacular 3d cockpit over lots of simulated systems to detailed procedures. When starting in the plane, you find it in secured position, with external power connected.Every flight starts with the pre-flight inspection, the tiedowns and pitot tube covers have to be removed, the wheels unblocked. Using Flightgear’s walker feature, you can literally get out of the plane and walk around, doing your pre-flight checklist.Once you climb into the cockpit, you can then start the engines and switch to internal power. The plane makes excellent use of the checklist feature, with the ability to highlight every control that needs to be operated next, so you won’t get lost easily.The cockpit artwork is simply great, close to photo-realistic, and there are lots of details to discover, from the way the windshield heater has a real function to ‘No Smoking’ signs for the passengers.The flight dynamics is modeled using YaSim, which doesn’t make it overly realistic at the corners of the operational envelope, but the basics are all there and the simulation nicely captures the STOL and high climb rate of the plane. There’s no simulation of damage due to overstressing the plane done, but callouts of limit violations can be activated (and of course you can crash and destroy the plane).If you’re in for a real challenge, start with a variant that has either floats or skies – if you have floats, you can actually select starting sites on the water (or get the option to re-position to a nearby site).Mount LoganA very nice bit of scenery is East of Valdez (PAVD) following the Bagley Ice Field towards the Seward Glacier at the foot of Mt. Logan, which towers a full 19,501 ft above sea level.The Twin Otter will be able to take off from almost any small airfield, so we can explore this from Cape Yakataga (PACY). It’s going to be a cold flight, so remember to activate Pitot tube and propeller heaters, otherwise there’ll be nasty surprises later.Fly north and start climbing over the first mountain ranges at about 10.000 ft – behind the peaks you’ll get your first visual of the Bagley ice field stretching in east-west direction.Follow the glacier east until you see towering Mount Logan to your left, reaching up to almost 20.000 ft and opposite to it, slightly lower, Mount St.
Then turn towards Mount Logan.If you have skies equipped and dare to, you can try landing on the Bagley field or on one of Logan’s glaciers – it’s quite a challenge.The Twin Otter reaches high enough to make the summit of Mount Logan, so start climbing again. If the visibility is good, you can see several other towering peaks over in Canada.Turn back west and follow the glacier valleys branching north of Bagley field, forming the Logan glacier.You’ll be rewarded by stunning views deep into ice-carved valleys.Follow the Logan glacier valley till the ice disappears and mighty watercourses carry the meltwaters of the ice fields. We’re going to end the flight at Jakes Bar, which is a small dirt airstrip in the middle of nowhere. Like many small field in Alaska, it doesn’t come with a radio beacon, so you’ll have to find it by eye – it’s where a meltwater stream coming from the south merges with the water from Logan glacier.There’s not much space here – but nothing the Twin Otter couldn’t handle.Juneau and surroundingsQuite different but equally stunning scenery is found in the vicinity of Juneau airport (PAJN). Here the sea meets steep mountains and glaciers and fjords and islands dominate the scene. Swedish Air PowerBackgroundThe Saab JA-37 ‘Viggen’ (the name goes back to an old Swedish word and means ‘thunderbolt’) is a Swedish single seat all-weather interceptor aircraft variant. With it’s delta wings and the canard surfaces, it is a most iconic sight, and when the first prototype of the design was rolled out in 1967, it was considered one of the most advanced aircraft at the time.The main design requirements were based on the notion that the aircraft would have to be operated from improvised airstrips, thus both the ability to utilize short (and, given Sweden’s climate, possibly frozen or snowy) runways and easy maintenance were considered very important.
The Space Shuttle in FlightgearAfter and the, Flightgear now adds the third craft capable of reaching space – the Space Shuttle.Thanks to the fact that virtually all material NASA has on the Shuttle is in public domain, the simulated flight dynamics and the resulting capabilities of the Shuttle are based on a large body of NASA wind-tunnel and actual mission data and hence highly realistic. By Gilberto AgostinhoFlightGear’s default aircraft, the Cessna 172P, went through a major makeover. This post will show some of these improvements.The aircraft exterior is now much more detailed, with new higher resolution liveries (as well as several cockpit and interior themes).The cockpit is now fully textured and fully functional.
All switches, buttons and levers are operable (try pulling out some circuit breakers!). When using ALS, the new interior shadow effect is very immersive.There are six variants avilable now (default, two bush tire variants, amphibian, pontoon and skis) as well as two types of engine (160 HP and 180 HP).
Below, the amphibian variant at San Francisco bay.The cockpit has now a glass effect, making the windows reflective. The instruments can also be illuminated if the sunlight is getting weak.If the conditions are just right, the cockpit glass will get foggy or display some frost, as in the image below. To control that, use the air vent and air heat levers (as well as cracking the windows!).Pre-flight inspection has now been implemented. It’s possible now to add and remove tie-downs, wheel chocks and the pitot tube cover.
On top of that, one has to keep an eye for the oil level and possible fuel contamination. The plane has a tutorial explaining how all these new features work.The aircraft can now get damaged. Land too hard and the front wheel will collapse; dive and pull the yoke at once and the wings will break. The secrets of the environment settingsIf you look at aerial imagery of a region every day for a year, it never changes. Yet if you would fly over the same region in reality every day, it would almost never look the same twice. In reality, nature is a dynamically changing environment, and what you see from a cockpit reflects this.Some of these changes have to do with weather – on a cloudy day, the light is different from bright sun, the shadows are muted, the amount of haze may change so that faraway terrain looks fainter and these are readily captured by the weather simulation.Yet there are more subtle effects. For instance, snow may linger on the ground even on a sunny day with temperatures above freezing if the original layer was thick enough.
Snow may fall, but not remain on the ground if the ground is warm enough. In essence, whether you see snow or not depends not so much on how the weather is now, but how it has been the last days, weeks or even months.Such changes to the scenery in FG are taken care of by the environment settings which control how the terrain is shown. The ‘Atmospheric Light Scattering’ (ALS) rendering frameworkHave you ever admired the beautiful colors of a sunset? Have you maybe wondered why sometimes sunsets show a fantastic palette of glowing red and golden colors in the sky and sometimes a rather muted blue-grey? Have you observed distant hills fade into blue haze while the glittering reflection of the sun on water shifts color to a yellow-orange and asked yourself where the difference comes from? Have you wondered why there’s sometimes a halo visible around the moon?All these phenomena and more are related to light scattering in the atmosphere. Actually, most of what we see looking out of a cockpit from 36.000 ft is not scenery but light scattered somewhere on haze, clouds or air molecules.
To create a realistic impression of a scene during flight, we can’t think of haze being something simple that obscures the scene, instead we have to invest as much attention to rendering haze properly as to the more prominent scene elements. In Flightgear, that’s what the ALS framework is doing.A little bit of theoryTo first approximation, the normal lighting situation of a scene during daytime is that the sun is high in the sky and illuminates an object, from which reflected sunlight falls into the eye. There are thus two light rays – the illumination ray (I-ray) goes from the sun to the object and the observation ray (O-ray) from object to the eye.In vacuum, that’s all there is to it, and pictures from the surface of the Moon illustrate this – objects remain visible no matter how far away, and any surface which is not in direct light is pitch black.In an atmosphere, light scattering can affect both the I-ray and the O-ray, and there can be in-scattering and out-scattering.
In-scattering corresponds to light from somewhere else in the scene being scattered onto the object (or into the eye), out-scattering corresponds to light from the sun being scattered away from the object or light from the object being scattered away from the eye. I-ray in-scattering causes ambient (non-directional) light – shadows are no longer pitch black but receive still some kind of illumination. Under a thin overcast haze layer, there is for instance strong I-ray in-scattering – while there is lots of ligh.