Flightgear

From Kiwiarena

Contents 1 Links 1.1 Game Links 1.2 Flightgear Links 1.3 Other Links 1.3.1 Highly recommended Reading 1.3.2 Aeroclubs 1.3.3 Civil Aviation 2 About Flightgear 2.1 Introdution to flightgear 2.2 Project Overview 3 Flightgear Multiplayer Server 3.1 Introduction to FGMS 4 Kiwiarena and Flightgear 5 Flightgear Downloads 5.1 New Zealand Scenery 5.2 Australia Scenery 6 Contributions 6.1 Flightgear Official Wishlist 6.2 Flightgear Multiplayer Server Official Wishlist 6.3 And suggestions from Kiwiarena

Links

Game Links

• Flight Map
• Pilot Tracker

Flightgear Links

• Flightgear Flight Simulator
• Flightgear Flight Planner
• Flightgear Scenery Designer
• Flightgear Flight Launcher
• Taxi Draw
• Atlas
• Flightgear AI Aircraft Download Page
• Displaying city/airport names

Other Links

Highly recommended Reading

• Stoenworks Aviation Page

Aeroclubs

• Waikato Aero Club

Civil Aviation

• Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of New Zealand

About Flightgear

Introdution to flightgear

The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, for the development and pursuit of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user application. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing.

There are many exciting possibilities for an open, free flight sim. We hope that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas.

Project Overview

FlightGear is a free flight simulator project. It is being developed through the gracious contributions of source code and spare time by many talented people from around the globe. Among the many goals of this project are the quest to minimize short cuts and "do things right", the quest to learn and advance knowledge, and the quest to have better toys to play with.

The idea for Flight Gear was born out of a dissatisfaction with current commercial PC flight simulators. A big problem with these simulators is their proprietariness and lack of extensibility. There are so many people across the world with great ideas for enhancing the currently available simulators who have the ability to write code, and who have a desire to learn and contribute. Many people involved in education and research could use a spiffy flight simulator frame work on which to build their own projects; however, commercial simulators do not lend themselves to modification and enhancement. The Flight Gear project is striving to fill these gaps.

There are a wide range of people interested and participating in this project. This is truly a global effort with contributors from just about every continent. Interests range from building a realistic home simulator out old airplane parts, to university research and instructional use, to simply having a viable alternative to commercial PC simulators.

Flight Gear and its source code have intentionally been kept open, available, and free. In doing so, we are able to take advantage of the efforts of tremendously talented people from around the world. Contrast this with the traditional approach of commercial software vendors, who are limited by the collective ability of the people they can hire and pay. Our approach brings its own unique challenges and difficulties, but we are confident (and other similarly structured projects have demonstrated) that in the long run we can outclass the commercial "competition."

Contributing to Flight Gear can be educational and a lot of fun. A long time developer, Curtis Olson, had this to say about working on Flight Gear:

• Personally, Flight Gear has been a great learning experience for me. I have been exposed to many new ideas and have learned a tremendous amount of "good stuff" in the process of discussing and implementing various Flight Gear subsystems. If for no other reason, this alone makes it all worth while.

Flightgear Multiplayer Server

Introduction to FGMS

fgms is a standalone network server for the FlightGear flight simulator and licenced under the GPL. With fgms you can fly with other pilots scattered around the world. So you can assemble experiences in formation flight and/or build virtual airlines etc.

Kiwiarena and Flightgear

Kiwiarena was originally setup to host the server end of open source online games and to support the open source community. With this particular project, there is a lot of opportunity to contribute back to Flightgear.

Up until Flightgear Multiplayer Server was installed, the games hosted have been purely "combat" simulators, being Tremulous, World of Padman, Urban Terror, and Open Arena. Having a flight simulator provides an awesome alternative to games that end up involving in personal conflict and also provides an opportunity to gain a better understanding of aviation.

Flightgear Downloads

• Flightgear Download
• More Aircrafts
• More Scenery

New Zealand Scenery

• Upper North Island
• Central North Island and South Island
• Lower South Island

Australia Scenery

• Australia 1
• (More coming)

Contributions

Flightgear Official Wishlist

Here are a few assorted things that the FlightGear project needs (or wants.) This is just a starting point to get people thinking. If you have other good ideas to add to this list, please feel free to submit them.

• FlightGear supports the ability to create a variety of aircraft including flight dynamics, custom 3d (external) visual models, custom instrument panels, and custom sounds. We need more people creating their favorite aircraft in FlightGear.
• FlightGear can place custom objects anywhere in the scene and we now have a central database of custom objects and a library of standard objects along with their placement around the world. We need people to model their favorite land marks and submit them to the central database.
• We need a good landing light implementation.
• Our 3d volumetric clouds need better integration with our live weather system.
• Gas turbine engines. Right now effort has been concentrated on modeling piston engines. We need someone to put the same amount of effort in modeling gas turbine engines so we can begin to model the higher performance 'modern' jets.
• Other sims can play random radio chatter in the background. This would be an easy feature to add if someone would take the time to record a set of radio chatter snippets in wav format.

Flightgear Multiplayer Server Official Wishlist

The server is in fact, more or less, a simple packet multiplexer. Since flightgear uses UDP there is no such thing as a connection. The server simply receives packages from a client, looks up in an internal table if the client is already there, if not the client is inserted into this list. Then the received packet is sent to all other clients in the list. If there is no packet received from a client in a defined time period, the client gets removed from the list.

I'm currently developing a more decent network protocol for flightgear.

Things that may be added in future releases of fgms are:

• Clients that "only" listen, eg. a RADAR station
  • There is an ATC application, which we probably can use with flightgear, you can find the project here
  • If you want to volunteer and write such an application, feel free to contact me. It might be necessary to modify the server code slightly.
• Voice chat over IP. We would need a client like teamspeak, but with additional features. It must be configurable from the outside (eg. by flightgear).

And suggestions from Kiwiarena

Some of this is New Zealand Related, in fact, Hamilton related.

• Aircrafts that could be added
  • PAC 750XL
  • PAC CT/4E Airtrainer
  • PAC Cresco
  • Alpha 160A
• Integrate mumble in with FGMS rather than teamspeak
• Improve New Zealand Scenery