What is Reddit's opinion of
FlightGear?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
38 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
X-Plane is pretty much the current gold-standard for flight sims in the home and is also used commercially in multi-axis hydraulic professional flight sims. It is pretty incredible how much realism they simulate. And the feature set between the home and commercial versions is virtually identical. Home is pretty much only missing the stuff required to control spherical/cylindrical projection screens and software to interface with physical high end flight control systems.
Pretty nuts what you can get for $60 these days. And a nice bonus is the founder and CEO of the company that makes X-Plane is a major fighter of copyright trolls.
Edit: I was kindly corrected below by /u/punchlineismachismo ... should have said PATENT trolls.
Also, if anyone want's a FREE, surprisingly great, open source flight sim, check out http://www.flightgear.org/
Did you do any research before buying?
Edit: Sorry u/sogini13 but you got played hard. You should have come here to verify first.
Just so everyone understands, this is the second non-video link after a google search for "virtualpilot3D". Thanks for the heads up OP but I don't think most people here needed it ;) Fuck these assholes, go support the actual FlightGear.
I agree with gheesh - Cheese would definetly keep bypassers entertained. That's a good suggestion. If you have a powerful computer with good graphics hardware, FlightGear might also be a cool display.
Flight simulator:
Flightgear - it's like Microsoft Flight Sim but free.
Driving simulators (separate from the likes of NFS and other console racers):
Assetto Corsa - More of a game than most hardcore driving sims, with a career mode to work through. Really good drifting physics
Richard Burns Rally w/ RSRBR mod (video) - This was released in 2004 but for me and many others is still the best rally (or loose surface) simulation game out there. A fair bit of the game has been reverse-engineered to be moddable and a yearly release of a new modded version of the game put out by RSRBR, there are tons of replacement cars and tracks. The graphics are surprisingly OK considering the age (but the engine sounds aren't great). It took until this year and the new Dirt Rally for something to even come close, but that is still a way off in terms of realism.
Have you tried Flight Gear? It is open source and has a lot of planes.
I'm not in to flight sims but I got a buddy that loves it. I'm sure its missing some bells and whistles though.
It still seems odd that Microsoft discontinued Flight Simulator. I'd like to think they'll go back to making nice cross-platform apps as was their specialty in the 1970s and 1980s, but for all of the Visual Studio Codes and SQL Servers for Linux, they still have legacy Windows and XBox environments to service.
An open-source flight simulator that seems similar to X-Plane is FlightGear.
FG has had these rendering improvements for a while according to the website.
It's a case of people not knowing where to turn on settings (for instance cloud shadows need to be turned on in the detailed weather advanced settings, and detailed weather doesn't turn on until apply is selected, things like random vegetation need to be tu), or not having recent systems. The other reason is that since scenery is volunteer developed, it differs by area and is not consistent everywhere (models, textures and full use of FG's procedural systems differs) - Europe is generally good.
Found it by right click in chrome > Search google for this image and I got this: http://www.flightgear.org/news/flightgear-v3-0-released/ -- this was like 2 years ago!
Well now, I'm making one of your animal liveries right now!
Release 2016.1.2 (bugfixes) has arrived on May 7th; 2016.2.1 has already been prepared. We just need to publish a release announcement.
Please see http://www.flightgear.org/news/a-preview-of-features-for-the-barcelona-release/ and http://wiki.flightgear.org/Changelog_2016.2 for more about the upcoming 2016.2.
I have the development ('nightly') version 2016.3.0, and I really like it! It's development; it can get buggy, but I like it :)
I don't know much about FlightGear's graphics needs, but pretty much anything over $500 should work. (As a comparison, the extreme X-15 flight here needed 3GB GPU memory and 8GB RAM.)
Proflight Simulator is just a ripoff re-boxing of an old version of the Free/Open Source flight simulator Flightgear.
If you want to play it, just go to www.flightgear.org and download it there for free, don't waste your money on PFS.
The official statement on "Proflight simulator"/"Flight pro simulator"/ all these reboxings of FGFS. http://www.flightgear.org/flightprosim.html
Also, downvoted, because it read more like an advertisement than a review.
Head over to Elon Musk's AMA in couple of weeks and make a request?
Edit: We don't want to him to buy KSP because its more money for SQUAD...rather hire the devs that left and create a ~~free?~~ open source version of KSP(Hint: Rocketgear like flightgear.org)
I have to confess that I don't know the answer. I mostly fly around virtually with a free cross-platform sim called "FlightGear". I'm seriously into free and open source software and I write quite a lot myself.
I may be too old for the current generation of games. :)
Yeah, and from my understanding it would even be legal according to the open-source license. The worse thing IMO is when someone takes a free open-source app then goes and sells it under a different name (this has happened! For example with this open-source flight sim), which while shitty - is again actually legal according to open-source license as long as the source code is still availible.
That's the idea behind open-source, sharing of ideas for mutual benefit, but of course some people are bound to abuse its legalities.
NOTE: All this is just from what I know, and I might be wrong on some of this. Actually there are many different types of open-source licenses and not all are this permisive. Though I believe this is the case with the GNU GPL, which is the most widely used open source license. I actually even admit to never actually completely reading the GNU GPL or any other software license longer than 5 lines for that matter...
I think it's to do with them being so high
http://www.flightgear.org/download/main-program/ is where i downloaded it from. when i extract the downloded scenery to :c/programfiles/flightgear/data/scenery it changes the .exe path for some reason. has done it 4-5 times.
Most USB based controllers should be supported by all of the various flight simulator packages.. you can get USB yokes, pedals, throttle quadrants, etc.. or for IFR training purposes, a multi-axis joystick with integrated throttle would likely be sufficient.
I also recommend you look into Flight Gear -- http://www.flightgear.org/ Available for Linux, OSX, Windows, Solaris, etc.. It's open source, highly extensible.. and free.
OK I think I interpret what you are saying as in this example page, network filter h only block images as selector after being entered because that is the only string that contains the letter h in the whole page. i.e. Network filter created through element picker only matches with image at src="http://www.flightgear.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/button_download-now-and-fly-free.png" because it contains the letter h in the src but there are no other positive matches elsewhere.
Hypothetically if there was also a remote script that wasn't being blocked by existing filters that the page loaded as well as that image. Would the filter created in My Filters be less specific and not only block images but also scripts?
e.g. on page with an image and script matching h the filter created in My Filters would be wider in scope to block both images and scripts containing the letter h?
When I click the "Download Now and Fly Free" button with the element picker, the box populates with
http*://www.flightgear.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/button_download-now-and-fly-free.png
I don't get the h only option.
What browser, browser version, and Ublock Origin version are you running? Maybe update everything and try again.
> Consider waiting a week for proper reviews before deciding between FSW and XP11
Or if you really need to be flying right now, a copy of Flightgear (free) should scratch that itch long enough for the dust to settle with respect to FSW vs XP11. Great aircraft are a bit few and far between but should be enough for a quick fix.
If you mean aerial perspective that occurs in real life, with colours depending on the atmospheric conditions and sun position including dust and smog. Having no haze at all distances like on the moon can't happen with an atmosphere. For how it works in a system that's generations ahead of P3D- see here 6 pages, and here.
What is wrong is if there's just one setting for every time of day / year/latitude, and METAR/weather/atmosthere setting. Just like you'd expect in real life, there is infinite possibility.
FlightGear actually has a pretty decent damage model on some planes. I mean, you can't rip a wing off, but you can certainly bend your landing gear and break the prop.
Accusim (MSFS) and REP (XP) planes model engine failures and stresses realistically, but I don't think they visually represent that beyond a smoking engine. IIRC, X-Plane simulates overstressed control surfaces by not rendering and not simulating them if they break.
Flightgear. May not be the best, but has a rather decent featureset for the price. (It's free.) Other than user-made content, it has some scripting that allows hacking of custom controllers or just customizing inputs of existing ones.
On flightgear.org, T Renk posts 'tours' every so often; they generally have beautiful screenshots. Point in case -- particularly nice screenshots
> as close to the real thing as I can get
It's one thing to convert the art (models , textures) but:
The FDM written for the JSBsim controls how the plane actually behaves. Flighgear's JSBSim engine is extremely good - it has been tested by NASA. It's very likely that the plane is going to fly far better in FG than a port.
Aircraft systems are written for the FG engine, not XP.
FG visuals under the ALS framework have things like advanced scattering with frost, rain on windshields etc. (see here. Other flightsims won't have that accuracy.
FG has a simulated weather system that reacts to terrain and they type of land (urban, crops, forest, rocks), and localised effects like thermals under clouds etc. That won't get transferred. Similarly the atmosphere has a lot of scientifically accurate haze and visibility conditions, and there's (see here and here)
You're probably better off using it in FG to recreate a wide range of scenarios that are close to reality.
I'm not sure if the GPL license allows a non-GPL licensed sim to use even parts of aircraft. You'll have to ask one of the FG devs in their forum.
> Some of the screenies on the site are looking really quite nice!
The homepage is very outdated, is it not? It's a community project so no paid media department..
Scenery also depends on where people have improved it, using flight gear's technology. I think turning up everything on rendering menu (select ALS rendering), switching on detailed weather (need to clicking apply each time to start) is pretty mandatory for people with newer computer systems (try the scenery around alps at LOWI). See this release announcement from the previous release.
The tours pages have really interesting showcases worth reading and the recent ones have newer screenshots.
I'm brand new to blender, but if you're interested in an outlet for your work where it will be greatly appreciated, check out http://www.flightgear.org
Flightgear is an open source flight simulator, and blender is used by many to make models for it. If you check out their wiki, there is a lot of information on modeling for flightgear aircraft. You can have a panel with working instruments on it. The system is highly modular, so you can simply "drop in" instruments, and they work.
Another thing you can do is download an aircraft model, and get an example of a working panel to learn from. Only hangup you'll run into (beside the complexity) is that flightgear models use .ac format files, which Blender doesn't seem to import, so you'll have to convert them, which is pretty simple. Import into AC3D, and export as an .obj file.
If you wish to find something that is very accurate in it's flight dynamics (note no weapons though) you can play around with Flightgear. It's a free simulator with a bunch of real world aircraft. It does have multiplayer capability and uses real world airports.
Link for the interested: http://www.flightgear.org/
Have you considered starting with something like FlightGear? Much of the heavy lifting has already been done, but they could use a lot of polishing.
You would need to spend some time figuring out how to make money off of an open source project, but it has been done many times before.
Sorry, it's just difficult to tell what you've already tried. Have you tried to reinstall directx (does DCS use directinput?)? In another post you said you have no other games to check with. There is the freeware Flightgear.
There used to be one in Seattle at the museum of flight. I have no idea if it's still there, but yup, I touched the leading edges of the wings, and they aren't exactly "knife-sharp", they are very different from a more conventional aircraft's leading edge of a wing.
The other thing about it that was very apparent was how smooth the skin was overall. Even on a modern fighter, you can see little ripples, high spots and low, on the skin. Not on the SR-71.
Also, if the model in flightgear is at all accurate, they're a real handful to fly. IIRC, there are two separate models of this plane available for flightgear, I don't recall... and models do vary in accuracy, so...
Handbrake and MDRP generally work for me, so I was a bit surprised by the GoT disks. I couldn't be arsed to learn another piece of software for this, as I'm already quite familiar with my existing tools and Transmission.
I'm also very wary of DVD ripping software. There seems to be a cottage industry of dodgy downloads . For example: http://www.dvddecryptermac.com
The site design looks like one of those shysters who take an open source product and sell it without adding any value to it. Kind of similar to what we see happening to FlightGear As well as looking cheap, they have the usual collection of awards and stuff to try to convince me this is a legit site. Because of this I generally stick with stuff I've researched.
I'd like it if HBO were a little more eager to take my money and give me a means of playing the content. We're reaching the same point music did, and they are acting as if the MP3 and iPod revolution should never have happened, and we should still be wandering around with Sony Discmans.
I used FlightGear when I was practicing for my Instrument rating. I liked it because I could easily edit the plane I was flying in FlightGear to exactly match the instrument panel in the actual real plane I was using in my real-life flight training. The FlightGear flight simulation engine is realistic enough that it been used in FAA-approved flight simulators. The source code is open source, and FlightGear is free software.
You can try things like this from your own house, you can get a flight simulator. FlightGear is a great free, open source simulator, its looking better and better with each version release, too.
FlightGear - the anorak's version of Microsoft Fight Simulator. Pick a plane, read the tutorials, learn how it works and feel a sense of accomplishment. Plus, you get to really appreciate how involved an airline pilot's job truly is. Cessna Citation X is a good starting point.
I play flightgear, which isn't really a game, but it sure kicks ass to take off with a virtual plane when you don't know how to drive! It's much more thrilling than any Microsoft "simulation" game, IMHO, and it's GPL-licensed ! :)
There are communities here that discuss those sorts of things all the time:
/r/Arduino /r/ECE /r/robotics
should get you started. In addition to Xplane there's also Flightgear and the Flightgear dev forum archives and current mailing list to sign up for. There are hobby / serious groups in both the Xplane and Flightgear camps doing remote integration work.
X Plane is the one most people recommend. It works on most operating systems (including Windows, Mac, and Linux) and doesn't have the performance issues that Microsoft's does.
FlightGear is a nice, simple, free one that also works on most operating systems.