Open Source Simulator FlightGear Releases v2.4 70
mikejuk writes "The latest version of FlightGear, 2.4, has just been released — and it has some significant improvements. Now it simulates weather so that you can ride the up draft from a range of hills and seek out thermals — but watch out for the simulated fog! For the future the implementation of an HLA interface means that you can build clusters of interacting simulators and perhaps even work with commercial flight simulators." The FlightGear website has gotten a long-deserved upgrade, too.
Graphics artifacts (Score:2)
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There are a handful of different HUD modes, the one the harrier is using has been bouncing around like that for a few years now
Surely that is an easy fix? I tend to wonder about software where the easy things are overlooked, as then I start to question about how well they handle the harder stuff
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Actually, you just need to watch that each person contributing is making clean tidy contributions. With open source or any software, there is no reason not to put the contribution point right in the middle of the factory floor for maximum visibility. Doesn't translate for you analogy.
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Re:Graphics artifacts (Score:5, Insightful)
While there isn't a lot of research on the topic, what there is seems to indicate that open source software and "commercial" (i.e. not open source) software have similar defect densities. Here's a paper on the topic:
http://www.reasoning.com/pdf/MySQL_White_Paper.pdf [reasoning.com]
I've worked on both "commercial" projects and opens source projects. My personal experience has been that willingness to fix bugs is much higher on the open source teams. Usually the authors actually use the product in their everyday life and bugs affect them personally. They are highly motivated to fix them. On "commercial" software projects, my experience is that the authors of the software rarely use it in their every day life. Selection of bugs to fix usually comes from a project manager.
Both open source and "commercial" projects usually have large backlogs of bugs that never get fixed. The difference is that open source projects usually fix bugs that directly affect the authors, while "commercial" projects fix bugs that directly affect customers who have bought enough units to gain the right to complain (i.e. thousands of copies). However, with an open source project, if the authors decide not to fix a bug you usually have a number of options. You can complain on the developer's mailing list and plead your case. If that doesn't work, you can fix the bug yourself, or hire someone else to do it. With "commercial" software once you file your bug you usually don't even know if they will decide to fix it. You usually don't even know if it was fixed in the next version without buying it and trying it for yourself. If the program manager decides not to fix your bug, you have no recourse at all unless you have already bought thousands of copies of the software and can threaten not to upgrade to the next version unless they fix your bug. Even then they might decide not to.
"Well that's the thing with volunteer made software isn't it?" is what you wrote. Yes. That's the thing with volunteer made software. You have direct access to the developers to report your bug. You get informed whether your bug when your bug is being looked at. You can make a case for having your bug fixed. And if that doesn't work, you can fix it yourself. What is there that needs fixing again?
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What you've missed is that the developers of proprietary software move on too (sometime the individuals, sometimes the whole company). Generally the customer does not pay the developers. The developers company pays the developers, and they will only pay them to fix your bug if there is nothing of higher value to the company for them to do. Yes, if it is product which makes the company money, and a lot of customers experience the bug, and it is serious, then it will probably get fixed. Otherwise maybe not. T
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There is again a BIG difference you seem to be missing,either you simply don't see it or are trolling, can't be sure. you see if a proprietary software house ignores the users? Well then they lose money and sometimes a LOT of money, and that tends to put the fire under one's ass!
That is pretty much the "product which makes the company money, and a lot of customers experience the bug, and it is serious" case I mentioned. So yes, I do see.
The developer has moved on and nobody wants to fix the shitter so after FOUR versions it STILL hasn't been fixed!
Actually I do agree that is probably the case and I never said I didn't. What I don't agree with is your claim that this one anecdote somehow proves the general case and your dismissal of the one study cited as being less relevant than your opinions on human nature.
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I tend to wonder why they're introducing massive new features like weather when they haven't even solved basic bugs like the HUD rendering issues.
Because people who want a realistic flight simulator probably care more about weather simulation than HUD bugs?
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...Come on, give me a good military flightsim like F19 that will run on my netbook, I know you can do it!
F19 Stealth Fighter? It was a good game, but not so good as a flight simulator. Ugly, and with not very realistic physics. And at the time, bombing Libya seemed unlikely and cruel. Sigh.
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Flightgear is an awesome piece of work being an all-volunteer project and I enjoy taking it for a spin every now and then. But my biggest gripe about modern PC flightsims is this: 3D cockpits.
I can understand completely why some people want them. They look pretty and (if done well) give you an idea of what it's like to actually sit in a plane. But for the most part, I've always found them to be a hinderance to interacting with the simulated aircraft. In most real planes, there are instrument panels situated
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Agreed - I love flight sims and hate 3D cockpits. I also hate 2D cockpits that don't have some view that at least gives me a reasonable amount of outside view. Yes, I know a real instrument panel takes up more space than a 19" monitor, but I don't want to have to set up a 14-monitor system to use the thing. Sometimes realism alone isn't the goal - you need to work out the aspects of realism that fit the genre. I wouldn't want a 747 simulator that required 100k pounds of jet fuel to operate either.
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watch out for the simulated fog (Score:2)
watch out for the simulated fog
Wouldn't that just be "fog"...'cause the whole thing's a simulation...
Gets better and better (Score:2)
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Is the scenery and texturing used open source? If so, just fix it yourself :)
Mars maps please (Score:3)
Can I fly across Mars now? It'd be cool if they could integrate the NASA(?) maps...
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I think $60 for X-Plane isn't bad, and it comes with Mars maps and special planes for Mars. I'm all about OSS, but X-Plane was one package I bought and am glad I did.
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...what?
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Microsoft doesn't even make Flight Simulator anymore.
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Are graphics of a real-life activity somehow not at all important for a computer simulation to fully, you know, simulate that activity?
You can have the most amazing physics and weather simulation capabilities around, but if the cars in a racing simulation sound like they're being generated by the PC speaker and the graphics look like Pole Position or something, I think that would be pretty damn pathetic now in 2011. IMO, while graphics are not absolutely critical in a simulation, better graphics can only i
Graphics weren't its weak point (Score:2)
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Yeah, I remember playing it way back (around the turn of the millennium), and it required use of a middle mouse button for some common function. Of course, this was back in the day well before optical or scroll mice were, well, existent, so using it with a 2 button mouse involved hitting both buttons at the same time (and hitting only one button accidentally of course did something you didn't want to do). And it was a common function (maybe accelerating?), too. Terrible interface design.
I don't even rememb
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3 button mice existed long before mice with scroll wheels were common. Unix systems nearly always had 3 button mice, and PC Unix/Linux users usually managed to get their hands on such mice too. (E.g. Logitech made the mice for SGI and for later Sun boxes, and made PS/2 versions). Flightgear of course started out as a Unix/Linux flight sim.
What you're complaining about isn't bad UI design per se, but that you were using a windows port of software designed for Unix user hardware.
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No, I was using a Linux native non-port on PC hardware. Which is, generally at least in my experience, what a lot of people have. And when making what is essentially a game, you should aim at what most people have. Yeah, I have an 8-button mouse now, but in 2000 most Linux users (probably) didn't.
Which is one reason Flightgear has never really made a major impact. Or, for that matter, Linux gaming in general.
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Which is one reason Flightgear has never really made a major impact. Or, for that matter, Linux gaming in general.
What, because you were the last person in the world too stingy to go out and buy a mouse with a middle button, and couldn't figure out how to enable ChordMiddle?
Lame link is lame (Score:2)
OK, I presume the slashdot editor that posted this ADDED the link to the actual website - for which we're grateful - but why even bother to include the original submitter's link to (presumably his own) blog?
Comparisons? (Score:3)
How does it stack up against X-Plane or MS Flight Sim?
Does it support things like the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke, Pedals and switch panels?
The "features" page doesn't really cover stuff like that.
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How does it stack up against X-Plane or MS Flight Sim?
Earlier versions of FlightGear (I haven't used 2.4.x yet) aren't as good as X-Plane or MS Flight Simulator when it comes to graphics or ease of use on a PC. The overall experience has tended to be more polished with X-Plane or FS. I don't know about non-PC (e.g. actual flight simulator hardware), and, again, I don't know about FlightGear 2.4. The other thing is that X-Plane and FS have the better graphics if you can get them to work at all - X-Plane, for example, only gives me white rectangles instead of te
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PC Based Flight Simulators just dont cut it (Score:2)
I have tried them all and except for IFR (and that is not even that good, but passable, barely ) practice they do a poor job.
And yes, I am a pilot.
I have yet to use one that accurately reflects the maneuvering and performance of a real airplane, not even a Cessna 152 much less a hi performance prop plane like a Mooney or a Bonanza.
I think the basic problem is they but way to much work into "pretty" and not enough work into actual flight dynamics. I will admit that it is hard work to accurately capture th
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The problem with most simulators, including a lot of the engines in X-Plane, is that they are essentially table-driven simulations. They don't compute forces, aerodynamics, and so forth on the fly. The models only fly as realistically as the aircraft designers tune their tables.
Now this is obviously getting off-topic, but I'm very interested in hearing the specifics of your experience with X-Plane. Austin Meyer claims that the X-Plane flight model can be used to simulate certain aircraft very accurately.
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I also neglected to add that I find simulators hard to fly because there are no frames of reference. You basically have tunnel vision and only one eye, so it's really hard to look out a window and orient yourself as you might do on a real airplane in VFR. As well, simulators maybe cause on to focus too much on instruments. I've only gone flying once and that was in a small canadian ultralight (US sport class equivalent) and I found that flying in real life was somewhat easier than on the simulator as I h
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There exist partial solution for that problem, such as TrackIR, which tracks your head movement and thus allows you to look around in the cockpit without awkward keyboard shortcuts. Also most advanced flightsims support multiple monitors, so throwing a bit of money at the problem can help as well.
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Essentially what X-Plane does could be considered an extremely crude, low-density real-time CFD (computational fluid dynamics.) The problem is that even extremely well done CFD's that run offline on super computer clusters can't compute all the effects and aerodynamic interactions of an airframe. X-Plane is pretty good for what it does, and it's been tweaked and refined over the years to account for a lot of different effects ... but at the end of the day, "blade element theory" is a fancy word for "reall
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That's certainly true. However even some of the basic things aren't well modelled. On some planes for instance, you use the fuel pump to build pressure for starting the engine, and turn it back off after pressure is built. But on every flight sim I've tried, the pressure is never maintained (totally inaccurate). In fact, there is plenty of dodginess with the starting procedures in every flight sim I've tried.
Even worse, the air traffic controllers in the sims don't give a damn what you do in the flight sim
Fun flying games? (Score:2)
A bit off topic, but something that may have broad interest... I'm not at all a hard-core gamer, but gleefully recall being a little kid playing F/A-18 Interceptor and messing around: learning to land on the carrier, and going off-mission to shoot at buildings and do tricks like fly under and around the Golden Gate bridge.
I would love an Oblivion-style open world game where you fly various modern planes and fighter jets and can go off the primary mission to tackle side quests or just mess around. Even bette
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Pilotwings goes into that direction, only problem is that the last version for home consoles was on th N64. There also has been a recent one on the 3DS.
OpenStreetMap tie-in? (Score:1)