FlightGear Live README


FlightGear Live 0.1 Echo
LinuxTag 2007





What is FlightGear?

FlightGear 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. FlightGear runs on many different platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and IRIX.

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.

What is FlightGear Live?

FlightGear Live is a bootable live system on CD (or any bootable medium) that boots into Linux, with FlightGear setup, ready to run. Current version of FlightGear Live is created using the Morphix framework.

What are the requirements of FlightGear Live?

In theory FlightGear Live will boot and run on any Intel x86-based (including Intel Pentium and AMD) systems. However to have everything working properly and smoothly, it is recommended that you have at least 512Mb of RAM. FlightGear uses OpenGL for its 3D graphics, so you also need a display card that has 3D hardware acceleration support under Linux and X, such as NVIDIA, ATI, and Intel's graphics display cards.

What display cards are supported with FlightGear Live?

FlightGear should work well with any display card that has 3D hardware acceleration support under Linux and X. So far FlightGear Live has been tested mainly with NVIDIA and ATI display cards. Both NVIDIA and ATI proprietary display driver, as well as the ATI open source driver for Linux are included. Other common display such as the Intel integrated graphics chipset should also work.

When FlightGear Live starts up, it will try its best to setup and choose the right display driver for X with 3D hardware acceleration. If you wish to change the display driver, simply exit out of X and follow the instructions.

If an NVIDIA display card is detected, the NVIDIA proprietary driver will be used by default. If you have any trouble please make sure you tried all the versions of the driver included (For example, some older NVIDIA cards seem to work better with older drivers). And if this still does not solve the problem, please tell us about it. You can find out more about NVIDIA proprietary driver here.

If an ATI display card is detected, it will try to determine whether it should use the ATI proprietary driver, or the Open Source ATI Radeon driver. Please note that at the moment if you have a display card that is supported by both drivers, it will use the ATI proprietary driver. The ATI proprietary driver currently supports Radeon 8500 and later AGP or PCI Express cards, as well as FireGL 8700 and later products. You can find out more about ATI proprietary driver here. The Open Source ATI Radeon driver has 3D support for cards below the R300 series. To find out more, please read radeon(4x) man page, or click here.

If you have a display card that works with 3D hardware acceleration on your system, but does not work under FlightGear Live, please tell us about it.


What is in FlightGear Live?

The current base system of FlightGear Live is Debian Etch Testing (i.e. before Etch was released as stable). You can install anything on top of the live system using apt-get.

Here is a list of some of the goodies included with the this FlightGear Live LinuxTag 2007 edition:

How can I get more aircraft?

You can get more aircraft at the aircraft download page. With the current FlightGear Live, you can install new aircraft by extracting them to /opt/flightgear/data/Aircraft/


How can I get more sceneries?

You can get more sceneries at the scenery download page (currently version 0.9.10). With the current FlightGear Live, you can install new sceneries by extracting them to /opt/flightgear/sceneries/downloads/


What if FlightGear Live doesn't work?

FlightGear Live is still in its very early stage of development. If you have found problems in any aspects, including problems with FlightGear itself, please let us know, with as much details as possible. There are tools such as strace, gdb and valgrind included to help you to help us solving your problems.


How can I become root?

When X (the GUI) is up and running, you are user fglive. You can become root in a terminal by using sudo (for example, to get a root shell, run "sudo -s"). No password is required. At the text console (for example if you quit X, or if your X does not start properly) you are root already.


Known issues with FlightGear Live


More information


Contacts

For any FlightGear Live specific issues or feedbacks, please contact Pigeon directly via e-mail or on FlightGear's IRC.

For any FlightGear issues, you may:

If you are not sure whether it is a FlightGear Live issue or a FlightGear issue, please make it a FlightGear Live issue to start with ;)



FlightGear Live 0.1 Echo LinuxTag 2007 README
3rd June 2007
Pigeon <pigeon at pigeond dot net>