Preface

FlightGear is a free Flight Simulator developed cooperatively over the Internet by a group of flight simulation and programming enthusiasts. "The FlightGear Manual" is meant to give beginners a guide in getting FlightGear up and running, and themselves into the air. It is not intended to provide complete documentation of all the features and add-ons of FlightGear but, instead, aims to give a new user the best start to exploring what FlightGear has to offer.

This version of the document was written for FlightGear version 1.0. Users of earlier versions of FlightGear will still find this document useful, but some of the features described may not be present.

This guide is split into three parts and is structured as follows.

Part I: Installation

Chapter 1, Want to have a free flight? Take FlightGear, introduces FlightGear, provides background on the philosophy behind it and describes the system requirements.

In Chapter 2, Preflight: Installing FlightGear, you will find instructions for installing the binaries and additional scenery and aircraft.

Part II: Flying with FlightGear

The following Chapter 3, Takeoff: How to start the program, describes how to actually start the installed program. It includes an overview on the numerous command line options as well as configuration files.

Chapter 4, In-flight: All about instruments, keystrokes and menus, describes how to operate the program, i. eḣow to actually fly with FlightGear. This includes a (hopefully) complete list of pre-defined keyboard commands, an overview on the menu entries, detailed descriptions on the instrument panel and HUD (head up display), as well as hints on using the mouse functions.

Chapter 5, Features describes some of the special features that FlightGear offers to the advanced user.

Part III: Tutorials

Chapter 6, Tutorials, provides information on the many tutorials available for new pilots.

Chapter 7, A Basic Flight Simulator Tutorial, provides a tutorial on the basics of flying, illustrated with many examples on how things actually look in FlightGear.

Chapter 8, A Cross Country Flight Tutorial, describes a simple cross-country flight in the San Fransisco area that can be run with the default installation.

Chapter 9, An IFR Cross Country Flight Tutorial, describes a similar cross-country flight making use of the instruments to successfully fly in the clouds under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR).

Appendices

In Appendix A, Missed approach: If anything refuses to work, we try to help you work through some common problems faced when using FlightGear.

In the final Appendix B, Landing: Some further thoughts before leaving the plane, we would like to give credit to those who deserve it, sketch an overview on the development of FlightGearand point out what remains to be done.

Accordingly, we suggest reading the Chapters as follows:

While this introductory guide is meant to be self contained, we strongly suggest having a look into further documentation, especially in case of trouble:

• For additional hints on troubleshooting and more, please read the FAQ

  http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/FlightGear-FAQ.html,

  The FAQ contains a host of valuable information, especially on rapidly changing flaws and additional reading, thus we strongly suggest consulting it in conjunction with our guide.

• A handy leaflet on operation for printout is available at

  http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/InstallGuide/FGShortRef.html,

• Additional user documentation on special aspects is available within the base package under the directory /FlightGear/Docs.
• There is an official FlightGear wiki available at http://wiki.flightgear.org,

Finally:

We know most people hate reading manuals. If you are sure the graphics driver for your card supports OpenGL (check documentation; for instance all NVIDIA Windows and Linux drivers for TNT/TNT2/Geforce/Geforce2/Geforce3 do) and if you are using one of the following operating systems:

• Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP,
• Macintosh Mac OSX
• Linux
• SGI Irix

you can possibly skip at least Part I of this manual and exploit the pre-compiled binaries. These as well as instructions on how to set them up, can be found at

http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/.

In case you are running FlightGear on Linux, you may also be able to get binaries bundled with your distribution. Several vendors already include FlightGear binaries into their distributions.

Just download them, install them according to the description and run them via the installed FlightGear icon (on Windows), or textttfgfs having set the environmental variables described in Chapter 3 (on Linux).

There is no guarantee for this approach to work, though. If it doesn’t, don’t give up! Have a closer look through this guide notably Section 2 and be sure to check out the FAQ.