I am using latest version of FlightGear 0.9.8 and am having problems NOT with the display but mainly with the plane controls. 1. the program should start with a demonstration of the Cessna,going through all the flight procedures,starting engines,taxying etc.But the file that controls this demonstation, flight001.sav is missing. 2. After I get the planes engines running,it is not possible to increase the speed and take off. some of the American military planes do go down the runway at zero height and very slowly,and bury themselves in the ground! I have tried uninstalling ( the uninstalling program is not perfect,as you have to uninstall many files by hand,or you cannot reinstal)After uninstalling I reinstalled Flightgear,without any improvement.I carried out this procedure three times,even downloading program from different mirror,thinking the original downloading might have been corrupted. To no avail.On checking fgfs.exe I get the following message which might explain all the difficulties:=Base package check failed ... Found version [none] at: FlightGearPlease upgrade to version: 0.9.8...Hit a key to continueThe question is what to do? I will be grateful for any help.

> 1. the program should start with a demonstration of the>Cessna,going through all the flight procedures,starting>engines,taxying etc.But the file that controls this>demonstation, flight001.sav is missing.In Flightgear 0.9.8 you start on the runway of the KSFO airport.This is the default.There is no flihgt001.sav file.> 2. After I get the planes engines running,it is not possible>to increase the speed and take off.When the engine is running you can increase the speed with the Page Up key and decrease it with the Page Down key.> some of the American>military planes do go down the runway at zero height and very>slowly,and bury themselves in the ground!Which planes did you use?>On checking fgfs.exe I get the following message which might>explain all the difficulties:=No, it only says that it can't find the Flightgear root directory.You need to start flightgear with the root option or set the flightgear environment variable.fgfs --fg-root=path_to_your_flightgear_directoryRead here for more info:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...sg_id=883&page=

Thank you for your rapid response.The trouble is on starting the program it does not start with the default.The program goes first to choice of plane.secondly to choice of airfield and lastly to the wizard. In the documentation the following is written.What should happen automatically in going to the default program. Start-Date-Lat=2003.06.08:15.30.00 flight001.sav.From Document fschool_0.0.3.pdfThis is the file which saves and opens the default demonstation with Cessna172P. I do not see why it is neccessary to mess around with the program as stated in your reference.Surely a downloaded program should work.Though I can see that not all the planes are in their final stages

>Thank you for your rapid response.The trouble is on starting>the program it does not start with the default.The program>goes first to choice of plane.secondly to choice of airfield>and lastly to the wizard.> In the documentation the following is written.What should>happen automatically in going to the default program.> Start-Date-Lat=2003.06.08:15.30.00 flight001.sav.From>Document fschool_0.0.3.pdfIgnore the documentation here, it is partly outdated because Flightgear is a moving project, programmers have better things to do like working on the programm code and other volunteers who could update the documentation are missing.Just make sure that your airport is KSFO, then it should run.> I do not see why it is neccessary to mess around with>the program as stated in your reference.If you use fgrun.exe you don't need to set the fg-root pathbecause fgrun.exe does this automatically for you.It is only necessary when you start fgfs.exe directly.> Surely a downloaded program should work.> Though I can see that not all the planes>are in their final stagesFlightgear is a free project of voluneteers,everyone is welcome to make it better.So if you found an error in the documentation you canhelp the project and correct it.

> I do not see why it is neccessary to mess around with>the program as stated in your reference.Surely a downloaded>program should work.Though I can see that not all the planes>are in their final stagesApart from the fact that I wouldn't personally consider "properly setting up the environment" to make FlightGear start up happily as "messing" around with it, I agree in that it should not be necessary to actually do any such things, this certainly requires some rather steep learning curve for novice users who may not have any computer related background.At least, the majority of Windows users can certainly not be expected to have any significant familiarity dealing with a shell and passing startup parameters manually to an application using command line arguments.However, despite the inaccuracies of the current documentation, it would definitely help to REALLY check out the existing docs, there are plenty of docs that are pretty useful, make sure to check $FG_ROOT/docs and take a look into the README* files.Also, there's always the possibility to simply runfgfs --help --verboseto get help about FlightGear's parameters.Additionally, you haven't really provided much useful information concerning your platform/OS/Hardware so far. Without such information it's really hard to track down any potential problems.Usually, you won't have to deal with many of the command line options if you are using "fgrun" - a GUI launcher for FlightGear. However, if fgrun doesn't work properly, there is usually no other way than simply going to a shell and starting everything manually, so that problems can be really identified.And THEN, any familiarity with a shell environment is certainly going to be plus.And suggestions, feedback and opinions are probably best sent to the FlightGear (DEVEL) mailing list rather than trying to discuss this here, simply because the experience has shown that only few developers are really going to comment on such threads or even take a look at a web based forum.Also, offers to update current documentation would certainly be warmly received.