My apologies if this has been posted before. I just installed FG 0.9.9 Windows on my system and when I start Flight Gear and it starts the scene, the camera spins around continuously. Is this normal? Jeesh, I hope not, cause I'm getting air-sickness just trying to figure out what's going wrong. I'm running XP Pro with an nVidia 256 mb graphics card and 1 gb ram.I gave the docs a quick look and tried to search this forum, but I didn't find any clues.How do I fix this?I also have a Saitek ST290 Pro joystick, anyone use this with FG?FG seems pretty cool, I just hope I can stop it from "spinning"....Thanks!

>My apologies if this has been posted before. I just>installed FG 0.9.9 Windows on my system and when I start>Flight Gear and it starts the scene, the camera spins around>continuously. Is this normal? Jeesh, I hope not, cause I'm>getting air-sickness just trying to figure out what's going>wrong. I'm running XP Pro with an nVidia 256 mb graphics card>and 1 gb ram.>>I gave the docs a quick look and tried to search this forum,>but I didn't find any clues.>>How do I fix this?>>I also have a Saitek ST290 Pro joystick, anyone use this with>FG?>>FG seems pretty cool, I just hope I can stop it from>"spinning"....>>Thanks!http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/flight_gear/h...cfm?wpid=247004(see the last paragraph)My assumption is: your joystick is probably not correctly configured for FlightGear, so that one of its axes or buttons provides input where it shouldn't, resulting in data being provided to FlightGear that is interpreted as "change view". How exactly did you set up your joystick? Did you create/modify any XML files, did you run fgjs?However, in order to verify whether this is truly related to your input hardware, please try disconnecting all fancy hardware and see if the problem still persists or disappears, if it should persist please make sure to provide as much information as possible about your setup (as suggested on the wiki page), if it disappears after disconnecting your hardware, you should first check that your joystick is in general properly calibrated (i.e. using the windows control panel or an arbitrary other simulator), afterwards you should ensure that the corresponding joystick is properly set up in FlightGear itself, you can do this by checking the joystick's XML configuration file, in particular you will want to look for any weird assignments.

Ahhh... disconnected the joystick and the problem went away! Ok, now I know what the problem is, I'll do my homework and try to fix it. Thanks!BTW, I'm creating a ship-simulation application at present (I'm a ship's officer / navigation instructor). Has anyone tried to interface or adapt FG for ship's simulation? As in a Naval Air simulation? I saw in the FG website that the Nimitz is somewhere in there, it would be cool if you could integrate a naval task group with an air wing... cool...Thanks for your help,Paul

>Ahhh... disconnected the joystick and the problem went away!> Ok, now I know what the problem is, I'll do my homework and>try to fix it. Thanks!feel free to ask any questions you may have, if you cannot fix the problem yourself, simply post the corresponding XML file here.>BTW, I'm creating a ship-simulation application at present (I'm a ship's officer / navigation instructor). > Has anyone tried to interface or adapt FG for ship's simulation?I am not sure what you mean by that, FlightGear in itself is a flight simulator, so the emphasis is understandbly not really on marine simulation. However, depending on what you actually envision, there are a lot of things you can already do in FlightGear, the nimitz scenario you mentioned is one of them. Likewise, you can create AI traffic using ships or other vehicles (basically, all sorts of 3D models) and have them move around the scenery. If you are however hoping to use FlightGear as the basis for a completely new (ship) simulation, I am afraid nobody has so far attempted something like this. I would also imagine that such a project would be quite an effort. On the other hand, there is SimGear: http://www.simgear.org which is basically former FlightGear code that has been factored out and sufficiently abstracted to be generally useful for all sorts of simulators. So, if you are really about to come up with a completely new type of simulator, you will probably want to mainly concentrate on using the SimGear code. Some FlightGear code however could probably be literally re-used for your specific project.On the other hand if you are mainly looking into interfacing your simulation with FlightGear, then this should be significantly easier-because you would probably only have to define a corresponding protocol, to make your simulator's vehicles show up in FlightGear.In general however, any development related issues are probably best discussed on the FlightGear developer's mailing list: http://www.flightgear.org/mail.htmlThat's where all developers hang around, so that's also where you will probably get the most competent feedback concerning any plans you may have with the SimGear/FlightGear code base.Apart from that, I seem to recall that a similar thing was previously discussed some time ago, either here or on the mailing lists-not sure about that, though. Maybe you can find something using the search?>As in a Naval Air simulation? >I saw in the FG website that the Nimitz>is somewhere in there, it would be cool if you could integrate>a naval task group with an air wing... cool...yes,it sounds kind of cool.On the other hand you need to realize that such projects are immense undertakings, that cannot be easily pursued without significant efforts. If you look at FlightGear, you are literally looking at the product of several years of development. So, while a completely different simulation project could probably re-use a fair share of code, and thus save time-there will still be many places that will be completely different from flight simulation, and thus you will probably be faced with areas, where there is hardly any re-usable code in SimGear/FlightGear.On the other hand, if you should truly intend to develop something like this, I am sure the FlightGear developers would indeed appreciate some sort of cooperation when it comes to combining the efforts where sensible. FlightGear itself could for example certainly benefit from a more realistic water simulation, so that water airplanes etc. could be properly simulated. So, possibly this would be one area where both parties might eventually benefit from each other.

Thanks for your reply and the link to SimGear.>...However, depending on what you actually envision, there are a lot of things you can already do in FlightGear, the nimitz scenario you mentioned is one of them. Likewise, you can create AI traffic using ships or other vehicles (basically, all sorts of 3D models) and have them move around the scenery...

Hi naval officer,as I am living in Bremen/Germany and the big containerport of Bremerhaven is a part of my city I am walking at the North Sea at the weekends quite often. And have a look at all these ships passing by. And dreamed about a combination of ships (steered by man) and aircrafts in Flightgear. And might be even vehicles on the ground.This could lead to a simulator as the military forces have actually where you connect all forces by network and the helicopter-pilot sees his destroyer with landing deck and the destroyer crew sees the helicopter and ... Only all on a lower level as we only can afford a PC and a monitor :-)>I've decided that at this point realistic physics simulation is not as >important as basic instrumentation (compass, knotmeter, radar, GPS and >chart plotter). I just wondered if, through perhaps a custom aircraft, >custom instrument panel and NASAL, a type of "waterborne" craft might >be created.This is why I thought about if it is possible to create "manned" ships within FlightGear in a *simple* way without moving water and moving decks up and down (what would be a superior feature for helicopter deck landings!!!). And though all what hfitz explained is 100% right it is also possible after my opinion to create an "aircraft" looking like a ship in the 3D world without flying capabilities, adequate max speeds (might be even backwards with some nasal code) and all naval instruments for navigation, engine control, etc.FlightGear has still a hardened water surface and it should be possible that this "ship" has hidden gears and rolls over the "sea".You work with Blender and Python, I think you would learn Nasal coding very quickly.Ok, I am *not* a developer of the inner circle of FlightGear and still learning every day with the help of other people but I could not and write this here. If realistic physics simulation is not the problem *now* why not start creating a 3D model of a ship and getting help from the developers mailing list for creating the instruments and adapting the technical stuff - after introducing yourself and what you are planning to do in a first mail :-)And might be in the future you get some co-developers, people who are primary interested in ships and navigation if you make some PR and have already the first ship modelled as a sample!All the best to you, very interesting project!RegardsGeorg EDDW

Thank you Georg for your reply.>And though all what hfitz explained is 100% right it is also>possible after my opinion to create an "aircraft" looking like>a ship in the 3D world without flying capabilities, adequate>max speeds (might be even backwards with some nasal code) and>all naval instruments for navigation, engine control, etc.>FlightGear has still a hardened water surface and it should be>possible that this "ship" has hidden gears and rolls over the>"sea".I haven't begun to study what FlightGear can do, but if this is possible, then I will be interested in learning more.I think the best thing I can do first is to learn as much as I can about FlightGear. Is this the best forum to post questions or are the mailing lists better?Thanks!Paul

Hi Paul,you'll get in contact with the real developers when posting to the developers mailing list. There is also a user mailing list.I am reading and mailing to both.If you are willing to get into the stuff, it is a must to read them.This forum is more for the first steps with FG and thanks to hfitz and some developers who show up here unregularly "first aid" is secured :-)And back to what you plan to do. At least some commercial flightsims like X-Plane and M$FS are "misused" in a way that people create ground vehicles (some years ago when I was with FS2002 I liked to drive around the airport and streets with a nice old Jaguar with all car features from inside), ships and even submarines.Why should that not be possible in an open sim like FG?And for the *long* if someone with C++ knowledge is interested in your project you could even create your own flightmodel, as there are several !!! in the FlightGEar world, an airplane (or ship) designer can use: YASim, JSBSim, UFO, UIUCModel, Balloon, LaRCsim, NullFDM, "External" - why not "ShipSim"? The mailing lists links are herehttp://www.flightgear.org/mail.htmlThese are other interesting links for FGMini-Howto for 3D aircraft desing:http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/fgfs-model-howto.htmlOther docs:http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/flight_gear/http://www.flightgear.org/docs.htmlAll the best to you, Paul. Hope to hear about your possible project, very interesting for me!RegardsGeorg EDDW

Thanks Georg,I gave FlightGear a quick try this morning following the simple tutorial. I don't have much flight simulator experience to compare it to, (the only other flight sim I've tried is "Micro Flight"), but was impressed with the atmospheric graphics and the aircraft / instrument detail. Very nice. I found flying the Cesna fun and the controls easy to adapt to.I also took a quick look at some of the docs and can see that adapting FG would be no small task. I don't have the time to start digging into it right now, but will give it a more thorough look when the beta of my ship sim is completed.Thanks again for your help,Paul

Hi Paul,all the best for your project.When you have a running downloadable Beta, add a new note to this posting!RegardsGeorg

i have the same problem... exactly where do you put the joystick config file? the manual wasnt very clear... :(