I know there is a dedicated forum here at AVSIM for the Flight Gear flight simulator, but I guess most simmers seldom visit it, and some may even not be aware of it's existence, so, I decided to post here my thoughts about the upcoming version of Flight Gear, version 3, of which we can already experiment an RC, now on version 4.

 

Flight Gear is an old open source initiative, started back in the times of fs5, and grew to a platform that I am tempted to consider probably the most serious one availabe today for flight simulation if the users are willing to contribute with their own work, adding to the already extensive list of features, ranging from different flight dynamics models to weather, systems, AI, ATC, etc... subsystems.

 

The visuals available for the next version of FG already make use of some of the rendering techniques we see on the reference comercial flight simulators, and the scenery has now an OSM-based database of scenery elements and with Terrasync will be dynamically downloaded into your machine as you place your aircraft into different Earth regions. 

 

Weather modelling is probably the most advanced available among the various comercial and freeware flight simulators we know today. It proably doesn't show when you start using FG, but when you start exploring the many features of it's "Advanced Weather Model" you soon realize that many features not available on the other sims are there, including various types of synoptic and mesoscale weather systems, convective and orographic effects, etc...

 

Aircraft models available for FG range from the default "hangar" that comes with the sim, and many models we can download from the "Download Central" or from the Wiki, with basic flight and systems modelling, to quite sophisticated models like some excellent helicopters already making use of what is probably the most advanced flight dynamics engine among the three or four that can be used with FG ( JSBsim ), or a Tu-154, a B-777 and a B-747with an already very complete / complex systems modelling, a DR-400 and the CAP-10 and CAP-20 French aerobatic aircraft, etc...

 

From the beginning one of the main features of FG has been an accurate depiction not only of the Earth and it's atmosphere, up to the higher levels, but also of the skies, as we can see them at a given place and date / time on any place of our Earth. This includes precise Sun and Moon rise / set times, according to date and time, Moon phases, etc... Even ther stars are preciselly depicted at night / dusk /dawn.

 

Honestly, in a time where FSX is still the most widely flight simultion platform, X-Plane and LM Prepar3d are progressively occupying the space being left by the MSFS franchise, and other smaller projects like Aerofly FS are also available, Flight Gear looks to me as the most promissing flight simulation platform for the future, it's only "limitation" being that, as a FREE, Open-Source platform it strongly depends on the community of users and developers.  

 

I can't but encourage you to give it a try. You should probably wait for FG 3 Final, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but the current RC4 is already very stable and great to play with.

 

Take your time to learn how to use and configure it. Until recently I was usually kept away from it because of the weird joystick configuration process. It is now as straightforward as the best payware products provide, and, a well designed aircraft for FG, using probably JSBSim, is most certainly one of the best models you will be able to use in a PC-based civil flightsim... For some reason Majestic uses JSBSim for their Q-400, running the FDE externally in FSX...

I can't but encourage you to give it a try. You should probably wait for FG 3 Final, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but the current RC4 is already very stable and great to play with.

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