What can Flight Gear 3 give us?...

I can't really give up on suggesting to all simmers "Flight Gear 3" for a flight simulation platform.

I would put it this way:

- It's 64 bit, but also runs in 32 bit!

- It's scenery covers the whole World, and with the new Scenery V2 and Terrasnc, scenery is mantained up to date and fetched from servers whenever you go to some new place you haven't visited before. The downloaded files are cached in your disk, saving the download if no updates happen.

- The simulator has a modular concept of the flight dynamics engine, allowing for the use of potentially any FDM or combination of FDMs, and counting already with at least 4 different options, with Yasim and JSBSim being the most widely used. The famous Majestic Q-400 for FSX uses JSBSim externally for it's FDM, and the advantages of such an option show!

- Weather modelling is in constant update, from version to version, but as it is right now, it provides a very plausible weather engine, using RW data ( METAR and winds aloft interpolation ), basic weather or advanced weather, or a mix of RW weather and either basic or advanced weather modes. Synoptic and mesoscale systems are represented and dynamically evolve in a very plausible / realistic way, providing users with, IMO, one of the best weather models available. For glider pilots, convective as well as orographic lift are very nicelly modeled and can provide us with excellent soaring simulation sessions.

- Available aircraft add-ons are all freely available, like anything about Flight Gear. The default models are very acceptable, but they can't naturally compare with the best FSX or X-plane add-ons in terms of functionalities and graphics. In terms of flight dynamics, and also some aspects of engine and systems modelling, default FG aircraft, and most of those you can freely download are up to and sometimes above the quality provided by the best FSX or X-Plane add-ons. Some rather sophisticated projects, like an almost fully modelled Tu-154, but also some great GA aircraft, like this DR-400, the aerobatic Cap 10B and C, and even some helicopters, are the "proof of concept" of Flight Gear as a great flight simulation platform.

- A new version of the simulator is usualy made available every 6 months. Version 3, offering some interesting new features, like enhanced rendering effects, based on the evolution of the already proven "Rembrandt" engine, and the new V2 scenery system.

- Flying online is another possibility, using a version of SqawkBox for FG.

- Air Combat and various types of weapons can also be used, and vehicles using them aren't confined to the air. You can have land and sea vehicles in FG3!

Flight Gear is a free, GNU licensed, flight simulation platform. It is in no way inferior, quite on the contrary, to FSX or X-plane in terms of flight dynamics, and even systems modelling and weather modelling.

The open source code and the languages that can be used for programming of generic or adon-specific systems are, among others C, C++, Python, and scripting languages like Nasal.

If you would like to contribute to the project, feel free to join - learn more how to here.

Flight Gear can easily be used for some interesting highschool or university projects on the areas of physics and programming, as well as many other projects suc as these...

If you are an MSFS user, or even an X-Plane user, your expectations in terms of scenery quality, amount of add-ons available and so on are certainly high. But please do not forget that at least in MSFS's World you pay for it ( with X-Plane 10 being a lot cheaper to maintain in terms of scenery and even airctraft add-ons - lot's of good freeware available...).

Being free, and developed by a team of programmers who give their time to the project, Flight Gear will necessarily evolve at a slower pace than it's payware alternatives but my experience with the last versions is that indeed much has been achieved and added in just one year since version 2.

We can only expect even better and more features to be added, but those who have the availability, should also consider contributing to the project in any of the available forms, including translation of manuals and menus to their native languages.