FlightGear, install this flight simulator easily from PPA

In the next article we are going to take a look at FlightGear. This is a open source flight simulator. It supports a variety of popular platforms (Windows, Mac, Gnu / Linux) and is developed by expert volunteers from around the world. The source code for the entire project is available and works under the GNU General Public License.

According to its creators, the objective of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated and open flight simulator framework For use in academic, research, pilot training settings or as an industry engineering tool. All that is sought after while remaining a fun, realistic and challenging desktop flight simulator. It goes without saying that there are many exciting possibilities in this free and open flight simulator.

Being an open source project we can download and copy it for free. This simulator is supported by the standard formats of the 3d model. In addition, many of the simulator settings are controlled through xml-based ascii files. Although there are players who consider that it cannot exceed the graphic level of the best commercial products, the physical model of the flight and the realism of the controls is possibly at the same or higher level than the best simulators.

The program will give us the ability to write extensions for FlightGear or also directly modify the source code of the program. This is straightforward and doesn't require a great deal of reverse engineering. This feature makes FlightGear an attractive option for use in private, commercial, research or just hobby projects.

Some general features of FlightGear

• This simulator will give us the possibility to pilot large number of planes.
• We can have several fixed flight plans.
• The empowerment of display lists for random vegetation It will provide us with a massive performance increase when creating vegetation.
• A wide and precise world scenario database. Accurate terrain from around the world has been designed based on the latest and most recent release of SRTM data. Scenarios include lakes, rivers, roads, railways, cities, towns, land, and other geographic options.
• We can make use of more than 20000 actual airports, approximately.
• We can also enjoy a detailed and accurate sky model. We will have the correct locations of the sun, moon, stars, and planets for the specified date and time.
• We will have a open and flexible aircraft modeling system that allows to expand the number of aircraft available.
• The animation of the cockpit instruments it is fluid and very smooth. Instrument behavior has been realistically modeled and faults in many systems are accurately reproduced.
• We will have multi-player support.
• Among its outstanding characteristics, it must be said that we will have the possibility of simulating the real aviation traffic.
• There is a realistic weather option It includes both lighting from the sun, wind, rain, fog, smoke and other atmospheric effects.
• We can consult more characteristics of this project in the official website thereof.

Install FlightGear on Ubuntu from PPA

To install this flight simulator in our Ubuntu (I have only tested it in version 17.04) we can add the PPA. We will only have to open the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and execute the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/flightgear

Once added, we will be able to update FlightGear through Software Updater once it is published in the PPA repository, if we had it installed. We can also install it for the first time by typing the following script in the same terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install flightgear

uninstall

To uninstall FlightGear, we can do it by executing the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove flightgear

And remove the PPA by launching "Software and Updates" utility and navigating to the Other software tab. Or we can also do it via terminal by typing the following:

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:saiarcot895/flightgear

FlightGear comes with a set of illustrated documentation and tutorials within the simulator. We will also have available to users this wiki which will provide us with additional documentation on both end-user and development issues.