Hongming Zheng (jianqing)
Hongming Zheng (jianqing)
First OfficerFirst Officer
Joined: Jun 04, 2009 Posts: 182 Location: Xiamen, China
Asked

FlightGear is a open-source flight sim(FREE!), It is pretty good, unlike Combat Simulators, FlightGear is like FS2004 or FSX, etc. You can fly from anywhere in the world to anywhere(have to have fuel of course 🙂 ). It is a simulator(not a game, has aerodymanics).

AIRCRAFT:
The Base FlightGear comes with many aircraft, but you can download more and more for free! 😀 ! Many of the aircraft won't work out for my FlightGear because it is a old version......

SCENERY:
The base flightgear only sets you to San Francisco Area, but you can download a part of scenery you want, or the entire world! I say the Graphics is like between FS2000 to FS2004(v9.10), the new version(didn't work out for me, ahh!!!!!!) is like FS2004 or better(NOT ON FRAME RATES!)
FlightGear(v9.10)'s airport is not detailed, no buildings sometimes, but in some places(like St Maarten, San Juan, Baltimore), it is detailed(FRAME RATES WILL BE BAD)

FRAME RATES:
WARNING: Try not to fly on full screen mode, it works really bad on my computer, green and really bad(Really Bad) frame rates.
But not on full screen mode, you can enjoy it! But the frame rates may still be bad in detailed places like St Maarten.

Go ahead and download it if you want, right here: https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/1366/flightgear-for-windows/

INSTALLING NEW(addon) PLANES(optional):
u install planes by putting the plane's folder to FlightGear\Data\Aircraft\, It's almost exactly the same as FSX or 2004! BE WARNED THAT ONLY A FEW PLANES AT flightgear.org WORKS, Here are the ones that worked:

Beech 99 i think

A4

Beechcraft Starship

and few more, one millitary aircraft seem to......NEVER DOWNLOAD THAT ONE Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad

INSTALLING NEW SCENERY(optional):
go to flightgear.org and under downloads click download more scenery, find world scenery map and click the chunk of area you want to download and save the file(I can't open), Then after saving, go to your computer's start menu and find flightgear and click Install and Uninstall scenery, find the place you saved that file, and select it and install it, then after installing finished go start flightgear and on the airports list click reload airports, after reloading new airports should come into the list!

Why the new version 1.9.1 didn't work out for me?
Cause the frame rates are like 0fps, AHhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad
And it ruins my old flightgear Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad I have to uninstall my old flightgear and reinstall it!

Answers 1 Answers

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Ian Stephens (ianstephens)
Ian Stephens (ianstephens)
Chief CaptainChief Captain
Joined: Feb 22, 2012 Posts: 1079
Ian Stephens is an expert on this topic. Read his bio here.
Expert Answered

FlightGear info is pretty solid, but the “0 FPS” on 1.9.1 usually has a cause

Hey jianqing — good write-up overall. On the “1.9.1 runs at basically 0fps and kills my old install” bit, that’s usually down to graphics settings/driver support or the new version picking a rendering mode your video card can’t handle well.

A few practical things to try (without breaking your working 0.9.10 install)

1) Keep the installs separate
Don’t install a newer FlightGear over the top of the old one. If you can, install 1.9.1 into a different folder so 0.9.10 stays untouched. That alone avoids the “it ruins my old FlightGear” problem.

2) Start 1.9.1 with the simplest graphics possible
If 1.9.1 starts at all, go into its graphics options and turn down anything that hits the GPU hard:

  • Lower screen resolution
  • Windowed mode (as you already found helps)
  • Turn off/disable fancy effects (shaders, reflections, clouds detail, etc. if present in your build)
  • Try a simple aircraft at a simple airport (don’t start at a dense/custom area)

3) Make sure it’s not running in some extreme render state
Sometimes the new version “remembers” a bad setting and keeps using it every launch. If there’s a way in your FlightGear install to reset preferences/settings back to defaults, do that and try again. (If you tell me your OS I can point you to where the prefs file usually lives.)

4) Video drivers matter a lot on those older versions
A true 0fps / slideshow is often an OpenGL/driver issue (or the sim falling back to software rendering). Updating your video driver (or rolling back if you updated recently) can make a night-and-day difference.

A couple notes on your add-on aircraft/scenery comments

  • Aircraft compatibility: you’re right — a lot of FG aircraft are version-dependent. A plane made for a much newer FG build can perform terribly or not work at all on an older base version.
  • Scenery: the “can’t open” part is normal if it’s a compressed scenery download. Usually you don’t “open” it like a program; you install/unpack it with the scenery installer tool (as you described) or extract it then point FG at the scenery folder.

Quick questions so we can nail down why 1.9.1 is 0fps for you

  • What are your PC specs (CPU, RAM, and especially your video card model)?
  • What Windows version are you on?
  • Does 1.9.1 run at 0fps even at a default airport with the default aircraft, in windowed mode?
  • Do you see any message/errors when it starts (even a brief black screen, missing OpenGL message, etc.)?

Answer those and I can suggest the most likely “this one change fixes it” path for your setup.

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