FlightGear Newsletter February 2010

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Welcome to the February 2010 edition of the FlightGear Newsletter.

The big news this month is that FlightGear v2.0 was released on the 25th of February, and is available for download from www.flightgear.org and mirrors.

This is obviously very exciting, and represents a huge amount of work by the developers over the last year. As you can see from the release version summary, there have been a whole host of changes since v1.9.1

FlightGear 2.0.0

On February 25, 2010, FlightGear v2.0.0, successor of 1.9.1, was released with binary downloads for Windows and Slackware being made available.

Since the last release, FlightGear has improved dramatically with such things as ultra-realistic 3D clouds and dynamic water. A summary of new features can be seen at our website.

Finally: Bug Tracking

As of February 2010, fellow FlightGear developers and users are encouraged [1][2] to file bug reports using http://code.google.com/p/flightgear-bugs/issues/list

Please note that this tracker is at the moment purely meant to be used for bug tracking purposes [3], i.e. bugs directly related to FlightGear and not for feature requests (there are plans being discussed to eventually set up a separate tracker for these [4]).

At the moment, this tracker is being used for both, FlightGear core, as well as the base package (aircraft, scenery etc) - this may however change at a later time once the tracker is being used more widely to help developers differentiate between core coding related issues and those that are related to base package contributions such as individual aircraft [5].

In the hangar

Livery database is growing

In the January newsletter we announced the new, more or less official, livery database. In the past two weeks, over 250 people (unique visitors) from over 35 countries have visited the database.

A lot of liveries were added over the past month, resulting in a pretty complete database of available liveries, with almost 170 unique liveries. However, it is possible that there are still liveries missing that were available with the old list. Such liveries can be uploaded through the contribute page. Newly made liveries are welcome as well!

Scenery Corner

All Dutch airports available

With the upcoming scenery release, all Dutch airports and heliports will be available. A couple of airports have been updated, as well as some missing airports were added.

Community News

TransGear Airways held its largest gathering yet

TransGear Airways is a cross between a virtual airline and a monthly multiplayer event organized by Rob Shearman (aka "MD-Terp"). It was founded last summer as a means to bring together pilots who are interested in flying passenger transports in a simulated environment containing a moderately busy controlled airspace. It began by utilizing typed multiplayer chat messages to issue Air Traffic Control directives, but thanks to further development of FGCom, the event has moved exclusively to voice-to-voice communication.

Starting with modest origins, the monthly events have steadily grown in popularity. This past month's event featured a total of eighteen participants (fourteen pilots and four Air Traffic Controllers) with operations spanning the entire continental United States. Currently two hubs each serving nine cities are in operation; a third hub based in Europe is currently in the planning stages.

No membership is required to participate, and beginners are always welcome. The events have been praised as a great learning ground for people interested in flying jet transports, and particularly for learning about the interaction between pilots and controllers. Some have even credited the increase in popularity in the events as a significant driving force behind FGCom's revival in the FlightGear community.

TransGear's events are held on the second Saturday of each month. For more information, visit its website.

Virtual Airline News

After the failure and underpopulations of former virtual airlines, FlightGear Forum members participated in a variety of polls to create a new, merged superairline. The superairline, Atlas Virtual Airlines, is expected to start its maiden flight at Frankfurt on March 14, 2010. The new superairline is based in Frankfurt and will fly to London, Amsterdam and Berlin.

The maiden flights will be a part of AVA's first event, which involves two teams to fly a CRJ200 around the world. Anyone can fly for this event by registering in this page.