New to FlightGear: Difference between revisions

You are eager to fly, but the engine is off. Well, turning on the engines is not always easy. Some aircraft have an ''autostart'' entry in their custom menu, but here is a general procedure that should work in many cases:

# Fuel: Some aircraft start the simulation with no fuel. You can add it in ''Equipment'' > ''Fuel and Payload''.

# Correct fuel mixture: This is generally ''rich'', so push the red knob all the way in, or use the key {{key press|m}} to enrich ({{key press|Shift|m}} leans.)

# Magnetos set on ''both'': Turn the key or press {{key press|}}} ''three times'' to move through ''R'', ''L'', ''Both''.

# Throttle: Some engines start better with a little gas.

# Run the starter: Click the ''Start'' position of the key on the panel, or press {{key press|s}}. Hold the starter for sufficient time, even 10 seconds.

Starting all engines in a multi-engine aircraft is similar to the single engine - except you must follow the same start sequence for each and every engine. FlightGear provides a convenient way to do this for all engines at once: Press {{key press|~}} and all the procedure above will work for all the engines. Note though that the default 2D panel is connected to ''only one engine'' and the {{key press|~}} trick might not work. Also, give some gas to be sure that all the engines are on.

These instructions may not work for jet aircraft, helicopters, or other types of aircraft with complex start procedures. Check the instructions in the aircraft help menu (press {{key press|?}}) and/or look at [[Aircraft|the aircraft's article on this wiki]]. In general to start the engine on a jet engine type aircraft, you need to:

# Set cutoff ''ON''

# Once the engines spools up to approximately 5% N1, set cutoff ''OFF''

There is also a [[MPMap|multiplayer map]] that lets you see who is online right now, and even what [[navaids]] are nearby.

== Learning to fly ==

=== Tutorials ===

Many aircraft have their own tutorial. With tutorials, you can learn to operate particular aircraft but also learn to fly. You can access tutorials by going to ''Main menu'' > ''Help'' > ''Tutorial''. A great place to start is the tutorial for the Cessna 172P aircraft, commonly used in real life to learn to fly fixed-winged aircraft.

 

If the tutorial starts without a runway and surrounded by water, your setup of FlightGear is missing the scenery for the airport at which the tutorial was supposed to run. To get scenery see the [[#Getting scenery]] section above.

One of the most frequent questions novice pilots ask about any flight simulator, but more so to FlightGear, is "Why is my aircraft turning left all the time?" Although it could be due to wind gusts crossing the runway, it is more likely due to the [[Understanding Propeller Torque and P-Factor|propeller torque and p-factor]].

* Compass turning error: A compass, when subjected to the forces of flight, tends to turn in the opposite direction for a brief period before settling on the correct heading. This is not a malfunction (see also the Wikipedia article {{wikipedia|Aircraft compass turns}}).

* The Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) is driven by a gyroscope (that is why it is sometimes called a Directional Gyroscope), which is subject to ''gyro drift''. The indicator will drift from its current heading and must be periodically (every ~15 minutes) calibrated to agree with the magnetic compass heading.

* You cannot just cancel a turn or climb by centering the yoke or stick. You must turn or push the stick the other way to get to level and level flight. But even then, the plane will not maintain its altitude or heading by itself. A common mistake is trying to find a hands off yoke position. While with trimming one could leave the plane for a couple of seconds, one must use autopilot or constantly adjust the yoke.

When you first start FlightGear, whether from the command line or the graphical interface of the launchers, you may wonder how to determine what airports are available. The launcher displays a list of airports, but you will not see details such as tower or [[ILS]] frequencies. You will not find a map showing [[VOR]]s and their frequencies. What can you do? See [[Getting aeronautical charts]].

In-sim, there is a map you can use in ''Main Menu'' > ''Equipment'' &gt ''Map'', which will allow you to see navigation data and the position of airports and aids. For more help with navigation see [[Understanding navigation]].

[http://www.flightgear.org/download/ Our website] offers precompiled binaries for download and install on Windows and Mac OSX, while most Linux distributions provide a packaged version in their repositories.

FlightGear is an open source, volunteer based project. That means that whatever you find here comes from passion, spare time and nothing else. This includes the simulator, the scenery, the aircraft, the wiki, the {{forum link|text=forum}} and everything else. Volunteers, in essence ''people that do things'', are fundamental to this project. Without them, it would not make a single step forward. So it is essential that contributors have fun in what they do.

If you plan to contribute to this project, you should take a look at some articles that will give you some hints:

* [[Building FlightGear|Build]] the latest Git code or download snapshots from the [[FlightGear Build Server]]

** Provide source code cleanups (in essence help in the process of migrating over to a primarily smart pointer-based memory management approach using SGSharedPtr)

** Provide bug fixes [[Bugs]] or new features  

** Get involved in any of the other FlightGear-affiliated projects