FlightGear Newsletter September 2011: Difference between revisions

The [[A local weather system|Local Weather]] package is currently adding support for the skydome scattering [[shader]], and in the process gets a dedicated terrain shader capable of rendering a low-altitude haze later. The first results are quite encouraging:

At selected airports, it is now possible to let FlightGear decide at which parking it should start. You can do this by passing the commmand line option <tt>--parkpos=AVAILABLE</tt> to FlightGear. This way, you don't need to worry about the details of whether the parking is of the right type, whether it is large enough, etc etc.  

* <tt>/sim/dimensions/radius-m</tt> should be a nummeric estimate of the size of your aircraft. A small aircraft fits into a large parking, but a large aircraft does not fit into a small parking space. Because the AI part of radius is also used for slightly different purposes (prioritizing gate assignments), the given value may deviate slightly from the real aircraft's size. See [[Aircraft radii|our wiki for an overview of standard aircraft radii]] currently in use.

* <tt>/sim/aircraft-class</tt> can be any one of "ga", "cargo", "gate", "mil-fighter", "mil-cargo", or "vtol". See [[Interactive traffic#A technical perspective|our wiki documentation]] for more information.

* In addition, the property <tt>/sim/aircraft-operator</tt> can be set to a three letter icao airline code. The first two properties are mandatory for the system to work, the last one is optional, but will generally result in a better parking location.  

 

See [http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13527 the corresponding forum discussion] for more information on how to update the aircraft configuration and corresponding livery select files.

# The screenshot must be an actual frame from a running instance of Flightgear. It can be cropped or altered in size, but it may not be altered or postprocessed in any way.

# Flightgear however may be altered in any way you wish (in fact, this is explicitly encouraged) - you may modify materials.xml, you may use custom scenery, you may use your own textures, liveries, your own aircraft currently under development, your patch to the core, ... The only condition is that it's understood that whatever you did is eventually made available to others - i.e. in case you have generated a livery which you intend to sell to others, you may not use it here. Any version of Flightgear is okay.

# Flightgear does not need to be run in the configuration you actually usually fly with - for the purpose of the screenshot, you may run settings with 1 fps which you would not fly otherwise.  

# The screenshot must be related to the challenge theme and to aviation (don't just go there with the ufo and take a shot).

This month's winners are:

'''Challenge theme 'Forest''''

'''Challenge theme 'Passenger views''''

and '''Challenge theme 'Oldtimers''''

*More amazing flights can be found at [[places to fly]].

With little than a month to go, the largest flight simulator event in the world (the [[FSweekend]] at [[Lelystad Airport]], the Netherlands) is coming close. Make sure to mark the weekend of 5&6 November in your agenda as "occupied". A team of FlightGear developers will be present in Lelystad to promote FlightGear to the public. They highly appreciate it if you are able to stop over at the airport!  

* The Wilhelmshavener Zeitung, a German newspaper, has published an extensive article about FlightGear. It speaks about Paid flightsimulators (...) and The Open Source flight simulator FlightGear. A micro history about FlightGear and about the use of FlightGear by the FAA. Read more [http://www.wzonline.de/index.php?id=1050&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=145689&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=624&cHash=e14cb0a1d3dd1c64ff909b79eaef7f68| here...] (in German)