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This changelog is a draft.


The FlightGear development team is delighted to announce the v2016.1 "San Fransico" release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bugfixes. Highlights in this release include an integrated launcher that includes the ability to download aircraft, a reduction in the installation package size, and improvements to the rendering of cockpits.

Founded in 1997, FlightGear is developed by a worldwide group of volunteers, brought together by a shared ambition to create the most realistic flight simulator possible that is free to use, modify and distribute. FlightGear is used all over the world by desktop flight simulator enthusiasts, for research in universities and for interactive exhibits in museums.

FlightGear features more than 400 aircraft, a worldwide scenery database, a multiplayer environment, detailed sky modelling, a flexible and open aircraft modelling system, varied networking options, multiple display support, a powerful scripting language and an open architecture. Best of all, being open-source, the simulator is owned by the community and everyone is encouraged to contribute.

Download FlightGear v2016.1 for free from FlightGear.org.

FlightGear - Fly Free!

The aircraft page of the Qt launcher for FlightGear 3.5 as rendered on Windows 7.

Major enhancements in this release

Project Organization

Core

  • Interactive traffic system re-enabled, having been disabled by mistake some releases previously.
  • Various security improvements, including the disabling of system.fgfsrc.

Aircraft Modeling

JSBSim

  • Sync with the latest version of JSBSim.
  • The pitot angle can now be tweaked with the <pitot_angle> tag in the <metrics> block.
  • The refuel rate is now configurable with the <refuel-rate> tag in the <propulsion> block.

Rendering

  • The addition of 3D grass to the random vegetation system.
  • Tree shadows
  • Interior cockpit shadows.
  • Interior glass reflections, frosting and fogging.
  • Interior panel backlighting.
  • New thruster effect (can be used for afterburners flames, rockets, etc.).
  • Lightning effects
  • Runway skid marks

Usability

  • Many improvements to Phi, the built-in web interface.
  • GUI cleanup to improve support for multiple GUI styles.
  • The built-in Qt launcher is available for all of FlightGear's supported operating systems.

Scenery

  • Regional texture definitions for Florida, Brazil, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeastern Asia.
  • stgmerge tool added to merge objects in a scenery tile into a smaller number of meshes.

Highlighted new and improved aircraft

Misc/uncategorized

Nasal Scripting

  • createViaTo() added
  • createDiscontinuity() added
  • activate() method added to flightplan ghost object

Documentation

  • The FlightGear Manual is now available in Chinese

Bug fixes

  • See our bugtracker for a list, albeit incomplete, of the bugs fixed in this release.