Changelog 2020.3

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Revision as of 15:47, 13 October 2020 by Stuart (talk | contribs) (→‎Launcher)
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Available in: English

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The FlightGear development team is delighted to announce the v2020.3 LTS release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This is the second Long Term Support release for FlightGear, since the project changed to offering both Long Term Support releases, and more cutting-edge Preview releases. This release represents the culmination of two years of development effort 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.

Major enhancements since the v2018.3 LTS include:

  • a developer preview of the upcoming Compositor graphical rendering framework as a separate pre-built binary,
  • improved aircraft carrier support
  • enhancements to both the JSBSim and YASim flight dynamics models
  • DDS texture caching to reduce load times
  • faster loading and more memory efficient buildings

Additionally 31 completely new aircraft have been added to the official hangar, and a further 525 have received major updates.

Founded in 1997, FlightGear features more than 600 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.

FlightGear - Fly Free!



Launcher

  • Welcome screen
  • Aircraft can now be marked as Favourites, and filtered, making it easier to see find your favourite aircraft out of the hundreds available.
  • The launcher now supports aircraft carriers, including selecting a carrier and setting a start position.
  • Ctrl-F shortcut for when you just want to Fly!

Graphics

  • To provide a developer preview, the Compositor renderer is included as part of this release. It provides a fully XML-configurable multi-pass rendering pipeline that is compatible with ALS and includes clustered shading.
  • Support for DDS Texture Cache, improving loading times.
  • Make star cutoff controllable at runtime
  • Use of non-directional point sprites as a fallback for drivers that do not support triangles of point sprites is now supported by setting /rendering/triangle-directional-lights=false.
  • A new Tower AGL view has been added. This is similar to Tower View, except that it keeps both the aircraft and the ground immediately below the aircraft in view, zooming and panning smoothly as the aircraft moves. Good for viewing landings.
  • Improved airport grass textures
  • Updated regional material definitions for California, Asia, Iceland, Jan Mayen island.
  • Active volcanoes - Katla, Eyjafjallajokull, Surtsey.
  • Instanced-based random and OpenStreetMap buildings, improving performance and graphical quality significantly.
  • Improvements to the Wingflex Shader.

JSBSim

  • Added the ability to set up the starter and acceleration times of a turbine (parameters <n1spinup>, <n2spinup>, <n1startrate>, <n2startrate>).
  • The <integrator> filter can now be reset to 0.0 by setting its <trigger> property to a negative value.
  • The integration scheme of the <integrator> filter can now be chosen among "rect" (Euler), "trap" (Trapezoidal), "ab2" 2nd order Adams-BashForth and "ab3" 3rd order Adams-Bashforth
  • The following functions can now be used in <function>: floor, ceil and fmod. Their functionalities are the same than the corresponding C/C++ functions.
  • <function> now checks the number of its arguments.
  • New system component linear_actuator
  • Bug fix of Euler angles computations in FGMatrix33
  • Export the fuel density to the property tree
  • Added cyclic clipping for FCS components
  • Fixed a regression which prevented the wheels rotation speed to slow down while the gears were retracted
  • Added the ability to control the turbine engines spin down factor

YASim

  • Ground friction (stiction) changes

Carriers

AI

  • fgcommands "add-aiobject" and "remove-aiobject" for adding/removing objects to the AI subsystem.
  • Many new AI aircraft
  • Numerous updates to AI traffic schedules and airline liveries.

Multiplayer

Replay / Flight Recorder

  • Multiplayer recording.

Nasal Scripting

  • Configurable load order for core Nasal modules.
  • Improvements and bug fixes to Emesary, the messaging interface.
  • Improvements to the core libraries.

Canvas

  • FG1000 Glass Panel: user-configurable VFR transponder codes, volume controls, new fascia, UI is now resizeable, support for custom SVG files (e.g. for a G500)

Aircraft

  • Users may enable/disable the pilot model from the View Options dialog.
  • New Aircraft: HU-16A-Albatross, LS8, Embraer-ERJ-145, Cessna 208B Caravan, PZL 104 wilga 2000 Draco, Scheibe Bergfalke, Taurus, f16, Dornier Do 28 Skyservant, Petliakov Pe 8 (Ant 42/DB 7), Grumman F.11 Tiger
  • Major Updates: CRJ700, Dragonfly, Mirage 2000, Jaguar GR1, H4 Hercules, JA37, Supermarine Swift, A320, Cirrus-SR22, Cessna Citation, J3Cub,
  • Other Updates: Harrier-GR3, ME-209-V1, SPAD-VII, Ryan-Navion, De Havilland DHC 1 'Chipmunk', A24 Viking, Boeing P26 "Peashooter", Socata-ST10, an24b, PA28, Diamond DA40

Miscellaneous

  • Updated Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish and Slovak translations.
  • Map dialog displays heliports and allows configurable cursor key panning
  • Faster Terrasync: Download a tarball of airport information on first start and only check for updates every 24 hours rather than every simulator run.
  • GPS fly-by mode
  • Sentry.io integration to provide centralized crash reporting.
  • Change screenshot filename to have date time

Updates since 2020.1

Changes since the 2020.1 preview release include:

  • Various launcher improvements including a Welcome screen and a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+F) to Fly!
  • Improved regional definitions for California, and better grass textures
  • New AI model for the 747 Freighter, and numerous AI livery and traffic updates.
  • Updates to the FG1000 glass panel display including configurable VFR transonder codes, volume controls, a new fascia, resizeable UI and support for custom SVG files.
  • A hangar full of new aircraft: HU-16A-Albatross, LS8, Embraer-ERJ-145, Cessna 208B Caravan, PZL 104 wilga 2000 Draco, Scheibe Bergfalke, Taurus, f16, Dornier Do 28 Skyservant, Petliakov Pe 8 (Ant 42/DB 7), Grumman F.11 Tiger
  • Updates to a large number of aircraft including CRJ700, Dragonfly, Mirage 2000, Jaguar GR1, H4 Hercules, JA37, Supermarine Swift, A320, Cirrus-SR22, Cessna Citation, J3Cub
  • Updated Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish and Slovak translations.
  • Faster Terrasync: Download a tarball of airport information on first start and only check for updates every 24 hours rather than every simulator run.
  • GPS fly-by mode
  • Sentry.io integration to provide centralized crash reporting.