FlightGear 1.0 hardware recommendations: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:05, 6 January 2008

Recommended hardware specs - for FlightGear 1.0

For example x86 PC:

1-2 GHZ (multi-core benefits may be employed by threaded FlightGear components such as for example the tile loader)
512-1024 MB RAM (more is better: as of 01/2008 FlightGear will often easily eat up >= 500 MB RAM by default, thus if less free RAM is available the FlightGear process would be significantly slowed down due to OS swapping)
3D hardware accelerator, 128-256 MB, OpenGL 1.2 capable (2.0 even better!)
400 MB free HD space needed for minimum installation (>=2 GB for compilations recommended), in addition: approximately ~100MB per installed scenery tile (terrain: non-ocean)
Soundblaster compatible soundcard (optional?) - preferably with EAX support
Gameport or USB (HID compatible) joystick/yoke and/or pedals (optional)

3D graphic cards that are known to work

NVIDIA GeForce MX420/440 (64Mb), GeForce 4 series, GeForce FX series, GeForce 6 series, GeForce 7300GT, GeForce 7600

For problems with nvidia chips, take a look here : http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshooting_Problems#Slow_Framerate_with_Graphic_Card_with_Nvidia_chip

Comparison of NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units

ATI Radeon 9000/9200/9250 series, Radeon 9600/9800 series

Comparison of NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units

Basically, you should be fine with any NVIDIA or ATI card that is not older than 12-18 months; however, you need to take into account that some of the newer features in FlightGear may not work as expected or may not even work altogether with older hardware. In general, 3D cards that make use of shared memory should be avoided (PCI express cards that share memory are ok). Also, if you intend to use FlightGear under Linux you may first want to check whether the driver for your card is fully supported under Linux (and your X version) or not.

Currently, you can basically forget about using any Matrox cards as FlightGear is very heavy on textures, but only the high-end matrox cards will have sufficient capabilities to deal with FlightGear's requirements.

TODO: explain PCI vs. AGP (2x,4x,8x) vs. PCI-E

Input Hardware (Joysticks, Pedals & Yokes) known to work

(Please check $FG_ROOT/Input/Joysticks)

CH PRODUCTS PRO PEDALS (USB/GAMEPORT)
CH PRODUCTS PRO YOKE (USB/GAMEPORT)
Logitech Attack 3 joystick (USB)
Logitech Extreme 3d Pro (USB) (Windows, Linux and OS-X)
Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro
Saitek ST290 Pro joystick (USB)(Linux)
Saitek X45 and Throttle (USB)(Linux, Windows)
Rockfire Gameport to USB adaptor with 4-axis gameport joystick

Hardware Incompatibilities

Cyborg-3d-force-usb from Saitek leads to a crash under Linux

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 * 1-2 GHZ (multi-core benefits may be employed by threaded FlightGear components such as for example the tile loader)
-* 512-1024 MB RAM
+* 512-1024 MB RAM (more is better: as of 01/2008 FlightGear will often easily eat up >= 500 MB RAM by default, thus if less free RAM is available the FlightGear process would be significantly slowed down due to OS swapping)
 * 3D hardware accelerator, 128-256 MB, OpenGL 1.2 capable (2.0 even better!)
-* 400 MB free HD space needed for minimum installation (2 GB for compilations recommended), in addition: approximately ~100MB per installed scenery tile (terrain: non-ocean)
+* 400 MB free HD space needed for minimum installation (>=2 GB for compilations recommended), in addition: approximately ~100MB per installed scenery tile (terrain: non-ocean)
 * Soundblaster compatible soundcard (optional?) - preferably with EAX support
 * Gameport or USB (HID compatible) joystick/yoke and/or pedals (optional)