FlightGear 1.0 hardware recommendations

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Revision as of 06:31, 7 April 2009 by MILSTD (talk | contribs) (removing related mailing list thread)
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Remember these hardware recommendations are based on informal user experience, be sure to consult other sources before making serious decisions regarding computer hardware.

Recommended hardware specs - for FlightGear 1.9.1b

  • 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 dedicated RAM, OpenGL 1.2 capable (2.0 even better!) (You may want to check out Supported Video Cards)
  • 500 MB free HD space needed for minimum installation (>=2 GB for compilations recommended,note that the full base package checkout is ~2.5GB as of 1/2008), in addition: approximately ~100-150MB 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) - please check out Supported Peripherals for a list of input hardware known to work with FlightGear.

Hardware Incompatibilities

A list of video cards that may not properly run FlightGear can be found at Problematic Video Cards.

  • Cyborg-3d-force-usb from Saitek leads to a crash under Linux (such problems are however not related to FlightGear in any way, but most likely due to local problems related to driver/kernel issues)