FlightGear Newsletter August 2009

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Welcome to the second edition of the FlightGear Newsletter.

This is currently a workspace for the current edition, with titles copied from the FlightGear Newsletter July 2009. Please feel free to add content etc.

We're still looking for a permanent (or even a temporary) newsletter editor, so if you'd like to get involved, have a look on the Forums.

What's New in CVS

Lots!

Contributing

Suggestions of how to get involved in the community and help make FG even better.

In the Hangar

Aircraft reviews/announcements

Fly Somewhere New

Details of interesting flights. Might best be a link to another page on the wiki

Useful Links

Either FG related, or useful resources for virtual flying

And Finally...

Links to cool aviation-related things.

LinuxTag 2009

A view of the FlightGear stand

The 2009 edition of the LinuxTag has been concluded and the Flightgear hangar was there full of aircraft and pilots ! You could easily spot our stand since it seemed to me the most popular one, the idea to take a free virtual flight coupled with a free flight instructor was like honey for bears. Furthermore the hardware was impressive, 2 flight stations with 3 big monitors each and real leverage were worth a try ! You could even track your flight through a projected mapserver on the wall.
. We flew mostly around the Frankfurt area, where a well done airport (still with a high fps rate) was the background of our participants. The favorite aircraft was the SenecaII as it was perfect to be flown with out equipment, meanwhile in the forward station was easy to see some Eurocopter Bo105 pilot or F-14 Tomcat top gun enjoying carrier approaches.

Terrain texture (before)
Terrain texture (linuxtag)

But that was not just fly and fun, at the stand you could easily take conversation with some code and model developers, discussing about new features and wishes. There was a developers section too, Till was hacking hearth and seas textures generator to improve our virtual world terrain painting applying shaders instead of fixed photos; early results where really interesting and I hope to see theme soon in the cvs repo.

The FlightGear guys proven them self very gentle and always speaked in english in my presence, Martin Spott took care to manage an entrance pass for me and kept me informed about needed stuff and events prior the LinuxTag via Emails. This means you have no excuses to miss the event next year (At least only if you are not afraid to virtually fly !).