FlightGear Newsletter February 2015
Work in progress This article or section will be worked on in the upcoming hours or days. See history for the latest developments. |
Development news |
In the hanger |
Community News |
Development news
FlightGear 3.4 Released
On February 17, the FlightGear development team published the v3.4 release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bug fixes.
A list of major changes can be found at: Changelog 3.4. FlightGear 3.4 is available for a variety of operating systems from http://www.flightgear.org/download/
ALS Volumetric Grass
Thanks to changes in the way random vegetation is managed when not visible, FlightGear can now render volumetric grass on the terrain (for instance the airport keep) using the random vegetation system without blowing memory consumption. A grass texture matching color with the ALS airport keep effect is already available, but not activated by default since it doesn't look so good with other rendering frameworks.
To explore this yourself, add the following lines to the Grass/Airport/AirportKeep/Greenspace
landclass in Materials/regions/global-summer.xml
:
<wood-coverage>10.0</wood-coverage>
<tree-texture>Trees/grass_blades.png</tree-texture>
<tree-varieties>1</tree-varieties>
<tree-range-m>200.0</tree-range-m>
<tree-height-m>0.3</tree-height-m>
<tree-width-m>1.0</tree-width-m>
Just as trees do, grass changes with the season and gets little nests of frost when below the snowline.
PagedLOD for AI models
The rendering logic for AI aircraft has changed recently. Whether they are drawn or not now depends on their projected size on the screen and not on their distance. Please check these properties:
/sim/rendering/static-lod/ai-range-model-pixel
(should be true)/sim/rendering/static-lod/ai-detailed
(should be 30)
With this configuration, AI aircraft bigger than 30 pixels on the screen should show up.
Note There are other factors in OpenSceneGraph that decide if the Paged LOD nodes get rendered. It may sometimes take a couple of minutes or some view panning for the models to pop up. |
Torsten Dreyer (2015-01-26). Re: [Flightgear-devel] Flightgear next (3.5.0) Does not render MP aircraft.
Tooltips can now be positioned
Thanks to some work by Necolatis, Tooltips can now positioned at a specific place on-screen.
New syntax:
gui.popupTip(label[, timeout[, override[, position]]]);
position must be a hash, consisting of a y
and/or x
value.
Some examples:
# Show "readme" at position 10, 10
gui.popupTip("readme", nil, nil, { y: 10, x: 10 });
# Show "readme" at position y = 10, with 2 second delay
gui.popupTip("readme", 2, nil, { y: 10 });
# Show "readme" at position x = 10, y at default position
gui.popupTip("readme", nil, nil, { x: 10 });
# Show "readme" at position 10, 10, with 10 second delay
gui.popupTip("readme", 10, nil, { y: 10, x: 10 });
Interview with a contributor
New software tools and projects
In the hangar
BAe Sea Harrier FA2
For a long time, the FlightGear (Sea) Harrier has been unmaintained. However, in early 2014, it's development restarted. Red Leader, it's new maintainer and developer, has added a host of new features to it, including guided missiles, new Nasal scripts, and a Canvas HDD.
The 2.4.0 version of the Sea Harrier has been released, with the following changes:
- Pushback truck is now fixed and works.
- Bbackwards-compatibility bugs fixed.
- A change to the sound system so that there is no sound when FlightGear loads.
- PDFs on the weapons system and HDD added
See also the forum announcement and the wiki page …
Cessna 550 Citation II
The Cessna 550 Citation II, a light business jet, has received several updates, with more still to come. Ludovic Brenta and chris_blues have put in a lot of time to polish up and improve this aircraft.
The Cessna Sierra Super II has also been added to the Citation II package. This is essentially an aftermarket modifcation of the Citation II, with new, more powerful engines giving an impressive rate of climb and greater fuel economy.
We hope you will enjoy flying this little aircraft and exploring all the new possibilities it has to offer.
Find out more at Cessna 550 Citation II …
New Rembrandt lights
Space Shuttle
With the great enthusiasm of a few cosmonauts, the famous Space Shuttle has been largely reworked. It now comes with fully working rocket engines, main engines, orbit control and orbit manouver engines, smoke, sound, animations, and a detailed help, to let you go up and try to hold a stable orbit at 150,000 to 350,000 ft at mach 10 up to 30.
The Space Shuttle can be downloaded from the GitHub repository in either a ZIP file or by cloning.
As an add-on you will get the heavily updated An-12 , An-22 , and An-225 (mission transport variants).
Find out more about space flight in FlightGear at FlightGear space program …
EC130 B4
The EC130 B4 helicopter has recieved a major update, and e.g is now ...
FG 3.5 version of EC130 B4 is the first update after FG 3.0 version and the first one made available in FGAddon - ec130 at the new Sourceforge FGAddon SVN repository.
For full details about all updates see EC130-B4 Wiki Page. For the latest updates - even newer than FG 3.5 version - see the Git - development repository.
New Liveries
- N156BC Sheriff Broward County Florida
- N812MH Maverick Helicopters (Grand Canyon)
- PR-BOP Parana Police Policia Militar, Curitiba (Brazil)
Enhancements of Model / Equipment
- NEW Searchlight Trakkabeam A800, fully functional with stow/deploy, color-filters (white,amber,red,IR),...
- NEW Stabilization for Trakkabeam A800, i.e. lightbeam direction remains stable in the air despite helicopter motion
- NEW Strobe Light, additional landing lights and all optimized for Rembrandt
- NEW wide luggage boxes, and a lot of new antennas
- Cockpit instruments are now fully adjustable
Remark: The searchlight code used with the EC130 heli is completely separate from the rest of the implementation, and so is very easy to reuse with other models and highly portable.
Updates of User Interface include new
- Operator/Model Info Dialog
- Antenna Setup Dialog
- Multi-Key Shortcuts
- Tooltips for pick animations
The work was contributed with a lot of excitement by mhab (aka Mike-DE).
Scenery Corner
Riesa-Göhlis Airfield
- Attention all lovers of nice and cozy airfields
Now you have a new destination for the next Sunday trip. Riesa-Göhlis (EDAU) is now available via TerraSync. The Riesa-Göhlis airfield is situated in Saxony approximately 19nm north of Dresden Intl. Airport. A special feature of this airfield is the public street between the airfield and the runway. Aircrafts have to cross the street at a automatic traffic lights. At the airfield detailed and photo-textured 3D models, an open hangar and a pleasant airport restaurant are waiting for you.
Fly along the Elbe river to Dresden or explore the Saxon Switzerland. For more features like start-up positions you can download a custom scenery file from the Riesa-Göhlis wiki page.
We wish you happy flying!
Community News
Wiki update
Forum news
Virtual Airlines
Multiplayer
FlightGear on YouTube
Channel: Flightgear's Tutorial
Note Spanish language only. |
Contributing
Volunteers
Translators required
The FlightGear Wiki still needs help for translating it into various languages. If you are interested in making the FlightGear Wiki multi-language then start at Help:Translate. | |
Das FlightGear Wiki benötigt immer noch Hilfe bei der Übersetzung in verschiedene Sprachen. Wenn Du Interesse daran hast, das FlightGear Wiki Mehrsprachig zu machen, dann fang doch mit Help:Übersetzen an. | |
De FlightGear Wiki kan nog steed hulp gebruiken bij het vertalen van artikelen. Als je interesse hebt om de wiki meertalig te maken, raden we je aan om een kijkje te nemen bij Help:Vertalen. | |
La FlightGear wiki todavía necesita ayuda para traducirla a varios lenguajes. Si estás interesado en hacer la FlightGear wiki multilingüe, entonces comienza en Help:Traducir. |
FGBanners
If you own a web page related to FlightGear or you want to create a new one, (such as a hangar, YouTube channel, etc.), you may required some graphics elements. Please visit our logos repository. If you have some art skills, please don't hesitate to contribute with your own design creations.
Screenshots
The FlightGear project always needs screenshots for the website, which show features that were added since the last release.These shots should be of good quality — regarding contents and technical image properties. It is therefore recommended to use the best viable filter settings (antialiasing, texture sharpening, etc.). More info at Howto:Make nice screenshots.