FlightGear Newsletter June 2010

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Development news

SquawkGear

http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7650

Bombable air combat add-on updated

The Bombable air combat add-on to FlightGear received a major update in June. Bombable now has these features:

• Dogfight against other FlightGear pilots over multiplayer with Sopwith Camel, SPAC VII, Fokker DR 1 Triplane, or A6M2 Zero
• Explode/burn when you crash
• Exceeding aircraft limitations (excess g-forces, overspeed) adds damage to your aircraft and finally leads to shutdown/crash
• Shootable/bombable moving AI tanks, jeeps, ships, and aircraft that catch fire, burn, explode, sink, crash, etc.
• AI scenarios that allow you to use FlightGear aircraft for air-to-ground, air-to-sea, and air-to-air combat missions against these targets

In the hangar

Boeing 787 and CRJ-200

nickyivyca is currently working on the Boeing 787. He corrected the FDM and changed some details in the model. More information in the forums.

He has also been working in the CRJ-200:

"The CRJ-200 and 787 were made with very similar systems and such. Neither had a 2.0 compatible AP. So, I found out what was wrong with the one for the 787 first, and made those changes to the CRJ here. Both worked. I also did some FDM improvements, like moving the engines to where they really are and adding gear smoke and contrails." - says he in the forum thread.

Cessna T-37

richter and snipey are working together in improving the Cessna T-37. Items that have been improved/created:

Model:

• Completely remodeled canopy;
• Main gear wheel wells and covers.

Sound:

• Interior-exterior sound level difference.

Instruments:

• Basic flight instruments.

More information here.

CH-47 Chinook

MOJO is tuning the CH-47. He spent some time adding external cosmetics which main purpose is to add more detail to the Chinook. He added antenna and aerials, domed windows, pitot tubes, whinch, engine hub details and started with the internal cargo bay. He is going to be adding an animated refuel probe and will be doing some more liveries also, his main aim is to try and get the model more defined.

Cirrus Vision SF50

Zexe created a SF50 model. It is still at a very early stage. More information here.

MiG-15bis

vitos improved the MiG-15bis model, and released it. More information here.

San Antonio LPD17

Browsing through the files, HHS found a rotorcraft carrier model and made a scenario to run it, which is availble on git.

Scenery corner

Nighttime London Gatwick

London Gatwick (EGKK) is being further improved and is in the second phase of development - night textures. All the buildings and features are currently being modified by karla to give suitable lighting and make London Gatwick even more attractive to FlightGear commercial flyers. Landing or taking off from Gatwick at night should add much to your enjoyment of the game - and most likely extend the hours you enter in your pilot's log. Further improvements and many minor changes are also being made to the existing models and daytime textures. The link shows an image of the part completed airport at night http://www.donlavelle.net/flightgear/flightgear19.html.

The new scenery will be released early in July.

Dubai gets busy

After looking jealously at the greatly enhanced airport Schiphol (EHAM) and the latest highlight Gatwick (EGKK) Mike (D-SKY1) decided to create interactive traffic for Dubai International Airport (OMDB). Based on the existing airport layout in FlightGear the traffic pattern for taxiing between gates and runways and a timetable for runway usage have been created. Although no nice modelwork is done (yet) a big bunch of scheduled flights is now added to this important hub in middle east. As OMDB is home port for Emirates Airlines (UAE) only Emirates flights are included. Within the next weeks more scheduled flights for AI traffic at OMDB will be added. During the process of creating AI traffic he tried to stay as close as possible to the real life timetable for Dubai International Airport querying several sources for double checking.

As Emirates Airlines is one of the most important customers for the Airbus A380 (UAE just ordered another 30 units of A380) the Emirates Airlines livery has been added to AI aircrafts A380.

Additionally some minor errors in several traffic files concerning changed ICAO codes for some airports have been removed.

All changes are available via GIT from now on.

Enjoy the enhancements and always follow SIDs and STARs to prevent collisions ;)

Aircraft review: B-25 Mitchell

A B-25 in the air near KATL

The B-25 served in almost every theatre in World War II. From Europe to the Pacific, the Mitchell was there. One of the most famous missions accomplished by B-25s was the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, when a group of 16 B-25s attacked the Japanese mainland, raising morale in the United States, and changing the priorities of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and possibly changing the direction of the war.

The flightgear model looks good on the outside. The author has done a lot of work on the textures, and this is improved even more by some excellent liveries made by Gooneybird that have been added to the B-25 base package by the author. The landing gear, engines and canopies are all carefully modelled, too.

The Cockpit is a little bit threadbare, with no chairs, two pilot figures, and the standard six instruments, which is more than enough to fly with. The only other issue I could come up with was the lack of weapons, but that is only an aesthetic problem. The B-25 handles nicely both on the ground and in the air. I can't talk about accuracy, however, as I have never flown in a B-25, so I don't know how it 'feels' in the air.

The Mitchell sounds great, too!

Review by Armchair Ace

From the community

FlightGear on YouTube

• edubletooth captured a bunch of landings at the airports with the world's most famous approach: Princess Juliana in the Netherlands Antilles. Make sure to bend when a 777-200 or maybe even a mighty 747 is passing just meters over your head!
• This excellent video proves that Howto Oscar (we already mentioned him last month) does more than creating howtos. Together with Don's extremely detailed simulation of Gatwick Airport (EGKK), Oscar's video angles make this an interesting and pleasant video to watch.

And finally...

Your own Copilot

How about having your own Copilot to help you fly your heavy metal? Imagine: You're at 3000 ft making a hand controlled descent to EGKK 26L in your 777-200ER: "flaps down"; check airspeed and altitude; you're now five miles out; "undercarriage down"; reduce speed a little more; "flaps down"; you seem to be slightly overspeed; "spoilers"; touch down "brakes" then "reverse thrust"; "flaps retract"; now take a look at the detailed scenery while taxying to your stand; "view" and "zoom out".

Those using Windows can employ Shoot - a free user-editable voice command utility. This may be used concurrently with FlightGear to recognize spoken words or phrases and carry out keyboard actions - including sequential or Shift/Alt/Ctrl... keying. Unfortunately Linux users do not have access to such a powerful utility.

Download Shoot 1.6.4 from http://clans.gameclubcentral.com/shoot and install it on your PC. You also need the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) which is also free; the link is given on the Shoot website. The free Microsoft .NET should also be installed using the Shoot link.

Shoot may be edited to obey verbal commands such as "start engines", "maximum thrust", "undercarriage up", "flaps retract", "trim nose down", "deploy spoilers", "reverse thrust", "view exterior" - or whatever you choose. Try it and add more immersion to your flying.