FlightGear Newsletter May 2011: Difference between revisions

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* [http://www.thomas-krenn.de Thomas Krenn AG] who have been donating an extremely powerful workstation for use in development and on exhibitions - including four graphics cards - which would have been completely unaffordable from our private budgets.
* [http://www.thomas-krenn.de Thomas Krenn AG] who have been donating an extremely powerful workstation for use in development and on exhibitions - including four graphics cards - which would have been completely unaffordable from our private budgets.
* Various FlightGear-enthusiasts and -developers from all over the world who've been donating private money via our PayPal-account at "donations@flightgear.org", which eventually led to ....
* Various FlightGear-enthusiasts and -developers from all over the world who've been donating private money via our PayPal-account at "donations@flightgear.org", which eventually led to ....
* the occasion of buying another five 24" displays at an advantageous price thanks to the subsidy of [http://www.bee.de/ Baastrup GmbH].
* the oportunity of buying another five 24" displays at an advantageous price thanks to the subsidy of [http://www.bee.de/ Baastrup GmbH].
* Finally, [http://www.science-computing.de Science + Computing AG] contributed to the affair by - guess, what - paying the insurance for all this equipment at the booth :).
* Finally, [http://www.science-computing.de Science + Computing AG] contributed to the affair by - guess, what - paying the insurance for all this equipment at the booth :).



Revision as of 15:40, 26 May 2011

Magagazine.png
Welcome to the FlightGear Newsletter!
Please help us write the next edition!
Enjoy reading the latest edition!


We would like to emphasize that the monthly newsletter can not live without the contributions of FlightGear users and developers. Everyone with a wiki account (free to register) can edit the newsletter and every contribution is welcome. So if you know about any FlightGear related projects such as for example updated scenery or aircraft, please do feel invited to add such news to the newsletter.

Development news

New plan for a FlightGear release

Good news: finally, a new FlightGear is planned again. We're aiming to release FlightGear 2.4.0 in mid August 2011.

Several people have now agreed to restart working on a new release and a new release plan for more regular releases has been prepared. We're now aiming to have two releases per year - one in mid February and one in mid August.

The current development branch will be used the base for a new release - which will be versioned as 2.4.0. Original plans to release FlightGear 2.2.0 in February got stalled when a number of the developers involved became too busy/blocked with RL commitments. A 2.2.0 source branch had already been created, but has now been abandoned, since it hadn't been maintained for several months. FG2.2.0 will not be announced officially, and no installers/binaries/downloads will be prepared - though the last snapshot of 2.2.0 sources remains available in the source repository.

Preparations for the next release (FG 2.4.0) have already started. The release process will involve a phase of two months for beta testing, starting on June 17th. During this phase several release candidates (complete FlightGear installers) will be provided for testing. Our existing build automation (Hudson) has already been prepared to provide regular installers for Mac and Windows - as well as binaries for certain Linux distros. And of course - sources are available for any supported platform.

For more details see here.

Nasal for newbies

New software tools and projects

FlightGear addons and mods

In the hangar

New aircraft

Updated aircraft

Airbus A340-600

More work has continued on developing an Airbus A340-600 for FlightGear. The aircraft has been given a new lease of life with a new JSBsim FDM which replicates better the size and control of such a large bird, and there is much more work on it to come. The model itself is looking very attractive with a newly modelled fuselage from British user Simon (MOJO), and some nice new reflection coding, lights and external models. It has a 3D cockpit which is currently identical to that of the A320-family in FlightGear (by Skyop and Ampere), as an A340 cockpit is being built from scratch by Skyop himself; This doesn't spoil it as they share 99% of similarities in real life. The aircraft was the first in FlightGear to incorporate aircraft operation equipment, and Cabin announcements; back in 2009.. and now these have been improved with new recordings by the author (Liam, if you're wondering who's voice that is), and work is continuing to make the aircraft one of the most enjoyable heavy metal birds to fly in FlightGear simulator. Thanks to all the users who have helped this slow moving project progress. If you are wondering where you can download this new version.. check out the Aircraft section in the FlightGear forums, where there is a special topic dedicated to it.

Airbus1.png Airbus.png

Liveries

Scenery corner

Seoul

Seoul is an impressive city where modern buildings with amazing design are mixed with the Korean traditional architecture of old buildings. Here are the buildings added this month:

Yeouido island
Gyeongbok Palace
  • Modern buildings
    • Dongbu Finance Building
    • GT Tower East
    • S-Trenue Tower
    • SK T-tower
    • Jongno Tower
    • Seoul World Cup Stadium
  • Old buildings
    • Namdaemun
    • Gyeonghoeru Pavillon
    • Geunjeongjeon
  • Others
    • National Assembly Building

In addition to that, about 150 generic buildings have been added in Yeouido island, one of Seoul's main business districts. It should be available in Terrasync very soon.

Airports

Aircraft of the month

Airport of the month

Screenshot of the month

Winner.jpg
Screenshot which won Contest for the Best Screenshot of 2011 on Polish FlightGear forum.
Congratulations for viper29!

Suggested flights

Aircraft reviews

Wiki updates

New articles

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New aircraft articles

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Most popular newsletters

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Community news

LinuxTag 2011

FlightGear setup at LinuxTag 2011

FlightGear was presented at LinuxTag in Berlin. The FlightGear crew consisted of David Glowsky, Holger Wirtz, Mathias Froehlich, Thorsten Brehm, Torsten Dreyer and Martin Spott.

Our booth worked like a magnet to visitors - thanks to our two flight-simulator setups. A small flight-simulator with 3 TFT displays and standard joystick/pedal controls and a large and impressive setup with 10 (ten!) TFT displays and a custom instrument panel. We certainly had more displays in use than any other booth :-). Photos on what was going on at our booth are available here.

Warranty void if removed!

Unfortunately, one of our five graphics cards in the big setup failed on Wednesday. What has happened? It overheated when it's fan blocked. Ironically, the fan had sucked in a warranty sticker which somehow had peeled off... So, is that covered by warranty? Or is "warranty void if removed"? ;-)

Aside from the sheer number of screens, Torstens's home-glued "Poor Man's Procedure Trainer" was blessed with compliments - and it really deserves this recognition.

People really enjoyed flying at our sims - and we surely attracted some future FlightGear pilots. A few of them were so enthusiastic that they seemed to keep orbiting around our booth all day - waiting for another chance to fly the large sim. :)

When more experienced visitors were flying at our booth, we used our netbooks to secretly telnet into the sim - and cause trouble by triggering specific failures. Flights were hampered by failing instruments, stalled engines or stuck gear (or any combination for really hard cases). Eventually, everyone was properly challenged! ;-) Kudos go to Martin Spott for safely landing a combined single-engine, stuck-gear and full instrument failure emergency in dense fog. He found his way back to the airport anyway. How did he manage? Unfortunately we forgot to fail the DME - and displayed distance obviously was enough information for his navigation...

During LinuxTag RadioTux also asked us to present FlightGear live at their booth. The recording of the interview is available here as a podcast (German).

Finally, we'd like to express a warm "thank you" to those private and commercial sponsors who made this year's booth setup possible by donating money and/or equipment and giving trust into our promise to do "the right thing" with these donations:

  • Local FlightGear-enthusiasts and -developers who had been buying a set of six 24" displays from their private budget in the run-up to one of the former LinuxTag exhibitions.
  • Thomas Krenn AG who have been donating an extremely powerful workstation for use in development and on exhibitions - including four graphics cards - which would have been completely unaffordable from our private budgets.
  • Various FlightGear-enthusiasts and -developers from all over the world who've been donating private money via our PayPal-account at "donations@flightgear.org", which eventually led to ....
  • the oportunity of buying another five 24" displays at an advantageous price thanks to the subsidy of Baastrup GmbH.
  • Finally, Science + Computing AG contributed to the affair by - guess, what - paying the insurance for all this equipment at the booth :).

FlightGear on youtube

  • Heiko created a very nice video of a BK-117 flight around the very nice place of Innsbruck, Austria.

FlightGear on Flickr

New tutorials and screencasts

Forum news

Multiplayer

Virtual airlines

FlightGear events

Useful links

And finally ...

Contributing

One of the regular thoughts expressed on the FlightGear forums is "I'd like to contribute but I don't know how to program, and I don't have the time". Unfortunately, there is a common mis-conception that contributing requires programming and lots of free time. In fact, there are a huge range of ways to contribute to the project without needing to write code or spending days working on something.

For ideas on starting to contribute to FlightGear, you may want to check out: Volunteer.

Call for volunteers

  • The OpenRadar project is looking for a new maintainer.
  • The FGFSPM (FlightGear Package Manager) is looking for a new maintainer.

Did you know