Howto:Install aircraft

From FlightGear wiki
Revision as of 17:59, 17 August 2014 by Gijs (talk | contribs) (Update the instructions to mention $FG_AIRCRAFT)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The latest official aircraft can be downloaded at FlightGear.org Aircraft, which then usually require unzipping software to extract from a compressed file format. Then these must be manually installed in a FlightGear software installation to use. The details depend on the method of download, operating system, and user setup.

An open source file archiver is 7-Zip, although be aware of user setup.

Linux

(Ubuntu 12.04)

  1. Download the aircraft
  2. Create a directory to store your aircraft if you have not already done so. Make sure this directory is outside /usr/share/games/flightgear/
  3. Extract your aircraft file into the folder
    unzip XXXXX.zip
  4. Start up FlightGear. Append the root aircraft folder to the $FG_AIRCRAFT list on the first page (previous to aircraft selection) of the launcher. Your aircraft should now show up in the list.

Macintosh OS X

  1. Open GUI Launcher for FlightGear Mac
  2. Click on "Others" tab at middle right of launcher
  3. Click "Install Add-On Data" link at bottom of launcher
  4. Select aircraft folder from menu, and click "Open"
  5. Click OK on pop-up box.

Please note: For Mac users, the above will not work if you have not installed FG to the applications folder. If you do not want to put your version of FG in your applications folder, you can place it in a separate folder of your own creation. That will allow the above aircraft (& scenery) installation method to work correctly/

Windows

  1. Download an aircraft and save it on your desktop.
  2. Unzip the file, using a file archiver like 7-Zip.
  3. Create a directory to store your aircraft if you have not already done so. Make sure this directory is outside your $FG_ROOT directory. For example, use C:/Users/{YourUserName}/Documents/FlightGear/Aircraft.
  4. Move the unzipped folder (usually the aircraft's name) to your that aircraft directory.
  5. Start up FlightGear. Append the root aircraft folder to the $FG_AIRCRAFT list on the first page (previous to aircraft selection) of the launcher. Your aircraft should now show up in the list.

Choosing aircraft

If you are looking for information to decide what aircraft to download, try:

External links to third party aircraft can be found at FlightGear hangars. Remember that the latest aircraft may not load with previous versions. If you happen to use an older version of FlightGear, look for older aircraft in the links section.

Invisible model

If you start FlightGear with the new plane you installed and there is no cockpit or exterior, this may be because the XML files are in the wrong encoding.

To fix this on linux try this:

$ cd path/to/aircraft/directory/
$ find . -name "*.xml" -print | xargs sed -i 's/<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>/<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>/g'

For developers

Help develop the FlightGear Package Manager which is intended to support automatic aircraft and scenery installation, currently in alpha development and in need of testing.

Related content