Howto:Install aircraft

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Revision as of 15:09, 18 April 2016 by Jaxsin (talk | contribs) (updated with Git info for renaming the folder so FG will work as expected)
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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. Alternatively if you are using the nightly builds or a version controlled copy of FlightGear, or you wish to manage your aircraft collection using version control tools, the aircraft can be obtained directly from the official FlightGear aircraft repository - FGAddon.

Installation process

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/. For example, use /home/{YourUserName}/FlightGear/Aircraft.
  3. Extract your aircraft file into the folder (the one you created above)
    unzip XXXXX.zip
  4. Start up FlightGear. Append the root aircraft folder (/home/{YourUserName}/FlightGear/Aircraft in our example) 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

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  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, for example the open source file archiver 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 (C:\Users\{YourUserName}\Documents\FlightGear\Aircraft in our example) 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.

When installing an aircraft fails

XML files with wrong encoding

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'

Rename Aircraft Folder

If you start FlightGear with the aircraft you installed it is invisible or if FlightGear will not start with your newly installed aircraft, but will start with other aircraft you might need to rename the aircraft folder.

If there is a readme file have a look there for instructions, otherwise try change to more obvious names like renaming for example "A320-master" to "A320" or "boeing-707" to "707". If that does not work ask around on the multiplayer chat, IRC or on the forum.

Installing From Git Repo

If you have downloaded a *.zip file of an aircraft from github or other online repository you must rename the extracted folder name and remove the -[branch] tag. The folder name must correspond to the [/b]<aircraft>[/b]-set.xml file contained inside of the extracted folder. This is something that git automatically does when you download a zip file. The better way would be to learn and use git

$ git clone http://repo.address/here.git

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.

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.

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