Howto:Install scenery

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Terrain

You can download World Scenery 1.0 terrain from the FlightGear site : http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/scenery-1.0.0.html

To install the scenery just extract (uncompress) the tar.gz archive file in the $FG_ROOT/scenery directory (under Win32, using a tool such as for example izArc), preserving all directory structures in the file. The scenery will be installed automatically. You can use fgadmin to uninstall added scenery.

There is also a 4 DVD set available for download via bittorent, which can be a higher performance option for those wanting to download the entire world: http://www.torrentbox.com/download/59050/FlightGear_4_DVD_Disk-set.torrent

Installing Scenery

In your FG_ROOT directory you would find the following directores

./Translations
./Protocol
./Textures
./Timezone
./Airports
./gui
./Aircraft-uiuc
./Scenery
./Traffic
...

The Scenery directory will show the following:- (Scenery is shown for completeness and for easy reference to above)

 Scenery/
     w130n30/
     Terrain/
     Objects/

If you download a scenery module called w90n40.tgz from [flightgear.org] then it will resemble something like the following:-

Scenery/
    '''w09n40/'''
    w130n30/
    Terrain/
    Objects/

Note the extra directory in bold.

TODO : Windows decompression help.

Objects

Objects and models can be found at the FlightGear Scenery Objects Database

Objects are really part of the scenery and can be found in the Scenery directory under $FG_ROOT.

Scenery/
    Objects/
        w130n30/

Any objects should be installed under the Scenery/Objects directory

Technical

Scenery for FlightGear is determined by looking at the environment variable $FG_SCENERY. Should the paths in $FG_SCENERY not be valid, FlightGear falls back to $FG_ROOT/scenery.

Mixing scenery types is almost universally a bad idea, and is unsupported. In this connection you should note that the scenery packaged with the base package/windows installer may not be the latest scenery.

For this reason it's probably better to extract scenery files you've downloaded into a new folder, which we'll call, for the sake of this exercise, $FOOBAR/Scenery In this directory, create two subdirectories . /Objects and /Terrain. You should untar individual files into the /Terrain folder.

Then you should set up $FG_SCENERY to use the new path: On POSIX Clients set FG_SCENERY="$FOOBAR/Scenery" + FG_SCENERY On Windows (fgrun) Go back to the first page of fgrun, and add the $FOOBAR/Scenery folder to the list.

Downloading From Mirrors

A list of mirrors can be found here: http://www.flightgear.org/mirrors.html#ftp
On most of the mirrors, the latest scenery can be found under "Scenery-1.0.0/"
Downloading from mirrors is often better than the official site, because mirrors are sometimes faster and have more user capacity. Use the graphical interface ( http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/scenery-1.0.0.html ) and use the link locations to find the appropriate chunk.
Be careful about confusing N with S, and E with W!!
Here is how to find an airport's co-ordinates:

  • Go to the Wikipedia page for the airport in question (for example, PHNL for Honolulu)
  • Find the co-ordinates (often at the top or right and side, marked with a small globe)
  • e.g. PHNL is in 21 N 157 W. If it's in the western hemisphere, you should round it up... so you should find the block with W160N20 If the co-ords were 21 N 157 E, you would round it down.. meaning that this location would be E150N20.

TerraSync

TerraSync is a utility that automatically downloads needed FlightGear scenery while the simulator is running.

It is recommended to use a separate scenery directory for TerraSync (that is do not run it on your main scenery directory).

Usage example (for POSIX compliant command shell):

Start terrasync:

% nice terrasync -p 5500 -d /tmp/fgfsScenery

Start FlightGear:

% fgfs --atlas=socket,out,1,localhost,5500,udp --fg-scenery=$FG_ROOT/Scenery/:/tmp/fgfsScenery

The full documentation and source for TerraSync is located in the FlighGear source distribution (in utils/TerraSync/).

TODO: More info

See also