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How realistic is FlightGear aircraft and environment? How can I get the most realism out of the FlightGear environment?
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Many newcomers may wonder just how realistic [[FlightGear]]'s [[aircraft]] and environment are. Many novices may wonder what is needed to get more realism and immersion from the FlightGear environment.


== Aircraft ==
== Aircraft ==


Todo: instruments
[[File:DR400_Dauphin_Rembrandt_02.jpg|800px|center|The [[DR400|DR400 Dauphin]].]]
 
== Flight ==


Todo: qualities of flight models
The underlying instrumentation models are very accurate, with many physical effects accounted for.


== Environment ==
* The heading indicator has a small delay when it is slewing to the desired heading.
* The artificial horizon can tumble.
* The magnetic compass will rotate in all three axes and get stuck if the aircraft is tilted.
* The altimeter uses air pressure to determine altitude; if the sea level air pressure is set incorrectly, it will display the wrong altitude as in real life.
* All of the instruments that need engine power in real life are tied to the virtual engine; if the engine is not running, all vacuum-powered instruments (such as the artificial horizon and the heading indicator) will not function properly.
* Some aircraft feature accurate electrical systems with batteries that will drain over time and instruments that need electricity.


=== Extensive and Accurate World Scenery Data Base ===
Many aircraft have quite complete cockpits; several effects make cockpits look much better, including ALS shadows.
== Flight dynamics ==


* Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full scenery set.
Since FlightGear uses many [[FDM|flight dynamics models]] under the hood, including [[YASim]] and [[JSBSim]], the realism of an aircraft depends on its FDM. Both of these support winds and turbulence; YASim generally has more realistic ground interactions with different surfaces, while JSBSim FDMs are generally truer to the real-life aircraft. It's important to note that both of these can produce similar results if the FDM is worked on enough.
* Correct runway markings and placement, correct runway and approach lighting.
* Taxiways available for many larger airports (even including the green center line lights when appropriate.)
* Sloping runways (runways change elevation like they usually do in real life.)
* Directional airport lighting that smoothly changes intensity as your relative view direction changes.
* World scenery fits on 3 DVD's. (I'm not sure that's a feature or a problem!) But it means we have pretty detailed coverage of the entire world.
* Accurate terrain worldwide, based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data.) 3 arc second resolution (about 90m post spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
* Scenery includes all vmap0 lakes, rivers, roads, railroads, cities, towns, land cover, etc.
* Nice scenery night lighting with ground lighting concentrated in urban areas (based on real maps) and headlights visible on major highways. This allows for realistic night VFR flying with the ability to spot towns and cities and follow roads.
* Scenery tiles are paged (loaded/unloaded) in a separate thread to minimize the frame rate hit when you need to load new areas.


== Scenery==


Real world tower registration data was used to locate towers in the United States. The data was sourced from the United States Federal Communications Comission tower registration database.
<gallery mode="packed">
File:Southwest04.jpg
File:Kansas_Scenery_Two.jpg
</gallery>
* Many buildings, landmarks, windmills, chimneys, pylons, and skyscrspers represented where appropriate
* Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full [[scenery]] set. The recent world scenery version 2 brought many major improvements, including more detailed heightmaps and man-made features such as roads, rivers, and train tracks.
* Correct runway markings including skid marks, runway lighting, and approach lighting.
* Detailed taxiways available for many airports.
* Sloping runways.
* Airport beacon lights with rotating beacons.
* Accurate worldwide terrain based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data. 3 arc second resolution (about 90m spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. United States used the more accurate 1 arc second (30m) data.
* Roads, rivers, and train tracks.
* Realistic night lighting with lit urban areas and headlights on roads.


Thousands of objects have been added through the [FlightGear Scenery Database http://fgfsdb.stockill.org/].
Real world tower registration data was used to locate towers in the United States. The data was sourced from the United States Federal Communications Commission tower registration database.


* 2700+ obstructions added for France (not sure of the source for this obstruction data)
Over one million objects have been added to the [http://scenemodels.flightgear.org/ FlightGear Scenery Database].


Todo: what are the sources for scenery database? The FAA obstructions data may have been used to populate the scenery database, but I am not sure.
To download scenery for the entire world as you fly over it, open the File > Scenery Download menu and check "Enable automatic download/update".


== Weather ==
== Weather ==


Todo: weather
[[File:Local_weather_1.00_06.jpg|center|[[Advanced weather]].|800px]]
 
FlightGear can periodically download weather (METAR) data. This information is used to influence the environment.
 
As of FG 0.9.10, for the current METAR station, FG models:
 
* Visibility for the rendered visual environment is set equal to the current METAR visibility. If the current METAR reports 10 statute mile visibility, the rendered visibility is 10 statute miles.
 
* If the METAR reports rain, FlightGear renders rain (precipitation).
 
* If METAR reports a thunderstorm, lightning is rendered and thunder produced through the audio system.
 
* FG appears to honor METAR dewpoint, "altimeter" or air pressure and reported sea level air pressure. It honors wing direction, speed and gust speed.
 
'''Notes'''
 
* Precipitation is modeled, but the graphics require improvement. Sufficient only to indicate rain.
 
* Lightning is present when a thunderstorm is near, the graphics are a fair representation, but also require improvement.
 
* The METAR weather fetch, parsing and rendering process causes momentary reductions in the simulator's frame rates.
 
* The METAR wind updates are applied without any smoothing, which can cause an aircraft yaw response, sometimes described as a "rudder kick".
 
References
 
If you want to prove the relationship between FG and METAR, you can open the property browser. Monitor
 
/environment/metar/max-visibility-m == 9656m
and
/environment/visibility-m == 9656m
 
The values should be the same. When you press Z/z on the keyboard, you should see the second value change, showing this value controls the rendered visibility.
 
You can do the same for cloud layers. For example METAR code SCT 10 translates to coverage: scattered, elevation: 10039 and FG automatically sets thickness and transition for the layer.
 
== Visuals ==
 
Settings for maximum visual experience and rendering quality.
 
FlightGear command options:
 
--enable-horizon-effect
--enable-clouds3d
--enable-specular-highlight (enabled by default)
--enable-real-weather-fetch
--shading-smooth (default)
--enable-skyblend (default)
--enable-textures (default)
--enable-real-weather-fetch
 
Sky Blend
 
This rendering option enables "fog" and haze in the distance. "sky and terrain look realistic"
 
Smooth Shading
 
Smooths shading.
 
Textures
 
Terrain texturing.
 
Volumetric (3D) Clouds


This renders clouds with three-dimensional realism.
With [[Advanced weather]], cloud patterns and winds will change throughout the day. With [[atmospheric light scattering]] enabled, fog and clouds are more realistic, and lighting changes throughout the day and during overcast periods. Advanced weather can be driven with live [[METAR]] data or manually configured for specific weather scenarios.


Geometry/Resolution
Enable advanced weather in the Environment > Weather dialog.


This is the resolution the FlightGear window is rendered in. The higher the resolution, the greater the detail.
<gallery mode="packed">
File:Cloud patterns with ALS lighting.png|Advanced weather creates realistic cloud patterns that mimic the real world weather
File:Moist air and haze seen from a Boeing 707 cockpit.png|Haze and dust particles with realistic blue color in distance
File:Morning flight.jpg|Few remaining clouds in morning sunlight, looks like it will be a nice flying day!
</gallery>


640x480 blocky and lacking in detail
== Rendering ==
800x600
1024x768
...
1600 x 1200 very fine detail
and up


Use anti-aliasing if you video card supports and your system can handle the extra load.
[[Atmospheric light scattering]], or ALS, features a realistic skydome and properly lit terrain, in addition to detailed terrain texturing and trees swaying in the wind. With advanced weather enabled as well, cloud shadows and volumetric fog are also fully supported. It can be enabled via the View > Rendering Options menu. Be sure to check out the quality slider, and if you're adventurous, enable custom settings.


Real Weather (METAR)
[[Rembrandt]] is FlightGear's shadow and lighting engine; with Rembrandt enabled, realistic shadows and lighting are possible. Note that not all aircraft support Rembrandt yet. In addition, it's not possible to use Rembrandt in conjunction with ALS. Rembrant is enabled with the <tt>--enable-rembrandt</tt> [[Command line options|command line option]].


This downloads current real world weather data into FlightGear from the nearest weather station (METAR report). The data is used to influence the environment. The cloud cover specified in the METAR report will be rendered.
== Sky ==


Time
<gallery mode="packed">
File:Southwest09.jpg
File:Water-sky01.jpg
File:Rayleigh_blue.jpg
File:Tree02.jpg
</gallery>


Set the current time for your location. If it's dark in San Francisco, it will be dark in the sim.


Yoke and Rudder Pedals
FlightGear's night sky features accurate placement and lighting of stars, planets, and the moon.


Rudder pedals add to realistic operation and make it much easier to accurately use the rudder over a twist stick. The yoke is less necessary, but can add to realism.
Atmospheric light scattering features accurate lighting of the sky and terrain; in addition, oceans and rivers are realistically shaded with ripples and sun reflections. Rayleigh scattering of distant terrain is supported, tinting the ground blue or red depending on the sun angle. With random trees, tree shadows are available; experimental aircraft ground shadows are also available.


The sun is quite realisticslly textured in the sky, and has such effects as sun dogs and rings.


=== Accurate and Detailed Sky Model ===
== Properties ==


FlightGear implements extremely accurate time of day modeling with correctly placed sun, moon, stars, and planets for the specified time and date. FlightGear can track the current computer clock time in order to correctly place the sun, moon, stars, etc. in their current and proper place relative to the earth. If it's dawn in Sydney right now, it's dawn in the sim right now when you locate yourself in virtual Sydney. The sun, moon, stars, and planets all follow their correct courses through the sky. This modeling also correctly takes into account seasonal effects so you have 24 hour days north of the arctic circle in the summer, etc. We also illuminate the correctly placed moon with the correctly placed sun to get the correct phase of the moon for the current time/date, just like in real life.
James Turner at one point started creating some properties under /sim/realism (mostly booleans for the moment), with the expectation that at some point we could create a GUI, and also use some Nasal to batch-configure the individual settings for different applications - flight trainer, game mode, kiosk, etc, etc. He remarked that he would be happy to add a /sim/realism/start-parked and /sim/realism/start-dark (though the latter involves aircraft designer help to hook the optional autostart functions of each aircraft). One concern relsting to this matter is touching the dreaded position init code, which is already baroque and complex. There's also the question of guessing a parking position when we don't have parking stand data - eg picking a point some distance away from the runway centerline (runway width * 5, maybe?), level with the threshold - but like all heuristics, this one has problems.
<ref>{{cite web
  | url    = http://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/mailman/message/24944091/
  | title  = <nowiki>Re: [Flightgear-devel] Issue with default starting scenario</nowiki>
  | author = <nowiki>James Turner</nowiki>
  | date   = Apr 6th, 2010
  | added  = Apr 6th, 2010
  | script_version = 0.25
  }}

Latest revision as of 01:08, 24 March 2016

Cleanup.png This article may require cleanup to meet the quality standards of the wiki. Please improve this article if you can.

Many newcomers may wonder just how realistic FlightGear's aircraft and environment are. Many novices may wonder what is needed to get more realism and immersion from the FlightGear environment.

Aircraft

The DR400 Dauphin.

The underlying instrumentation models are very accurate, with many physical effects accounted for.

  • The heading indicator has a small delay when it is slewing to the desired heading.
  • The artificial horizon can tumble.
  • The magnetic compass will rotate in all three axes and get stuck if the aircraft is tilted.
  • The altimeter uses air pressure to determine altitude; if the sea level air pressure is set incorrectly, it will display the wrong altitude as in real life.
  • All of the instruments that need engine power in real life are tied to the virtual engine; if the engine is not running, all vacuum-powered instruments (such as the artificial horizon and the heading indicator) will not function properly.
  • Some aircraft feature accurate electrical systems with batteries that will drain over time and instruments that need electricity.

Many aircraft have quite complete cockpits; several effects make cockpits look much better, including ALS shadows.

Flight dynamics

Since FlightGear uses many flight dynamics models under the hood, including YASim and JSBSim, the realism of an aircraft depends on its FDM. Both of these support winds and turbulence; YASim generally has more realistic ground interactions with different surfaces, while JSBSim FDMs are generally truer to the real-life aircraft. It's important to note that both of these can produce similar results if the FDM is worked on enough.

Scenery

  • Many buildings, landmarks, windmills, chimneys, pylons, and skyscrspers represented where appropriate
  • Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full scenery set. The recent world scenery version 2 brought many major improvements, including more detailed heightmaps and man-made features such as roads, rivers, and train tracks.
  • Correct runway markings including skid marks, runway lighting, and approach lighting.
  • Detailed taxiways available for many airports.
  • Sloping runways.
  • Airport beacon lights with rotating beacons.
  • Accurate worldwide terrain based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data. 3 arc second resolution (about 90m spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. United States used the more accurate 1 arc second (30m) data.
  • Roads, rivers, and train tracks.
  • Realistic night lighting with lit urban areas and headlights on roads.

Real world tower registration data was used to locate towers in the United States. The data was sourced from the United States Federal Communications Commission tower registration database.

Over one million objects have been added to the FlightGear Scenery Database.

To download scenery for the entire world as you fly over it, open the File > Scenery Download menu and check "Enable automatic download/update".

Weather

Advanced weather.

With Advanced weather, cloud patterns and winds will change throughout the day. With atmospheric light scattering enabled, fog and clouds are more realistic, and lighting changes throughout the day and during overcast periods. Advanced weather can be driven with live METAR data or manually configured for specific weather scenarios.

Enable advanced weather in the Environment > Weather dialog.

Rendering

Atmospheric light scattering, or ALS, features a realistic skydome and properly lit terrain, in addition to detailed terrain texturing and trees swaying in the wind. With advanced weather enabled as well, cloud shadows and volumetric fog are also fully supported. It can be enabled via the View > Rendering Options menu. Be sure to check out the quality slider, and if you're adventurous, enable custom settings.

Rembrandt is FlightGear's shadow and lighting engine; with Rembrandt enabled, realistic shadows and lighting are possible. Note that not all aircraft support Rembrandt yet. In addition, it's not possible to use Rembrandt in conjunction with ALS. Rembrant is enabled with the --enable-rembrandt command line option.

Sky


FlightGear's night sky features accurate placement and lighting of stars, planets, and the moon.

Atmospheric light scattering features accurate lighting of the sky and terrain; in addition, oceans and rivers are realistically shaded with ripples and sun reflections. Rayleigh scattering of distant terrain is supported, tinting the ground blue or red depending on the sun angle. With random trees, tree shadows are available; experimental aircraft ground shadows are also available.

The sun is quite realisticslly textured in the sky, and has such effects as sun dogs and rings.

Properties

James Turner at one point started creating some properties under /sim/realism (mostly booleans for the moment), with the expectation that at some point we could create a GUI, and also use some Nasal to batch-configure the individual settings for different applications - flight trainer, game mode, kiosk, etc, etc. He remarked that he would be happy to add a /sim/realism/start-parked and /sim/realism/start-dark (though the latter involves aircraft designer help to hook the optional autostart functions of each aircraft). One concern relsting to this matter is touching the dreaded position init code, which is already baroque and complex. There's also the question of guessing a parking position when we don't have parking stand data - eg picking a point some distance away from the runway centerline (runway width * 5, maybe?), level with the threshold - but like all heuristics, this one has problems. <ref>James Turner (Apr 6th, 2010). Re: [Flightgear-devel] Issue with default starting scenario.