Unique Features

FlightGear...

Community

• is not only a simulator, it is the international community that wants to give everybody the opportunity to feel like a real pilot.
• is fully community driven. Commercial interests have no influence.
• is created, maintained and updated by an international crowd of volunteers that donate their time and work for free.

Freedom

• is published as free software under the GNU General Public License.
• poses as less limits as possible opposed to commercial packages that impose limits trying to seduce to pay for enhancements.
• offers anyone the opportunity to develop the software, to develop the landscape, to create 3D landmarks, to create the 3D model of aircraft, to re-create the flight dynamic of aircraft, to paint aircraft, to create flight instruments and controls, to develop enhancements. You can even create a rocket and place a satellite in orbit around the world.
• can be improved by anybody using free tools.

Realism

• was the first flightsimulator to include a comprehensive celestial simulation. Sun, moon, planets and stars are drawn on the accurate position in the sky with the phases in synchronisation with the selected time and date. The scenery includes lighting on roads and urban areas making night flights as realistic as possible.
• will be the first flightsimulator to include realistic simulation of VHF radio propagation for ATC communications and navaids.
• is the only flightsimulator which includes out of the box AI traffic for most major airlines according to real-life flight schedules, valid between october 2011 - october 2012, and also has tools available to maintain and update the airline/flight database.

Performance and Hardware/Plattform Support

• is not a single platform simulator, it will run on Windows, Linux and Mac, and more! (ok, it won't run on the ZX81 but that is being worked on)
• has a very stable 3D engine that works on high-end gaming machines but also on cheap second-hand machines.
• supports multiple graphics cards, no need for a Matrox Triple.

Included Airplane models, Scenery and Add-ons

• is modular, enhancements are provided by the FlightGear community, to the FlightGear community, for free. We may not have many addons, but that's simply because we try to incorporate as much as possible into the main project. By doing so, you don't have to browse the internet for interesting stuff.
• offers with a single download well over 10 aircraft and most aircraft have several paint-jobs available. If 10 aircraft isn't enough, the community offers well over 400 other aircraft for anyone to download. Above that there is a huge database of liveries for anyone to try out.
• has a built-in downloader that provides you with the latest scenery for the entire world. Every time you visit new places, additional scenery is automatically downloaded, installed and displayed.
• has a worldwide scenery database, collecting objects and models of landmarks, airports and houses.

Flight Dynamics Modeling (FDM)

• features not only one flight dynamics engine, FlightGear contains three (actually more) flight dynamics models with one interface around it.
• provides, with the inclusion of JSBsim, the standard for fluid simulation and is used as such by government and education.

Flexibility, technical features and development opportunities

• models are based on XML files that can be tweaked, adjusted and improved by anyone.
• is flexible in nature, inputs and outputs can be networked (over TCP/IP and UDP) making multi PC configurations easy possible. One master and several slave computers can be configured to display 180 degrees around you with instruments and controls. All the hooks are available to include Real instruments into a virtual cockpit.
• is shipped with a standalone lightweight panel rendering engine to draw 2D panels on a low-cost computer/graphic card without 3D acceleration at reasonable frame rates.

Miscellaneous Features

• cockpits can be manned with a crew, one in Poland and one in Malaysia. They can refuel their aircraft by contacting a tanker that is manned with a crew from Germany and Japan. All on one network, together, live.

Unique Features? -> need to be discussed

• is not (only) for the geek and nerd. The easy single download makes flying possible for pilots that want to lay their hands on the yokes, push the throttle and twist the heading bug, not caring about peek and poke, differentials, iterations and integrals.
• aircraft can be flown alone or within a simulated world including traffic control.