FlightGear Newsletter January 2010: Difference between revisions

===FGComGui, an interface to FGCOM===

[[FGCOM]] is an external program which works hands in hands with FlightGear to provide radio communication, in particular for multiplayer users.

The feedback on various forums and [[IRC]] shows that a lot of people, who are not specially at ease with command line usage, find it difficult to setup and launch FGCom. This is where a new little piece of code comes to rescue.

Tuxklok created [http://code.google.com/p/fgcomgui FGComGui], a simple graphical user interace front end to fgcom, which aims on making FGCOM easy and friendly in use.

The FGComGui is currently developed and tested under Windows and Linux environments, but it seems a Mac version is to be expected.

[[File:fgcomgui.png|thumb|left|200px]]

Once installed, the FGComGui does just what you would expect. Using your mouse and a few clicks, you can drive FGCOM painless, from initial setup, testing, to normal usage. You can even set a few options with nice menus, notably the audio volumes and the port used to talk to fgcom.

FgcomGui docks as a tray icon (see the screenshot on the left), making it possible to monitor its status while flying, and easily stop it or restart it if needed.

So if you feel FGCOM is a bit difficult to use from command line, or you are just willing an easier FG pilot life, do not wait anymore and [http://code.google.com/p/fgcomgui try it]! Installation is described on the author's [http://code.google.com/p/fgcomgui/ Google Code page], but it can be worth mentionning that so far the linux build is only optimized for Ubuntu users. Other distribution users can take a look at [http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5746&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=24ffbc024ff4c0379fb8b0515aaa4a00&start=135 this forum] for some hints about how to build in their environment.