FlightGear Antics
Hereafter mentioned as FG and can be visited at:
http://www.flightgear.org/I decided to use the word antics as to illustrate "playful" with tongue in cheek also as in frolic ;-)
However, back to the simulation. Not much less downloads, I must add, than XP, to start my story. It came to 27mB for the base program, Windows binary and manual. I've decided to download some scenery of Washington State to have the airports WA20(Eatonville Swanson) and 6WA8 (Greenwater Ranger Creek). All that at another 58mB, thus a total of about 84mB.
The latter airport is one of my favourites as it sits in a valley between the mountains. One just can't easily do a "straight in" landing at that airport especially aimed at RWY17! I took off from Swanson and made a fly-over past Ranger Creek, just to check the "new" area under FG. Here I encountered my second surprise with FG, but I'll talk about it a bit later.
First things first then. Accordingly, a brief mention about the flight model. This is where one can really detect that a dedicated flight model, in other words, one sim one model at a time, is quite important. The "general" sim type, trying to cover from the heavies to ultralights just can't be done (of course XP still comes close to be the best). The main aircraft of FG is currently a C172. It has a few "models" one can try (i.e. the flight dynamics model, FDM, and NOT the looks): LaRCsim (by NASA as default), JSB (
http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/), UIUC (University of Illinois, http://amber.aae.uiuc.edu/jscott/sis/) and a hotair balloon, for which I still haven't the foggiest idea how to get it going in FG!In conclusion, any one of these models is awesome. I always thought that X-Plane's modeling of a light aircraft is quite good. However, "we" still need a lot of work there in that department! Even the good ones I consider I have (the Thad models- pardon the expression
J ), is not as convincing as FG does it. Period. (Added, IMHO J ). I will not expand about cockpits and scenery, I've added a few pictures of my landing at Ranger Creek, which is the center of my story that will show you what was done re. gauges, basic but functional. I've opted to use the "mini-transparent" cockpit. Much more can of course be seen at the FG website.Now just a brief interruption of myself as to explain why I air my views in here using FG as soundboard. Firstly, I'm always hunting to see if "the truth is out there" whether XP has the best FDM or not and to see if Austin went astray or not. Secondly, I still really want to see runways that spread over uneven terrain, with some sort of slope, in ANY simulator. This brings my to the last, my second surprise, and that is FG's extreme situation. Well..., I landed there successfully, so I guess it can be done
J in a real situation like that? Maybe...When I approached 6WA8 I saw that I was in trouble.
Mountains all around and in a Cessna with not much power to spare. Straight in line was the Mountain, thus no way to come from that side, over it and then try to nose dive down for an approach, not this pilot! Best was then to "hug" the valleys, find a spot to do a 360 and then gradually turn into final. I will spare you the "gory" details, I executed the approach as planned. Successfully landed:
with an alarming slow deceleration towards the "cliff"-like overhang at the end of the runway! Notice the little "uphill" ahead, which nearly shoved me into the air again. Notice the flap lever at full to the right, I felt saver in this "crunch" with flaps (just in case one had to get out of this again).
However, finally came to a stop, looking rearwards at the downward sloping runway.
X-Plane still, of course, covers the widest range of acceptable aircraft models. FG is definitely where XP started: much more dedicated. People working on it filling in with the much debated eye-candy, but strictly attentive about keeping the FDM at its peak and I think with this it's very successful! I'm thus willing to say, that for each time I start XP, or whatever, to specify what type of FDM to use than select it from within the simulator. Meaning: before the simulation starts it's fully setup with one specific FDM only, totally dedicated to that model, such as my well-beloved Falcon 3/4 range! Lastly, but not least, the much hyped scenery, totally bland in XP and also still not taking care of runway slopes and desert versus forest depiction. I'm sure it can be done, freeware FG-type or commercial XP-type, I've now seen it, I know it can be done. FG is not a nice-to-have, it's falls in my category of a must-have from today on.