Flight Simulator Information

UAV Flight Simulator

03-December-1999: Due to demise of Fahrenheit, I'm giving up for now on converting to Direct3D(I'm beginning to hate Microsoft). Bought TNT2-based Diamond Viper V770 card. Will concentrate on Linux/OpenGL now. Waiting for Xfree86 4.0, as I'm too lazy(don't have the time,really) to try to cobble something together to support the Viper770 card. SGI has released free Linux-based Performer(screw you Microsoft!)

July-1999: I have produced an alpha version of an OpenGL PC/Windows-based UAV(Unmanned Air Vehicle) flight simulator, and am converting it to Direct3D(and eventually to Farhenheit and Java3D).
Select the following to download the OpenGL sim executable zip package: sim.zip
It requires an accelerated 3D Graphics board, and has been tested on AMD K6-2 350Mhz & Celeron 333Mhz systems running 3dFX voodoo II boards.
Make sure you get the OPENGL32.DLL driver for the 3dFX card too - I've included one here: opengl32.zip
Put it in the /WINDOWS/SYSTEM directory.

Download the README.TXT file for more info: readme.txt

GLUT

I downloaded and installed the GLUT32 library and DLL for Win32. I was able to build and run all of the demos on my now non-accelerated 333Mhz K6-2 with MS Visual C++ version 5.0. I'm particularly interested in doing text output to the screen, and there were two or three demos where text was output to the screen. I need to check the source to see if GLUT was being used to do the text output(my guess is no - and that these are just converted OpenGL demos doing bitmapped text output). Also, none of these demos looks particularly promising to be used as a basis for a flight simulator.

DirectX SDK 6.1

I downloaded and installed the DirectX 6.1 SDK on my non-accelerated Pentium 100, and 3dFX-accelerated Celeron333. I was able to build and run all of the Direct3D Retained-mode demos using Visual C++ version 6.0. The flyfs(fs stands for full screen) demo looks like a good candidate for a basis for a flight simulator - and it already has text output showing frames per second. I get an average of 15fps on the Pentium100 and 57fps on the Celeron333/3dFX machine. Make sure you read the readme file for tips on compiling(you have to add in the Direct3D libraries and include files in the search path for Visual C).

Flight Gear Flight Simulator

I've almost completed building for the PC/Windows, using version b20.1 of the Cygnus GNU C compiler. I had run into a problem with a missing gpc library. Recommendations on the FlightGear Deleloper mail server suggest removing the tools libraries from the main makefile.

I downloaded the executable separately on my Pentium100 & Celeron333/3dFX systems. On the non-accelerated Pentium100, it crashes within 1 second after initialization completes(this is my computer at work, and it has got to go! -the good news is, by the time they get around to getting me my new computer, I'll get a Pentium III!). On the Celeron333/3dFX it runs fine, giving about 16fps with the heads-up display engaged. Don't understand how to use the Menus(it isn't intuitive, guess I'll just have to read the manual). Was able to take off(who can't?) - will need the manual to land.

Flight Simulator Links

GNU GPL Free Flight Simulator Home Page

AV Simulator Online

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