FlightGear

FlightGear is a free, open-source, atmospheric and orbital flight simulator used in aerospace research and industry. Its flight dynamics engine (JSBSim) is used in a 2015 NASA benchmark to judge new simulation code to the standards of the space industry.

FlightGear 2020.3 has over 700 aircraft and spacecraft projects in the launcher browser, that can be filtered by advancement level in flight dynamics model (FDM), systems, or art. It's used professionally for research and development, as well as non-professionally.

FlightGear has a terrain-driven weather simulation, as well as other weather engines. That is, it's not just limited to "live" service weather modes like METAR that lock you into the current/common weather for the time/season at a location - during the limited times of day you have free to fly. It also isn't limited by the fact that "live" weather observations happen at intervals - and observations can't be everywhere, at all heights, covering small scale, unpredictable, weather experienced by aircraft.

FlightGear 2020.3.7 and later has 3d models of buildings, roads, entire cities etc. , based on Open StreetMap (OSM) data and automatic generation, for the whole planet.

In addition, a broad overview of FlightGear features includes a multiplayer environment, a flexible and open aircraft modelling system, varied networking and interfacing options, multiple display support, a powerful scripting language, multiple flight dynamics engines, multiple rendering pipelines for different generation hardware, detailed weather visualisation with ALS renderer, and other features suited for settings in research, industry, DiY projects, and desktop simulation, combined with an open architecture.

FlightGear supports a variety of popular platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux etc.), compiles on ARM (embedded) processors for research or DiY settings (including Raspberry Pi), and is developed by skilled volunteers from around the world.

The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated and open flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, pilot training, as an industry engineering tool, for DIY-ers to pursue their favorite interesting flight simulation idea, and last but certainly not least as a fun, realistic, and challenging desktop flight simulator. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing.

FlightGear is a free flight simulator project. It is being developed through the gracious contributions of source code and spare time by many talented people from around the globe. Among the many goals of this project are the quest to minimize short cuts and "do things right", the quest to learn and advance knowledge, and the quest to have better toys to play with.

FlightGear and its source code have intentionally been kept open, available, and free under the GPL license.

History

FlightGear started as an online proposal in 1996 by David Murr, living in the United States. He was dissatisfied with proprietary, available, simulators citing motivations of companies not aligning with the simulators' users, and proposed a new flight simulator developed by volunteers over the Internet. Development of an OpenGL based version was spearheaded by Curtis Olson starting in 1997. FlightGear incorporated other open-source resources, including the LaRCsim flight dynamics engine from NASA, and freely available elevation data. The first working binaries using OpenGL came out in 1997. By 1999 FlightGear had replaced LaRCsim with JSBSim built to the sims' needs, and in 2015 NASA used JSBSim alongside 6 other space industry standards to create a measuring stick to judge future space industry simulation code.

Being opensource, FlightGear has historically received development from the science and engineering community. Many contributors have had an academic background in engineering, maths, physics, or computer-science - in addition to some involvement or interest in aviation like being pilots (hobby, professional, test pilots, or retired). This is true especially among long-term contributors, and the academic insight has shaped the project's simulation standards.

The FlightGear project has been used in a range of projects in research and industry, including by NASA for both Earth and Mars conditions (e.g. in ARES glider design for Mars). It has been used as a research and development platform by various agencies and universities, including use in full-motion research simulators like at the University of Naples. FlightGear has also been used for teaching - for example, pilot and ATC training, including in FAA certified simulators, as well as for general education by museums etc.

The FlightGear project has been nominated by SourceForge, and subsequently chosen as project of the month by the community, in 2015, 2017, and 2019.

There are many exciting possibilities for an open, free flight sim. It is hoped that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas.