This page illustrates how to use FlightGear Mac OS X 1.0.0 through r150, especially the use of the launcher. See Users Guide for the latest launcher and Users Guide for 0.9.10 for 0.9.10.
Installing FlightGear
Installing FlightGear is as easy as other Mac applications.
- Download the disk image file of the dmg file from Downloads page (should be FlightGear-1.0.0-r150.dmg or something like that)
- Mount the disk image file by double-clicking it (Safari may automatically do it).
- Copy the FlightGear icon from the mounted disk to the Applications folder.
Note
You MUST install FlightGear by copying FlightGear icon from the mounted disk into /Applications folder. Launching FlightGear from the mounted disk is no good since it doesn't allow you to add new aircraft / downloaded scenery data
Using FlightGear Mac OS X
Launching FlightGear Mac OS X
Launch FlightGear by double-clicking its icon at the Applications folder, and the window of the launcher shows up (Figure 1)
Selecting an aircraft and an airport
At the launcher window, you can select an aircraft and an airport. The thumbnail image of a selected aircraft will be shown at the image panel on the window. The airport that you select here will be the starting point of your flight. FlightGear uses ICAO 4-letter airport codes, which is composed with one or two prefix letters followed by two or three airport code. For example, the ICAO code for San Francisco International Airport is KSFO. “K” in this case shows The United States, and SFO is the airport code for San Francisco International Airport. You can use "Advanced features" >> "Position" tab to find an airport. You can also find ICAO airport codes from Air code database search.
Enabling on-the-fly scenery downloading
By checking "Download scenery on the fly" at the launcher window, you can download scenery while you're flying through the network. Keep it checked if you're not sure.
Launching FlightGear - the simulator
Clicking "Start Flight" button at the window opens up another window - the FlightGear main window (Figure 2). FlightGear immediately starts loading tons of data required for simulation. It may take a while on slower machines to load everything.
Using advanced features of FlightGear
FlightGear has many features and options that you can specify at the time you launch it. Some of these are not changeable from the menu in the FlightGear main window. To enable / disable these features, click the triangle-shaped button at the left-bottom of the launcher window. Then the advanced features tabs come up (Figure 3). All option values are saved so you don't have to specify these every time.
Note
Not all availabe options are implemented on the launcher. We selected the options by the follwoing criteria:
- command-line options that you cannot change from the menu on the FlightGear window
- frequently used options
If you have any suggestion on adding options to the launcher, please leave your comment.
General
There are some options available at this moment as shown in Figure 3.
- Save preferences on exit
- lets FlightGear save preferences that you changed from the menu in the FlightGear (fgfs) main window will be saved to $HOME/.fgfs/autosave.xml
- Control
- specifies the control device you will use in FlightGear. "auto," "joystick," "mouse," and "keyboard" are available. You can leave it as "auto" unless you really want to change it manually.
- Unit
- specifies the unit used in FlightGear. "feet" and "meters" are available.
- Time of day
- specifies the time of day. Available options are real, dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, evening, and midnight.
Features
- Sound
- Disabling this will cut all the sound in FlightGear.
- Instrumental panel
- specifies if 2D panel is drawn from the beginning. You can also enable/disable the 2D panel from FlightGear menu
- Random objects
- specifies whether FlightGear draws random objects or not
- Clock never advances
- specifies whether the clock advances in FlightGear or not
- No fuel consumption
- makes aircraft consume no fuel while it's flying
- Start in a frozen state
- starts FlightGear with frozen state. it doesn’t seem working at this moment.
- Display HUD
- displays HUD at the beginning, I guess. You can turn HUD on/off by pressing 'h' while you are flying.
- 3D HUD
- enables 3D HUD if an selected aircraft supports it
Rendering
- Fullscreen mode
- Enabling this will launch FlightGear as full-screen mode
- Window size
- specifies the size of FlightGear window. It will be ignored when full-screen mode is enabled
- Sky blending
- enables or disables FlightGear to blend the sky depending on time and surrounding environment. DO NOT disable this option, or FlightGear crashes.
- Textures
- enables or disables textures on runways, buildings, and scenery objects. Disabling this will give you some more fps, effective especially on G4 Macs.
- Wireframe
- lets FlightGear draw wire-frames so you can see how the world of FlightGear is drawn. This should be enabled only for debug / development purpose.
- Fog
- specifies how fog is drawn. "disable," "fastest, "nicest" are available.
- Shading
Position
You can find airports or aircraft carriers by searching with a keyword into the filter text area. Available keywords are:
- For airports
- airport name
- country name
- location name (such as city; if available)
- IATA code (such as SFO, LAX, HND)
- ICAO code (such as KSFO, KLAX, RJTT)
- For aircraft carriers
- carrier name (nimitz or eisenhower)
- "carrier"
Airports and carriers that match the keyword are shown at the table view below the filter text area. The airport pop-up button at the upper pane is synchronized with the currently selected airport or carrier. when you select an airport or carrier from either the pop-up button or the table view, another is changed automatically.
Choosing a runway
When you choose an airport, available runways are shown at the "runways" pop-up button. You can choose a runway or leave it as "default".
Network
- Enable Multiplay
- enables or disables multi-player mode. Enabling this will open a new browser window to show the map on a multi player server.
- CallSign
- specifies the name shown in the map. Username must contain only alphabet letters, numbers, underscores, and dots. FlightGear will exit when you specify a call sign with invalid characters. A user name with 8 or more characters will be truncated into the first 7 characters.
- Server
- specifies the server to connect. mpserver02.flightgear.org are available at the time of writing this.
- Your Mac
- specifies your Mac's IP address. Usually the launcher detects the address automatically.
- Port
- should be 5000. Note: CallSign and IP address are ignored unless "Enable Multiplay" is checked.
Others
You can specify any options other than aircraft, airport, and the options shown in the launcher. Entering space-separated options as shown in Figure 7 will pass additional options to FlightGear. You can see all available options by pressing "View Options.'' Some options might cause FlightGear crash. If you encounter such crashes with a specific option, please let us know.
To install additional aircraft and scenery data, press "Install Add-on Data." You can specify multiple files and/or folders to install to the FlightGear data folder. Acceptable file types are:
- zip
- tar
- tar.gz
- tar.bz2
- folder
You will see the message window when all the data are successfully installed, otherwise error message will show up. You can select both aircraft and scenery data at a time. If you select an archived file that does not contain aircraft files, it will be extracted into the data folder, but will be ignored. When you finish installing new aircraft, restart FlightGear.app and these aircraft will appear on the list.
Resetting to default options
You can trash $HOME/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.macflightgear.plist to restore the default option values.