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.

There are many exciting possibilities for an open, free flight sim. We hope that this project will be interesting and useful to many people in many areas. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Features

  • Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full scenery set.
  • Correct runway markings and placement, correct runway and approach lighting.
  • Taxiways available for many larger airports (even including the green center line lights when appropriate.)
  • Sloping runways (runways change elevation like they usually do in real life.)
  • Directional airport lighting that smoothly changes intensity as your relative view direction changes.
  • World scenery fits on 3 DVD's. (I'm not sure that's a feature or a problem!) But it means we have pretty detailed coverage of the entire world.
  • Accurate terrain worldwide, based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data.) 3 arc second resolution (about 90m post spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
  • Scenery includes all vmap0 lakes, rivers, roads, railroads, cities, towns, land cover, etc.
  • Nice scenery night lighting with ground lighting concentrated in urban areas (based on real maps) and headlights visible on major highways. This allows for realistic night VFR flying with the ability to spot towns and cities and follow roads.
  • Scenery tiles are paged (loaded/unloaded) in a separate thread to minimize the frame rate hit when you need to load new areas.

What's New

Features

  • Added FFmpeg on macOS to enable exporting video recordings (!19, @zakalawe)
  • Added the azimuthal equidistant projection to Canvas, and to the default airliner navigation display (!169, !176, @Gijsrooy)
  • Added offline mode to the launcher (!285, @zakalawe)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed various issues that could halt the installation process while downloading the data package (@zakalawe)
  • Fixed an additional crash with random vegetation on macOS (!151, @zakalawe)
  • Fixed an issue where FGCom would auto-enable when switching servers (#3069, @zakalawe)
  • Fixed a crash upon simulator reset while using VR (!302, @jameshogan)
  • Fixed a crash when loading saved continuous recordings on Windows (!211, @zakalawe)
  • Fixes to the default aircraft, the C172P (!157, @wc2020):
  • Use density altitude for auto mixture in autostart
  • Add rudder trim to autostart
  • Adjust pitch moment tables on flap deploy
  • Fix throttle with mouse slider bug

Misc.

  • Aircraft can now be uninstalled through the launcher when an update is available (#3220, !278, @zakalawe)
  • The load/save location for the route-manager has been changed to a more friendly default (#2984, @zakalawe)
  • Phi, FlightGear's browser-based user interface, has been made more responsive for use on small screens (!173, @PlayeRom)
  • Updated translations in the following languages:
  • Chinese (!167, @sidi762)
  • Dutch (!186, @Gijsrooy)
  • French (!166, @frougon)
  • Polish (!168, @PlayeRom)

Deprecation Notice

  • LaRCSim and UIUC FDMs will be removed in the next major release of FlightGear.

For now, a deprecation warning has been added to notify users and give developers ample notice (#3055, @kchodl). Aircraft developers are encouraged to migrate to JSBSim.

Previous changelog

Features

  • Updates to the default aircraft, the C172P, including a fix for stuck tutorials
  • Automatic scenery downloads (known under the hood as TerraSync) are now enabled by default (#30, @the_fl3dd0x)
  • This is a major improvement for user experience and eliminates one of the most common painpoints with scenery, where users would find themselves being infamously "TerraSunk"
  • Updated JSBSim to v1.1.14 (#3003, @bcoconni)
  • This provides a number of bug fixes, and some new features
  • Aircraft developers should read the changelog for JSBSim
  • Allow users to select a download directory upon first launch (!161, @zakalawe)
  • Added support for incremental updates, significantly reducing the duration of fetching and installing future updates.
  • Added FFmpeg on Windows to enable exporting video recordings (!2, !53, @Gijsrooy)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed multiple shader bugs that were causing graphical artifacts and vegetation to not be visible (#36, #37, #39, #3080, @icecode)
  • Fixed a bug where messages from ATC were appearing on the splash screen before the user had fully spawned in (#3068, @midnight-ploughboy)
  • Fixed a bug in the launcher where dropdown boxes on the Flight Planner page were empty (#3093, @zakalawe)
  • Fixed a memory bug in YASim that resulted in a crash under certain conditions (#54, @frougon)
  • Fixed missing maps in the FG1000 (!68, @stuart131, @Avionyx)
  • The FG1000 used STAMEN maps which are no longer free, this resulted in no maps and therefore a black background on the FG1000
  • The FG1000 now uses OpenStreetMap tiles, and maps are back!
  • Fixed regional textures for random buildings (!101, @fdalvi)
  • Fixed minimum dewpoint calculation in JSBSim (!158, @Gijsrooy)
  • Fixed SID/STAR selection and modification in the route manager (!131, !186, @zakalawe)
  • Fixed crash with random vegetation on macOS (!155, @zakalawe)

Misc.

  • The broken STAMEN map layer has been removed from the Canvas Map, it now requires a subscription and is no longer freely available to use (!68, @stuart131)
  • Fixed a broken link to the new FlightGear website in the launcher (!86, @Gijsrooy)
  • Radios can now only transmit when they are operable (!60, @MariuszXC)
  • The /controls/radios/comm-ptt property can now only be activated if the radios /operable property is true
  • Fixed QML warnings about using deprecated syntax with Connections (#2965, @zakalawe)
  • Improved Polish translations (!67, !128, @PlayeRom)
  • Updated the FlightGear app icon on macOS to match Apple design guidelines (!59, @IskenderWang)
  • Added a configuration file for the Honeycomb Charlie Rudder Pedal (!78, @henning.stahlke)
  • Removed broken and obsolete items from the Windows start menu (!29, !37, @Gijsrooy)
  • Updated SQLite to v3.49.1 (!102, @ranguli)
  • Switched from UDNS to C-Ares
  • Updated Curl to v8.15.0 on Windows (!5, @Gijsrooy)

Complete release notes here.