Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 05, 2006 02:01 AM
Today, we've stepped into the world of flight simulators. This is a unique application space in that it has existed and been under improvement for years. Due to this extended development period, the quality of flight simulator software has increased dramatically and the users have extremely high expectations.
This article about <a href="http://www.flightgear.org/" title="flightgear.org">Flight Gear</a flightgear.org> fails to mention any of the other flight simulators or offer any comparisons with same. True to form, Joe's overarching reason for choosing Flight Gear is the fact that it is free and GPLed. While these are important factors, in the world of flight simulators, they are of least importance. The important factors are realism, graphics quality, performance, pilot community, online competitions and so forth.
The defacto standard in PC based flight simulators is, without a doubt, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/" title="microsoft.com">Microsoft's Flight Simluator</a microsoft.com>. Over the years, Microsoft has lead the way with constantly increasing realism, scenery options and pilot community. No one who has used it could deny Microsoft's dominance in the flight simulator arena. However, MS Flight Simulator is, unsurprisingly, Windows only.
More recently <a href="http://x-plane.com/" title="x-plane.com">X-Plane</a x-plane.com> has made massive advances in the flight sim world. X-Plane offers realism and graphics quality that is on par and in many cases better than Microsoft's Flight Simulator. In fact, the quality of X-Plane is so good that it is actual used to drive FAA certified full-motion flight simulators for instrument training and even commercial certification. While not open source, or even free/gratis, X-Plane is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux for a relatively low price.
Although there are many other flight sim programs out there, for the sake of brevity, I will end with <a href="http://www.flightgear.org/" title="flightgear.org">Flight Gear</a flightgear.org>. As the article describes Flight Gear is open source and available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is of fair quality but, when comparing Flight Gear to the others it seems quite dated. Though the technical realism is good, the performance is poor and the graphics quality is down right antiquated when compared to X-Plane and MS Flight Simulator. Additionally, Flight Gear has a good development community behind it but the Flight Gear user community is somewhat lacklustre. The user communities of X-Plane and MS Flight Simulator are both large and vibrant with all sorts of online flying events. Indeed, there are even countless <a href="http://flyawaysimulation.com/article299-Virtual-Airlines.html" title="flyawaysimulation.com">Virtual Airlines!!!</a flyawaysimulation.com> These virtual airlines fly regularly scheduled virtual flights.
The flight simulator world is an entire world unto itself and Flight Gear is still in the dark ages. Being open source is not, by itself, enough to warrant serious comparison between Flight Gear and the other big flight sim applications.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 05, 2006 02:01 AMThis article about <a href="http://www.flightgear.org/" title="flightgear.org">Flight Gear</a flightgear.org> fails to mention any of the other flight simulators or offer any comparisons with same. True to form, Joe's overarching reason for choosing Flight Gear is the fact that it is free and GPLed. While these are important factors, in the world of flight simulators, they are of least importance. The important factors are realism, graphics quality, performance, pilot community, online competitions and so forth.
The defacto standard in PC based flight simulators is, without a doubt, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/" title="microsoft.com">Microsoft's Flight Simluator</a microsoft.com>. Over the years, Microsoft has lead the way with constantly increasing realism, scenery options and pilot community. No one who has used it could deny Microsoft's dominance in the flight simulator arena. However, MS Flight Simulator is, unsurprisingly, Windows only.
More recently <a href="http://x-plane.com/" title="x-plane.com">X-Plane</a x-plane.com> has made massive advances in the flight sim world. X-Plane offers realism and graphics quality that is on par and in many cases better than Microsoft's Flight Simulator. In fact, the quality of X-Plane is so good that it is actual used to drive FAA certified full-motion flight simulators for instrument training and even commercial certification. While not open source, or even free/gratis, X-Plane is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux for a relatively low price.
Although there are many other flight sim programs out there, for the sake of brevity, I will end with <a href="http://www.flightgear.org/" title="flightgear.org">Flight Gear</a flightgear.org>. As the article describes Flight Gear is open source and available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is of fair quality but, when comparing Flight Gear to the others it seems quite dated. Though the technical realism is good, the performance is poor and the graphics quality is down right antiquated when compared to X-Plane and MS Flight Simulator. Additionally, Flight Gear has a good development community behind it but the Flight Gear user community is somewhat lacklustre. The user communities of X-Plane and MS Flight Simulator are both large and vibrant with all sorts of online flying events. Indeed, there are even countless <a href="http://flyawaysimulation.com/article299-Virtual-Airlines.html" title="flyawaysimulation.com">Virtual Airlines!!!</a flyawaysimulation.com> These virtual airlines fly regularly scheduled virtual flights.
The flight simulator world is an entire world unto itself and Flight Gear is still in the dark ages. Being open source is not, by itself, enough to warrant serious comparison between Flight Gear and the other big flight sim applications.
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