FlightGear

The FlightGear flight simulator project is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project.

Commandline usage
The simulation can be started using a Window Manager's menu, however it's likely more preferable to start FlightGear via the command line as there is more control over the options (ie. Aircraft models likely cannot be chosen easily once the simulation has started).

Show help messages:

Show a listing of available aircraft:

Basic commandline incantation (which is used within the Win32 build) for adding geometry (use the desired screen resolution) and timeofday options:

Additional aircraft
Users can download additional (unsupported) aircraft models. Once downloaded, extract the tarballs and use the following option:

Additional scenery
Users can download additional scenery or utilize terrasync.

Take note, there is currently no folder as noted by the previous incantation.

Download the tarball scenery, extract into a local folder, and use the following option:

Terrasync
To enable Terrasync, use the following while remembering to add the folder to the --fg-scenery list of folders, as specified above. (Unknown if specifying the additional Terrasync folder within fg-scenery is necessary.)

Scripting command line options
Eventually it becomes more desirable to automate much of these commands per scenario. It is nice to already have script files for different scenarios, named such as, , and to respectively start in single player, multiplayer or debug modes.

For example, to start a FlightGear multiplayer session:

Make the file executable and run it whenever. To modify your options, do so by editing the commented script file!

(Omit the "./" if "${HOME}/bin" is already within the $PATH.)

Poor Frame Rates Compared to Win32 Build's Frame Rates
The default "c172p" aircraft model seems to cause significant frame rate loss. Choosing another aircraft model such as the "c172p-canvas" alleviates this problem.