Version 2.0 of the free FlightGear flight simulator released

A frame from FlightGear
Source: FlightGear The FlightGear project has released version 2.0 of its free flight simulator. It is the first major update since the OpenSceneGraph library was introduced about a year ago and version 2.0 now more fully utilises the potential of this library. The developers have enhanced the 3D rendering of clouds, making objects change colour according to the simulated weather conditions and humidity. The atmosphere model is now said to be generally much more realistic than before.

The developers say they completely overhauled the sound code, introducing the simulation of positional 3D sound sources where the volume is adjusted according to the distance of the source. The program now also simulates a Doppler effect for moving objects.

Other new features affect the simulation itself. For example, computer-controlled departing and arriving traffic at the same airport, ground vehicles such as cars, lorries, trains and airport push-back vehicles for some aircraft models as well as AI escorts for AI carriers. AI objects are now solid, which allows collisions.

FlightGear 2.0 is available to download for all major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and various Linux distributions and the source code is licensed under the GPL.

(djwm)