Growing Wings

As a fan of physics, I have often been intrigued by flight and fluid dynamics. I actually know very little about either but I can certainly appreciate and admire them at work. So I have long been a fan of flight simulators, and love getting behind the stick of a single propellor plane or a jumbo jet and seeing how many crazy things I can try before I crash into the ground from a horrible stall. That, however, is not the point of this article.

FlightGear, a wonderful open source flight simulator for Linux, is a powerful sim that is not only fun to play around with at a user application level (I managed to crash my single prop, 747, and the Wright Brother's plane), but also an incredible foundation for academic and research purposes. Currently, FlightGear is utilized to research icing on wings, build cockpit simulations, and develop environments to test autonomous flight intelligence.

To see a clip of the product in action, watch this video or browse these screenshots.

As is, FlightGear comes packed with several aircrafts, including the 737, 747, Douglas A4 Skyhawk, Cessna 172, Eurocopter, Chinook, Harrier, a paraglider, the 1903 Wright Flyer, and a fun little UFO. The site also boasts three flight models and tons of scenery and airports (which can be downloaded via their extremely busy FTP site or ordered on CD). Instrumentation is super realistic -- for example, the magnetic compass is vulnerable to the motion of the plane.

FlightGear, however, does have some limitations. For instance, I've certainly seen more graphically realistic flight sims. And during my evaluation, I was not able to get sound to work properly, and found that some of the flight models did not have graphic models to match (so flying the Harrier and the space shuttle, all I saw was a basic plane shape). But again, where this package lacks in graphics, it makes up for in realism. I think a physics or aerodynamics major would really get a kick out of this program.

Take Off!

Basic installation is pretty easy although configuration can get tricky. Luckily, the product is well documented. The source code is available on the official website and if you look under "executables," you will find links to RPMs for Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware (if you follow the Mandrake link, you will also find SuSe RPMs)..