A few weeks ago I
stumbled upon Flightgear, a completely
free flight simulator which is available for most platforms. It comes
with a dozen aircraft (including some helicopters), and with scenery for
the San Francisco Bay area. You can download more scenery for anywhere
in the world. If you’re so inclined, all the tools to edit the scenery
are available for download as well, so you can add any amount of detail
to your local area. For instance, I added the oil platforms in the Santa
Barbara Channel. Then I submitted these changes back to the scenery
maintainer, so that with the next scenery release those oil platforms
will show up for everybody flying in that area.
Flightgear is much
more of a real simulator than a game, and since I discovered it I’ve
spent almost as much time reading about flight as I’ve spent actually
flying. The first thing you learn is that single prop airplanes pull to
the left
when rolling down the runway. Lucky for you, flightgear does not
simulate different surfaces so taking from the grass is no problem. The
traditional “full power, pull back on the yoke” will get you in the air,
albeit with a significant lean to the left. If you’re me, you then point
the plane where you want to go, and hope it works out. After more
reading and more practice I can now take off reasonably well and my
landings are getting fairly smooth, although not always on the runway.
The rest of the
time is spent checking out scenery, figuring out how the autopilot works
(the best docs I found were written by the manufacturer), and learning
about the million other details you need to know to fly an airplane. The
great thing about the simulator is that you can learn the hard way, and
it’s OK. For instance, I had a
C310 quite literally fall out
of the sky when I was flying to the top of Mount Rainier. The engine
just suddenly cut off, I think because I didn’t lean the fuel mixture
like you’re supposed to. Another time I took the 737-300 for a flight,
which involved hitting the ocean. The 737-300 is really hard to fly.
It’s much less stable than you’d think, and because it’s so powerful you
can drop from 500ft to sealevel before you know it. On top of that, the
nose prevents you from seeing the horizon.
If none of this is
interesting to you, then Flightgear is probably not for you. But if you
are interested in aviation then this is truly a great program. The last
flight simulator I played before this one was Flight Simulator 2 so I
can’t compare Flightgear to the current state of the art. My impression
is that its flight model is as good as any other. There are somewhat
less planes available, and I haven’t found any areas that have detailed
scenery. On the other hand, it’s free, constantly improving, and you can
extend it any way you want if you have the skill. Give it a try, you’ve
got nothing to lose.
