To run FlightGear you need to install the binaries. Once you’ve done this you may install additional scenery and aircraft if you wish.
Pre-compiled binaries for the latest release are available for:
To download them go to the link below and follow the provided instructions:
https://www.flightgear.org/download/
Detailed FlightGear scenery is available for the entire world, allowing you to fly everywhere from the Himalaya mountains to rural Kansas. The FlightGear base package contains scenery for Keflavik, Iceland. To fly elsewhere you will need to download additional scenery. Once you have chosen a flight area, you can either download the Scenery files manually or enable automatic download via TerraSync.
FlightGear is able to fetch the Scenery as you fly, if you have a permanent Internet connection at your disposal. FlightGear will download scenery to a separate directory from the main installation. One major benefit of TerraSync is that it always fetches the latest and greatest Scenery from the FlightGear World (Custom) Scenery Project and therefore allows you to pick up incremental updates independent of the comprehensive World Scenery releases, which are generally synchronized with FlightGear releases.
You can enable TerraSync either through the GUI launcher or directly within the simulator itself:
You can find more information about TerraSync in the Wiki:
https://wiki.flightgear.org/TerraSync
Each piece of scenery is packaged into a compressed archive, or tarball, in a 10 degree by 10 degree chunk. Each tarball is named after the 10x10 degree chunk it represents, for example w130n50.tgz.
You can download scenery outside of the simulator from a clickable map on the Internet or via the TerraMaster tool:
https://www.flightgear.org/download/scenery
https://wiki.flightgear.org/TerraMaster
Alternatively, you can support the FlightGear project by purchasing a complete set of world scenery from here:
Once you have downloaded the tarball onto your computer, you need to find the Scenery directory of your FlightGear installation.
For Windows, this directory is likely to be:
C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Scenery.
For Unices, it is usually:
/usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Scenery.
For macOS, it is usually:
/Applications/FlightGear.app/Contents/Resources/data/Scenery.
To install the scenery, uncompress the tarball into the Scenery directory. Most operating system provide tools to uncompress tarballs. If you cannot uncompress the tarball, install an extractor program such as 7-zip (https://www.7-zip.org).
Note that you should not decompress the numbered scenery files inside the tarball like 958402.gz – this will be done by FlightGear on the fly.
Once you have uncompressed the tarball, the Terrain and Objects directories will contain additional sub-directories with your new scenery inside.
To use the new scenery, simply select a starting airport within the new scenery. If you are using the FlightGear Launcher, you will need to press the Refresh button before you select your airport.
If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you may find that Windows installs downloaded scenery (and aircraft) to your Virtual Store:
C:\Users\Your Name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\FlightGear\Scenery
If it does this, you need to copy the Terrain and Objects directories manually to your real FlightGear Scenery directory as described above.
You may install the downloaded scenery data and aircraft using the GUI launcher. Pressing
Install add-on scenery on the Add-ons tab opens up the file browser window. Selecting one or
more scenery data files will install the scenery data into:
/Users/(Your Name)/Library/Application Support/FlightGear/Scenery
Acceptable formats for the scenery data are one of zip, tar.gz, tgz, tar, and extracted folder. If the installation via the GUI launcher fails for some reason, you still have an alternative way to install the data.
In the Add-ons tab, click the Add button for the Additional scenery folders section and select the folder where you store the downloaded and unpacked scenery. Likewise for adding aircrafts. Click the Add button for the Additional aircraft folders section and select the folder where you store downloaded and unpacked aircrafts.
If you would prefer to keep your downloaded scenery separate from the core installation, you can do so by setting your FG_SCENERY environment variable.
This is where FlightGear looks for Scenery files. It consists of a list of directories that will be searched in order. The directories are separated by “:” on Unix (including macOS) and “;” on Windows.
For example, on Linux a FG_SCENERY environment variable set to:
/home/jsmith/WorldScenery:
/usr/local/share/Flightgear/data/Scenery
first searches for scenery in:
/home/jsmith/WorldScenery
followed by:
/usr/local/share/Flightgear/data/Scenery.
On Windows, an FG_SCENERY environment variable set to:
C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Scenery;C:\data\WorldScenery
first searches for scenery in:
C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Scenery
followed by:
C:\data\WorldScenery
Setting up environment variables on different platforms is beyond the scope of this document.
If you are interested in generating your own Scenery, have a look at TerraGear – the tools that generate the Scenery for FlightGear:
https://wiki.flightgear.org/TerraGear
The actively maintained source tree of the TerraGear toolchain is located alongside the FlightGear project on SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/terragear/ci/next/tree/.
The base FlightGear package contains only a small subset of the aircraft that are available for FlightGear. Developers have created a wide range of aircraft, from WWII fighters like the Spitfire, to passenger planes like the Boeing 747.
You can download aircraft from:
https://www.flightgear.org/download/download-aircraft/
Download the file and uncompress it into the data/Aircraft subdirectory of your installation. The aircraft are downloaded as .zip files. Once you have uncompressed them, there will be a new sub-directory in your data/Aircraft directory containing the aircraft. Next time you run FlightGear, the new aircraft will be available.
On all platforms, you may use the GUI launcher to install aircraft files.
Most of the packages named above include the complete FlightGear documentation including a PDF version of The FlightGear Manual intended for pretty printing using Adobe Reader, available from https://get.adobe.com/reader/
Moreover, when installed, the HTML version can be accessed via FlightGear’s Help menu entry.
Besides, the source code contains a directory docs-mini containing numerous ideas on and solutions to special problems. This is also a good place for further reading.