The Story Behind Flightgear Default Airport, KSFO (And also MSFS & X-Plane)

So while having some time to myself and flying around KSFO (San Francisco International Airport) region I thought to myself; is there any significance to using KSFO as a default airport for Flightgear?

Although there is not any official reason as to why KSFO was chosen as its default, here's what I got when I asked & searched around:There are probably some requirements for an auto-startup airport to make a good impression to newbies in flight sims, which is having good scenery of built-up airports, city objects, great landscape features.


KSFO, or San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, easily meets just such requirements. Surrounded by hills on one side, and a water feature (bay) on the opposite end, and some buildings and bridges. So no matter which part on the runway you spawn, you will see some features and details as visual eye candy. KSFO also offers some fairly advanced challenges for relatively new users, such as having terrain & structures to avoid during take off or landing, but still has the open water landing approach perfect for people attempting their first landing.

A short flight into the skies and a few turns in the correct direction and the world famous Golden Gate bridge will greet the new user, piquing his or her interest to go closer for a look, and there's also the famous Alcatraz island and various other landscapes / structures to buzz around and experiment with flying.

And once the user gets the hang of it, start flying to the other plentiful nearby airports around it, like KHAF (Half Moon Bay) or KOAK (Oakland International) both of which are just a really short hop from KSFO.

So, KSFO as single auto start place is a very good choice, for the first time users to experiment, and the place is literally full of other airports and airstrips to go to all within a short time.


What about MSFS's Meigs Field?

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the first few versions Flight Simulator, or even the Meigs Field, but the original MSFS's startup airport uses Meigs as its default starting airport. 

Although there wasn't an official reason ever provided by Bruce Artwick, the creator of the original Flight Simulators in the late 70s & early 80s, people surmised that Meigs was chosen partly because Bruce was from Chicago, and also Meigs is a very beautiful airport jutting out into the lake surrounded by a marina with boats, yatches (although none of those are depicted in the original simulators) and world famous buildings.

In fact it was probably a no brainer choice as the default back then, as upon startup on Runway 36, the first recognizable thing you will see after take off is Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center, and with nearby Chicago O'Hare International Airport & Midway International Airports to fly to.

It was a beautiful airport, but alas it didn't last. In 2003, the through a combination of some political madness, some post 9-11 panic and other reasons unfathomable to me, the Mayor of Chicago destroyed the airport by bulldozing the runway with large X's on it, even stranding some planes that are still parked the airfield.

What about X-Plane 10's Seattle-Tacoma International - KSEA?

 Well I can't find any info on why KSEA was chosen as the default start up airport in X-Plane, but it was a nicely detailed, nicely modeled airport, with an odd runway that slopes upwards so your horizon is shortened quite a bit. The scenery in X-Plane is also odd in that it comes with "built-up" data generated at random based on how the roads are and how likely a buildings are placed.

 Because I only had the X-Plane demo for a while, I don't know too much about X-Plane other than I love the demo, it has great visuals especially the lighting.

 X-Plane apparently also changes their default every version. In version 9, it is at LOWI - Innsbruck, Austria. In version 8 it was at KSBD - San Bernardino, California, USA.

The Walker

 The Walker is sort of an add-on for FlightGear that allows a "person" to get in and out of the aircraft and walk about. Hence the "Walker" name. The latest version of Walker has some options, mainly to add accessories such as a flight helmet and shades, or change gender or theme (mechanic, pilot, flightsuit etc.).

Standing on the runway of KSFO watching a B777 takeoff, and fly around like a fighter jet.

  To install the Walker, download it from here and simply unzip the Archive to your fgdata/Aircraft/Generic Folder.

  To add the Walker to your Aircraft (you must do this),  replace the Entry at the top of your -set file with this line:

< propertylist include="Aircraft/Human/Include/walker-include.xml" >

The Keys "a", "A" and "s" have their normal Binding when not in Walk View or Walker Orbit View.


Walker Movement
The Walker gets out by clicking on the "Walker" Menu option "Get Walker out". The direction of movement is controlled with the mouse. He runs forward with the "w" key , backwards with the "s" key. Lateral movement is carried out with the "a" key to the left and the "d " button to the right. Run with "A" . In the Walker Menu you can change Gender and Outfit, and create custom Animations and Poses.

 When I edited it into the C172p, pressing "s" just turns the engine once. As in, it goes "hek" and then stops dead instead of "hekhekhekhekhek". But if I toggle the Walker outside, then pressing s does start the engine, and you get the hilarious view of the plane starting up and then running away from you.

Apparently this is an issue with the C172P only, other planes did not have this problem. The only way to start the plane is to toggle the Walker outside, ie. start from the outside of the plane, like one of those biplanes. Be sure parking brakes are on!!

Cessna 182RG Dusk Flight off of KOAK

Cessna 182RG Low Light Flight off of KOAK

  The Cessna 182RG in Flightgear is an old model, (as in, from the older versions) and it shows, if only in the cockpit. The interior & cockpit is a bit on the sparse side, but most of the instruments are there, it's flyable and very usable. Be warned that the 182 fixed-gear version has some problems in its FDM. In short, the RG is a better, and actually for me, a joy to fly with.

  To download the RG, you will also need to download the fixed gear version so they would work. It took me quite a while to figure this out...

Some fun buzzing the Golden Gate bridge

High altitude (about 12,000ft) over the Carribeans.

Saab JA-37 Viggen (Flightgear Jet Testing)

I've been a test pilot for the Saaba JA-37 Viggen lately. The plane is made by Anders Lejczak (3D model & textures) and Nikolai V. Chr. (Aerodynamics, animations, sound, effects, HUD, coding), and can be downloaded here. 

Now have to bear in mind this plane is under development, and I probably don't make a good test pilot.

Because:

...I kept crashing it.

Testing is done at KOAK, and embarrassingly, I never really left the airport compound and poked three holes in the area.

So, a little about the plane, for the brave souls who would like to try it out. First off, I wasn't able to control it with a keyboard, I'm sure others have better luck doing so, but the developer did recommend it would be better with a joystick. It requires a long runway, and afterburner takeoffs are recommended.

Being in development there are some minor issues with it, such as afterburner sound stuttering and all, hoping that it would eventually be fixed.

UPDATE : 30th May 2014 - I found the reason why I can't fly it. With a keyboard, the "5" key to reset all controls to center is not there, and because there is also no standard HUD I am not aware the plane controls doesn't reset when I hit "5" on the numeric pad. This explains why the plane is unflyable, as I kept thinking I had reset the controls. (It didn't help that the jet gave impressions that the center key was pressed when I do so mid-turn). Once I found out, and flew with a mouse, the plane was actually completely flyable. I contacted the author of the FDM about this and he said it's been fixed in a new version. I will try it out and blog about it. 


Model :

While the FDM is being sorted out (I'm confident it will be), I will talk about the model. It's a nice model, with nice livery, you have two sets of livery with it, one is the standard gray (I can not remember the names of the liveries!) and the other has a nice camouflage scheme that I quite like. The HUD is standard, showing altitude, attitude indicator and angle of attack, but I can not say how accurate this is to the real jet though, because I hardly know about Saab JA-37 Viggens. The cockpit is a bit sparse at the moment, but all the necessary items for flying are there to use, and with the radar screen(?) in the middle like all jet fighters should have.

Crashing :

I feel I should write about crashing it because I am already an expert. I don't know how others fly it with a keyboard, but I can't, and the jet seemingly won't respond to my key commands. So I just lose control and crash into the ground. The crash not only have an explosion sound effect, it also has the pilot gasping his last breaths. Hmm. Becaue I am an expert at crashing the plane, I came to dread hearing it .  My last few flights, when losing control and about to crash, I just pause and quickly reset it. Didn't want to hear another pilot getting killed :) .

Swapping Out Generic Glider Model for Multiplayer

The default Blue/Yellow glider, used in multiplayer for unavailable aircraft.

 In Flightgear multiplayer, users whose plane models that you don't have will show up in the world as a generic blue & yellow glider to indicate that other players are there, with a plane model that you do not have. These gliders will represent the direction, and pose of the multiplayer planes in real time.

 There are several problems I have with that.. for one thing, it detracts ever-so-slightly from t he multiplayer experience - imagine if ATC asks for you to look out for traffic nearby, and you see this blue-yellow low polygon thing zipping, or hovering through the air. Certainly not visual candy.

  You can actually change the model from the generic blue and yellow glider to whatever model you like.

In the preferences file "preferences.xml

< default-model type="string">Models/Geometry/glider.ac

You can search in the Models folder for an .ac file that you may fancy, for example, replace it with Models/Aircraft/rafale.ac, and all the mp aircraft will show Rafales, improving the experience.

 Personally, there's still something that bugs me and that is, helicopters. If you change the model to a Rafale for example, and one takes off vertically, it also makes it off somewhat. Also, if there is an ATC in the area, they are also represented by these models on top of the tower, then you have a Rafale, or whatever fixed wing aircraft hovering on top of the tower, which looks odd.

 My personal preference is to use the UH-60 helicopter;

change the code from

< default-model type="string">Models/Geometry/glider.ac

to

< default-model type="string">Models/H-60.xml

and you get a UH-60 model, complete with running engines and spinning rotor, and this bumps up the realism a little bit more. In multiplayer, you will have these UH-60s zipping around in the air, hovering or just making those slow movements for those users who use helos, and they will look (almost) totally authentic. The only difference is that some of them take off like a plane down the runway but otherwise, you have a UH-60 hovering over a tower (ATC), it looks totally fine and believable!

Don't remember what aircraft this was supposed to be.

This is supposed to be an Airbus 330-300, an aircraft I haven't downloaded.

A "Clipper". Over MP, it's a UH-60.

Weight, load and distribution experimentaion (Flightgear Cessna 172)

After the eventful flight

 I experimented with the Cessna 172 KOAK to KHAF empty, then load it up with passengers and cargo, and then back to KOAK. The flight to KHAF was fine, but at KHAF I think I loaded up too much passengers and cargo and on takeoff it was barely flying. Using autopilot when loaded is disastrous, as it flew fine.... until it turned into the wind, then all it wants to do is just stall the aircraft, and I spent something like nearly 2 minutes just hovering in the air at less than 60knots with the stall warning siren blaring mucking with the AP until I finally decided to just get rid of AP and flew it manually. And it didn't fly well with that weight until but I committed to get back to KOAK, taxi back to the apron and shut down and offload the cargo and (green faced) passengers. After that, just watching other flights for a while before I quit FG.

First serious flight I've been experimenting with weight, cargo and load. Now I really the kinds of effect it has on everything.

Going Supersonic CitationX

Supersonic! Mach 1

Simulation freezes when I open Route Manager. Resizing the window fixed it, but this happened.

Ghostplane!

"Random failures"

 This morning I had some time, so I started up FlightGear and took off from WBGR and practiced touch-go a little bit with the Citation X. Once in the air about 6000 feet, I was browsing the menus and saw "Random failures".

 Feeling adventurous, I selected it. A menu popped up, asking for failure sequences and time to fail. I selected within 1 minute and some other option I did not bother to look through.

 Must be something I did, because the failures came piling on one after another!! First the electrical system, so all the instrumentation blanked out, including the Master Caution lights. I began turning the aircraft around, did my imaginary emergency calls, and prepare for an emergency landing. As I did so yet another message appeared telling me something failed.

And another.

And yet another.

 I simply did not have time to understand the failures! At one point I saw the message "Engine 3" fail, and thought, huh, CitationX only has two engines... but didn't think much about it - I was on single engined approach.

 Things kept failing. I couldn't even keep track of what, exactly. As I was appraching to fast, I hit the speedbrakes to slow down, and as I was slow enough I retracted it - and guess what? Speedbrake fail! So I increased engine thrust and pulled up - this was when I was about 1500ft agl, and just in front of the runway.

 On FlightGear at WBGR, there is a big tree at the end of the runway. I clipped that tree with my wingtips when I watched the replay later.

 The plane was not properly lined up, and I did some aileron turns to line up, and THAT failed. Fortunately, the last turn was lined up relatively well and I had to use rudder alone to align. Hit the runway - hard- at an angle, wit ha high sinkrate, at just stalling speed (less than 120kts) and probably slapped the wingtip there, used rudder to further align with the runway and hit the brakes.

 Screeched to a halt. Well the CitationX in FG had suspiciously good braking distances but I''ll ignore that for now, that would be a good thing in this situation.

And then, Engine 1 failed. The plane is now dead in the middle of the runway with no power.

Didn't stop there though, things kept failing. Things that I didn't know existed on a plane failed.

Oh, what fun! But I'm probably not going to try Random Failures again.... with the kind of failure I just had, it was probably an onboard fire by the looks of how everything just stopped working completely.



And someone needs to cut down that tree growing in the middle of the landing path...

Pictures soon..

It's been a while... but a new computer coming!

It's been a while. Over 2 years in fact. I finally am getting a new computer to run FlightGear! I know it is loooooooooong overdue, but due to circumstances I am not able to get my hands on a computer powerful enough to run FlightGear, instead using my old 2003 computer just barely getting onto the Internet and running basic stuff, let alone run FlightGear after my computer broke.... (see previous posts)

But now, the wait is over! I am getting a new computer, I just ordered it yesterday, and will be shipped to me in about a week! Very pleased with myself about this. It outputs directly to HDMI and all.

Looking forward to running the new version of FlightGear (smoothly, I hope) and logging more flight time! Hopefully, it would be powerful enough to both run FlightGear and then do some video recording of my flights!

Some of the screenshots I am looking forward to seeing on my computer screen..

How to get Started in FlightGear

Here's a tutorial I did mainly for a friend who's completely new to FlightGear on how to get started off the ground.

1. Press "H" to see the HUD. This gives you a virtual display of the plane's informations such as rudder and aileron position, throttle position, altitude, speed and heading. This would be very useful later on.

2. Assuming you're starting out on the default runway, and the engine has started (use Help > Autostart feature), the first thing you should do is to get power to the engines (we will leave all the preflight check etc for purposes of QuickStart guide). Do this by press PageUp key repeatedly until the throttle reaches about 80%. You can go up to 100%, but this is not necessary because 80% is enough to get you airborne, and most real planes don't go 100% to save on tear and wear and also prevent failures.

3. Once you have the throttle powered up, you will realize that you are now moving along the runway and gaining speed. You might need to correct a bit to the left or right due to wind conditions. The 0 and Enter key on the number pad of the keyboard is the planes rudder. Tap 0 once to correct left a little, and Enter to return the rudder to position. Enter to go right. Remember to return it to center position. Try to stay on the runway, as excursions will destroy the landing gear on some aircraft. Don't worry too much about this part, as the plane will more or less stay quite straight.

4. Usually the take off run is quite short, and you would have gained enough speed to take off. Tap the "Down" cursor key about 3-4 times. This will pull back on the yoke, and your jet will start to liftoff. At first, the front wheel will lift off the ground, but the rear wheels will still be on the ground. Eventually as the plane gains enough lift, the whole plane will be off the ground. Remember to center all ailerons and rudder!

5. Now you're airborne. To slow things down a little, throttle down (PageDown key) to about 60%. Tap the "Up" cursor key one or two times and watch how the plane is. At this point you might need to make a lot of corrections until the plane heads the right way. Now you're airborne! Press "G" to stow the landing gear, climb to a safe altitude (6000 feet would be nice) and get a feel of the aircraft in the air!


Things to remember:

PgUp = Throttle up
PgDwn = Throttle down
Up key = Nose down
Down key = Nose up
Left = aileron turn left
Right = aileron turn right
0 = Rudder turn left
Enter = Rudder turn right

To view your own plane, press the "V" key.

Tap the left/right keys to turn left or right sparingly. Tapping it once or twice to the left, watch the plane make a bank, and centering it, rather than turning it left all the way in a hurry and you don't have enough time to center it until you're tumbling out of control.

Watch the HUD for information regarding your aircraft. It gives you quick information on altitude, speed and various other information that you can't quickly grasp by looking at the instruments.

This tutorial also more or less the same for propeller planes, but be warned, the prop planes may be slower, but they have torque effect that really turns the aircraft into a bank (in midair) or yaw left on the runway! You will need to counter with some skillful rudder action (on ground) or aileron (in air).

Check out this page for more tutorials

FlightGear Logo

These are two logos I design as part of my contribution to FlightGear (since I can't contribute in terms of coding or stuff like that). However, it's not the real logo, it's just a proposal.

Personally I think it looks too much like the Boeing /McDonnell Douglas / NASA logo to be original. Perhaps it needs to be more imaginative. What do you think?