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FlightGear 2.0.0-pre3 for Mac OS X, Universal Binary
February 2nd, 2009

We are very proud and excited to release the FlightGear 2.0.0-pre3 for Mac OS X. This release gives more "comfortable" flight to every single Mac user. It runs on Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard), and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). FlightGear 2.0.0-pre3 for Mac OS X comes with the fancy GUI launcher that eases your flight. You can change aircraft, airport, and options as you like.

The launcher also makes it possible to fly with your wing mates. Enabling multi-player mode pops up a fancy on-line map so you can find your new wing mates. Tail-to-nose flight can be more fun with fgcom, an integrated voice chat client. It allows you to chat with your wing mate for better communications including Voice ATC. Moreover, FlightGear Mac OS X integrates Atlas - the navigation map that helps your flight plan. Thanks to the easy installer in the launcher, you can add new aircraft, scenery, GUI updates, and update files for existing files in a few seconds. 

Note that this release is a pre-release version and the selection of aircraft is not officially settled yet, so I picked up the same set of aircraft. 

Have a happy flight!

Installing

Simply drag & drop the FlightGear icon into the Applications folder. It contains everything including OpenSceneGraph library in its folder. If you have an older version of FlightGear with some additional data, move it somewhere before copying this version to Applications folder. Overwriting FlightGear will remove post-installed data like scenery, models, and aircraft (This is a specification of Mac OS).

Flying With FlightGear

To launch FlightGear Mac OS X, just double-click the FlightGear icon at the Applications Folder. Then follow the steps below:
1) Launch the FlightGear at the Applications folder, and the GUI Launcher will appear.
2) Select an aircraft and an airport (or a carrier).
3) Check or uncheck "Download scenery on the fly" as you need.
4) Check  "Navigation Map (Atlas)" if you want to use it.
5) Click the triangle button and change options if you need.
6) Press "Start Flight," and the main window will appear.

Wait for a while and you're ready to fly. For more detailed information in using FlightGear Mac OS X, read the documents on our website:
http://macflightgear.sourceforge.net/home/documents/

What's New in This Release?

There are so many new features added to this release since 1.9.1, which include:
- The latest JSBSim that provides many new features
- Model view for each aircraft on Multi-Player server.
- Ambient color setting has been changed
- Wildfire integration (see Environment >> Wildfire settings from the menu)
- Ridge wind
- Better integration of AI and ATC systems (I guess it's still in progress.)
- "Random failure" mode added to Equipment
- AI/ATC integration (I guess it is still in progress)
- Tanker configuration for ATC/AI
- AI Flight Plan updates allows flight plans to start at a given time
- AI Thermal updates
- AI Model updates:
  + for supporting geometry info using custom scenery project
     You can specify true to /sim/traffic-manager/use-custom-scenery-data for enabling this feature
  + for supporting per-AI-aircraft performance xml data.
      The performance data is stored in data/AI/Aircraft/performancedb.xml
- Sub-models can be added to any AI objects (for paying frame rate)
- Supports X-Plane 850 airport file format parsing; 810 is still supported and may be mixed with new format.
- Some dialogs can be resized (by dragging at a corner)
- Ground radar updated to display new pavements.
- Retrieve the full pavement/taxiway description, made of several words
- Directly associate runways objects with their ILS navrecord (if one exists)
- Add variable winds (direction and gusts) for the boundary layer if defined in METAR.
- Immediately fetch a metar if real-weather-fetch is re-enabled at runtime
- New command line option --metar="some metar"
- Add support for generic binary input through network
- Fixed that type codes for localizers and ILSs were swapped in the nav.dat reader
- Save more than 20 percent execution time by avoiding multiple calculations of properties
- Improvement on generic network protocol
- Shader effects
- Generic input device support (Advanced Input subsystem) for Linux and Mac OS X
- Processing the ICAO.ils.xml scenery data into ILS/LOC nav records
- More precise matching of ILS records to navaids
- Update FGRunway to process information from threshold.xml files
- Enable EffectCullVisitor
- Supports random objects, vegetation, and static models on fgviewer
- Allow the joystick hat to move the view, even when the sim is paused
- Correct logic to determine if we really have a hit (on scenery)
- fgviewer can be invoked from fgfs using --fgviewer option
- Start supporting "In-scenery" airport data (described in scenery files)
- Add Bertrand Coconnier's latest landing gear code to JSBSim
- A means of looking up scenery elevation is improved
- Fixed division-by-zero problem in JSBSim, dme
- Fixed the rendering of the KLN89 on the 2D panel that was broken during the move to osg
- Small fixes to generic protocol
- Fixed the fgfs crash at exit (happened when deleting subsystems)
- Minor bug fix patch for terrasync
- Fixed transmission of float and double values in generic protocol
- Fixed the fgjs crash on Mac OS X (caused by PLIB)

There are also Mac OS X specific new features / bug fixes including:
- terrasync finally works on Mac OS X 10.4
- fgcom start running on Mac OS X 10.4, but it still gets error due to OpenAL (or HW) restriction 
  (It works fine on OS X 10.5 or later)
- Improvement on installer.
- Fixed the bug that mpserver cannot be changed on the GUI Launcher.
- Fixed a bug that the menu bar and Dock cover FG menu on full-screen mode.
- Fixed (again) a problem loading terrasync on Tiger
  + It crashed by "Incompatible version of libiconv.2.dylib"; this should be tested.
- Aircraft preview using fgviewer 
  + You can see and move a selected aircraft's 3D model by pressing "Preview" button on the Aircraft tab
- Added command-line tools (fgjs, js_demo, metar, yasim. fgjs probably won't work though...)
- Fixed a problem on option interpretation, which may make FlightGear ignore given options.
- Added Parking position option.

Known Issues

There are several known issues on this release.
- FlightGear Mac OS X runs only on OS X 10.4 or higher
- fgfs may crash on non-stable aircraft
- fgfs may crash when quitting on startup
- fgfs may freezes after a few restarts or a long flight due to NaN
- fgfs may crash during startup with no reason. Just try launching again.
- Some shader effects (default.vert and model-default.vert) are disabled since these corrupt the scene graph on ATI Radeon X1600 card. You can enable these by copying *.org file to *.vert under data/Shaders folder.
- Enabling water effect changes water color into green on Macs with some nVidia chip like nVidia GT7300.
- Control + click doesn't work as right click. use double-finger tap instead (you need to activate it from system preference).
- fgcom may not work on Mac OS X 10.4 due to OS restriction on sampling rate on recording.
- Lots of functions could be missing due to fgfs/cvs is being developed.
- Some of aircraft look different from those in 1.9.1 since the changes in ambient color
  (e.g. some looks darker, and transparent object likes c172p's tail light look like solid color)
  These should be fixed by aircraft model side.
- 3D clouds become colorful rectangles when Shader Effects are disabled
- PNG textures had darker / black edges (on 3D clouds, lights, and more)
- terrasync (Download Scenery on the fly) may not work on Mac OS X 10.4 (being investigated)

Further Information and Help

FlightGear Mac OS X website is the first place to visit. Jump Start Guide, Users Guide, Troubleshooting, and documents for developers are available at:
http://macflightgear.sourceforge.net/home/documents/

Mailing list,  discussion forum, and various requests are also available at:
http://macflightgear.sourceforge.net/home/list-forums-etc/

The official FlightGear web site is also a good source of information. The manual, quick reference guide, tutorials, and additional documentation are available at:
http://flightgear.org/docs.html

Typical Q & A

Here are some typical Q & A specific to Mac OS X version.

Q: FlightGear closes when I press "Start Flight" and nothing happens. How can I launch the simulator?
A: Launch Terminal.app (at /Applications/Utilities) and type the following command (without "$"):

  $ cd /Applications/FlightGear.app/Contents/Resources
  $ ./fgfs.sh --aircraft=p51d --airport=KSFO

  You can change the aircraft and the airport as you want.

Q: Can I install FlightGear other than the Applications folder?
A: Yes. you can install it anywhere as long as it is writable folder.

Q: I can't use Function keys because these are reserved for controlling hardware features. 
     How can I use these keys on FlightGear?
A: Open "System preferences" >> "Keyboard and Mouse." Then check "Use the F1-F12 keys to control software
     features." Unfortunately, MacBook Pro users cannot assign F9-F12 if it is used by Expose. Change the shortcut
     keys for Expose from System preferences as well. 

Q: FlightGear crashes while I'm flying. How can I find the problems?
A: Open "/Applications/Utilities/Console.app" to see the error log that FlightGear wrote.

Q: Where is the data folder?
A: It's on /Applications/FlightGear.app/Contents/Resources/data. You can open it at Others tab on the GUI launcher.

Q: Where can I find a log file?
A: You can find it at $HOME/.fgfs/log.txt. Select "Go" >> "Go to folder" from Finder's menu and type "~/.fgfs".
     Then you can find log.txt there. You can also open the log file by pressing "view log" button on the GUI launcher.

Q: What does r232 of FlightGear-1.9.1-r232 mean?
A: It's a FlightGear Mac OS X specific revision number. We use subversion to organize the Xcode projects and GUI launcher program, and the revision number increases on every GUI launcher related bug-fix or update. You can check the revision number by opening "About FlightGear Mac OS X" from the menu bar. It's a good idea to tell revision number to us since we can easily find if your problem is already fixed in the latest revision.

See also Troubleshooting for more information.

Brief License Information for integrated software

1. Atlas
Atlas is a map showing utility for FlightGear developed and maintained by David Luff, Frederic Bouvier, and Per Liedman. Atlas can be distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL). See COPYING.txt for more detail.

2. FGCOM
FGCOM is a voice communication utility developed by Holger Wirtz. FGCOM can be distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL). See COPYING.txt for more detail.

3. PLIB
PLIB is a Suite of Portable Game Libraries originally developed by Steve Baker. PLIB includes sound effects, music, a complete 3D engine, font rendering, a simple Windowing library, a game scripting language, a GUI, networking, 3D math library and a collection of handy utility functions. FlightGear uses PLIB for GUIs, Joysticks, and so on. PLIB is distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). 

4. OpenSceneGraph
The OpenSceneGraph is an open source high performance 3D graphics toolkit, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling. OpenSceneGraph is developed by Don Burns, Robert Osfield, and more than 300 contributors. OpenSceneGraph is distributed under The OpenSceneGraph Public License that is based on LGPL.

Contact

The binary release was produced by Tatsuhiro Nishioka. If you have any questions or problems for this release, either email me (tat <dot> fgmacosx <at> gmail <dot> com) or post your question to:
- Mailing List
- FlightGear Mac OS X Website
- Help and Open Discussion
Please refrain from emailing me for the general questions about playing FlightGear.