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So disappointed

Installing FlightGear, scenery, aircraft etc. on Mac.

So disappointed

Postby stolzy » Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am

I had really hoped that FGFS would have matured. I had been an occasional user of FGFS a few years ago, but found I was spending more time getting support than flying it.
I came back to 2.8 hoping against hope that it would work reasonably.

Unfortunatly i have had to give up again, every time I fly I come across small problems:

Can't turn 2d panel back on in View>Display Options - its checked but not visible
Can't tune radio as per instructions in tutorial (middle click in any Mac I ever used activates the widgets screen) How can you change the value to the left of the decimal?
Any right click disables the mouse as soon as the pointer goes in the Flightgear window it snaps to the middle of the screen.

These are just the issues from my last 10 mins of use.

But the killer is the variable frame rates that make it unflyable (vary from <1 20) on a 2x 2.66 dual-core Xenon MacPro with 12 Gb Ram.
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Re: So disappointed

Postby zakalawe » Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:13 am

stolzy wrote in Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am:Can't turn 2d panel back on in View>Display Options - its checked but not visible

This is a (odd) feature - the 2D panel is only visible when looking exactly straight ahead. Personally I suggest avoiding the 2D panel, I'd remove it from the app, but people would complain I think.

stolzy wrote in Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am:Can't tune radio as per instructions in tutorial (middle click in any Mac I ever used activates the widgets screen) How can you change the value to the left of the decimal?

Unfortunately you need to disable the Apple overloads of middle-click in System Preferences, FlightGear currently assumes it can use all three mouse buttons. Or you could just tune the radios using the dialog - not as nice of course. If there was a way to block the Apple overloads when we had focus, I would do it.

stolzy wrote in Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am:Any right click disables the mouse as soon as the pointer goes in the Flightgear window it snaps to the middle of the screen.

This is another feature - right-click cycles the mouse between three modes - 1) normal; 2) controlling the flight controls and 3) controlling the view direction. When it jumps to mode 2 we centre the mouse so the controls are in the neutral position, otherwise the plane might suddenly turn or pitch.

Arguably it would be better to disable this feature by default, but it's been around 'forever', so there would be some resistance!

stolzy wrote in Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am:But the killer is the variable frame rates that make it unflyable (vary from <1 20) on a 2x 2.66 dual-core Xenon MacPro with 12 Gb Ram.

That's a little harder to fix - I've knocked the default shader level down for new installers, but unfortunately many MacPros ship with a comparatively under-powered graphics card.
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Re: So disappointed

Postby Hooray » Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:28 pm

stolzy wrote in Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:32 am:But the killer is the variable frame rates that make it unflyable (vary from <1 20) on a 2x 2.66 dual-core Xenon MacPro with 12 Gb Ram.


Like previously mentioned, this is usually related to underpowered 3D hardware (graphics card/GPU).
So it would be interesting to know if you are able to run any other OpenGL simulators or games with good performance, such as the X-Plane demo or UrbanTerror for example, both are OpenGL-based and also run on Macs.

Alternatively, you could also try following the instructions here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Debugg ... e:_Level_0
That will disable all eye candy to see what your maximal possible frame rate is, so that you can start re-enabling things one by one to see which features have an impact or which ones don't.

Please report back with your findings
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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