Board index FlightGear Support Installation

System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Need help getting up and running? Installing FlightGear, add-on planes, sceneries etc.
Forum rules
In order to help you, we need to know a lot of information. Make sure to include answers to at least the following questions in your initial post.

- what OS (Windows Xp/Vista, Mac etc.) are you running?
- what FlightGear version do you use?
- what graphics card do you have?

Please, also see Requesting Technical Help.

Note: If you did not get a reponse, even after 7 days, you may want to check out the FlightGear mailing lists to ask your question there.

System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby Halberd3000 » Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:56 pm

Hello. I was hoping someone could give me some specific system requirement for FlightGear 3.2 for Windows. I am looking to purchase a good flight simulator program and I want to make sure I have the right tools to use this software. The system requirements in the manual are a little too vague for a computer novice such as myself to get a handle on. I need hard numbers and such to make a good determination.

Thanks for your help!

Sincerely,
Hal
Halberd3000
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:27 pm

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby Hooray » Mon Oct 20, 2014 10:08 pm

Hi & welcome !

I'd suggest to check out the wiki: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Hardware_Recommendations

Obviously, any advice will be affected by your budget, your preferred OS and other requirements - overall, you should probably opt for at least a quadcore system with 64 bit CPU cores, at least 8 gb dedicated RAM, and at least 1024-2048 of VRAM - probably using a recent NVIDIA/ATI PCI-e graphics card - also SSD drives are convenient, too if you can afford them. Then again, there are other important factors, such as your operating system, driver support etc. It is generally a good idea to "test-fly" FlightGear if possible - keep in mind that the way you're using FlightGear will also affect system requirements - i.e. it makes a huge difference if you're doing airliner flying or GA flying - equally, complex scenery at daytime/under VMC is putting more strain on the system than doing IFR under actual IMC (night time/darkness, bad weather etc) - because there will be less to display.

PS: FlightGear is, and will remain, free - for other software like FSX/X-Plane, you'll obviously want to refer to another source, not necessarily the FlightGear forums.
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,
Hooray
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby hvengel » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:17 am

Hooray wrote in Mon Oct 20, 2014 10:08 pm:Hi & welcome !... - probably using a recent NVIDIA/ATI PCI-e graphics card - ...


The higher end the better but a mid level card like the GTX5xx, GTX6xx or GTX7xx cards in the $100 (US prices) range should give good performance if you are running a single normal resolution monitor (up to 1920x1200) although you may have to back off the eye candy a little to keep frame rates up. In that price range are a number of cards like the GTX560, GTX650 or the GTX740 that are good candidates.

If you are interested in recording your flights then the minimum nvidia card to use the nvidia ShadowPlay utility (allows recording with minimal frame rate impact and is also free) is the GTX650 desktop GPU.

If you want to run multiple monitors or a single higher resolution monitor like a 2560x1600 30 inch unit you should consider a higher end video card. If you want to run one of the new 4K monitors then you will want the highest end video card money can buy (IE. a Titan or Titan Z).

My experience is that you will want at least 2GB of VRAM as I typically see VRAM usage > 1GB on my system even with "light" aircraft (IE. simpler lower detail 3D models) and much more with "heavy" (highly detailed) aircraft.
hvengel
Retired
 
Posts: 1127
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:35 am
Location: Minden Nevada

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby flyingfisch » Tue Oct 21, 2014 2:46 am

Actually, a lot of the time people overestimate the hardware you need to use flightgear. I have a Toshiba Satellite with 4GB of RAM, Intel integrated chipset graphics, and an Intel i3 processor. I get 30FPS at KSFO with the 777 (Flightgear v3.0.0) with model shaders all the way up, ALS enabled, other shaders mid-ish, random vegetation and trees off, random buildings on. It is a little choppy when it first starts up, and freezes for a few seconds when it needs to load another block of scenery, but for the most part it runs very smoothly.

</my-2-cents>
Beechcraft A35 Bonanza
Wiki Page
GitHub Repo
Improving the 737-300
Forum Thread
All my projects
User avatar
flyingfisch
 
Posts: 306
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:11 pm
IRC name: ffisch
Version: 3.0
OS: Ubuntu 12.04

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby Halberd3000 » Tue Oct 21, 2014 2:27 pm

Thanks very much, everyone. This info helps.
Halberd3000
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:27 pm

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby hvengel » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:04 pm

Since the OP was asking about recommendations specifically to run FG I assumed that he wanted to put together a system that would run FG with higher frame rates, with minimal choppiness and higher levels of eye candy. IE. something well above the bare minimum and closer to an optimal FG experience. So my recommendations were for a system that would give good frame rates with nearly no choppiness with most of the eye candy turned up well above minimal levels. I should have clearly stated this in my prior posting. So I agree with flyingfish that with proper configuration that FG can run on modest hardware but IMO this does not result in an optimal FG experience. Stepping up to a mid level nvidia GPU will allow something close to an optimal FG experience without breaking the bank even on hardware with a fairly modest CPU and memory configuration.

The newer Intel integrated graphics chips seem to do a lot better than the older ones. Even though his system is fairly modest flyingfish is getting around 30FPM which is more than enough to be acceptable (IMO 20FPS is the absolute minimum) and is surprisingly good considering his GPU. He is also seeing some choppiness which is not desirable but is probably unavoidable with his GPU. To get to 30FPM he has to reduce eye candy to a considerable degree but not completely to minimum and this does show that with the eye candy turned down that FG will run on some fairly modest hardware. In addition this also indicates that with eye candy completely turned down that FG will run OK on hardware that is even more modest. I also suspect that his monitor is not particularly high resolution which has a significant impact on how much GPU is needed.

For a short time I ran my current computer with the integrated Intel GPU while I was waiting on my nvidia card to be shipped. This was with a 30inch 2560x1600 monitor and a recent Intel chip set (i7 Haswell). I could not run FG at all on this system apparently because it lacked the GPU capacity to drive the high res monitor and FG would fail to start. Since I had an nvidia card on the way I didn't spend any time trying to get things working with this hardware so I don't know if this is possible with some tweaking. But I suspect that even if I got this working that frame rates would have been horrible with the high res monitor. How much GPU you need depends on your monitor resolution and higher resolution monitors require higher end video cards to give comparable performance and lower end GPUs may not even be able to drive some high end monitors.
hvengel
Retired
 
Posts: 1127
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:35 am
Location: Minden Nevada

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby Hooray » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:36 pm

it should have worked at least in windowed mode then, I have been using such setups on similarly low-end hardware, and while fullscreen would often fail - a windowed setup should at least allow the init code to complete. Also, whether FlightGear is ultimately CPU-bound (limited) or GPU-bound depends heavily on the actual setup, i.e. startup and run-time settings, including aircraft and scenery complexity obviously.
We have people like Thorsten with incredibly powerful "gaming" systems that were getting rock-solid frame rates/spacing at a time when FlightGear would be CPU-bound for many other users due to the recently-discovered/fixed effects system bug on less powerful systems. So the question where FlightGear is CPU or GPU bound cannot be answered reliably without providing a lot of surrounding context info and the actual use-case.
Overall, the "minimum startup profile" detailed on the wiki should help identify "the best possible performance" with all settings disabled, which should at least provide some kind of baseline to work with once people start using more customized settings for a certain combination of eye-candy, location and aircraft complexity.

In general, there are still a number of issues in the C++ code that remain unidentified and that are not easily identified on typically developer machines that are usually fairly powerful - and unfortunately, we're not getting much -actionable- feedback from people with lower-end/older systems - otherwise, FlightGear could certainly be made to work better on such hardware, too.

But given the lack of feedback, as well as the lack of development with a focus on lower-end systems, it is certainly a good idea to aim a little higher - which I also did by suggesting at least 8gb of RAM, a 64 bit quadcore CPU, as well as at least 1024 MB of dedicated VRAM.

It is important to keep in mind that the way our aircraft and scenery are being developed, FlightGear is still not particularly optimized - so throwing more horsepower at the problem, does indeed help provide a more satisfying experience.

The other issue here is that we're lacking an integrated mechanism to allow end-users to easily track behavior of individual subsystems and aircraft in terms of RAM/VRAM and CPU utilization - so that we're only seeing fairly rough numbers communicated, even on the devel list.

While things like the recently-fixed listener issue should no longer show up, the underlying problem is a fairly common one and can be seen in a number of aircraft that are using Nasal callbacks triggered by timers/listeners, which may be registered to run way too frequently.
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,
Hooray
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby hvengel » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:38 pm

You are probably right about running FG windowed on the high res monitor with the Intel or other low end GPUs. For users with low end GPUs who can not upgrade for what ever reason this might prove to be a good solution to achieve better frame rates even if the FG experience is sub-optimal. Since I was getting a high end GPU in a few days I didn't explore that possibility since I wanted to make full use of the high res monitor.

Fortunately with the fast GPU I can run at full resolution with eye candy at max with decent frame rates even with complex scenery and aircraft. I am clearly not CPU or memory bound as I never see either approach max utilization in my system monitoring software. As a result I get very steady frames rates with no noticeable choppiness (IE. frame spacing is very even). My system is, if anything, more powerful than Thorsten's system. I agree that "throwing more horsepower at the problem, does indeed help provide a more satisfying experience" at least up to a point. I also think that going from a low end GPU to a mid-level GPU will give a lot of bang for the buck, if users can do this type of upgrade, and will take most users up into a really decent FG experience although on low end hardware they may then find themselves CPU or memory limited. But just about any recent (last 5 years) multi-core CPU should handle FG nicely when paired with a current mid-level GPU. These mid-level GPUs should handle resolutions up to 1080P or a tad higher nicely.

I may have actually seen a small frame rate drop with 3.2 compared to 3.0 (perhaps 10%) although I have not done extensive testing having only used 3.2 for two flights so far, So I might be mistaken about the actual performance difference (IE. it might have been more about scenery content being more complex - more clouds on the days I tested 3.2 for example). But so far 3.2 seems to be the most stable recent version I have tested as I didn't have a single issue on either flight.
hvengel
Retired
 
Posts: 1127
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:35 am
Location: Minden Nevada

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby F-GTUX » Sat Nov 15, 2014 12:05 am

Hello,

I thought I couldn't go further than FG 1.9.1 with my 9 years old AMD Athlon x2 @2.3GHz, 4 Go DDR(1)@333MHz, NVidia 6600@430Mhz(256Mo). I tried FG 3.0 some weeks ago, when I installed a fresh Lubuntu 14.10... and I chose to go on with it. Obviously, shaders are not for me, they kill my frame rate ! And I stay with the scenery 2.12, not the new Terrasync one. But at 1920x1080, I can fly at 30 fps around KSFO. Paris is a much more demanding area : the fps can drop as low as 10-15. This is quite the same as what I had with FG 1.9.1. So I will wait some more time before upgrading my antique! Some months ago, I tried FG 1.9.1 on an Asus T100 (Atom Bay Trail, 2 Go, Windows 8.1, 1366x768), it was slower but flyable except around Paris. I still have to try FG 3.2 on both PCs, just for fun.

Thus, about system requirements, the answer essentially depends on what you're looking for : 100 fps on 4K dual screen around Paris with all rendering effects on and the new scenery, well, you'll have to wait for next generations graphic cards and processors! But any modern computer should give you at least a basic experience, just be careful to avoid some problematic hardware listed on the wiki. Above that, it depends on your budget, your computer must also be considered as a coherent whole : no high end CPU with a low end GPU or vice versa, no bad savings on the amount of RAM, and a SSD can be a good idea.
F-GTUX
 
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:25 am
Location: France - Le Chesnay (78)
Callsign: F-GTUX
Version: 2018.3.1
OS: Lubuntu 18.04

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby IgnasTumas » Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:52 am

I have MX150, can run Escape from Tarkov with 30-40 FPS. Will it run this FS?
IgnasTumas
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 9:36 pm

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby D-ECHO » Sat Feb 13, 2021 11:09 am

Hi Ignas,

we need a bit more information to even make a guess about the potential performance of FlightGear on your computer, most importantly:

Which CPU do you have?
How much and what RAM do you have?

Also, please note that FlightGear 3.2 is very old (as you can see the last post before yours is from 2014, that's 7 years ago!).
D-ECHO
 
Posts: 2460
Joined: Sat May 09, 2015 1:31 pm
Pronouns: Bea (she/her)
Version: next

Re: System Requirements for FlightGear 3.2?

Postby Johan G » Sat Feb 13, 2021 11:23 am

Latest stable version is 2020.3.6.
Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)
Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
Some YouTube videos
Johan G
Moderator
 
Posts: 6629
Joined: Fri Aug 06, 2010 6:33 pm
Location: Sweden
Callsign: SE-JG
IRC name: Johan_G
Version: 2020.3.4
OS: Windows 10, 64 bit


Return to Installation

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests