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FAQ - Read This First!

All general support: help on flying, installation, hardware, getting online etc. There are lots of users and developers to help you out.
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?
- does the problem occur with any aircraft, at any airport?
- where did you download your aircraft/scenery from?
- is there any output printed to the console (black window)?
- copy&paste your commandline (tick the "Show commandline box on the last page of FGRun or the "Others" section on the Mac launcher).

Please report any bugs not specific to an aircraft on the issue tracker.
To run FlightGear on old computers with bad OpenGL support, please take a look at this wiki article.

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.

FAQ - Read This First!

Postby Kugelfang » Tue Dec 26, 2006 7:15 pm

Forums are about sharing information, asking for help and offering assistance. But to get help someone else will either have to be familiar with the problem you're experiencing or be able to duplicate your problem on their system.

So when asking for help, here are some guidelines as to what to include in your request:

    1. What are you trying to do?
    2. What do you expect to happen?
    3. What happens instead?
    4. Where have you looked for solutions?
    5. What have you already done to try and overcome the problem?
    6. The version of the software you're trying to use (did you compile it or download an executable?)
    7. The operating system you're using (Windows version, Linux distribution, etc)
    8. Hardware specifics (processor, RAM, etc.)
    9. Your video card specifics
Some other things to consider:
    1. The more detail you give, the more likely it is that someone will be able to help you.
    2. The more you have tried to help yourself, the more likely it is that someone will be willing to spend time helping you.
    3. Try your best to post in English even if your English is not that good. You'll have a much better chance of getting a response that way.
    4. Yes, computers can be frustrating. Do not take your frustrations out on other FlightGear enthusiasts.
FlightGear has a wide variety of documentation available that answers most common questions.

Your first port of call should be The Flightgear Manual (aka The Getting Started Guide). This should be part of your distribution. The latest version can be found here: http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/getstart/getstart.html

This includes tutorials on how to fly for beginners, and lots of information on what keys to press, how to install aircraft, scenery etc. Please ensure you are using the correct version of the manual for your software version. Using the 0.9.10 manual for a 0.9.8 system may lead you astray!

Secondly, there is a wiki here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Further documentation can be found here: http://www.flightgear.org/docs.html

Some questions are asked repeatedly on the forums. Please search before posting. The most common questions/answers are repeated here to save time:

Q: Why does the aircraft turn left on take-off ?
A: http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_wiki/index.php?title=Understanding_Propeller_Torque_and_P-Factor[/list]
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Postby Kugelfang » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:34 am

FlightGear has a wide variety of documentation available that answers most common questions.

Your first port of call should be The Flightgear Manual (aka The Getting Started Guide). This should be part of your distribution. The latest version can be found here:

http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/getstart/getstart.html

Please ensure you are using the correct version of the manual for your software version. I.e. using the 0.9.10 manual for a 0.9.8 system may lead you astray!

Secondly, there is a wiki here:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_w ... =Main_Page

Further documentation can be found here:

http://www.flightgear.org/docs.html

-Stuart
We were set in our ways. We believed in a good God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that the same good God did not intend man should ever fly.
--Bill Tate (Crouch, The Bishop's Boys)
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby sim » Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:57 pm

You got that quote at the bottom right Stuart about what god said. We're all sinners or we would not be on this forum but then this isn't real it's just fun. That's what we all enjoy about FlightGear please don't make it a sin! sim
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby dany93 » Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:26 pm

Hi,

How can we tag a topic as "SOLVED" ?

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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby flameout » Thu Sep 10, 2009 1:54 am

dany93 wrote:How can we tag a topic as "SOLVED" ?

I don't know of any "tag" method, but I do know you can edit your original post, which edits the topic name, and append [Solved] to it. I believe this is what you are referring to.

This is what I have seen people do here, and it is quite clear.

I hope this helps.
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby dany93 » Thu Sep 10, 2009 10:02 am

flameout wrote:I don't know of any "tag" method, but I do know you can edit your original post, which edits the topic name, and append [Solved] to it. I believe this is what you are referring to.


Thank you, flameout. It works and it helps.

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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby joeb3651 » Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:24 am

Well I'll try not to take my frustrations out here but 4 hours and I still can't get FlightGear to work correctly.
Specifics:
Vista 64bit home premium
8G RAM
nVidia GeForce 9600M GT
500G HD
Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick
2 monitor setup, integrated display and external Acer 19"

FlightGear 1.9.1

Issues, first, is there anyway to get FG to run on my Acer monitor. Everytime it starts the GUI starts on my large monitor, where I have my main menus, but then the flight window opens up on my laptop screen with the window at 1680X1050 and I have to carefully find a place where I can drag it to my large monitor. Then hit maximize so it's full screen.
BIG issue! The joystick keeps coming up as a Microsoft PC joystick...whatever. I've gone through the forums and tried every solution including changing the default .xml with a line telling it js 0 is equal to the logitech xml file, adding a custom file with the logitech settings in it, etc., etc., etc. All I keep getting is that I have a simple MS Joystick. This was 3 hours of my issues.
Issue, the read this first docs give a location of a joystick README at http://rockfish.net/fg/README.Joystick Nothing there but a page saying the rockfish domain is for sale.
Issue, fgjs.exe starts, asks me to test for the deadzone, counts to 0 from 10 and crashes.

So how do I get to a document that will tell me what I need to do with this setup to get it to work. I forgot to mention during all of this trial and error I've done at least 4 clean from the start installs.

Thanks,

Joe B
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby Armchair Ace » Sun Sep 27, 2009 9:00 pm

I cannot find help for this problem on any FAQ list, so I'll ask here. I can start FGFS and set the network settings as I wish (as said on Multiplayer help on FGFS wiki) and everything should work however, I can connect to the server, but I cant see any other pilots, I cannot see any pilots on the pilot list and I DO have AI models activated, What to I do? :(
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby redneck » Mon Sep 28, 2009 6:19 am

Have you tried a different server? Maybe the server you've been trying to connect to is down.
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Re: FAQ - Read This First!

Postby MD-Terp » Mon Sep 28, 2009 10:19 am

joeb3651 wrote:The joystick keeps coming up as a Microsoft PC joystick...whatever. I've gone through the forums and tried every solution including changing the default .xml with a line telling it js 0 is equal to the logitech xml file, adding a custom file with the logitech settings in it, etc., etc., etc. All I keep getting is that I have a simple MS Joystick. This was 3 hours of my issues.

No matter what you do, the sim will still say "JS: failed to detect joystick name" or whatever. The process of forcing FlightGear to load a certain bindings file is more of a workaround than a solution. You very well may have done it right the first time, but you will still get that error message. The proof is in whether the controls you want are assigned to the joystick movements/buttons you intend them to be.

Sorry if that wasn't clear from any of our help documents. Please feel free to come to us with any other issues you are having. Keep in mind that an ambitious and extraordinarily complex project is bound to have issues here and there when trying to make it universally cross-platform -- and all this by complete volunteer programmers, as well.
Cheers,
-Rob.

"Retired" from FlightGear involvement as of July 2010.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8809
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