I'd like to present you my experience with Flightgear (on Linux) early after installation.
Long story short, a haven't been gaming for quite some time (counted in years), when I came across an article on Czech linux-oriented portal "root.cz", being a review of FG. I decided to give it a try, thinking of it in terms of relaxing evenings after some hard studying. From today's perspective, that's exactly what FG offers me .
Installation was really straightforward; using the repos in latest openSUSE, FG 2.8 was few clicks away. While I installed a launcher too (two of them actually), It took me some time to realize that I need to use a launcher, but I'll come to that later. When starting it for first few times, I just didn't use it, resulting in the defaults.
At first startup, I noticed the "Need help? use help->tutorials" message, and because I had no idea how to start up the plane (it would be just plain try and fail, than try something else), I did just that and started some basic tutorials. I wouldn't say going through the tutorials was frustrating, but they were quite boring and I was eager to get in the air as soon as possible. I managed to do that using the "engine failure" tutorial, and managed to get the basics of the handling and landed quite well at the same time (given the circumstances, being it my first landing) .
Anyway, I was flying around KSFO for a day or two, till I found out about about the launchers. From now on, I used mainly Citation X for flying around, soon discovering the MP, which is in my eyes the one most important feature. There are always some people around KSFO, so that was sufficient for some time.
Back to the launchers, I prefer using the "FGx" launcher - it just seems more quickly usable to me (eg. the map showing chosen position).
But I wanted to fly over Europe too... The wiki is very nicely done when it comes to installing the scenery and more planes (having enough disk space, I installed whole world and all planes on FG site). About the planes, I agree there is a need to better distinguish poorly done planes (especially when it comes to unusable FDM) from the good and excellent ones. There are some true gems, as well as aircraft I wasn't able to keep in the air even for 30s due to obviously malfunctioning FDM.
Here I must stress usefulness of the Autostart feature, present in most aircraft not running at startup. It keeps frustration away from those who just want to enjoy the flight .
(Please note that I actually agree with aircraft being shut down at startup, as long as autostart is present, or the starting procedure is trivially doable by just trying what you see in the cockpit.)
I discovered however, that there can be some problems on Linux about the planes (eg. some versions of the L39 Albatros undergoing several improvements lately). The problems can be caused by Linux being case sensitive about file paths (Windows is not), and I suspect, more models could suffer from some developers not knowing that. It's easy to fix if you know about the problem, but it would better be done on the developer side, as you never know if the smoke is just not implemented or missing due to this. Not to mention how lengthy it would be to go through more aircraft...
I also vote for hosting a non-GPL hangar on the FG site, and tighter coordination with the aircraft developers (I think they should be asked to actively propose their models to the hangar once it is created, of course there could be link to their site/hangar). It would help nice models to be more easily found, an more people could enjoy them. And that's why people spend time creating them, right?
A little downside is how the FGcom is done as a standalone program just cooperating with FG itself. It took me some fiddling with the settings for about two hours to get it working, but again installation was simply done from repos (FGcom and than FGcomGui as well).
When it comes to eye candy, as a user of Intel HD graphics, I cant allow much, but I have to state that the weather and clouds (especially with light scattering; Rembrandt has no chance at this HW) is just awesome, and in my eyes the best visual part of the FG at all.
Most likely because of the Intel graphics, I suffered for a long time from a problem with aircraft models (and some ground textures too) being black or missing some parts (see my post in an older thread complaining about similar problem). I solved it by adding a command line option turning off texture compression.
One of the downsides that result in bad first time impression is a poor scenery (the basic one, not custom). On many places, the quality is too damn low. But AFAIK this is going to be improved, and the current state is anyway reasonable when it comes to HW resources.
To sum up my feelings about FG, it's a great project with high potential for the future improvements. It's nice to see a competitive open alternative to commercial products, which is in many areas superior .
Keep the good work up and thanks to all those who participate!