First Blush Experience of install of 3.6RC on
Windows Vista 32bit ati Radeon x300 4gbRam
I used the link for windows provided above for the test copy.
First thing ( possibly a non-issue )
After clicking on the setup execute file it felt a very long time for something to indicate that anything was actually happening. After a few minutes I noticed the HDD light was flashing so I remained patient and eventually the operating system asked me to approve the program, I did.
It seemed to be a very clean and typical windows install until the very end. There is a bug report about this but at the end of install it seems the program is attempting to start but it can not find the file intl.dll and therefore the install reports that it can not start flightgear.
This has been previously reported, but I mention it again, because people just trying Windows FlightGear when they get to this point in the installation they may be confused and they may even execute a bit of advice that comes with the crash report about re-installing flightgear, which is entirely unnecessary even after this type of crash.
I ignored the crash and dismissed any and all open windows associated with the install.
Flightgear installed properly and is workable in spite of the above mentioned crash. I assume it to be not important to the over all running of the program that this crash happened,. I assume because flightgear runs on the first click of it's installed icon that the program finds intl.dll because the program runs.
What I found surprising was the inclusion of the "traditional" release planes, because of all the talk about how flightgear was to come with just the 2 UFOs and the new excellent "detailed". It's okay, now I have two of many of these, and the launcher lists the release planes under the documents/Aircraft private local file of planes.
The installation appears to have correctly incorporated my last 3.6 nightly flightgear.org files, and it did create a new nav cache. All of my planes seem to have listed correctly. There is a problem with one of the planes text displayed in the launcher.
It is the release plane version of the B1900D from the data/Aircraft folder. Using the arrow to switch variants and the optional version correctly displays:
After installation, I added my custom hacks to things like huds and menus and keyboard and my Nascar Racing Wheel joystick file, the Global Acars Nasal stuff, Vatsim stuff...
And I took a test flight in the 172 at KSFO and it was an excellent first flight. Everything working properly and as expected so far, but I've not put 3.6rc thru it's paces yet and intend to post anything glaring over the next day or so.
Thank you, folks, for working so very hard and diligently on this.
Ray
Ray St. Marie