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Adventures of a FG noob

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Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Farhad » Sun Sep 12, 2010 1:49 am

Hi,

I just wanted to share with you some of the stuff that I have been doing with FG and, hopefully, get some pointers as to how to do better.

Today, I flew the C172r first on a short warm-up leg from KSFO to KOAK - easy and fun. Then, from KOAK I decided to try something a tad more involved. I would fly from KOAK (Oakland) to KMRY (Monterey Peninsula, near Carmel). I decided to set the time to 'dusk' for some pretty scenery. I knew that the 70nm flight would take me into the early night, but I figured that with route manager set for the AP and with the HUD for the landing, I would do fine. Sure enough, I got their at dark already and I could not see *any* light anywhere, not even at the airport (which, according to AirNav had a beacon and dusk to dawn lighting). I ended up circling the place, getting as low as 700ft just to try to spot the airport, but to no avail. Then, rather frustrated, I decided to cheat and "switch on the light" by setting the time to 'noon'. I was baffled to find myself over open water with no land in sight whatsoever. Either I had screw-up badly, or my AP when whacko. Last time I checked, the Bermuda Triangle was not off the coast of California :?

To top if all off, when I decided to play the game to the end a ditch in the water (at slow speed and a nice AoA) I found out that... .... I could "land on water". I guess FG (1.9.1) does not see a problem with landing on water :wink:

Couple of real complaints now:

a) is there a way to make the ATIS louder without making all the sounds, including engine noise, louder?
b) is there a way to flip the cockpit light on in the 172r? Instruments are neither backlit nor illuminated in any way.

It tough being a noobie. Not. I still love FG and I have a great time with it, even if I end up in really bizarre situations..

Cheers!

FG

PS: I forgot to mention the best part of my 'adventure': 9 miles out of KMRY, I listed to the ATIS, then proceeded to radio the ATC and announce myself. I did get a reply and even a runway (consistent with the info on AirNav!). Heck, he/she even cleared me for my 'final'. Except there was no land in sight....
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby MAKG » Sun Sep 12, 2010 4:56 pm

You need to set up "terrasync." KMRY is (barely) outside the default scenery tile. Terrasync will download scenery as you approach it. Missing scenery appears as open ocean.

fgrun has a checkbox for this.

If you start at an airport where you're not sure you have scenery (e.g., KLAX), there is also a "scenery prefetch" option in fgrun.

The c172p has backlit instruments. And that route manager isn't terribly realistic for a light aircraft with no GPS.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby nickyivyca » Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:00 am

He was flying the C172R, which is definitely more basic than the C172P.

As for the landing on water........it's a bit of a silly glitch with JSBSim. Helijah, a BIG YASim fan, can give you info on that :wink:

As for ATIS volume, I have no idea.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Sealbhach » Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:19 am

If you're on a long flight with the AP flying the plane, you can speed up the simulation rate using the Environment/Time settings. It sounds like you ran out of scenery. I download big chunks of it from here:

http://flightgear.org/Downloads/scenery-1.0.1.html

.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Farhad » Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:21 am

where do I download terrasync (for Ubuntu/GNU Linux 10.04)?
(I hope I can get it separately from FGrun which I could not compile for my machine :oops: )
thanks!
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Farhad » Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:26 am

MAKG wrote:The c172p has backlit instruments.

really?! I did not find it. what is the command?
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby nickyivyca » Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:45 am

If you're using the C172P the instruments should be lit. But since you're using the C172R, it may not have lit instruments. The C172P doesn't have a route manager, you have to use the GPS and AP built into the cockpit.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby MAKG » Tue Sep 14, 2010 11:42 pm

Farhad wrote:where do I download terrasync (for Ubuntu/GNU Linux 10.04)?
(I hope I can get it separately from FGrun which I could not compile for my machine :oops: )
thanks!

fgrun will really help you out here.

If you're building it yourself, you should get that working. Quite a lot of the stuff discussed here will make more sense.

It's not as well maintained as FG itself is. I've had to (occasionally) correct some compile problems. But I do think the current svn version is working properly.

You already have terrasync with the FG build. But it has to be enabled. There are command line options for that, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with fgrun.

The c172p has no GPS.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Sealbhach » Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:02 am

Forget FGrun, is my advice. Use FGO, it's much lighter on resources and has a nice balance between GUI and command line controls:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6279

.
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Re: Adventures of a FG noob

Postby Quadunit404 » Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:26 am

Fgo! is currently Linux-only though :?
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