AirRacing, an air race plugin for FlightGear, has been updated. This release improves accuracy in penalty checks and gate-passing detection. It also comes with new features - the gate number indicator and a new arrow that points the following gate. You can download the latest version from the AirRacing page.

I also want to say that the latest binary package of Flightgear/CVS was released on Jun 15. This version includes JSBSim/CVS as of 2008/06/08. With this bleeding edge of FlightGear, you can fly some latest aircraft that are capable of air-show smoke, hooks for carriers, parachute, etc. Some of such aircraft are Dave's F-4N, helijah's Zlin 50 lx, and more. You can visit the Aircraft Link page for more aircraft.

Have a fun flight!

The GUI launcher for FlightGear Mac OS X is getting more useful and stable. It now introduces two fancy features for Mac users - Voice ATC (FGCOM) integration and Favorite list.

The Voice ATC (FGCOM) integration enables you to make a real voice communication using radio setting. Selecting a COM1 radio and press space bar to talk to your wing mates. Thanks to user-friendly GUI, all you have to do is to write an account info of FGCOM in the network tab. Then the GUI launcher automatically activates FGCOM in Multi Player mode for you. Don't you have an account for FGCOM yet? press "get an account" button on the Network tab. It will show you how to get one.

The Favorite list gives you a means of preserving a named set of current options just like a book mark of Safari. You can switch from one configuration to another with just one double-click on the list in the Favorite tab. Do you have some combinations of favorite airport and aircraft? Do you change options from time to time? Use Favorite list. It's a real time saver.

Moreover, r154 improves stability, especially after OS X 10.5.2 update. Do you experience FlightGear quits unexpectedly with "Download scenery on the fly" enabled? Try this update! you can download scenery again.

You can download the updater from Downloads page, like always. If you don't have FlightGear 1.0.0 full package yet, download FlgihtGear-1.0.0-r152.dmg first, and then, update it with FlightGear-1.0.0-r154-launcher.dmg.

Have an easy flight!

According to reports from users, there is a problem in "Download scenery on the fly" after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.2. Enabling this option likely causes FlightGear quit unexpectedly, possibly with a Crash Report dialog.

The problem occurs when FlightGear connects to terrasync (scenery downloader that works in background. it start downloading when FlightGear sends the current location) with UDP connection to localhost:5500. The real cause of this issues is under investigation. One thing I can find is that terrasync is working properly since connecting it from a test program makes terrasync start downloading scenery data properly. The problem should be in FlightGear side or some updated Apple's library.

The workarounds for this problem at this moment can be one of the followings:

• Disable "Download scenery on the fly"
• Postpone applying the 10.5.2 update :-p
  

If you are using r154-candidate, leave fgcom related options blank. Otherwise, enabling multi-player mode also makes the same problem.

I will find the solution and make an updater as soon as possible, so be patient please.

Note added on Feb-14-2008

The cause of this issue was found. I'll make an update package after some tests. Meanwhile, please download PLIB-OSX10_5_2.tar.gz. Extracting the file at /Applications/FlightGear.app/Contents/Frameworks should fix the issue. In case of error in extraction, remove PLIB.framework folder and extract again. This file is for Leopard only at this moment. I'll test this on Tiger hopefully soon. Feedbacks from Tiger users are very welcome. (Please be advised that you should make a backup of the original PLIB.framework. Otherwise, you need to download the FULL package again in case of trouble.)

Here comes another update for FlightGear Mac OS X - 1.0.0-r152. This release improves the quality especially on Tiger, as well as stability, usability and new features for all Tiger/Leopard capable Macs. It is recommended for all users to update to r152. Probably the biggest reason for you to use this release can be the useful symbolic link to FlightGear's data folder. the link is automatically made at $HOME/Documents/1.0.0 folder when launched. Now you don't get lost in finding Aircraft or Scenery folder. You can probably find some useful documents that you've never seen! Moreover, the screen shots taken by pressing 'F3' (or Option-F3 or Fn-Option-F3) will be copied to $HOME/Documents/1.0.0/ScreenShots automatically when fgfs exits. You can use ImageMagick or Gimp to convert ppm images to some other image file format.

The 1.0.0-r152 full package and the GUI updater are available from the Downloads page, like always.

The changes since r151 includes:

• Fixed the problems on Tiger
  • text fields are grayed-out
  • gear buttons and FlightGear icon are not shown properly
  • Some thumbnails were blurred when opening/closing advanced feature tabs~(This is not a bug, but is made by corrupted DPI info in thumbnail)
• Improved stability
  • fixed the error when .#*-set-xml# is in Aircraft directory (probably made by emacs)
  • fixed the bug in specifying more than one "other options"
• More improvements for usability
  • symbolic links (short cuts) for data folder to ~/Documents/FlightGear/1.0.0
  • snapshots are copied to ~/Documents/FlightGear/1.0.0/SnapShots/*.ppm when fgfs exits
  • accepts 7zip format for Aircraft data only if 7zip is installed on your Mac (Leopard has 7zip)
• Improvements in Aircraft
  • Nasal cleanups
  • fixed ADF and VSI in A6M2
  • integrated package for both A6M2 and A6M2b (A6M2 has multiple livery(textures) - gray and green)
  • some minor updates

Hope you can have more comfortable flight using this.

I've released the latest GUI launcher for FlightGear Mac OS X 1.0.0. it's available from either Downloads page or sourceforge download page.

What I like the most in this release is that you can search all the airports and installed aircraft using GUI launcher. Aircraft search can let you find yasim aircraft only, or beta versions only by typing such keyword to the search box. You can also open Positions or Aircraft tab by clicking the gear buttons at the right end of airport/aircraft text field on the top pane of GUI launcher.

The complete changes in r151 GUI launcher package since r150 are:

• Improved Airport search
  • airport name and code show up in the top pane instead of code
  • airport search is available by clicking a gear button at the right end of the airport text field.
  • Incremental airport search (by name, location, airport code, or country) at the "Position" tab
  • more than 20,000 airport information. I believe it contains all the airports available in FlightGear.
  • improved launch time of GUI launcher (not fgfs itself though)
• New Aircraft search
  • aircraft name shows up in the top pane instead of its configuration file name
  • aircraft search is available by clicking a gear button at the right end of the aircraft text field.
  • Incremental aircraft search just like airport search (by name, fdm(yasim/jsb/etc), or status(alpha,beta,etc))
  • aircraft data cache to improve the launch time of GUI launcher from the second time.
• More Options in both General and Features tab
  • Real weather fetch
  • Horizon effect
  • Clouds / 3D clouds
  • Turbulence
  • visibility
  • Season
• Improved xml file for Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals
  • can be recognized on my MacBook Pro

To install the GUI package, just open the dmg file and click the package icon. Then follow the instruction as the installer tells you. The full package with r151 GUI launcher will be available soon.

Have a confortable flight using r151 GUI launcher!

I've released the FlightGear Mac OS X 1.0.0-r150. This release fixes the problem in installing additional aircraft/scenery data. It is recommended for all users to update 1.0.0 (r149) to 1.0.0-r150. You can check your revision number by clicking "About FlightGear Mac OS X" from the menu bar of the GUI launcher.

If you don't want to download entire FlightGear package, you can also get a single fixed file and copy it to FlightGear folder yourself. see detail instruction at this page

We are very proud and excited to release FlightGear 1.0.0 for Mac OS X. This release of FlightGear gives more "comfortable" flight to every single Intel Mac user as well as PowerPC user. Now it runs on both Mac OS 10.4(Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). FlightGear 1.0.0 for Mac OS X comes with the fancy GUI launcher that eases your flight. You can change aircraft, airport, and options as you like. The launcher also makes it possible to fly with your wing mates. Enabling multi-player mode pops up a fancy on-line map so you can find your new wing mates. Thanks to the easy installer in the launcher, you can add new aircraft and scenery data in a few second - no need to find the data folder any more.

You can download FlightGear-1.0.0 from Downloads page.

I updated Mac OS to 10.5 (Leopard) and confirmed that FlightGear Mac OS X 0.9.10, 0.9.11-pre1, and even CVS/OSG are fully Leopard Compatible. You can enjoy FlightGear Mac OS X on Leopard as well as Tiger.

For those who already installed 0.9.10, make sure you have the latest GUI launcher. If you don't have it, download FlightGear-0.9.10-r114-launcher.dmg from Downloads page.

I test FlightGear Mac OS X only on Leopard updated from Tiger, so reports from the users who have clean-installed Leopard are very welcome!

After months of silence, Binary pakcages for 0.9.11-pre1 and CVS snapshot have become available from Downloads page. 0.9.11-pre1 has some new features such as Dynamic View, New Multi Player Protocol, and lots more. CVS snapshot package is the latest binary package from the CVS as of Oct-30-2007. These packages are for developers and advanced users. Read "IMPORTANT NOTICE sections" before downloading these packages. You can see ReadMe included in each package for more information.

This time, I should say "Have a challenging flight!"

I'm working on updating Xcode project files for FlightGear 0.9.11-pre1. It has been successfully built and is being tested on both Intel and ppc Macs. I'll post the binary package of 0.9.11-pre1right after some test flights (and if there are less critical bugs). If you want to build it yourself, you can download the Xcode project files, patches, and build scripts from the svn repository.

svn co https://macflightgear.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/macflightgear/branches/0.9.11-pre1

If you encountered an error in downloading SimGear, please download SimGear-0.3.11-pre1 manually and put it into the root folder of the working copy.