Installation

Everything lives in one folder, ~/FlightGear by default. If you want another location, such as a second drive, set FG_BASIS first. The scripts in these docs read this variable.

export FG_BASIS="$HOME/FlightGear"
mkdir -p "$FG_BASIS"/{downloads,runtime,Aircraft,TerraSync,Photoscenery}

Required packages

sudo apt install curl zstd unzip imagemagick python3-pil python3-numpy python3-requests

The aerial imagery scripts need the magick command, which means ImageMagick 7. Debian 13 ships it, and you can check with magick -version.

Download FlightGear and its data

The program and data are on SourceForge. The data is almost 2 GB.

cd "$FG_BASIS/downloads"
curl -L -o flightgear-2024.1.7-linux-amd64.AppImage \
  https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/release-2024.1/flightgear-2024.1.7-linux-amd64.AppImage/download
curl -L -o FlightGear-2024.1.7-data.txz \
  https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/release-2024.1/FlightGear-2024.1.7-data.txz/download

Extract

The AppImage gets extracted so that it runs without FUSE and starts faster.

cd "$FG_BASIS/runtime"
chmod +x ../downloads/flightgear-2024.1.7-linux-amd64.AppImage
../downloads/flightgear-2024.1.7-linux-amd64.AppImage --appimage-extract
cd "$FG_BASIS"
tar -xf downloads/FlightGear-2024.1.7-data.txz
ls

The folder must now contain fgdata. If the extracted folder has another name, rename it. To test:

cat "$FG_BASIS/fgdata/version"

Get the tools

cd "$FG_BASIS"
curl -LO https://codemich.de/projekt/flightgear/doku/flightgear-werkzeuge.zip
unzip -o flightgear-werkzeuge.zip -d werkzeuge
chmod +x werkzeuge/starten.sh

First start

"$FG_BASIS/werkzeuge/starten.sh" --aircraft=c172p --airport=EDDP

On the first flight, TerraSync downloads the surrounding scenery, which takes a few minutes.

Add aircraft

Aircraft for FlightGear 2024 are available as ZIP files on the mirror servers. Extract them into Aircraft.

cd "$FG_BASIS/Aircraft"
curl -LO https://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/ftp/Aircraft-2024/SpaceShuttle.zip
unzip -q SpaceShuttle.zip && rm SpaceShuttle.zip

Next step

Next, set up the overlay. Most of the customizations build on it.