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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Open Source vs Commercial Flight Simulators

By Aaron Jackson


If you are looking for free flight simulator games then you won't do better than FlightGear. FlightGear is an open source flight simulation package which has been under constant development since the mid 1990's. FlightGear has been created by a online community of contributing coders. There are different versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh. Because it's an open source application it means that the program code is freely available so that other programmer communities can alter the software. There are a few commercial adaptations of FlightGear available like ProFlight Simulator that've been extensively modified and enhanced with premium extras like additional planes and helicopters.

The open-source nature of FlightGear means it does not have any support compared against commercial variations of the simulator such ProFlight Simulator. Irrespective of whether you choose to use the free open-source version or one of the commercial versions you will be getting your hands on one of the finest flight simulators available.

As freebie flight simulator applications go FlightGear fills the needs of anybody looking for a fun and pragmatic flying experience. It's realistic enough to be used as a help in pilot training and to be used in research. It's actually more than just a game. Don't waste your time hunting for flight simulators in your flight sim store as the niche nature of the flight sim market means that the majority of the software is available for download.

FlightGear has it's origins in the large level of dissatisfaction flight simulator fans had with commercial flight sims that had tiny scope for expansions. The open source community supplies the perfect environment for ongoing enhancements and improvements. Commercial flight simulator programmers have also taken the open source code for FlightGear and developed the flight sim further and are selling commercial versions of the application. The open-source nature of the project means that there are much more alterations and enhancements being released continually than the popular Microsoft product for instance.

As well as airplanes ProFlight Simulator is also a helicopter flight simulator. It includes a magnificent collection of copters you can fly making it actually a helicopter flight simulator in addition to the 100+ aircraft that you can fly. This includes army and medical copters. The possibilities are endless. A helicopter flight simulator permits you to visit places on the map unreachable to planes and you can land on the side of mountains for instance. The helicopter models in ProFlight Simlulator handle in a pragmatic way that lead you to feel like you are flying a genuine copter. As well as the freedom to land anywhere on land there are more than 20,000 airports you can land at. The world is available for you to fly over and there are many realistic models of recognisable landmarks that you can fly to such the Great Wall of China, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower.




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