Flight Yoke and Rudder Pedals

It is possible to use FlightGear by just using the mouse and keyboard, but it isn’t much like flying a real plane.  A joystick with a throttle and twist will also do the job with a bit more realism.   When I was using Microsoft Flight Simulator a couple years ago, my wife bought for me (let me buy) a FlightSim Yoke and Rudder Pedals from CH Products.  That and some real flight navigation charts is what really turned this from a trivial game into a simulation.

I hooked up my yoke to my desk and plugged it and the rudder pedals into my USB port.  To start up FlightGear, I opened up Konsole and entered fgfs which starts up the default scenario. I’m sitting in a nice little Cessna in San Francisco, California.   I try moving the hat switch, nothing.  I move the throttle forward, nothing.  I try wiggling everything, and nothing happens.  Shoot.  Not as easy as I thought it would be.  I need a mechanic.

I rotate my 3D desktop to another desktop, and open up Mandriva Control Center, this requires entering my root password.  Then I click on “Browe and Configure Hardware.”  It takes about 30 seconds to scan my laptop for various hardware devices.  When it is finished I see that it has found my rudder pedals and my yoke and they are listed in the “Other” category.  Mandriva just needed to be told that I had plugged in something it needed to look for.  I rotate back around to my FlightGear window and now the hat switch works, as well as the throttle and suddenly I was hurtling down the runway and lifting off.  I flew around the airport and landed, and the yoke and pedals worked perfectly, even the toe brakes.

I was surprised I didn’t even have to calibrate the yoke or pedals.  I checked it in my OS by opening “Configure your Desktop” and then “Keyboard and Mouse” and then Joystick.  Both devices are listed in a drop down menu, and I checked each one and they are already well calibrated.  If yours aren’t there is a wizard you can use.

I also tried plugging in my Cyborg 3d Gold joystick.  Mine is made by Tsinghua TongFang and was bought in Asia.  I think it is a copy of a Saitek joystick.  While I suspect Saitek’s version is already calibrated correctly, my joystick isn’t and I have to run the joystick calibration wizard before I use that each time.

If you don’t have a yoke and rudder pedals, then a joystick like my Cyborg 3D Gold works fine.  Twisting it to right and left acts as rudder pedals.  With this you don’t have a lever for your fuel mixture and you can’t use differential breaking without the keyboard, but you can still have a good flight experience.  Be real good to your wife though and hang a picture of CH product yoke and rudder pedals next to your computer, and occassionally make comments that you are trying to decide between buying a real Cessna, or just buying the simulation yoke and rudder pedals.  Also it helps if Father’s Day or your birthday is coming up soon!
Technorati Tags: yoke, rudder pedals, flightgear, flight simulation

Installing Flight Gear

Installing FlightGear was so easy.  Although FlightGear works on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, I have only tried it on my own Mandriva Linux installation.   

Installing software in Mandriva Linux is usually very easy.  Mandriva’s Control Center (similar yet different from Windows Control panel) has a tab for Software Management. The first time you do it, you will need to “Configure media sources for install and update.”  Basically this tells your system where to connect on the internet to download software.  This is mostly automatic and is easy.  If you have trouble you might try http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ for help.  Mandriva has official repositories which has loads of software ready to be used on a Mandriva system.

I already had this setup, so all I needed to do was click on Install and Remove Software.  In the search bar I typed in flightgear and two different packages were displayed: flightgear v1.9.1 and flightgear-data v1.9.0.  I checked both of them and clicked apply.  My computer then showed me a list of other software packages that needed to be installed first before flightgear (dependencies) and I clicked accept.  Everything else was automatic.  It downloaded and installed the whole program while I did something else.  I didn’t keep track of how long it took, I assumed it would be a long time because it was a big program, and was surprised that the first time I checked on it it was already downloaded. 

Flightgear comes with only a little bit of scenery installed.  You can add scenery later, which lets you customize flightgear according to your usual flight patterns.  My next blogpost will be about installing scenery.

So I successfully installed Flightgear, but how do i start it?  I use KDE 4.2 has my window manager, and it was in the kickoff launcher (the start menu) under applications–>games–>other.  Clicking it started me off in a Cessna 172 in California.

 Another way to start it that should be the same in any linux distribution is opening a terminal, like Konsole, and typing “fgfs”.    Later, we’ll look at customizing how to start Flightgear from the commandline and the various options for varying where, when, what plane, the weather, etc.  At first, I was quite intimidated by starting it this way and thought the commandline would be a hassle, but now see a number of advantages to starting flightgear from the commandline.  I barely know anything about using the commandline, so if I can learn it, you probably can too.  That’s for another day though.

Why Fly?

This is not a normal hobby.  It is definitely for somewhat unusual people.  Normal people play Halo or Bejewled.  But who wants to be normal?

My first experience with a flight simulator was twenty years ago with one of the first flight simulators from Microsoft.  The graphics were 2d and cardboardish and I flew entirely using the keyboard until I got my first joystick which was made by Tandy corporation. 

Five years ago I was given Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 for Christmas.  It was like when I was a kid.  I was amazed and fascinated by it.  I decided I wanted to use it not as a game, but to really learn how to fly.  I did the tutorials, and read a lot on the web about flying.  I bought a set of charts, and I learned how to fly using instruments.  I saw it as a learning experience.  “It’s a simulator, not a game,” I would tell my wife.

For various philosophical reasons a few years ago, I switched to Linux.  Microsoft games do not play well with Linux (though it has so many other advantages).  I missed my flight simulator, but had new things to learn in a new operating system that held my attention for a couple years.  After being 50 miles from the epicenter of the biggest disaster to hit the world in 2008, my stress level went up.  I needed my flying back and dusted off my rudder pedals.  In 2009 I discovered FlightGear- a completely free and libre flight simulation that works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.  That was good news.  I could have my cake (Linux) and eat it too (fly airplane simulators). I am now back in the pilot’s seat using FlightGear under Mandriva Linux.

I fly for several basic reasons.
1) I’m too scared to really pilot a plane.  People like me die doing that all the time.  The simulator is safe, and cheaper.  I’m a chicken.  And I turn green in small planes.  I don’t like green chicken (except in Thailand- where curried green chicken is fabulous). 
2) I like to learn new things.  I wanted a healthy hobby.  It’s not a computer game- I can at least pass it off to my wife as a learning experience.
3) I can pretend that I know how to fly a plane.  It gives me a comforting false sense of confidence! And my 9 year old thinks it is cool. 
4) I think it helps me to relax.
5) I get joy from playing with new technology, accomplishing new things, and from learning.
6) I am a somewhat unusual person.
7) It gives me a chance to wear my authentic Ukranian World War II pilot’s hat.  I look ridiculous if I wear it at other times.
I don’t have much money and can’t afford expense hobbies like golf.

If you have any of these reasons, and you want to fly on a Mac, Linux, or Windows machine, then check out FlightGear.  I’ll be detailing my experiences using FlightGear and things I learn about flying airplanes here.  Feel free to join me- but I have to warn you- I don’t have a license.

You can get flightgear from www.flightgear.org or if you use Mandriva Linux, it is in the repository and you can easily install it using Mandriva’s Control Panel.  Click on Software Management –> Install & Remove Software–> search for Flight Gear –> and check the box for flightgear and click apply.  It will bring in all the packages you need and install them.   I’ll go into more detail into how I installed it in a later post.

I am just learning how to use it, and welcome you to sit beside me as a co-pilot and learn with me.
Right now I’m off to do a touch and go!

Fly Free!