Carrier Ops in Flightgear

[Thorsten]

I'm currently taking a break from spaceflight and am taking care of the integration of the USS Harry Truman into the Flightgear repository - a highly detailed carrier model we've recently been donated. So, in case someone is interested in what I'm doing when not coding Shuttle - here it is.

Well, the perks of the integration work are that I get to fly a lot of carrier launches and approaches, and... it's still fun.

So here we are, the Tomcat on final, ready to land (coming in a bit too hot...)

And safely down in the hangar deck, preparing to get out and grab a coffee...

Taxiing across the flightdeck with the Hawkeye...

... some crewmen watching us...

An early morning takeoff with the EC-135 helicopter, with the flightdeck illuminated by floodlights...

... somewhat unusual shot taken very low from the centerline lights - but cool.

Rainy way, my Tomcat doing a cat launch...

... and coming back - here you can see that the Truman actually moves with the waves, which adds a lot to the experience.

Taxiing across the wet deck, rain splashing against the canopy...

... and on the elevator down to the hangar deck.

The Truman is truly an amazing bit of modeling work, and it's a pleasure to help make it come alive.

 

[Interceptor]

Do you have any links to this? This looks cool.Thanks

 

[Thorsten]

Our distribution is organized a bit differently from how Orbiter works - only scenery and aircraft have their separate distribution chain and are packaged individually, this got merged right into mainline, so it is now part of the current devel version and will be shipped with the next release. I don't actually have a packaged version, this touches dozens of different files (and partially affects also other carriers where they share files like the FLOLS or the lighting) spread across a handful of commits.

We're currently gearing up towards the next stable release, but there's a few mission-critical bugs which need to be addressed before - I expect the stable version 2017.3 to appear within the next week.

The current devel status is assembled for Win and Mac every 24 hours by a Jenkins build server - so that version is available now. The binary itself is fairly lean, but the carrier requires an update of the data package - there's only the option to have a monolithic download bundled with the binary (~1.5 GB) or to use GIT to get all updates directly from the repository.

All download links here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/?source=navbar

 

[Interceptor]

So in other words,the next release of Flightgear will have all the parts required for carrier ops including the USS Truman?Thanks,and looking foward to doing some traps.

 

[Thorsten]

Yes, carrier ops works right now (there's Nimitz, Vinson and Eisenhower as well as Foch and Clemenceau if you're looking for something smaller - at various levels of detail) and the new release will in addition have the Truman (at pleasantly high level of detail).

 

[Gingin]

Looking good, I might try those challengings landings with the Tomcat on a rough sea

 

[Thorsten]

Should be a piece of cake for you after trying to get the Shuttle into Paro :lol:

 

[Gingin]

Should be a piece of cake for you after trying to get the Shuttle into Paro :lol:

Ahah, Last one I tried finished in the trees

Don't tell me you gonna put some hook on the Shuttle :lol:

 

[Thorsten]

A bit (a lot...) later than planned, but we have a release out - get the files for your OS from here, and you can launch right from the Truman