Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
125 lines (91 loc) · 6.41 KB

SETUP.md

File metadata and controls

125 lines (91 loc) · 6.41 KB
Raw

flightgear-control Environment Setup

This document describes the steps to set up your linux system with flightgear for running flights with the flightgear-control and thingworx-flightgear-edge projects. The target flightgear version is 2020.3.17.

Dependencies

  1. Linux x86_64 running with a windowing system.
  2. Git
  3. JDK 11
  4. GPU preferably with more than 1Gb of VRAM.

Simulator installation

This guide covers usage of flightgear with an AppImage, which is the preferred method of running the flightgear simulator. Alternatively, flightgear may be available through your package manager.

flightgear simulator initial setup
  1. Use a web browser to navigate to flightgear's release repository for version 2020.3.17 at https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/release-2020.3
  2. Download the following files and place them in a designated folder.
    • FlightGear-2020.3.17-x86_64.AppImage
    • FlightGear-2020.3.17-data.txz
    • FlightGear-2020.3.17-update-data.txz
  3. Extract the data archives to the current directory in the following order. Both archives should extract to an fgdata directory.
    1. Extract archive FlightGear-2020.3.17-data.txz
    2. Extract archive FlightGear-2020.3.17-update-data.txz
  4. Ensure the binary file FlightGear-2020.3.17-x86_64.AppImage is executable.
  5. Add the directory containing the FlightGear AppImage to the PATH. Set this in the shell config files (e.g. .bashrc) too. The simulator scripts used by the flightgear-control establish and depend on an FG_HOME within the same directory as the AppImage. Simulator assets like aircraft will have to be redownloaded.
  6. Clone the flightgear-control project, and check out the latest tagged release.
  7. Run the simulator setup shell script with: flightgear-control/scripts/fg_launcher.sh
flightgear aircraft model installation
  1. After the launcher UI is visible, click 'Okay' on the welcome screen if it appears. Enlarge the window if the welcome screen doesn't appear to show an 'Okay' button.
  2. If inclined, navigate to "Settings" and disable crash and error reporting.
  3. Navigate to the "Aircraft" section.
  4. Select the "Browse" tab near the top center of the UI. Add the default hanger if there is an option to do so.
  5. Search (top right of window) for the following models required by the flightgear-control project, and install them if necessary. If a model doesn't appear in the search results, it's possible a minimum ratings requirement is excluding it from results.
    1. Cessna 172P Skyhawk (1982)
    2. F-15C
    3. Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II
    4. Alouette-III
  6. Exit the simulator UI. Manage aircraft models installed in the simulator by re-running the fg_launcher.sh shell script.
flightgear Protocol Setup
  1. Locate the flightgear installation directory on your OS.
  2. Copy the project protocol xml files under flightgear-control/protocol directory into the flightgear installation data Protocol directory without preserving the source directory structure. All xml files should end up in this directory without the source directory structure. For example:
    • find flightgear-control/protocol -name *.xml
    • cp -v flightgear-control/protocol/input/c172p/c172p*.xml flightgear-2020.3.17/fgdata/Protocol/
    • cp -v flightgear-control/protocol/output/c172p/c172p*.xml flightgear-2020.3.17/fgdata/Protocol/
    • cp -v flightgear-control/protocol/input/f15c/f15c*.xml flightgear-2020.3.17/fgdata/Protocol/
    • cp -v flightgear-control/protocol/output/f15c/f15c*.xml flightgear-2020.3.17/fgdata/Protocol/
    • ...
Launch a simulator instance
  1. Use the provided shell scripts in flightgear-control/scripts to launch a simulator configured for our purposes: flightgear-control/scripts/f15c_flight.sh 5220 103 49.19524 -123.18084 f15c_beta
    • Parameters:
      • 5220 - lower bounds for the port range. The simulator reserves this port and the next 19 ports for various I/O.
      • 103 - initial heading in degrees
      • 49.19524 - initial latitude position
      • -123.18084 - initial longitude position
      • f15c_beta - aircraft nickname
    • A table of port ranges mapped to application config files is available here
    • The scripts in flightgear-control/scripts are organized into [aircraft]_runway.sh and [aircraft]_flight.sh.

Read telemetry from the simulator output stream

  1. Launch a simulator instance according to the previous section.
    • The shell script specifies a socket protocol defined in f15c_output.xml with this line: --generic=socket,out,45,$TELEM_HOST,$TELEM_OUTPUT_PORT,udp,f15c_output\
  2. Use netcat to output the simulator telemetry stream to the shell. The output stream uses the first port in the range reserved by the simulator. nc -l -u -p 5220 127.0.0.1

Display the simulator view

  1. Launch a simulator instance via: flightgear-control/scripts/f15c_flight.sh 5220 103 49.19524 -123.18084 f15c_beta
  2. Open URL http://localhost:5222/screenshot?type=jpg in a web browser and confirm that the simulator view appears. Some of the packaged shell scripts (typically *_flight.sh) enable retrieval of the simulator view with line: --httpd=$CAM_VIEW_PORT\

Generate flightgear-control library jars

  1. Switch to the project root of the flightgear-control project, and ensure the latest release or development branch is checked out.
  2. Run the build tasks jar and sourcesjar with the gradle wrapper, specifying JDK 11: JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk11 ./gradlew jar sourcesjar
  3. Check that the jars flightgear-control-[version].jar and flightgear-control-[version]-src.jar appear in build/lib.
  4. Use these jars in other projects.

Generate flightgear-control application jar

  1. Switch to the project root of the flightgear-control project, and ensure the latest release or development branch is checked out..
  2. Run the build tasks appjar with the gradle wrapper, specifying JDK 11: JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk11 ./gradlew appjar
  3. Check that the application jar flightgear-control-[version]-app.jar appears in build/lib

IDE

  1. Ensure your IDE has gradle project support.
  2. Import flightgear-control as a gradle project, and configure it to use the included gradle wrapper.

Run flights

Documented here.