Compiling FlightGear 2.4.0 for Ubuntu Linux 10.04 (Lucid)

Building Flightgear Games Linux Technical Ubuntu

2011-08-17

Update 2011-08-26: If you are using Ubuntu 11.04 or later, it looks like this is now packaged as a .deb by PlayDeb. This post may still be of interest to those using earlier versions of Ubuntu.

I recently had cause to install FlightGear 2.4.0 on Ubuntu 10.04. It’s not packaged in the form of a deb yet, so I’ve documented the commands I used. No guarantees this’ll work for you, as I haven’t tested them rigorously; and I’m assuming some Linux and command-line knowledge.

Install some dependencies (this may not be a complete list; it’s simply the set I was missing). If you get warnings below about missing libraries, hunt around for them in the Ubuntu archives.

sudo apt-get install libboost-graph-dev libopenal-dev libalut-dev libopenscenegraph-dev libjpeg62-dev libplib-dev zlib1g-dev

Get SimGear 2.4.0, unpack it into a temporary directory, and install it (checkinstall will create a deb for you as a side-effect, and install that so you can uninstall with apt if necessary). I’m using -j10on make as I have many CPU cores; you may want to tune this to match your number, although it will only affect the speed of build.

./configure --with-jpeg-factory ; make -j10 ; sudo checkinstall

Get the FlightGear 2.4.0 source(at the time of writing, the file with the slightly more recent timestamp) and install it:

./configure ; make -j10 ; sudo checkinstall

Get the 2.4.0 “Base” package and unpack it to /usr/share/local/flightgear. The tarball contains a data/ directory at the top level; you need to move directories around after unpacking so that the **flightgear/**directory contains direct subdirectories:

ls -1 /usr/local/share/flightgear/
AI
Aircraft
Airports
Astro
ATC
AUTHORS
etc...

You’re done! Run fgfs to launch Flightgear (there’s no GUI so you’ll have to become familiar with the command-line switches).

Comments

I may try this method with other flight simulators as well. flightsimulatordownloadd.org

— Greg Hill 2012-09-02 00:13

Thanks you. Compiling FlightGear Download is working well for me so far,

— Greg Hill 2012-09-02 00:09

Is flightgear available for Linux Mint 12 LXE 64bit yet

— Ken Tooele 2012-04-12 21:49

I've walked away from FlightGear for a year, hoping for improvement. When I gave up Windows in 1999 for Linux, I started missing having a flight simulator. I still do. The Linux experience is second-class. When we're fortunate enough to find packages, they don't include a GUI. And getting it as a second package and spending an hour working out environment variables isn't an answer. The planes work, mostly. I'm still selecting aircraft from the command line, COMPLETELY unaware of all the work that's been done on radios and autopilot, I'm just happy to get in the air at all. My joystick's very standard...Logitech Extreme 3d. But I fly with the stick 1/3 up, no controls on the stick make sense...no one ever worked any of this out. I'm no programmer. Most Mac people aren't either. And I don't see anyone on Windows using a flight simulator fiddling with a joystick definition when they can just steal another program and fly it, instead. I've spend many, many hours *just* to get to the basic flight, with trim-tabs, flaps and the HAT selector to work. I shouldn't have to do that *every* release. So tell me. Has there been any movement in the last year on _really_ improving user experience?

— Brian Fahrlander 2012-03-12 15:31

Builds and installs perkect with Ubuntu 11.04 (Linux 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux) "thumb up" Packages from playdeb do not work stable on my machine, this HOWTO solved this issue! thank you very much! tracy

— tracy 2012-03-01 08:16

You can also download a precompiled version of FG 2.4 for Ubuntu from http://www.unitedfreeworld.com/downloads-pre-compiled-packages-linux-ubuntu/ This was a much easier choice for me.. Good luck

— Mahen tan 2012-02-22 00:19

Jonny, thanks, I've added that to the list.

— andrewferrier 2012-02-15 21:24

From an essentially fresh install of 10.04.3 I also had to install package zlib1g-dev. Thanks for keeping it simple.

— Jonny 2012-02-15 21:04

Thank you very much! It also works perfectly in my Ubuntu 11.10 (oneric) installation. ;)

— Dan Serban 2012-02-06 19:17

Thanks a lot! Note, please, that it have to be done in userspace, f.e. ~/TMP/

— OCEAN 2012-01-21 19:38

Hope this works, I'm still using 10.04.3. Thanks in advance!

— Lucas 2012-01-16 13:45

Hunt around for them in the archives? Tell me you're not serious. That's a real help.

— Mitchell 2012-01-10 11:23

How do I run on Ubuntu 11.10?

— rodoman 2012-01-03 18:36

:P :(

— Lamebutt 2011-11-09 18:46

I could not download FlightGear 2.4.0 >:(

— Lamebutt 2011-11-09 18:46

Thanks to pollux for the mirror... I'd been trying to download from flightgear ftp for over two weeks and the download always failed. Now I got the file!

— Eric 2011-10-17 18:09

actually, needed openscenegraph 3.0.1 also, that takes a while to build and install...still going

— Dale 2011-09-26 06:22

And I meant to say, THANKS Very Much! for the clear install instructions and dependencies list, that list got all that I needed.

— Dale 2011-09-26 04:35

Installing simgear required to manually create two directories, then it successfully installed. Not sure why, it complained, I manually added and reran checkinstall. sudo mkdir /usr/local/include/simgear sudo mkdir /usr/local/include/simgear/scene

— Dale 2011-09-26 04:33

Thanks much for this. I saw that PlayDeb supposedly had the 2.4 debs, but for some reason, it kept deferring to the 2.0 debs in the repos. Oh well, compiling went well, and reminded me of my Gentoo days ;) Kudos, Dave

— Dave J. 2011-09-11 12:06

Hello, To anyone that cares, if you happen to receive a seg fault upon fgfs execution, you probably used to play with an earlier version of the build. Try renaming your existing FG_HOME directory (e.g. /home/your_user_name/.fgfs) so the new version can recreate the directory appropriately.

— Rich 2011-09-07 02:36

Guille, thanks. I've updated the list of dependencies.

— andrewferrier 2011-09-06 09:41

Hi, Thanks a lot for this guide. I am compiling right now in Ubuntu 10.04. Previously I installed FGFS1.9.1 via the Package Manager, and uninstalled before I compile this. I would like to add that I also had to install "libjpeg62-dev" in order to compile SimGear2.4.0 and "libplib-dev" for FlightGear2.4.0

— Guille 2011-09-04 05:53

Had some hard times with downloading 2.4.0 Base Package, here an efficient link : http://ftp.linux.kiev.ua/pub/mirrors/ftp.flightgear.org/flightgear/Shared/

— pollux 2011-08-29 16:51

It's /usr/local/share/flightgear.

— andrewferrier 2011-08-26 12:17

Also, is it "/usr/share/local/flightgear" or "/usr/local/share/flightgear", and why there not /usr/games (or is this so V2.0 and V2.4 can co exist)?

— Michael 2011-08-25 21:15

Dennis, thanks for the clarification. I already had that package installed - have added it to the list.

— andrewferrier 2011-08-25 08:50

I was installing on Ubuntu 11.04 - not many games here - and had to: sudo apt-get install libopenscenegraph-dev

— Dennis 2011-08-25 02:56

Thanks you very much! :-) This was very helpful, though I compiled mine on OpenSUSE 11.4 Tumbleweed. The only headache was finding analogues of dependencies, though figured out in few mins.

— Jason 2011-08-24 20:22

There is a FG GUI tolunch the flightgear: the FGRUN. I found the .deb package

— Stephen 2011-08-20 20:13