FlightGear Flight Simulator/2020.3 LTS/Hardware Requirements

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FlightGear System requirements discussion

System requirements are a complicated topic.

FlightGear supports a larger range of hardware than normally expected - as FlightGear is an opensource scientific and engineering software historically from the Linux community, and is run on non-gaming (e.g. weak GPU or laptop) hardware in research and education settings. In DiY (home cockpit) or professional simulator settings[1] FlightGear is run in complex configurations - see input and interfacing on the main article.

Screenshot galleries: What people want is to see what a sim looks like on hardware people actually have, and at a desired target performance and resolution. A separate gallery is needed for each group of target settings. The familiar max settings galleries as provided by commercial products like games are meaningless for this - below the max hardware limit. It's not trivial to find exact specifications, even for commercial applications with lots of test systems. As the FlightGear project is volunteer based, the screenshots gallery is what was available in the wiki - roughly high-settings and roughly representative of 2020.3 at somewhat high-ish settings.

FlightGear's GPU programming can support high-ish settings on a GTX 1050 Ti at 30+ FPS at 1080p (fair amount more than 30 FPS, depends).

Mostly high-ish settings requirements

Performance target: 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution, 30+ FPS with Cessna C172P.

Settings target: ALS renderer, shaders: max, detailed weather (aka. Advanced Weather), terrain driven weather, cloud shadows, cloud density & distance: max, Anti-aliasing: MSAA 4x or 8x, transparency AA (adaptive AA on AMD) set to MSAA, scenery load distances (LoD ranges setting): default. Vegetation density: very high. Project3000: installed. Turn off world-wide AI traffic if CPU is slower, turn off building & road layers, or use random buildings only. LoD:range rough influences range at which objects including trees load, turn this down if RAM is low or CPU bound in areas with lots of objects.

Visuals target: somewhat high-ish settings examples

Minimum

  • CPU sandy-bridge i5 2500k or equivalent. You can get away with a recent high frequency 2 core CPU.
  • GPU GTX 1050 Ti or AMD equivalent
  • 8 GB RAM.
  • This build will be strongly CPU bound. Can turn up GPU heavy settings like AA/TRAA.

Recommended

  • CPU: 4 core i5 4xxx or AMD Ryzen equivalent. All building and road scenery layers on.
  • GPU: GTX 1060 or AMD equivalent for super-sampling Transparency AA
  • 16 GB+ RAM. Vegetation density: ultra.

MAX-ish settings

FlightGear can do realistic draw distances. On clear days, and from high altitude looking down, distances can be huge (many 100s of km+). Once realistic draw distances option is selected, FlightGear will remove the limiting fog as weather visibility and max load distances allow - including ignoring METAR in "live" weather mode once it reaches upper limit of 9999m.

Object load distances also use more RAM/VRAM: FlightGear can also create somewhat realistic tree and bush densities, as well as draw every single building in open street maps, plus auto-generated buildings, for the load distance you specify.

32 GB of RAM for large draw distances for terrain and/or objects. Better GPUs for higher resolution, or higher AA/TRAA. More complex craft can tax both CPU and GPU. With high object count FlightGear is more demanding of CPU.

Medium, Low, and Minimal settings requirements

A large range of hardware is supported than normally expected - as FlightGear is an opensource scientific and engineering software historically from the Linux community, and is run on non-gaming (e.g. weak GPU or laptop) hardware in research and education settings. In DiY (home cockpit) or professional simulator settings[1] FlightGear is run in complex configurations.

FlightGear keeps renderers from older eras, has lots of settings configurability, has multiple weather and physics engines with differing requirements, and is mostly backwards compatible with older versions of aircraft. The "default" renderer does not use shaders at low settings.

For really marginal systems, before switching to older FlightGear versions, it's recommended for people to try running latest FG with lower settings, older renderers like shaderless, older terrain (e.g. WS 1.0), older aircraft, or less complex aircraft. Try turning off world-wide AI traffic as it can be demanding.

The default Cessna 172P is rather demanding - try looking for a different craft or C172P from older versions.

See FlightGear wiki pages for requirements:

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 FlightGear Applications and usages - Wikipedia - last accessed on 2022-09-12}}
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