Andrew Ferrier

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

• 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).

The son of one of the world’s most influential and talented economists is obviously a total geek. How wonderful.

Oh, and get this blog comment and response.

Update 16:58: Then, of course, you read this.

Why don’t economists get any respect?