Flightgear must be one of the best written FOSS games ever done. This is not just an entertaining flight simulator game… it’s considdered one of the most realistic pieces of flight simulation software ever done – in fact it is used for real flight simulation research projects.
So how come nobody plays it ? Why do people still spend a fortune on Microsoft Flight Simulator instead ? Because this great piece of software… well it lacks finish. When you start it, you are sitting in a cockpit – there is no simple graphical way to select your airoplane or airport quickly – and selecting a new airport from the ingame menu leaves you stranded in a lake unable to move… not pretty.
What would flightgear need to become the leader in the industry it deserves to be ? Well for starters you should not need to spend hours trying to build third-party launch tools with esoteric (and unlisted) dependencies in the hope of having a quick way to select a plane (how many new users will realise that you CAN select your plane if the only time this is possible is with a commandline option… and the command line won’t even list the airports – so you don’t know how to enter those…)
So let’s assume flightgear adds this launch control, so new-to-flightsims people like me don’t end up in a cockpit wondering where I am or what is going on – let alone what plane this is… it still doesn’t quite cut it.
Right of the bat two things are obviously missing.
1) I cannot find a way to switch to fullscreen mode… I am supposed to fly a virtual plane while I have half my desktop in my line of sight… talk about breaking the fourth wall of realism.
2) The only way to learn the game it seems is to read long (third-party) docs explaining lots of aircraft theory with the keyboard equivalents to various dials and switches hidden within the text…
Would it be that hard to write a tutorial mode ? That runs you with onscreen instructions through your first flight, take-off to landing, maybe a few of those, each one doing progressively more advanced parts of the process – heck even the oversimplified fighter-plane sim GL-117 has a tutorial mode.
My conclusion – flightgear is an absolutely amazing flight simulator for all existing fans of flight simulators – for those new to the genre… it’s just not good enough.
And this is what is wrong with FOSS games in general. The moment a FOSS game becomes even slightly ambitious… it focusses everything on getting the gameplay perfect, and does absolutely nothing about the finish. When the sounds and artwork are up to scratch (as it definitely is in flightgear – where the scenery is based on actual GIS data) – it still lacks those little “enter our world easy” bits that set the current set of proprietory games into a league of their own.
It should be hard to play a game (or there is no point) – but it should be easy to get started (or there is no motivation) – this is not a new concept, or even unique to computers.
Classic game inventors have always said the greatest praise a game can receive is if it “takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master”… FOSS games need to start pursuing this goal. There are some very talented people doing FOSS games now… a few small steps and FOSS can start to truly challenge the proprietory monsters, but until and unless we acknowledge those shortcomings and address them, FOSS will always be the gaming underdog.
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