Compiling FlightGear 2.6.0 for Ubuntu Linux 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

Emilien Klein

Note: This post was not published originally on my Tumblr blog, but stayed for almost 3 years there as a draft. The information is most likely not accurate anymore.

These instructions will let you use the recently released FlightGear 2.6.0 on Ubuntu Linux 11.10 by compiling it from source. I've based my instructions on those linked from the official site and updated them for the new 2.6.0 release (apparenlty they started using CMake instead of just ./configure)

Install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install libboost-graph-dev libopenal-dev libalut-dev libopenscenegraph-dev libjpeg62-dev libplib-dev zlib1g-dev libxmu-dev
  • Get the following files

  • Decompress the 3 downloaded tarballs.

  • Compile

    Make 2 new directories to compile SimGear and FlightGear in:

    mkdir sg; mkdir fg

    Compile SimGear:

    cd sg; cmake ../simgear-2.6.0; make; sudo checkinstall

    Checkinstall will ask you a few questions. Make sure to set the Name and Version appropriately. It might also complain about files located inside the /home directory: I chose to exclude them from the package.

    Compile FlightGear:

    cd ../fg; cmake ../flightgear-2.6.0; make; sudo checkinstall
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/FlightGear
sudo mv data/* /usr/local/lib/FlightGear

And that's it! Run fgfs to launch Flightgear (there’s no GUI so you’ll have to become familiar with the command-line switches).

Based on http://www.andrewferrier.com/blog/2011/08/17/compiling-flightgear-2-4-0-for-ubuntu-10-04/