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Changelog 2024.1

After many years of development, the FlightGear team is thrilled to announce the release of FlightGear 2024.1.1. The version is named 2024 rather than 2025 because the release cycle began before the new year, and was delayed due to the holidays.

FlightGear 2024.1 will be the last major release before moving to a new rendering pipeline.

Note: This changelog is not an exhaustive list of every new bugfix and feature available in 2024.1.1.

Highlights

  • Real-time dynamic shadows and lights
  • Added preliminary support for VR headsets using OpenXR
  • Added a preview of World Scenery 3.0, a new scenery system that uses multiple levels of detail to provide higher frame-rates and lower memory occupancy at bigger visibility ranges
  • Fixed a large number of crashes, bugs, and memory leaks, as well as a high-severity security vulnerability (CVE-2025-0781).

Release Notes

AI Traffic & Liveries

  • Fixed fallback models for certain AI aircraft
  • Many improvements to make AI aircraft behavior more realistic
  • Traffic and/or liveries have been added for the following airlines:
    • Aeromexico
    • Aeromexico Connect
    • AeroUnion Mexico
    • Air Caraïbes
    • Air China
    • Airest Cargo
    • Air Hong Kong
    • Air Hong Kong Cargo
    • Amazon Air
    • Amerijet Cargo
    • ANA Wings
    • Azores Airlines
    • Blue Air
    • Braathens Regional Airlines
    • Corsair
    • Cyprus Airways
    • Delta Airlines
    • DHL
    • DirectFlight Airtask Shetland
    • Eastern Airways UK
    • European Air Transport Leipzig
    • Eurowings
    • Ibex Japan
    • LOT Polish Airlines
    • Northern Air Cargo
    • Polar Air Cargo
    • SATA Air Açores
    • Solaseed Japan
    • Southern Air Cargo
    • Sky Lease Cargo
    • Transavia France
    • Transavia NL
    • Tunisair Group
    • UNI Air Japan
    • United Airlines
  • Traffic and/or liveries have been removed for the following airlines:
    • Germanwings (defunct)

Aircraft and Flight Dynamics Models (FDMs)

  • Added damping to the roll/pitch of the magnetic compass disc to simulate fluid
  • Exposed the roll and pitch properties of the magnetic compass disc to the property tree for animation purposes
  • Updated JSBSim to v1.1.11
  • Added better support for frozen lakes
  • Fixed the exhaust gas temperatue (EGT) calculation for piston engines in YASim
  • Fixed unit error for sub-model drag

Canvas and UI

  • Fixed a bug where Navaids and Parking display toggles in the Airports dialog were not being respected
  • Fixed broken OpenStreetMap imagery in the Canvas map
  • Removed broken OpenAIP map support from the Canvas map, as it is no longer available without an API key
  • Fixed broken TFC layer in the Canvas map
  • Aircraft that are invisible to TCAS are now hidden on the TFC layer
  • Fixed a bug with 2D panels on reload
  • Improved the property browser dialog
  • Standardized the dialog title bars
  • Improved the input device interface

Carriers

The following aircraft carriers have been added:

  • Admiral Kuznetsov
  • Liaoning

Environment

  • Updated world magnetic model data set from WMM2015 to WMM2020.
  • Replaced season selection (--season) with improved climate modeling, including seasonal variation, ocean temperatures, dew points, snow lines, and other environmental factors

Graphics

  • Improved scenery object support, including defining and rendering large numbers of scenery lights in STG files, and support for generic instantiation of objects (e.g. windmills, pylons)
  • Added the Milky Way to the night sky
  • Added optional support for ShaderVG, a shader based version of ShivaVG
  • Fixed various model transparency issues
  • Fixed a bug where taxiway markings made the ground transparent
  • Fixed shader errors that were occurring with some GPU drivers

Hardware Support

  • Added support for device-specific configuration dialogs
  • Added ability to see the button numbers for input devices
  • Increased the limit of buttons on input devices to 32
  • Added or improved support for the following input devices:
    • CH Pro Pedals
    • Honeycomb Aeronautical Alpha Flight Controls
    • Honeycomb Aeronautical Bravo Throttle Quadrant
    • Saitek Pro Flight Combat Rudder Pedals
    • Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals
    • Simped F16 Pedals
  • Improved support for Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) systems such as ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot

Interfaces

  • Flight recordings of unlimited time can now be saved to file and replayed without any loss of detail, optionally including multiplayer aircraft
  • Added compressed video encoding supported
  • IO channels can be re-initialized and are exposed on the property tree under /io/channels/

Launcher

  • Added a unified Latin/Chinese font for the splash screen to fix font rendering issues
  • Launcher settings are now version-specific
  • Added Qt6 support
  • Raised the default aircraft ratings filter from 3 to 4
  • Fixed a bug where combo boxes could become empty
  • Implemeneted various miscellaneous improvements to the FlightGear launcher

Legacy

  • Removed Rembrandt command-line options

Misc.

  • Fixed various PNG files to resolve console errors about failing to read a texture
  • Fixed autopilot warnings on the UFO
  • Fixed a bug affecting automatic tower view positioning
  • Adjusted default ATIS text-to-speech settings to be less intrusive
  • Removed the “Welcome aboard! Need help?” voice message
  • The Route manager now shows total distance, distance remaining, estimated time of arrival, and flight time
  • Added a hightlighting tool (enabled by setting /sim/highlighting/enabled=true) to highlight animated objects under the cursor along with related objects
  • Multiple fixes for the Route Manager dialog
  • Fixed a bug where users could unselect a radio button
  • Fixed a bug where spaces in config files caused an error
  • Added annunciator properties for landing gears to the Property Tree
  • Fixed a segfault occurring in the ground network at EGSS
  • Improved error reporting for aircraft and traffic

Nasal

  • Fixed a number of bugs

Networking

  • Improved protocol support for ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot
  • The WebSockets protocol now supports ping messages

Phi

  • Fixed various broken or unsupported maps
  • Added a map option to disable repositioning the aircraft by dragging
  • Fixed attributes for multiplayer and AI aircraft
  • Automatically use the latest AIRAC cycle for OpenFlightMaps
  • Fixed midnight time offset issues

Scenery

  • Added region-specific random building textures
  • Improved performance and stability of randomly generated trees

Translations

  • Added localization support for add-ons and aircraft
  • Improved translations for the following languages:
    • Chinese
    • Dutch
    • French
    • Georgian
    • German
    • Italian
    • Polish
    • Russian
    • Slovak
    • Spanish