From FlightGear wiki

The FlightGear development team is delighted to announce the v2017.1 "Bergen" release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bugfixes. Highlights in this release include: Accurate buildings from OpenStreetMap, voice synthesis of tutorial instructions, improved rendering of Earth from orbit, and a more realistic blackout/redout system.

Founded in 1997, FlightGear is developed by a worldwide group of volunteers, brought together by a shared ambition to create the most realistic flight simulator possible that is free to use, modify and distribute. FlightGear is used all over the world by desktop flight simulator enthusiasts, for research in universities and for interactive exhibits in museums.

FlightGear features more than 400 aircraft, a worldwide scenery database, a multiplayer environment, detailed sky modelling, a flexible and open aircraft modelling system, varied networking options, multiple display support, a powerful scripting language and an open architecture. Best of all, being open-source, the simulator is owned by the community and everyone is encouraged to contribute.

Download FlightGear v2017.1 for free from FlightGear.org

FlightGear - Fly Free!

Major enhancements in this release

Core

Support for additional layers of scenery, initially for use by OpenStreetMap buildings.

preferences.xml has been renamed to defaults.xml (FGData commit 0565ea).

Aircraft Modeling

More realistic blackout/redout system based on studies for military training simulations (FGData commit 52e559).

Improved AI models for a number of aircraft, and AI schedules for an increasing number of airlines.

Atmospheric Light Scattering

New shaders for drag chute animation, allowing to render flexing and deformation under stress.

New "grain merge" and Fresnel option for environment reflections on the aircraft fuselage.

Learn more in the Newsletter.

Environment Rendering

For rendering views from orbit, Earthview 2.0 is now available, with support for normal maps, better upper atmosphere edge, cloud relief shader, improved dawn zone, horizon estimation and improved resource management.

Performance

Canvas performance has been improved.

Support for SIMD operations added, improving performance on some architectures.

operations added, improving performance on some architectures. AI performance has been improved.

Usability

Bergen Airport, Flesland (ENBR) in Norway is the default airport for this release.

Tutorial instructions are now played through the built-in voice synthesis system, making them easier to follow.

Scenery

Accurate buildings generated through OpenStreetMap are now available via TerraSync. Buildings for the UK, Switzerland and large parts of Scandinavia are available already, with more to be generated in the future.

Improved scenery and terrain for the Azores.

Canvas System

Canvas performance has been improved.

Remote canvas is now available.

Highlighted new and improved aircraft

Bug fixes

Various bug fixes that cause crashes in multiplayer.

See our bugtracker for a list, albeit incomplete, of the bugs fixed in this release.

Changes in 2017.1.2

Change Windows multi-app launch detection from a .pid file to a named mutex.

--console now works in the launcher.

Changes in 2017.1.3