gflight

Fly over the real world.

A small flight simulator on a streamed globe: real terrain and satellite imagery, volumetric clouds, a Cessna 182 and a Spitfire. Free for Windows and Linux.

Download for Windows zip Linux zip

Two aircraft

Cessna 182 in flight over the Inn valley

Cessna 182 Skylane

Stable and forgiving, with a working G1000 glass cockpit. The flight model is checked against the pilot's handbook for stall speeds, climb, cruise and take-off run.

Spitfire over the Alps

Supermarine Spitfire Mk II

Light, sensitive elevator; ailerons that stiffen at speed; it swings on take-off and sits tail-down on the ground. Tuned to NACA's 1942 flight tests: it stalls at about 84 mph and reaches 349 mph at 17,000 ft.

Screenshots

Cessna 182 cockpit view with the G1000 displays
From the left seat, filmed like an action camera
Cessna 182 at sunset
Sunset, with the film camera look
Spitfire under a broken cloud layer
Under a broken cloud layer
Spitfire chase view
Spitfire over Innsbruck
Cessna 182 chase view
The Nordkette above the Inn valley
Spitfire cockpit view
Spitfire cockpit

What's in it

The whole planet

Elevation and satellite imagery are streamed and cached as you fly. A list of famous places is one click away.

Volumetric clouds

Ray-marched cumulus, from a few clouds to overcast, lit by the atmosphere. They drift with the wind and cast shadows on the ground.

A real sky

Sun position from the time of day, physically based atmosphere, sunsets, and exposure that adapts like an eye or a camera.

Camera looks

Eye, action cam, phone or film camera: lens, grain, rolling-shutter propeller, dirty windscreen glare, colour looks.

Joysticks and pedals

Sticks, yokes, throttles and rudder pedals, bound by moving the control. Gamepads work too.

VR

The cockpit in a Meta Quest or other PC VR headset, through OpenXR. Display only; you fly with your usual controls.

Download

Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit)

Unzip and run gflight.exe from its folder. You need a GPU with Vulkan or DirectX 12 and an internet connection for the terrain.

gflight-windows-x86_64.zip

Linux (x86-64)

Unzip and run ./gflight from its folder. You need Vulkan drivers (Mesa or NVIDIA) and an internet connection for the terrain.

gflight-linux-x86_64.zip

On laptops and integrated graphics, open the settings with Tab and set Graphics > Quality to Low or Medium.

Controls

↑ ↓ ← → pitch and roll
A D rudder
W S throttle
F flaps (Shift up)
B brakes
[ ] pitch trim
C chase, cockpit or free camera
right mouse look around
T time of day
K clouds
Tab settings, aircraft, places
H all keys

VR with a Meta Quest

On Windows, connect the headset with Quest Link (cable or Air Link) and set it as the active OpenXR runtime in the Meta Quest Link app. SteamVR and Virtual Desktop also work. Then start gflight with VR switched on:

set GFLIGHT_VR=1
gflight.exe

On Linux, run a WiVRn or ALVR server and start GFLIGHT_VR=1 ./gflight. Sit normally and recentre the view once you're in the cockpit.

VR support is new and hasn't been tried with a headset yet. Without a headset runtime, gflight simply opens its window.