Argentina: the first flight simulator designed in Linux

Although he was already known informally, the first flight simulator developed in Argentina It was officially presented within the framework of the VI Forum of Digital Societies 2011 organized by the foundation of the same name and supported by the Presidency of the Nation.

The simulator works inside an IA-50 Guaraní airplane recycled at the Paraná Airport and was developed by Walter Elías and his team, from the city of Oro Verde, province of Entre Ríos. The Paraná aeroclub together with Elías' team managed to adapt the IA-50, which for many years provided service for the transfer of officials from the Entre Ríos governorate, to turn the simulator experience into something complete, including passenger seats .

The development of the simulator had a rather unusual and homemade creation process. With the LCD purchased by Walter's mother, plus the notebooks and computers of each of the team members, the hardware requirement was conditioned to use the platform. In view of the low resources available to the project, free software became the valid option to develop the software platform.

This is how the Paraná Linux Users Group (LUG) enters the project, who collaborate with the necessary knowledge to set up the simulator, based on GNU / Linux (Ubuntu distribution) and flight gear, the open source multiplatform simulator that, according to specialists, has a higher level of realism than licensed commercial simulators.

During the simulator presentation at the AeroSport 2011 event at the Paraná airport, more than 400 people visited the project and participated in a talk to learn about the aircraft construction process and the reason and advantages of using free software, a talk that ended with a rather unusual fact: 99% of attendees were unaware that using copied licensed software is an illegal practice.