NEW: there is now a CHANGELOG which is located at the bottom of the page. So you can see easily what has been added to the site since the last time you came.

Simmer Ciantis

Welcome to Simmer Ciantis. Ciantis is my callsign in multiplayer flight sims - you may remember me from the Targetware one during the 00's decade. I write here what can be useful to be shared if you wish to fly planes inside your computing box :)

Table of Content

Linux as the OS
Participating to this site
1. Contact email
2. Multiplayer lobby/chatroom
Custom missions
My sim videos
Native vs Proton vs Wine
1. Native
2. Proton
3. Wine
Running modern flight simulators under Linux
1. FlightGear
  1. Installing and running FlightGear
  2. Installing additional airplanes
2. IL2 1946
3. IL2 1946 under Proton
4. War Thunder
Running quite old sims on modern computer systems
1. Running retail CDROMs of Novalogic arcade-style sims in a GNU/Linux distribution using Wine
  1. Alternatively, maybe Steam?
  2. F-16 Multirole Fighter
    1. Extracting the CD ROM image and have it running
    2. Update: Additional step for up-to-date Wine
    3. Installing and running the game
  3. MiG29 Fulcrum
CHANGELOG
Donate to ciantis.clewn.org

1 - Linux as the OS

When you need simplicity, stability, performance, and, moreover, backward compatibility with old - yes, very old - software, all of them on basic (old almost as well) hardware, Linux has proven to be an interesting choice. It's mine. It may not be yours. Here I'll be focusing on the use of Linux to run my favorite sims.

2 - Participating to this site

I thought of coding a simple wiki engine, but it's like chasing mosquitos with a bazooka for the purpose of this site. Nevertheless community contributions are more than welcome! "Save as", then edit (html skill required) any page you want to change and email it to the address below, and I'll publish your contribution shortly thereafter.

2.1 - Contact email

wumzleradio@clewn.org

2.2 - Multiplayer lobby/chatroom

If you wish to meet other like-minded simmers and perhaps find someone wishing to host (or if you wish to host) a game even for an especially old sim, you can use the chatroom (on which you may find me, using the Shangri-l nickname, sometimes). To access the chatroom please visit
#ciantis on Freenode.net (webchat link)

3 - Custom missions

I plan to design and post some add-on missions for various sims in the future. It's a lot of work, you can support it with a small donation using the form at the bottom of this page if you want me to work faster. May I add, if you found anything here useful, you can donate as well?

4 - My sim videos

You can find my (few) sim videos on Youtube at the channel "Simmer Ciantis".

5 - Native vs Proton vs Wine

This section is a stub

Native

Proton

Wine

6 - Running modern flight simulators under Linux

In this section we will discuss about current-era sims that can be run on your Linux computer.

6.1 - FlightGear

FlightGear is a very important flight simulator that any simmer should consider using. It is available for multiple platforms, but here we will focus on the Linux one.
FlightGear features:

Free software
TerraServer for the whole world flyable and automatic scene downloads as you fly.
Real time real-world weather and daylight
Multiplayer
A huge quantity of aircrafts can be installed, and some of them are very detailed (think weapon system and other things like that, even if FlightGear has no air combat feature)

6.1.1 - Installing and running FlightGear

This is a really easy process since you'll just have to launch the software center for your Linux distribution's repositories and select FlighGear and FGRun for installation.
FGRun is a graphical tool allowing to run FlightGear with the desired options, such as aircraft choice, multiplayer support, real-world weather and so on.

6.1.2 - Installing additional airplanes

There is a tool in FlightGear that allow to automatically install new planes. Unfortunately, at the time theses words are written, it is not usable with the repositories version of FlightGear (in Ubuntu 16.04). Alternatives can be, either to install an up-to-date FlightGear from FlightGear.org or to got to this same website to download and install new aircrafts manually.
You'll see there is really many aircrafts availables, even if all of them aren't at the same advanced state of development.
To install an aircraft, download the .zip file and unzip it to your FlightGear intallation's aircraft folder. For a system-wide (any user) installation it may be in /usr/share/games/flightgear/Aircraft (may vary depending of your exact Linux distribution).

6.2 - IL2 1946

IL2 is a quite old and respectable sim, which was at the time of its issuing a true revolution talking about realism (and then, difficulty).
Over years, many add-ons where published, adding new theatres of operation, new aircrafts, dynamic campaigns and other improvements. All of them are bundled in the 2006 bundle called "IL2 1946".

6.2.1 IL2 1946 under Wine

6.2.1. Why Wine?

IL2 1946 is conveniently installable on Wine. Nevertheless it is a Windows game and then you'll need to install and run Steam in its Windows version, using Wine, to download and install it.

6.2.1.2 Installing and running Wine, Steam and IL2 1946

To intall Wine, you'll need an updated version (not the one of your distribution repositories probably, although I haven't, naturally, tested each Linux distribution and each version of them). I installed wine-staging from the ppa, following the instructions given at WineHQ.org. It's a simple and straightforward process.
Then you can install Steam for Windows from the official Steam site, use its store to buy IL2 1946, and download it and run it without trouble.
In case you encounter a problem, remember that the Wine "windows-style drive C:" is located in the hidden directory /home/<yourhome>/.wine/drive_c . From there you can locate the Steam.exe programm if you have no other way to launch it using Wine (right click, "open with Wine").

6.2.1.3 - Know bugs

The digits on the keyboard are not recognized for radio communication, but this is maybe due to my French keyboard layout, I don't know. I may test to switch to an US layout someday, just to see.
This may be a problem (I haven't tested, I use a joystick) for throttle.

6.2.2 IL2 1946 under Proton

This section is a stub

6.2.3 War Thunder

Firstly please note that, while the game is available as a native linux port, it CRASHES, C.R.A.S.H.E.S., and crashes often. It' highly frustrating to suddenly have to reboot the computer while you were just about to fire your rockets on a machine gun nest. Really, really frustrating.
But the game is so good I keep on playing it nevertheless.

7 - Running quite old sims on modern computer systems

7.1 - Running retail CDROMs of Novalogic arcade-style sims in a GNU/Linux distribution using Wine

...recent distribution (Ubuntu 16.04 was used to write this section, which was sure a "recent" distribution at the time of writing).
Wine allows to run Windows programm on Linux.
Please note that I used most up to date Wine installed from PPA. Note that my previous wine-devel was no longer updating, but going back to winehq and following the installation steps that were current allowed me to install the latest wine-staging. I don't know how the whole thing would be working (or not) with older (read, repositories version) Wine.

You can still find for an unexpensive price original, used but in good condition, compilation CD ROMs of Novalogic popular sims, as well as expensive original boxsets, on Ebay for example. I bought French version of F-16 MRF + MiG29 Fulcrum for the price of a sandwich. I'm currently also waiting for English version of F-22 Raptor+Mig29 Fulcrum imported by air mail. I ran (and ran into trouble but fixed things) F-16 first, so I'll be talking bout it first.

7.2 - Alternatively, maybe Steam?

I haven't tested Steam as an alternative way to run these sims but I can say they are available there for a little much more money (but not much) and if they work as-is in Wine it is sure a more straightforward process to run them this way. But I haven't tested them under Steam/Wine/Linux and cannot tell much. Please contact if you got any feedback ! Thank you.

7.2.1 - F-16 Multirole Fighter

I don't know if it is possible to run it with the original CDROM in your drive. Because, my sim machine has no CDROM. I got an old laptop with such a drive, which I used to create a CD image used on my sim machine to run the soft. Anti-copy protection are active on retail cdroms, which required me to investigate a bit, and since information is partial and scattered, I'm writing this off in the hope that it will be useful once shared. Note once again that you can donate to support this web thing if you feel inclined to do so.

7.2.1.1 - Extracting the CD ROM image and have it running

Brasero is a popular (read "ships with distro") CD burning application, that we will use here to create the image.

Insert the F-16 MRF original CD in your drive
Launch Brasero
Select "1:1 CD Copy" project type
As "destination", choose "disk image", and make sur it is the ".toc" (TOC/BIN CDRDAO) image format that is selected (which is the default)
Possibly, you'll be asked to install additional software support with the built in software updater/installer, which will not take long and should work with no problem
Create the image, it will take a few minutes, the drive will be noisy, and it will be saved at the root of your home directory unless you specified another place

Cdemu is a CD ROM emulation tool at the kernel level that can do things that ordinary "disk image mounter" cannot do, such as taking care of the semi magical process of having a CD image recognized by the game like a genuine CDROM.
gcdemu is a system-tray-icon style application that will allow you to mount the image and set various options with a GUI interface.
Both ship together. To install them, first, add ppa:cdemu/ppa to your system with the command

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cdemu/ppa

then install everything :

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gcdemu

...Launch gcdemu. In the options tab, activate bad sectors and the other ones. Not sure if it's mandatory, but when done, it won't prevent to work, all I can say.
...And in gcdemu, choose your .toc file (the .toc.bin file, which is much bigger, has to be in the same directory than the .toc file). Your image is now mounted and you should see a shortcut for it somewhere in your workplace.

7.1.2.2 - Update: Additional step for up-to-date Wine

7.1.2.2.1 - Update to the update

This additional step is NOW NO LONGER required when using Ubuntu 18.04 and Wine-stagging, and possibly, an update of Wine could have solved the problem for Ubuntu 16.04, but I know nothing sure about that. These additional commands are kept here for completeness purpose, if you got problems although you completed the above steps, they can be useful to you.

7.1.2.2.2 - The additionnal step

Wine got updated recently. Additional steps are now required. You now have to look in the gcdemu panel to find the /dev path of the virtual drive (likely to be /dev/sr0 if you don't have a physical drive installed) and then, in a command line :
first, create an empty directory once for all on which the CD image will be mounted

	 
	 $ mkdir f16cd

Then, mount the /dev/srX disk image. This will have to be done upon each startup :

	 
	 $ sudo mount /dev/sr0 ./f16cd

Then launch wincfg and in the "drives" tab, add a new drive for which the path shall be /home/yourhome/f16cd. This has to be set only once since Wine will remember the setting then. ...You can now run the installer as described below.

7.1.2.3 - Installing and running the game

You can now run the setup.exe from the cdrom right subdirectory (maybe F16Setup, something like this) to install the game, providing you got Wine installed naturally, by opening the cdrom in your file browser and right clic->run with Wine... And then, run the game without problem.
To run the game, change directory (cd "/home/yourhome/.wine/drive_c/Programm Files (x86)/NovaLogic/F16 MRF") and enter the command

	 
	 $ wine F16.exe

And you're done and ready to fly/fight.

7.1.3 - MiG29 Fulcrum

Please refer to F-16 Multirole Fighter ; the steps are roughly the same. I haven't still tested the sim, but I don't know why some things could go wrong, since it's very similar games (same epoch, same publisher, and even same engine) right ?

8 - Changelog

Read...

*********	 
	 Common conventions for this CHANGELOG
	 Each entry has a date expressed in YYYYMMDD HH:MM 
	 The ? character is used as a date wildcard when an entry is still planned and/or unfinished. 
	 
	 Each entry has a status, which can be
	 
	 *PLANNED for things that are going to be added
	 *ONGOING when it's currently being in progress
	 *TESTING when it's almost done but not fully validated
	 *DONE when it's finalized
	 
	 The following keyword are used to describe changes that are made to the Table of Content
	 
	 NEW for a section added
	 MOVE for changing the numeric index of a previously existing section
	 COMPLETE when the corresponding section has been completed by an edit
	 
	 Status for NEW sections 
	 NEW sections can have a status:
	 
	 STUB applies to ONGOING or PLANNED new section. It means that the header titles for the corresponding section have been added to the document body but without any content attached to them 
	 DONE applies to all kind of new section and means that content has been added to the body and the section is considered as finished. 
		
	 Good read ! 
	 *********	 
		 
	 20?????? ??:?? UTC ; Status: ONGOING TOC
	 NEW 5 Native vs Proton vs Wine ; Status: STUB
		 5.1 Native ; Status: STUB
		 5.2 Proton ; Status: STUB
		 5.3 Wine ; Status: STUB
	 MOVE 5->6
	 NEW 6.2 IL2 1946
		 6.2.1 move 5.2 -> 6.2.1
	     6.2.2 IL2 1946 under Proton ; Status : STUB
	 NEW 6.3 War Thunder
	 MOVE previously 6 -> 7
			NEW 7.1.1.1 Wine VS Proton (see 5)
		 COMPLETE 7.1.3 MiG29 Fulcrum tested
		 NEW 7.1.4 F22 Lightning 3
			NEW 7.1.4.1 Launching the game
		 NEW 7.1.5 Comanche 4
			NEW 7.1.5.1 Launching the game
	 MOVE previously 7 -> 8
	 MOVE previously 8 -> 9
		 
	 20191003 05:30 UTC ; Status: DONE 
	 Added section number to some forgotten section headers during the first pass. 	 
		 
	 20191003 04:01 UTC ; Status: DONE
	 Renaming of each section header of the document to indicate the section number as it can be found in the Table Of Content. 
	 
	 20191003 03:23 UTC ; Status :  DONE
	 Added a feature to prevent the displaying of the changelog and print it only if needed. 
	 
	 20191003 02:44 UTC ; Status: DONE 
	 Added a CHANGELOG section.

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