Welcome to the "LAC on Raspberry Pi" forum!

[bbosen]

Welcome to the "Linux Air Combat on Raspberry Pi" forum!

From its humblest, early beginnings, Linux Air Combat has been coded for high performance even on modest computers. For several years we have been watching development of the popular, inexpensive little "Raspberry Pi" microcomputers, hoping they would one day become sufficiently powerful to host LAC.

That day has arrived! In mid July 2020, I purchased a Raspberry Pi model "4b" with 4 GB of RAM. The version I purchased came with a 32 GB flash memory card preprogrammed with their "NOOBS" boot loader and the popular "Raspbian" operating system.

To tell the truth, I really didn't think it would be powerful enough to host LAC. I had attempted this back in about 2017 on a Raspberry Pi version "2", and the result was frustrating: although it was easy to get that old version of LAC compiled on the "Pi 2", flight attempts yielded only about 2 or 3 frames per second. It was profoundly unflyable.

This time, with the Raspberry Pi model 4b, it was different. Very VERY different!

This forum is for publication of announcements, video clips, and other items of interest to people that want to take best advantage of Linux Air Combat on Raspberry Pi hardware.

Note that we will allow a small amount of duplication in this forum and in the "Compiling and Installing" forum. Use your judgment when discussing that subject. If you have details about compiling or installing LAC that are of specific interest only to Raspberry Pi users, those postings belong in this forum. On the other hand, most information of that type might be of general interest to anybody that wants to compile LAC on any kind of computer, so it might best be published in our "Compiling and Installing" forum.

[Robert Mills]

I have successfully downloaded Lac09p15.apk to my Raspberrypi model 4b 4GB and run install.sh. I have received a message to say that a version of LAC has been installed. However I am unable to run it or find the executable file. In the Release folder there is a file named Lac09p15 but I am unsure what that is? Looking for help?

[bbosen]

Hi Robert. Thanks for asking. Just fire up a bash shell and enter the following command line:

lac

This will work from any location in your filesystem because the executable version of Lac09p15 has been copied to your global /usr filesystem as /usr/bin/lac.

However, it will not work correctly until after you have also installed the free, well known "freeglut3" library. Further details are available here:

http://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacOnRaspberryPi.htm

I hope this helps!

-Bob-

[bbosen]

Robert,

As a consequence of your report, I realized that the instructions really weren't very clear on how to actually execute lac. I have just inserted the following new text into the associated 'README.txt" file:

To execute lac after installing, just open a bash shell and 
issue the following command:

lac

... just type "lac" (without quote marks) and terminate your 
command with <ENTER> according to long-standing UNIX/LINUX 
norms. That will work from anywhere in your filesystem, because 
our install.sh script copies the executable into the global 
/usr filesystem at /usr/bin/lac.

I think this will be helpful to others. Thanks for bringing this little oversight to my attention!

[Robert Mills]

Once again it would not run when I entered the 'lac' command. The error message was 'unable to find libglut.so.h'. I cannot find this software as directed.

[bbosen]

Robert:

When LAC cannot find a standard library that it needs, it displays messages like the one you describe. Others have solved this problem by installing the free, well-known, "freeglut3" library with its associated development library. On my copy of Raspbian, these two libraries are named:

"freeglut3-2.8.1-3" and
"freeglut3-dev-2.8.1-3".

I installed them using the Raspbian repository, through the "Preferences -> Add/Remove Software" menu picks.

I hope this helps!

-Bob-

[bbosen]

Don't search for "freeglut3-2.8.1-3". Just search for "freeglut3" and let Raspbian find the appropriate, latest version for you. It should find the two libraries listed above.

-Bob-

[bbosen]

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