15 years. That’s how long open source simulator FlightGear has been around and, to celebrate the sim’s birthday, along with the upcoming release of version 2.8.0 in August, they’re running a screenshot contest through their website.

“July 17, 1997. Thirteen months after a group of people with a combined passion gathered, the first release of a new, open source flight simulator was unveiled to the public, called Flight Gear. Being open source, anyone could and can dig into the program to see how things are done and make edits or improvements. Unlike most other simulators, the community strives to merge addons into the program.

15 years later, FlightGear (we got rid of the space in 2001) is the best known open source flight simulator in the world, with users and contributors from all over the world. It is used by universities, companies and home enthusiasts for education, research and fun.

To celebrate FlightGear’s 15th birthday, we decided to organise a screenshot contest. Anyone can send in screenshots till the end of this month. Two weeks of public voting will follow, leading to the winners being announced on August 18 with the release of FlightGear 2.8.0. The winning screenshots will be used to promote FlightGear to the wider public.

Screenshots can be submitted at http://flightgear.org/contest, where you can also check out already submitted screenshots.”