Quickstart:

Press 9 for full throttle to take-off from aircraft carrier.
Press F1 for GUI and help.
Press F9 to toggle automatic coordinated-turning (for propeller aircraft).
Press Backspace to reset.
To enable joystick, pass -j
See the manual.

• Renders an empty white window:

Probably caused by an obsolete OpenGL driver (older than OpenGL 2.0).
Try passing -no-shadows