The world's most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator
Have you ever wanted to take charge of a commercial airliner and fly around the world? Well X-Plane is about as close to the real thing as you’re ever going to get on your PC. Claiming to be the world’s “most comprehensive, powerful simulator” it’s so accurate that the US and Canadian aviation authorities have given it official approval to train pilots towards their commercial licence.
Of course, those guys are not sat behind a PC in their bedroom - their training is done in a $150,000 simulator - but what they see is exactly what you get on your PC. What’s more, you’re not limited to Earth – in X-Plane you can even fly around Mars!
Firstly, be warned. X-Plane is one MASSIVE program. Don’t be fooled by the 1.8MB file size in the game description – that’s just the installer. Once you’ve installed that, a very swanky download dialogue opens to download the other 1.3 gigabytes of the game. All those scenarios, vectored graphics and flight controls take up a lot of hardrive space. Depending on your bandwidth, you will be looking at hours, if not days to download the whole thing.
In this X-Plane demo, you are limited to just one aircraft and five minutes of flight but in the full version, you can take control of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier. It also offers subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie. In all, about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history) with several hundred more which can be freely downloaded from the internet. There’s even a plane builder option which allows you to build your own model.
You can pretty much fly to any location around the world and choose from over 18,000 airports to test your landing and take-off skills. You can even test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs. X-Plane naturally features the whole range of weather conditions you might face and the plane reacts realistically to them. The graphics are vector based so they’re not exactly brilliant but they’re what you’d expect from a simulator .
The biggest problem you’ll have is working out how on earth to get started. X-Plane's controls are incredibly complex to mirror a real commercial airliner. I spent the best part of 10 minutes just sat on the runway trying to work out how to start the engines whilst Air Traffic Control went crazy at me. You are prompted with a few guidelines at how to get rolling (such as “hit spacebar to release the breaks”) although you’re not told how to start the engines.
There are so many switches and dials in the cockpit that there’s no knowing what to hit without studying the huge flight manual in detail. In the end, the best I managed was to race around the airport before crashing into and destroying a control tower, killing all on board. For those that do have more patience, they need merely move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen where a drop down menu will present access to preferences, instructions, control configuration and many other options.
For those that just want to fly free as a bird and admire the scenery, X-Plane is not for you. For those that want the challenge of mastering a real airliner or are training for a professional license, it’s the best program out there and will have you absorbed for hours.
This is a recut of beta 7 that fixes Plane-Make crashing on startup on Windows
Changes
This is a recut of beta 7 that fixes Plane-Make crashing on startup on Windows
User reviews about X-Plane
by Troy Fraser
i cant downlowd windows wont let me rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
by Joe Bennett
X-Plane has a more real life feel then FSX,.
for beginner pilots its FSX, when you learn how to fly real life ,its X-Plane
by Anonymous
Great !.
Great !! what the cool is ! I like very very much this game.
Pros: the graphics
the planes
Cons: nothing
by Anonymous
X-Plane is amazing and worth the steep learning curve. .
I have been using X-Plane since version 8 and I do very much enjoy it. However there is room for improvement. The object-model aerodynamic flight system is amazing and I spend more than half my time making aircraft and the rest of my time testing them. The airplane maker is definitely my favorite feature.
Pros:
I love the fact that it uses the actual aircraft model to simulate flight and this allows the user to create any aircraft and test to see if it could really fly. I love the airplane maker and spend most of my time making planes and testing them. Incredibly detailed world makes flying a joy no matter where you are or what you are flying. Be it a Boeing 747 or a hot air balloon. I could say so much more about this program that is top notch. And while it isn't perfect, it is getting withing reach of being everything a PC pilot could want.
Cons:
The text and buttons in the menus are small and packed and could be laid out in a more intuitive manner. In plane maker, the steps to complete a working model are unknown without allot of trial and error. There are many options and features that are not needed to construct a basic flyable aircraft. But figuring out which ones you need is a daunting task until you've built at least half a dozen planes. And the buttons are difficult to use because they are tiny and close together. More flexibility in the plane maker and a simple guide or checklist system would be great. It would be awesome to have a blank world to use as a sort of wind tunnel to test the aircraft without having to exit plane maker, open the flight sim, test the plane, close the sim, open plane maker, make adjustments, close plane maker, open the sim, test the plane, and the game goes on back and forth. And since it takes 5-8 minutes for the sim to load, it becomes a many hours long task to build a basic airplane. An actual wind tunnel system would also be awesome. You would be able to test the aircraft and look for instability at given speeds and help design better planes. Even if it were just a blank space where the aircraft would be locked in position, and yet the area would treat the plane as if it were moving in real atmosphere. Allowing testing without worry of crashing. More
by Anonymous
this is a demo, X-Plane 10 is a serious commercial simulator.
You realize that this is the X-Plane 10 demo, and that X-Plane 10 is a commercial product that costs US$80. For that price, you receive 10 double-sided DVD's worth of scenery data (75GB) and a sizable number of initial aircraft to fly. The demo is restricted to 15 minutes of flight in a single 747 and one location of scenery.If you are more of a casual flight sim player who only wants one or two favorite locations and aircraft then I recommend Microsoft Flight. MSF is initially free, but each little scenery expansion or extra aircraft costs you MS Credits. For example, MSF comes free with the Hawaii main island and 2 planes. The rest of Hawaii will cost you US$20 and each additional aircraft currently costs between $8-15.If you are a serious flight sim enthusiast then X-Plane 10 is the way to go. At US$80 you get essentially most of the world (between 74N and 60S latitudes) and 30 aircraft, much cheaper unless you only really wanted 1-2 favorite planes and locations.
Pros:
- Not new-user friendly, though not terribly difficult.
- Takes time and dedication to master, much like real-world piloting.
- Expansive scenery and a large collection of available aircraft.
- Open for community expansion (new planes, new scenery).
Cons:
- Cheap for what it comes with, but still a sizable investment for some.
- Not for the casual pilot. Try MS Flight. More
by Anonymous
Gaming.
X-Plane is Nice and most realistic ever many aircraft many sceneries and more download this it's really great
Pros: Ultra Realistic
Many Planes
Many Sceneries
Cons:
Big installation size (Demo=3 gb|Full Version=60 GB More