X-Plane v 9.0 - PC

Don't let the low price tag fool you, this is NOT a toy or a flying animation like MS Flight Simulator, this IS a real simulator, also available in a FAA-certified version, a tool that gives you amazing graphics yet is based on the live analysis, at least 20 times per second, of a precise model of every square inch of the aircraft's surface in the conditions given (weather, wind, engine thrust, control surface position etc.).Hundreds of different planes are provided: F-14, Boeing 747, Cessna 172, Hawker Harrier jump jet, B2 bomber, Bell 206 helicopter, Space Shuttle, mars planes, weird experimental planes, even model airplanes and many more, and you can change their aerodynamics or simply redo their paint job. All with realistic cockpits and the possibility to work all the controls. At any time you can change the view, looking up, down, left, right, backward, or even getting a view from a chase plane or the tower (ideally, on a second monitor). Because this is a real simulator, you can create any shape of plane and you will be able to see how (well) it flies (or doesn't...), or you can modify existing planes and see the change in behaviour. You even get martian planes, i.e. made to fly in THAT atmosphere.The terrain models are superb and cover just about the entire Earth (and Mars), with thousands of airports to choose from (on Earth). I live in France and all the tiny local airports are in there, plus the international ones. The terrain is accurate w.r.t. contours, hills, mountains, rivers, altitudes, but don't expect to recognize buildings in cities. At first I thought this was a defect, but then I realized that since 2001 there may be restrictions on this level of realism.After a few minutes attempting to fly a real simulator with a mouse, you will realize that you need a serious joystick or better: a set of yoke and pedals. I recommend the ones from CH products, they install in a few seconds and feel close to the real thing. With X-plane you can tie these controls in with the actual controls on the cockpit image, and you can assign all the extra buttons to whatever you want (raising and lowering flaps or undercarriage, firing guns, changing views, etc.), all completely programmable.The sounds are amazing, and you can set time, weather, date, airport. You can start off from any of the airport's runways or even from any of the gates or ramps, or you can start with an approach to landing on that runway, from 3 or 10 nautical miles away.If you spend a lot of time on X-Plane (there is a high risk of that) you will eventually learn to work the autopilot and the VOR and ASF etc.. A complete set of onscreen maps indicates beacons and airports as well as their frequencies. You enter the frequencies onto the NAV radios on the cockpit, and then get the instruments to point at the beacons or the autopilot to lock onto a glideslope down to a runway, landing you automatically by instrument flying. You can do just about everything a real plane does, except actually fly... :-)You can fly with other people over the Internet, or you can tie in more than one computer over your local network to get even more realistic images from multiple monitors. In fact, you can even get the FAA certified version X-plane and use it with professional cockpit simulations from flypfc.com (but be prepared to spend a few grand on that setup...) to actually log in official simulator time.This is a truly remarkable software package that could only have come from a bunch of highly skilled and dedicated airplane nuts. No monopolistic multinational could turn out such quality. They also maintain the package up to date, with frequent updates. Works on PC and MAC.I am glad I made the right choice.

I wanted a flight simulator to practice "the scan", the required checking of all important gauges during instrument flight. Microsoft FS went dead and no longer works since the latest Windows 10 update due to conflicts with the DVD copyright method, and even the no-CD patch available on line no longer works. So I investigated X-Plane.Before you buy an X-Plane 9 DVD set, there are certain problems and issues you need to be aware of. First, just because this is an older program, don't think that it is not highly demanding of your hardware, especially your video card. I run an Intel dual-core 3.00 GHz processor with on-board video, admittedly a rather modest system. With X-Plane 9 I immediately received pop-ups that I had way too many rendering options that required higher video power. No problem, I was not interested in fancy scenery anyways, so I set it all to minimums. But you should know that X-Plane needs a lot of video processing power.On three different DVD sets the sceneries did not load. Turns out this is a well established chronic problem with X-Plane 9. As a result I was limited to flying around Aachen, Duesseldorf, and Liege, Belgium. What is very frustrating is that the program offeres you a huge list of airports, but then after loading an airport it says with a pop-up: "There is no scenery installed for this area. You will just see ocean around this airport." The problem is that with no scenery you also have no nav-aids, no VORs, nothing.If you install sceneries available on the web, the program simply crashes, even if you install it very carefully and preserve the exact file structure the program needs.So I started flying around Germany with a Cessna 172. Much like the one in FS, this Cessna is not anything like its real-life name-sake. It's violently unstable. You let go of the yoke and it goes into a sudden roll and crashes within about 5 seconds. You cannot adjust the sensitivity of the yoke, so you spend a lot of time recovering from dives, stalling climbs, and rolls left and right. Ridiculous and completely unrealistic.So, if you think you can get an older version of this program and run it on a modest machine, think again. It will not happen. My conclusion is that X-Plane appears to be very promising, and I intend to purchase the new X-Plane 11 since it has a modest price tag. However, to run it I need a real "gamer" machine, minimum price tag probably around $ 700.00. The emphasis needs to be on a powerful video card. Anything short of that will probably not work.

After using microsoft flight simulator, in all it's editions, for years - i decided to try x-plane 9.Frankly, x-plane turned out to be a major disappointment.The program comes on 6 DVD's [not cd's, DVD's] - it takes hours to install the program.It will only run if disc 1 is in the dvd drive.The graphics for aircraft and scenery are almost cartoon-like compared to fsx. From the 6 dvd's i expected accurate and great scenery - wrong. I looked around Paris for the Eiffel Tower - nothing. I looked around London for well known land marks - nothing. How can well known land marks shown clearly in fsx be missing from x-plane?Initially i could not use the program near full screen because doing this made the mouse pointer invisible; without it not much can done.I downloaded the latest update, this rendered the mouse pointer visible. However when i selected full screen the pointer again disappeared. without it the program cannot be used. additionally, there appears to be no way of regaining the pointer - apart from re-installing the program - another 4 hours.as far as i can tell, the only advantage it has over fsx is that the rendering and frame rate of the cartoon-like scenery is a bit better than some of the scenery in fsx. However, the scenery in fsx is clearer, accurate and more realisticThe weather in x-plane leaves a lot to be desired, nowhere near as good as in fsx. Turbulence and high winds cause the aircraft to flutter unrealistically.there is nothing intuitive about the program and the x-plane site is not great.Finally, don't waste your money on x-plane.

J'ai Windows 7 Familial j'ai peut etre bien un virus je ne sait points , ou il me manque des mises a jour. Je verrai dans le futur. Merci

マイクロソフトのFlight simulatorがゲームであるのに対して、こちらはゲーム的要素を感じない「シミュレーター」です。そういう意味において面白くはありませんが、完成度は高いと感じます。まだ使いこなせているとは言えない状態ですが、お気に入りの"Piper Malibu"で楽しんでいます。タイトルに書いたとおり、夜景の色がリアルです。マイクロソフトのFlight Simulator Xの夜景はオレンジ色基調のぼんやりしたものですが、こちらは水銀灯の鋭い光が程よく混ざり、いくぶんシャープな夜景になっています。加えて、着陸灯が照らし出す滑走路がとてもリアルです。日中の景観はマイクロソフトに分があります。