X-Plane Deluxe Review
Have been using Microsoft Flight Sim X on a Vista machine. The idea was to improve my instrument awareness. I fly VFR (visual, with only secondary reference to instruments). Changed computers to a Mac. This simulator runs on Mac, so...br /br /First, the good or excellent. The visuals are awesome. Yes, at the very close level, under a quarter of a mile or so horizontally or 5000' or so elevation, the scale and needs of computation yield a pretty artificial landscape, but that pretty much has to be true for any simulator. Second, I think the Cessna 172 flies a bit more realistically than the Microsoft product. There's good and bad to that. The good is that I don't have the feeling of having to yank the plane around the sky or execute very gradually that's true of Flight Sim. br /br /But, first time I flew a 172SP I found the bird needed a lot of right rudder to keep it straight at full power. That's true of the simulated bird as well. The problem is that I'm trying to control with only the mouse and keyboard. There's no way that works. To take off straight rudder control is necessary. Get a joystick? Yoke and rudder peddles? The gratuitous sprinkling of balloons around the sky is unnecessary. But there is probably a setting that I just haven't found yet to get rid of them.br /br /I read a lot of negative reviews of the product. I don't share their experience. Haven't tried arbitrarily changing things and am not trying to design an airplane. One of the things that took some getting used to was the mouse control of pitch and roll. Holding the mouse below the target cross pitches up, stick back, and above the cross is the opposite. For the most part the pitch and roll control are pretty sensitive. If you're really trying to fly, the mouse arrow won't be very far from the cross very often.br /br /My 12 year old son is a gamer, at least he's not a pilot and he fools around with things like Runescape. He gets wild and is impressed with the visuals attached to things like bad landings. Smoke. All sorts of warning lights on the panel... For my purposes, I skip by my goofs pretty fast. The best way to do that is simply hit pause and pull down the menu to reposition the plane for takeoff.br /br /So, my expectations weren't excessive. The problems I've encountered aren't a lot different from those I had learning Microsoft Flight Sim. X Plane may or may not do everything it promises excellently. I'll probably never know. But I look forward to keeping my instrument awareness up. My wife says flying a simulator has even improved my landings.
X-Plane Deluxe Feature
- Try out both subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter to the supersonic Concorde
- Fly 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry -- plus hundreds more downloaded from the Internet
- Customize the textures, sounds and instrument panels for your own airplanes -- or redesign the flight panels of pre-existing planes
- Detailed failure-modeling with 35 systems that can fail randomly -- fail instruments, engines, flight controls, and landing gear at any moment
- Variable weather patterns, from clear skies and high visibility to thunderstorms with controllable wind, wind shear, turbulence, and microbursts -- rain, snow and clouds are also available
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Love my Macs, but FSX is FAR better than X-Plane - Sports Stats Fan -
I'm an instrument-rated private pilot, and although I'm not part of the super-serious sim crowd that operates virtual airlines and virtual ATC, flight-sims aren't just games to me. I've used versions of Flight Simulator since the 1980s, and when I earned my license and then did instrument work, it was a resource I relied on VERY heavily. br /br /But I'm also one of the many, many PC users so fed up with the constant need in a Windows environment to run anti-virus and anti-spyware programs that seriously degrade system performance that I switched to Macs last year. In general, I'm VERY happy.br /br /The one HUGE disappointment has been X-Plane 8 Deluxe. It was the VERY first program I bought. But if it came with a money back guarantee, I'd absolutely be demanding my money back. br /br /I've pulled a PC out of storage and upgraded it just so I can still run FSX. And I may, at some point, install Boot Camp or a similar program just so I can run FSX on my Macs. What I'll never do is spend another penny on X-Plane. FSX has its share of issues, but it's a MUCH, MUCH better program than X-Plane.br /br /Digression: I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend the book Microsoft Flight Simulator for Pilots: Real World Training. The authors, both flight instructors, do an outstanding job of relating FSX to real-world flying. (And they do an equally good job of pointing out where flying in FSX differs from real-world flying, as, for example, in ATC, available IFR clearances, and functionality of the G1000 PFD and MFD).
May 01, 2010 17:54:08
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