Product Description

DVD Drive Required
Windows XP or Vista
Processor: any @ 2GHz+
System Memory: 1GB
Availabe Hard Drive: 60GB
Video Card: 64MB VRAM

X-Plane is the most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator available for the personal computer. X-Plane simulates anything that flies: from single-engine fixed wing props to multi-engine jets; gliders to dirigibles; helicopters to spacecraft to VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier.

X-Plane has the most realistic flight model available for personal computers. It comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, simulating aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic SR-71 and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie.

X-Plane comes with 29 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more are freely downloadable from the internet.

X-Plane includes scenery for the entire continental U.S. You can land at any of thousands of airports, as well as test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads on building tops, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs. Weather is variable from clear skies and high visibility to thunderstorms with controllable wind, wind shear, turbulence, and microbursts. Rain, snow and clouds are available for an instrument flying challenge, and thermals are available for the gliders! X-Plane can download real weather data from the internet, allowing you to fly in actual current conditions!

X-Plane also has detailed failure-modeling, with 35 systems that can be failed manually, or randomly when you least expect it! You can fail instruments, engines, flight controls, and landing gear at any moment.

X-Plane includes Plane-Maker which allows you to create your own airplanes, and World-Maker which lets you create your own scenery. Also included is Weather Briefer which produces a weather briefing based on

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1950 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: First Class Simulations
• Released on: 2008-06-20
• Platform: Windows XP

Customer Reviews

Great with flaws
A great simulator, but less of a game. This will keep the budding aerospace engineer busy for hours as the software comes with tools to create your own aircraft, scenery, buildings etc. Because of the way it works the software actually simulated the aircraft, most flight 'games' just use preset files to describe flight behaviour, but X-plane actually uses the 3D model of the aircraft, so a new shape means a new flight characteristic.

However the low budget development means that some of the bells and whistles of more polished rivals (FSX) are absent. Mostly this doesn't matter and the gap between FSX and X-Plane is now very narrow in terms of polish and features. Overall I prefer X-Plane to FSX, it is in the end all about flight which is far better modelled in X-plane, and now with version 9 the view out the cockpit rivals FSX.

My only gripe is the lack of wide-screen support in the cockpits supplied with X-Plane, this will no doubt come as wide-screens are increasingly common and add realism (better peripheral vision).


Edit September 09

OK so first off I don't often get around to using X-Plane (X-P) these days. That is more to do with having two kids than any flaw with the software. What I didn't say in my previous review was that if given a choice between FSX and X-P I will always go for X-P. Add to this the fact that there are an enormous number of freeware files now available for X-P. Because X-P comes with all the software you need to begin creating planes and scenery there is a large community of enthusiasts pumping out various freeware add-ons, some of which is full professional quality. However the one downside of X-P relative to FSX is the degree to which system engineering is typically simulated. In FSX it is possible to buy add-ons like the PDGM 747 which simulated nearly every button on the flight deck. X-P is simply not that sort of software, it has a handful of active controls in most cockpits and that is all. X-P does simulate radio stacks, RADAR, autopilot, and the basic controls, but generally no more than that. Whereas FSX allows full FMU and FADEC simulation as well as complex failure mode control, basically it can allow the entire flight deck of even the most complex, highly automated, modern airplane to be fully simulated. So it comes down to what you are looking for in a flight sim, accurate flight models that are calculated directly from the three dimensional shape of the model or faithful virtual cockpits which simulate all the aircraft systems and functions. If you want to simulate flying an airliner (IFR type) as accurately as possible with all the complexity and sophistication of the real thing (but relatively tame handling) then go with FSX. If you want accurate flight modelling, airframe simulation, and seat of the pants (VFR type) flying in small airplanes then X-P may be more suited, especially if you want to have ago at designing your own planes and then testing them out.

For the majority of people FSX is probably the better choice, but if you have a deeper interest in aerospace and aircraft design, you may find X-P ultimately more rewarding. With prices for both falling I would suggest buying both - thats what I did and I love them both.

Much Improved
This is the third version of X-Plane I have brought. I am an MS Flight Simulator fan, but have always enjoyed the extra challenge that X-Plane gives you. For those who have never played it, X-Plane uses a very realistic physics engine to create flight dynamics that are about the best you can get outside a multi-million-pound simulator. It has in the past however, been let down by having too many bugs and poor graphics. It has (to me at least) been worth buying because it enabled you to land the space shuttle, on aircraft carriers, and many other things MS Flight Simulator couldn't do.

X Plane 9 has massively improved graphics. This includes reflective water, much, much, much better textures and general environments including far more detail on buildings. It also has full virtual-cockpits and 60GB of scenery spanning the world. X Plane has also kept its challenges; you can attempt a re-entry and landing with a space shuttle, land a helicopter on a frigate and many other things. Aircraft 'feel' more realistic and more challenging to fly than in Flight Simulator X, which is great for someone that plays these games often, perhaps not for someone that doesn't.

X Plane really does have its merits, but unfortunately there are also many problems. One of the biggest one is the progress made by its biggest rival; FSX. X Plane 9 has great graphics.. FSX is better. X Plane lets you land on aircraft carriers, etc.. FSX now lets you do many of those things. Whats more, apart from visual improvements there aren't really many improvements from the last version. What compounds this is accessibility; whereas FSX was clearly designed for beginners as well as more experienced players, X Plane obviously wasn't; there is a total lack of clear instructions and the interface is at times very confusing.

I have loved previous versions of X Plane because of the wider variety of aircraft and situations you can fly in compare to MS Flight Simulator. I would love to say I still feel like that, but the problem is while FSX has improved on previous version a lot, X-Plane 9 hasn't. In fact with the new content in FSX, X Plane has lost a lot of what has made it unique and ultimately, worth buying.

Bye Bye Microsoft Flight Sim.
The flight handling in X-Plane is much more sophisticated than Flight Sim. No, the sceneries not as good and you'll be surprised at how much better a computer you need to run this at the same level you ran Flight Sim on your current PC but that tells me that X-Plane is an unsung hero for many enthusiasts. I won't be going back to Flight Sim, X-Plane is it for me. About the only downside I give this program is that the inbuilt Air Traffic Control is dictated using your computers on board text to voice function. Its basically like having Stephen Hawking as your ATC. That said, I play online through Vatsim with human ATC's so that's not so much of a problem. X-Plane is quirky, a bit buggy and a setting tweakers dream. It's not perfect but I love it enough to retire Microsoft Flight Sim just for the realism of the flight handling.