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Buy for $39.99 (save $10) from Amazon. Your purchase from this link supports MacUpdate!

BE SURE TO TURN ON THE >BETA< OPTION IN THE INSTALLER BEFORE YOU RUN IT TO GET THE BETA! The demo contains a limited scenery area to keep the download size reasonable, and the joystick runs for 10 minutes only.

DESCRIPTION
X-Plane is the world's most comprehensive, powerful flight simulator, and has the most realistic flight model available for personal computers.

Welcome to the world 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.

X-Plane comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic SR-71 and Space Shuttle. X-Plane comes with about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several thousand more are freely downloadable from the internet. (See www.X-Plane.org as a good place to start).

X-Plane scenery is world-wide, with scenery for the entire planet Earth between -60 and +74 degrees lattiude. We also have MARS scenery! (thanks to the Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter, which mapped that planet's elevation) You can land at any of over 18,000 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! Real weather conditions can be downloaded from the internet, allowing you to fly in the actual weather that currently exists!

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.

While X-Plane is the world's most COMPREHENSIVE flight sim, your purchase also comes with Plane-Maker (to create your own airplanes) World-Maker (to create your own scenery), and Weather Briefer (to get a weather briefing before the flight if you use real weather conditions downloaded from the net).

X-Plane is also extremely customizable, allowing you to easily create textures, sounds, and instrument panels for your own airplanes that you design or the planes that come with the sim.

X-Plane's accuracy (in flight model), scope (in aircraft and terrain coverage), versatility (in aircraft type and weather conditions), add-on programs (in aircraft and scenery editors), user-customizability, downloadable aircraft, and downloadable scenery makes it the ULTIMATE flight simulation experience for Macintosh.

WHAT'S NEW
Version 9.41 Beta-3 (Updater 2.05r2):
  • Electrical system should work fine even for planes created on the ancient old PPC macs from many years ago.
  • Should not crash on quit while text-to-speech is playing, as it could before.
REQUIREMENTS
  • Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
  • 1GHz G4 or faster
  • 32MB video card
RELATED LINKS
    The demo contains a limited scenery area to keep the download size reasonable, and the joystick runs for 10 minutes only.

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SCREENSHOT

Developer:Laminar Research
Downloads:207,016
  - Version d/l:455
Games:Simulation
License:Updater
Date:13 Nov 2009
Platform:PPC/Intel
Price:$59.99
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X-Plane User Reviews (92 posts)Write A Review
sort: smiles | time
May 2 2008
*****

TARTATIN  Definitely the best simulator available on Mac.

X-Plane is available for years on our platform and since the begining the support was excellent.  
(Version 9.0)

praisebury
+3
[ Reply ]
Oct 2 2006

PETER COLE  I've been using X-Plane for a few years now and can only say how amazed I am with it. The terrain is about as accurate as is available for almost the entire planet (from the SRTM data set - from NASA). The weather is fantasic (with a real time option too). I have hundreds of planes downloaded from and other sites incl. www.x-plane.org

GPS style maps are avaiable with a dual monitor set-up. The six minute demo was enough for me to know this rocked - and I could still fly after the six minutes, just not use the main flight controls.

If you want a real flight sim (not a game) this is it. Even MS call their Flight sim a game. Although certainly enjoyable, this is not a game. It is used to train real pilots in both fixed wing and helicopters.

X-Plane is worth every cent!  
(Version 8.5rc2)

praisebury
+2
[ 2 Replies - Reply ]
Replies:
Oct 4 2006

SOREN0  Great review!

I think X-Plane is an awesome flight simulator.

It just gets better and better with each release.  
(Version 8.5rc3)

praisebury
0
Feb 16 2007

PETER COLE  Thanks for your kind comment.  
(Version 8.6rc6)

praisebury
0

Sep 20 2009

ISTRA  on their website it is now $29, not bad!  
(Version 9.4rc6)

praisebury
+1
[ Reply ]
Sep 18 2009
*****

JAMUS  Best. Flight sim. Ever.  
(Version 9.4rc5)

praisebury
+1
[ Reply ]
Jul 26 2009

PLAINLY X-PLANE  The good, the bad, the ugly, the wacky.

It's X-Plane plainly explained, along with a healthy dose of prove-it-to-me skepticism.

Product reviews, tips and tricks, the occasional tutorial. Get an unbiased look at the flight simulator that provokes bipolar disorder in otherwise well adjusted people:

http://plainlyxplane.blogspot.com  
(Version 9.31)

praisebury
+1
[ Reply ]
Mar 25 2009
*****

THEBEAUTIFULONE  Incredibly cool!  
(Version 9.30b7)

praisebury
+1
[ Reply ]
Oct 12 2009

TALATHARB  There is one Flightsim for the Mac, XP, so this is the best one. Flightgear has potential but still some way to go. hopefully they keep it up.

That said, xplane is a piece of crap. there was never a stable version, and there probably never will be one. this is the authors 14th attempt to deliver something without introducing silly new bugs over and over again. Maybe he's gone completely bananas, who knows. But for sure he has no knowledge of software development, quality management and customer care. sadly enough.   
(Version 9.4rc14)

praisebury
0
[ 3 Replies - Reply ]
Replies:
Oct 29 2009

HOLYPOLY  DON'T FEED THE TROLLS  
(Version 9.40)

praisebury
0
Nov 13 2009

MITCH_DE  i dont think its crap. Because lots of professionals use it and even military use the special version (cost much more, has features to use real cockpit).

They simple add lots of things users wanted and that also add bugs = normal !  
(Version 9.41 Beta-2)

praisebury
0
Nov 14 2009

TALATHARB  "They simple add lots of things users wanted and that also add bugs = normal ! "

and

"Because lots of professionals use it and even military use the special version "

So in your opinion bugs and professional use correlate. aha!

And no, I am not trolling. Nor am I a naive Faboy  
(Version 9.41 Beta-3)

praisebury
0

Apr 28 2009

SOMMOP  You don't really need to build airplanes to enjoy this sim. If you're already a pilot, this thing is pretty damn good.   
(Version 9.30b8)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
Apr 4 2008

CALEB GRANT  for everybody who says that they just sit on the runway, you obviously havent given this simulator any time. i personally have never tried to make any planes, but i still have fun flying the planes that oter people make around. the controls are very simple once you know them, although i will admit that changing them is a little tricky. this game is not meant to be played with a mouse, so i recommed that you buy a cheap joystick if nothing else. i use maybe 3 or 4 buttons, and then my joystick and clicking around in the window view.

maybe if you took a little time to think about it you could actually figure it out  
(Version 9.0rc3)

praisebury
0
[ 3 Replies - Reply ]
Replies:
Apr 16 2008

KIDDAILEY  I would love to spend more time to try it out, but the 10 minute demo limit doesn't give you much time to figure anything out, let alone decide if this app is worth $80!  
(Version 9.0)

praisebury
0
Apr 16 2008

CALEB GRANT  i have x plane 8 installed, so i probably do have more time to mess with it than you do, but i think that 8 is a great buy and 9 can only be better  
(Version 9.0)

praisebury
0
Apr 16 2008

CALEB GRANT  i have x plane 8 installed, so i probably do have more time to mess with it than you do, but i think that 8 is a great buy and 9 can only be better  
(Version 9.0)

praisebury
0

Nov 29 2007

CJJ  People!

Download and buy X-PLane 9!!!

The realism and graphics are INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!  
(Version 9.0b2)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
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