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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 9.3rc12:
  • GPWS annunciator stays lit up for as long as the GPWS system is activating... it does not just pulse.
  • If you hit the fire extinguisher, the engine is recovered normally when you open a new plane or reset the flight.
  • A handful of new gps commands to control the software Garmin-430.
  • Various fail-at-speed-altitude failures should be operational.
  • Twin fuel gage instrument can now handle it properly when people put the fuel tanks on the wrong sides of the plane in Plane-Maker. (Obviously, the LEFT tank should be tank #1, and the RIGHT tank should be tank #2, in twin-tank planes... a number of people have been breaking this rule... the new fuel gage should be smart enough to handle that).
  • Multi-IOS should work as intended.
  • The control-o view lets you get a bit closer to the ground, as needed for some really low airplanes.
  • Map mode is transmitted from master to external cockpits.
  • Ramp-start option applies to initial start of the sim as well.
  • Conditions under which rain is encountered are tweaked a bit.
  • 1 more decimal for wing sweep and dihedral in Plane-Maker.
  • Shadows won't be clipped from inside the 3-d cockpit.
  • Shadow fades out at night.
  • Shadow angle is fixed for AI planes.
  • Frame rate will not jitter as much on OS X 10.4 with ATI hardware and heavy rendering settings.
  • ARC on engine ECAM in Cirrus shows up in 3-d cockpit now.
  • Generic rotary now works correctly when mode is "rheostat".
  • Allow_rosetta flag allows plugin authors to test ppc plugins on an x86 Mac.
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.


SCREENSHOT

Developer:Laminar Research
Downloads:199,804
  - Version d/l:129
Games:Simulation
License:Demo
Date:04 Jul 2009
Platform:PPC/Intel
Price:$59.99
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X-Plane User Reviews (88 posts)Write A Review
sort: smiles | time
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 ]
Mar 25 2009
*****

THEBEAUTIFULONE  Incredibly cool!  
(Version 9.30b7)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
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
+1
[ 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

Dec 19 2007
**...

ARTWILSON22  It looks like X-Plane would be a great find for a true flight simulation enthusiast however for a newcomer who is interested in learning, it lacks guidance. You sit there on the runway wondering what to do. I would have expected a little more from a Mac app but X-Plane does not even offer a true Mac interface but some wack UI that looks like a flavor of Linux. A disappointment.  
(Version 9.0b11)

praisebury
-2
[ 1 Reply - Reply ]
Replies:
Dec 23 2007

THOR420  Unfortunately, X-Plane has historically had issues with documentation, but as is implied in most 'flight' simulators, you fly. I would highly recommend visiting the sites listed here: http://x-plane.com/xworld.html. They are right on the mark saying x-plane.org is "THE PLACE for newsgroups, downloads, etc". The people are extremely helpful and knowledgeable about all things X-Plane.

The user interface is what you get unless you want to change the look of it (which is not that difficult to do). I am not sure what you mean saying that it "looks like a flavor of Linux". I have used Linux since 1994ish and for some reason I think you meant to say: looks like GTK+ running on X Windows System. Most of my Linux boxes don't even have graphical user interfaces.

All in all, most serious flight simmers would agree that as far as real world flight physics accuracy goes, X-Plane is the only choice. It is too bad you thought it a disappointment.  
(Version 9.0b12)

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 ]
Nov 11 2006
**...

BOSIE  Scenery is still boring, crashes as regularly as previous versions even on a G5 Quad. I still can't see a reason to want to buy it unless as people say all you want to do is twiddle the knobs for realistic flight simulation. If refunds were an option I'd take it.   
(Version 8.5)

praisebury
-2
[ 1 Reply - Reply ]
Replies:
Oct 21 2007

SWORDFISH  Funny you complain about not getting a refund. X-Plane always offered a fully functional demo. If you don't like it don't buy it.  
(Version 8.63)

praisebury
0

Oct 12 2006

CJJ  For those of you who just want to get off the ground,

Take these Tips!

Press the "B" key to release brakes

Hold down F2 to take off

The "A" key is back view

The "W" key is cockpit

http://x-plane.org/  
(Version 8.5rc4)

praisebury
0
[ 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

Aug 24 2006
****.

RUSSELL GLEASON  I myself am relatively new with X-Plane (Aug. 23, 2006) having purchased ver. 8.40. I'm using a G4 Digital Audio Mac with Dual 1.8GHz Processors and a ATI 9600 converted AGP graphics card from OWC made specially for G4 Macs, along with 1.25Gb of RAM. Here is my evaluation so far:

PROs: This is probably the best "authentic" Flight Simulator for the Mac that your going to find. It is a real joy to fly/play as I can find myself spending hours on this game.

CONs: The number of free aircraft that you can download is good (but not great). The free aircraft that are available are great, but the number and type of aircraft I feel is somewhat limited (for my taste) and this leaves me alittle disappointed.

Probably the single biggest CON for me is this similator lacks "detailed geographical senery". Given the day and age of computer technology that we live in, the accuracy of low altitude senery is quiet lacking.

A GPS map display would also be nice for pin-point location accuracy (just yesterday I was walking through Sears and you can even buy hand held electronic GPS map displays/units that show exactly where your at!).

I think in the end, while X-Plane is a very, very good program that I would highly recommend to anyone, I think the makers of the program are having a tough time keeping up with todays technology for a "highly realistic" feel "beyond the instrumentation panel" for flying characteristics that gives a pilot a realistic detailed look and feel.

- Russell  
(Version 8.5b8)

praisebury
0
[ Reply ]
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