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.
Version 9.2rc2: A few improvements on the V-22 thanks to help from a crew-chief on the real plane.
A few improvements in the linear-tape instruments for airspeed and Mach number and the like.
No more rain starburst pattern.
A few problems with replays and loaded situations addressed. Minor improvements in the EGT modelling.
New cmnds: Fuel pump: PRIME. HOLD DOWN the button to run the electric pump.
Flight model enhancement: We got RID of a variable that everyone was mis-using: Critical altitude of jet and turboprop engines.
The critical altitude is the max altitude at which the engine can put out full power or thrust.
Plenty of jets and turboprops have critical altitude way above sea level: They can put out full thrust or power way above sea level!
BUT, they can only do this by going ABOVE 100% N1 flying high, or by staying well BELOW 100% N1 when flying low!
In other words, these engines are air pumps: They can NOT make the air any denser!
They can only continue to put out rated power in thinner air by spinning the N1 up higher!
SO, if you want to have a flat-rated turboprop or jet engine in X-Plane that has a critical altitude well above sea level,
then you have exactly 2 options:
1: Enter the true thermodynamic power of the engine in Plane-Maker, and keep the N1 well BELOW 100% N1 to avoid actually hitting that power.
Only advance the throttle as you climb into thinner air to use the engines' excess capacity to continue to put out full power during climb.
or
2: Enter a max throttle of OVER 1.00 in Plane-Maker. Take off at 100% N1, and as you climb, advance the throttle so the N1 creeps OVER 100% N1,
holding constant thrust as you climb!
In both cases, you will see an increasing N1 as you climb to hold a constant thrust up to the airplanes' critical altitude... AS IN REALITY.
Now, for RECIP engines, it is a bit different! THOSE engines can be turbocharged, and the turbo can AUTOMATICALLY spool up faster-n-faster as you climb,
resulting in a constant engine horsepower as you climb with no change at all in engine indications (other than higher cyl-head temperatures, in reality). So, we are leaving THAT critical altitude in place in Plane-Maker.
Double click time matches OS preference - easier to double click now
Menus drag and click like OS X and windows.
Better framerate - up to 10%, depends on CPU, GPU.
PAPI lights at LOWI go in the right direction.
More translations.
Dark areas and stripes fixed in Planet
Generic pointers don't jitter
