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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1411
12 Days of X-Mas: X-Plane Fight Simulator
By Michael Flaminio, Insanely Great Mac
December 17th 2002
Whatever you do, don't call this flight simulator a "game."
Ever wonder what it's like land a Boeing 777 at Chicago O'Hare? How about doing a full
reentry in the space shuttle? Or maybe just tooling around your home town in a Cessna
172? X-Plane lets you do that and more. What better way to hide from the winter
weather than learning to fly in the friendly virtual skies? X-Plane has long been one
of my favorite computer past times and worthy of a look.
X-Plane, current at version 6.40, is an impressive flight simulator package from
Austin Meyer's Laminar Research. The game boasts the most accurate flight model
available on a consumer product. In fact, the software is used in training systems to
test aircraft and train pilots. Under the hood, X-Plane uses OpenGL for 3D graphics
and runs on both OS 9 and OS X. Despite complex graphics and modeling, X-Plane runs
pretty smooth even on "average" hardware.
The biggest weakness to X-Plane, however, is still its scenery. X-Plane uses a complex
terrain-based scenery model, which makes for pretty good ground scenery, but city
scenery is sorely lacking. The flight sim compensates for the lack of any real city
scenery by using dynamically generated cities, complete with roads and moving cars.
While impressive, the city scenery quickly turns into an endless display of
nondescript suburbia. Flight simulators such as Microsoft Flight Sim offers much
greater detail for major cities, complete with accurate landmarks.Other than the
flight model, however, X-Planes other greatest strength is its expandability. Here,
the scenery issues can be overcame, as X-Plane allows anyone to create and download
scenery and planes. In fact at X-Plane.org, you can find more aircraft than you can
shake a stick at. Everything from Wright Brothers to Battlestar Galactica can be found
for your flying pleasure.
X-Plane is available free in a limited demo. The demo lets you fly around in a limited
area and only offers joystick control for a short period of time. You can though load
and fly any plane to your liking, and if you can figure it out, fly via the keyboard
for as long as you like. X-Plane with the North American scenery pack is available for
$59.99 plus shipping from Laminar. The full Earth scenery package runs $79.99, and if
you feel like flying on Mars, you can get that too for $99.99. I'd recommend a
joystick with a "twist" handle, or go all out like me and get the
http://www.chproducts.com/retail/index.html>CH Products Yoke and Pedals.
[Throughout the month of December, Insanely Great Mac is posting gift ideas for the
Mac head on your Christmas list, or for yourself. We'll pick out hardware and software
items that hopefully will not be too obvious. All gift ideas will be priced below or
around $100. Feel free to comment on the items and offer your own suggestions in the
comments section below.]
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