![]() The entire world is included in the game, along with thousands of airports, but graphics are definitely the Achilles' heel of this series. Many talented fans have cranked out plenty of other aircraft you can download from the Web, so there's never a dearth of things to fly. Fortunately, it is easy to modify existing planes by changing engine specifications, modifying wing shapes, and making nearly any other tweak imaginable so you can live out your dreams of being a test pilot. Tools are included for making your own aircraft, but they aren't easy to use. If you're feeling really ambitious, it's even possible to switch from Earth to Mars, where low gravity and a nearly nonexistent atmosphere mean that flying planes designed for that environment (two are included) requires planning several minutes ahead of where you actually want to end up. Helicopters and VTOL planes also are supported, making it easy to try your hand at the controls of a Huey, V-22 Osprey, Harrier, or Joint Strike Fighter. Exotic aircraft, like the Hindenburg zeppelin, X-15, and SR-71 Blackbird, are available out of the box, along with more-standard fare, like a Cessna 172, Piper Malibu, and Bombardier 415 seaplane. This is the most comprehensive flight simulator available to consumers, and it models everything from radio-controlled airplanes to jumbo jets to the space shuttle. What other simulator lets you land the space shuttle?įlight Simulator 2004 came with a lot of planes, but it can't touch the variety offered by X-Plane. This labor of love is now in its eighth commercial iteration, and while other sims have come and gone, X-Plane is the only one still flying high as a potential alternative to Flight Simulator. Whereas Flight Simulator is designed by a huge team working with an enormous budget for one of the biggest companies in the world, X-Plane is largely designed by one person, on a relatively miniscule budget, who's working for himself. (There are multiple flight tutorials included if you're truly starting from ground-level.) But the more you fly, the more you’ll want to fly better, so when you clamber into the sky for a sunset tour of London, you’ll soon want to return to Heathrow to practice your runway approaches and landings.īefore long, you might find yourself among the dedicated, hauling planeloads of digital passengers from Chicago to Frankfurt.X-Plane 8 may be Flight Simulator 2004's biggest competition, but the two products are about as far apart as you can get. Though the setup demands some av-geek knowledge, you should get the hang of the general controls pretty quickly, and, as in real life, you can automate much of the work. (I’ve used previous versions of X-Plane to get a bead on airport departure and approach routes, to know where I should sit for optimal photo-ops). (Flying bare-bones hardware? Dial back the graphics settings to "minimal" and it should run fine.)Īs a virtual pilot, you can fly by the Space Needle, bask in Manhattan's forest of steel and glass, dip into the Grand Canyon. ![]() Depending on your computer’s graphics capability, the program will add in autogenerated (but accurately placed) buildings, and the design team’s artist is replicating real structures constantly. Dial in a sunset, snowstorm, or whatever else you like, then cruise over any city, coastline, or mountain range-all rendered from real-world mapping data, including road placement. The 11th release of the program that helped kill Microsoft’s Flight Simulator a decade ago, just dropped in beta and available as a free demo, has pushed the realism yet further.Ĭoming Innovations That Will Make Flying Economy (Mostly) Better Arrowĭisaster is always one wrong button away-that's the reality of flight-but when everything’s going right, you can arc gracefully through the sky, execute barrel rolls and loops in a light sport airplane, or fly that 747 from Paris to New York with all the drama of a routine commercial flight.įor the noob crowd, X-Plane 11 offers a stunning simulation of the airborne environment. This dedication to the reality of flight has long made Laminar Research's X-Plane the go-to game for aviation enthusiasts and actual pilots, taking off for fun or honing their real-world skills. And then, you'll feel the plane: the flexing wings, the spinning of the engines when you hit the throttle, the deep hum when you deploy the landing gear. You'll take in the high-res scrolling landscape beneath you-or above you, whenever you learn that no, you cannot fly better than the pros. You’ll first marvel at the instrument panels, the realistic sea of buttons and dials that control autopilot, the engines, flaps, radio comms, among scores of other functions. If you’ve ever suffered a spat of turbulence and wondered how you’d do at the controls of an airliner-who hasn’t?-it's time you took a spin in X-Plane 11, the industrial-grade flight simulator you can download to your desktop.
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