About X-Plane

Note: This review is very outdated – it is based on X-Plane 5.54. The current version is 7.30, which is a lot better (both technically and graphically) than the version described here. I hope to find the time to update this review some day.

According to my own experience and all reviews I've read so far, X-Plane from Laminar Research is the most realistic flight simulator you can buy for your PC or Mac. Realistic means in terms of flight physics. There are other products with more photo-realistic graphics, more action features or a more convenient user interface, but none of them matches X-Plane's pure realism when it comes to the main thing: flying. You can almost feel all those physical forces attacking your plane, and that's because X-Plane actually calculates them!

The flight model

While most simulators use high-level flight models that try to reproduce the behaviour of a certain aircraft (making it more or less unusable for other aircraft designs), X-Plane takes the low-level approach and actually calculates all the forces attacking the individual parts of the aircraft (wings, control surfaces, propellers, fuselage etc.) by breaking down the aircraft into many small elements using "blade element theory".

When you move the rudder, for example, X-Plane will react to its angle like real air would (of course, X-Plane takes care of things like air density, depending on air pressure and altitude). That's why your plane will move like the real thing. Many conventional flight models wouldn't even show the moving rudder in the graphics – X-Plane does, and everything you see actually influences the physics of the aircraft!

If one engine of your jet airliner fails (and you can have X-Plane make it fail manually or randomly), the plane will behave completely different. The flight model doesn't need a special "broken engine" procedure, since it will immediately notice that the thrust from that engine is missing and calculate all the forces accordingly. Many real-life pilots use X-Plane for practicing such situations and say that no other flight simulator reproduces them well enough (if at all).

Hardcore flight enthusiasts can output all relevant data in real-time through a serial port or network to control external equipment such as full-size cockpits with real instruments!

By the way, the flight model covers not only subsonic and supersonic flight, but also stratospheric and space flight (the Space Shuttle is included!), as well as realistic water physics for seaplanes (or try to land your helicopter on a frigate tossing in the sea!). You can even fly on Mars – you need completely different aircraft there, because gravity is lower and the air is much thinner!

Create your own planes!

For me, the greatest advantage of X-Plane's universal flight model is that you can design your own aircraft, and X-Plane will figure out how it will fly according to the rules of physics! That's real fun. X-Plane comes with an aircraft design tool which allows you to make your own planes, gliders, helicopters, rockets, blimps, zeppelins and VTOL aircraft (version 5.60 and later also supports gyrocopters). The user interface of Plane-Maker is horribly inconvenient (there's no undo function, for example ...), but it's well worth the pain.

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads!" 

The U.S. Department of Defense and NASA use X-Plane for testing new designs before they build a prototype. Now if that isn't a proof of quality ...

In addition to the 48 aircraft included, you can download many more from the Internet designed by enthusiasts all over the world. My own collection currently contains 165 additional aircraft eating up a negligible 749 MB of hard disk space ...

Some people have even gone beyond the limits and designed cars and boats with Plane-Maker. Of course those "aircraft" can't fly (or can they? Look at the screenshot ...).

Scenery

Speaking of customization, you can also make your own sceneries for flying. X-Plane comes with elevation data for a big part of the world (and almost all of the rest can be downloaded), but only very few details and objects – most of the world is covered with a boring generic landscape – still good enough for a realistic flight experience though. If you want a really nice landscape, you need to download sceneries made by other X-Planers, or make your own. You can see some of these custom sceneries in my screenshots on this web site. You can also make custom 3D objects, but you need a special (free) third-party tool (see my Links page) unless you want to edit 3D coordinate lists by hand.

Graphics

The overall graphics experience greatly depends on the quality of the textures (both aircraft and scenery) you use. The screenshot on the right shows the most photo-realistic plane and scenery I found so far, much better than the default stuff (which is still good). Also, you need a fast 3D graphics card. I'm using a GeForce 256 on an AMD K6-2/400 and get good frame rates in 1280 x 1024 as long as I turn the trees off and the number of visible objects is not too big. If you use lower resolutions, you can use slower hardware as well – I assume that texture memory is the most important factor.
 

Weather

The weather simulation is really amazing. There's hardly anything you cannot adjust, and it also looks great! The plane realistically reacts to wind and thermals, you have clouds, rain and snow, thunderstorms with lightning (the weather radar in the cockpit will show you where to go to have maximum fun ...), snow drifts on icy, slippery runways, even water and snow spraying up from the runway caused by your propwash or jetwash... And you can even download the actual weather of the area you're flying in from the Internet!

Air Traffic

X-Plane also features realistic air traffic. I haven't tested this extensively, however, since it's not really important for my own fun. The database of airports is huge – almost every village is included (or can be easily added if you have the data). All airports have the correct runway orientations and navigation aids, so you can practice realistic landings at any given airport. If you install a speech engine for your operating system, you can hear air traffic control radio messages, otherwise you can read them on the screen. I'm talking about messages concerning your own flight, not just ear-candy – for atmosphere, there's additional background chatter sound even without a speech engine.

Multiplayer

Another feature I haven't tested yet is the new multiplayer capability, but it must be real fun. Your buddy can fly along with you, tow your glider, sit in the tower or just be your flight instructor who lets your engines or instruments fail or other funny things ...

General

X-Plane is a freak product. It is being developed mainly by a single person, Austin Meyer, and therefore the product carries his handwriting, which means an excellent flying experience with decent graphics, but a ... well ... suboptimal user interface and poor documentation (plus some bugs, but show me a software without ...). To get the most out of it, you need to download a lot of extra stuff, but for me exactly that makes a big part of the fun. It's sort of a creative community sharing their artistic and engineering work. By the way, Austin Meyer listens to his users' wishes and implements new features depending on how many people want them! You can vote for new features and improvements on the Internet. That's a spirit I find awesome.

Like most serious 3D applications, X-Plane is written in OpenGL (and not Microsoft's proprietary Direct3D), making it easily portable across platforms. Windows and Macintosh versions are included on the CD, and the program reportedly also runs fine under Linux using the Wine compatibility layer.

The price has dropped from 200 to 40 US$ in the last few months, making the program affordable for normal users now. However, you need to add a lot of shipping costs if you live outside the U.S. like me, unless you find the package in a retail store, where it will probably appear soon. If not, you can order it directly from the X-Plane web site.

As I said, it's definitely not (yet?) a mainstream product, with all the advantages and disadvantages you'd expect in that case. But X-Plane got me on the hook from the day I first read about it, and I'm still addicted. If flying is your thing, X-Plane is for you.