X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
The benchmark for civilian aviation realism, X-Plane simulates anything that flies: from single-engine fixed wing props to multi-engine jets; gliders to dirigibles; helicopters to spacecraft to VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier.
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Overview
X-Plane is the most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator available for home computers. It includes subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, simulating aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic SR-71 and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie.
X-Plane comes with 29 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more are freely downloadable.
It includes scenery for the entire continental U.S. You can land at any of thousands of 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. X-Plane can download real weather data from the internet, allowing you to fly in actual current conditions.
X-Plane also has detailed failure-modelling, 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.
The integral Plane-Maker allows you to create your own aeroplanes, and World-Maker lets you create your own scenery. Also included is Weather Briefer, which produces a weather briefing based on actual weather conditions downloaded from the net.
X-Plane is extremely customisable, allowing you to easily create textures, sounds, and instrument panels for your own aeroplanes that you design.
Features
- More than 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more that are freely downloadable
- Ability to land at any of over 18,000 airports, as well as on aircraft carriers, helipads on building tops, and more
- Variable weather, from clear skies and high visibility to thunderstorms
- Detailed failure modelling
System Requirements
- Operating system: Mac OS X v10.3 or later
- 1GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel Core Duo processor
- Memory: 1GB
- Free hard-disk space: 60GB
- Video card: 64MB VRAM
- Media required: DVD drive for installation and play
- Accessories: USB joystick or yoke and Internet connection recommended
Most Useful Reviews
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
As real as it gets
Written by DL from Dublin
Aug 20, 2008
This is no game. This is the most realistic flight simulator out there. The graphics may not be as good as MS FlightSim, but the behaviour of the aircraft is more realistic. If you buy this, do yourself a favor and buy the global scenery AND get yourself a joystick or even better, a throttle quadrant and some pedals too.
Be warned: it's not easy to fly. You'll actually need to get to grips with the principles of flight before you can get to land safely on XPlane. Start out flying a two seater and gradually progress to the Airbus A380.
And if that isn't enough, buy multiple copies and install them on multiple machines to fly against your friends or have multiple views of your aircraft.
My only criticism is that it runs a little bit slow on my mac mini. iMac and PowerMac users should have no performance problems.
Downloads of free aircraft etc. are available at x-plane.org. …More156 of 162 people found this useful
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
U.S. scenery only ?
Written by GW from GLASGOW
Aug 28, 2008
Don't get me wrong, this is state of the art when it comes to desktop flight sims, and is the only serious contender for the Mac. Truly an awesome product favoured by real world pilots for it's peerless flight model. Benefits more from a good graphics card than a CPU or RAM upgrade for spectacular visual effects.
However, and it's a big however, why are they selling it the UK with only the US scenery. The entire world is certainly available (on seven DVDs), but unfortunately not separately. I you wish to add the rest of the world you will have to buy the entire package again - just somewhere else. …More117 of 132 people found this useful
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
Yes BUT....
Written by PR from TWICKENHAM
Mar 30, 2009
Great realistic sim, great community, BUT the scenery aspect is a big let down. In the UK, you are limited to freeware or shareware via the (really good) community website/forum. It's worth buying the entire package which is not overly expensive as it gives access to the community and updates. There are many realistic and enjoyable features, so I would definitely recommend, BUT for gods sake Austin, give us some European scenery. CAUTION I bought scenery add-ons from Circle Software which I could not get to work. I emailed them for help and NEVER got a reply - don't touch these people. …More
36 of 41 people found this useful
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Most Recent Reviews
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
X Plane 9. Great buy
Written by AN from Waterlooville
Sep 21, 2009
I came over to Macs (I have a 3.06 iMac) about a year ago which has been a worthy choice. I was prepared to sacrifice gaming variety as a consequence but have found COD 4 on a Mac to be excellent and fulfils a lot of shoot 'em up needs with ease. Now I have bought X Plane 9 predominantly because I missed the Combat Flight Simulator and such like on the Windows system and my joystick was gathering dust (I'm not interested in cluttering myself up with Bootcamp and prefer a complete break from Windows). Well! I am impressed, the graphics on X Plane are very very good and the game runs well and interacts nicely. I installed the 70G the game takes up simply onto an external drive (took about an hour) and it runs from there. No issues with Snow Leopard. Make sure you adjust the settings in the game to allow full screen, also free downloads of other aircraft are easily available from X plane.org. The world maps are fun as are the weather options. An ability to do some dog fighting would have given this product 5 stars and I quite miss that. However the carrier landing on's and smooth rendering fly alongs and the simple fun of X Plane 9 make for a relaxing bit of quality time. I certainly without doubt recommend this game to you. …More
25 of 26 people found this useful
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
Brilliant Simulator
Written by MB from Walsall
Aug 16, 2009
I've bought a lot a simulators for my mac over the years, but X-Plane is the only one that I've come back to again and again. It's just as good as an app, but it's 100 times better. If your going to by a simulator buy this one! …More
23 of 26 people found this useful
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X-Plane 9 by GraphSim
Yes BUT....
Written by PR from TWICKENHAM
Mar 30, 2009
Great realistic sim, great community, BUT the scenery aspect is a big let down. In the UK, you are limited to freeware or shareware via the (really good) community website/forum. It's worth buying the entire package which is not overly expensive as it gives access to the community and updates. There are many realistic and enjoyable features, so I would definitely recommend, BUT for gods sake Austin, give us some European scenery. CAUTION I bought scenery add-ons from Circle Software which I could not get to work. I emailed them for help and NEVER got a reply - don't touch these people. …More
36 of 41 people found this useful
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