X-Plane Version 7.1

Warning; X-Plane is not a fast action, aggressive, explosion and great sound type game. With any civil flight simulators games, it will challenge your own personal skills, and it could be learning tools for some people on aerodynamic and flight instruments of an aircraft. But for flight simulator buffs like myself, it is a great game to have. If you never own some type of flight simulator, this is not the one to start with; you will be discouraged in no time. So my suggestion would be to download the X-Plane demo or to buy a combat flight simulator (on special) from the era of WW I or WW II, use any airplane with single engine propeller, then start your flight without engaging to battle right away, therefore follow the flight plan in real time and check out your airplane controls and performance. Now if you find that exciting then you will be ready for X-Plane, if not at least you have a combat flight simulator that will give you some action during battle. Since X-Plane does not give any flying lessons or an understating law of physics on flight, it would be best to try Microsoft Flight Sim or ProPilot , or Fly! which they are offering some type instructions for flying an airplane and understanding airplane's instruments.

I have an older version of X-Plane version 5.52, and I recently bought the newest version 7.1, both from a retail store. These games has some unique features that the other flight simulators don't have, which I could compare with my 32 different flight simulators, civil and combat that I own. My first flight simulator was Ace of the Pacific -1992, which I consider a classic now. I was so impress by the aircrafts performance in this game, I start collecting other flight simulator. X-Plane comes with the larger amount of aircrafts; there are about 40 of them within the game. I have my license to fly single engine airplane, which I am familiar with Cessna 152 and 172, but I can't compare my experience with any larger aircrafts or jet except accepting the condition of the flight simulator world. Therefore I will assume these conditions to be close enough to real thing, since I use the Cessna 172 in the flight simulator to fly around. It is not perfect but close enough. This flight simulator will not replace flying any real aircrafts, but the flight simulators are the next best things to fly your aircraft of your choice.

X-Plane included Plane-Maker, Scenery-Maker, and Part-Maker software; therefore you could modify or build your own airplanes and sceneries. No need to buy third party software. I enjoy this concept when I bought the version X-Plane 5.52 , therefore I decide to purchase the next version; I like the idea you could build your own aircraft that will react with the law of physics. If the wings are too small or large, your weight and balance is off or any other missing elements, your aircraft will perform badly. I am no engineer or airplane designer, but this game give me some satisfaction to use my imagination to create my own design or replicate the scale of real aircrafts. At first this software are complicate to use, so you would need lots of patience, and experimenting when you build your first plane. It doesn't come with a detail manual how to use this software. I used the tutor, which it is offer on X-Plane site on how to build your own airplane. You will find it on the www.X-Plane.com site. Plus, I opened some already made airplanes from the game in Plane-Maker to understand how some of the other features are being created to make the airplane perform the way it does. I was able to create some simple airplanes to some amazing one, and some duds. It became easier to use as you build more aircrafts. I was able to add my own airport with ease with Scenery-Maker but to modify the surrounding was another challenge. So far I have not used the Part-Maker.

This game has the Space Shuttle; I try to make a full entry from the orbit to Edwards airport, it takes about a good 30 min from start to finish, unless you crash it first. This is a very challenging adventure. I found something else new in version 7.x that is not found yet in any other flight simulators, I am able to pilot an airship or build them. The Hindenberg, is offer only by the X-Plane upgrade ver 7.0, and this airship is something else to fly. X-Plane has a radar weather map, local map and world map. I was able to fly some special jet airplane on Mars atmosphere and gravity; unfortunately it comes with a limited scenery area unless you order full Mars scenery or build your own with Scenery-Maker. The rest of the navigational information and instruments are very similar to the other civil flight simulator for IFR, ATC and so on. The sounds are average but you could create or modify them to your liking, they come in WAV file format. The flight simulator graphics and instrument panels are generic, because they could be modified in the Plane-Maker. The instrument panel is better in ver 7.1 than ver 5.52. It comes with lots of airports world wide including aircraft carriers, I was able to find some aircraft carriers on the California coast. You are able to download real time weather from the X-Plane site; the file name for it is metar.rwx which you would copy at the root of X-Plane folder. The earth scenery comes complete with version 5.52, but the version 7.1 it is a water world with the California Island, the only land offer through the CD and you have floating airports in the air all over the world except California Island. It make me think of the movie Waterworld. These airports are at their true topographic elevation even with no ground shown below. What happen to me at first, when I want to take off from Toronto airport, my airplane took the plunge in the water when it ran off the runway. It did show me good water effect while my airplane was sinking, and then when I realize this game was missing whole lots of scenery. I tried several international airports with same result. Obviously I was very disappointed for the lack of scenery. There was only one CD included in the retail box. I felt this package ver 7.1 was incomplete compare from ver 5.52 that I purchase previously. With time and patience, I download from my modest modem 56k the free earth basic scenery from X-Plane site. It took me about 40 some hours just to download the scenery from the X-Plane site. It comes in sectional longitude and latitude areas. Afterward, I had to download WinRar to decompress these files. I notice there is no Antarctic continent except for some type "icebergs" which is actual bits and pieces of the Antarctic coast. Once I installed the sceneries, which took about 3 gigs of space on my hard drive, I found the topographic of the world was precise for all the location I choose to go. I was able to see now movable vehicles on the roads, even some people waiving you from the airport fence when landing or take off from the municipal airport, and it does include other obstacles. This will depend how high you set you graphic quality. It has AI airplanes flying around your airplane, and it has all normal atmospheric weather conditions you would find in real world such as icing carburetor and wings, heavy rain, thunderstorm, except for extreme violent weather. The clouds are cumulus type only. There is option for plug-in on version 7.1 for the programmer (C+) to modify the game. If you are a Flight Simulator enthusiast, then you will enjoy to fly different airplanes, it come with variety of aircrafts such as civil, seaplane, airship, jet, jet fighter, rocket fuel, Space Shuttle, helicopter, sci-fi. I would recommended this flight simulator to anyone who would like to build, paint, and fly their new design aircraft. And enjoy adding or modifying some scenery. But if you enjoy the details sceneries and airports, and airplane's cockpits, then it would best to go with Microsoft FS2004.

It would be best to have a type of yoke or joystick to fly these airplanes, I try it with keyboard command and mouse and it was little harder to handle the airplane. There is less downloadable airplanes on the web site compared to the competition. This game is more oriented to the people who have some understanding of aerodynamics. I found this out by testing this game on my relative who doesn't have a clue how to fly an airplane. In conclusion, the strength of this software is to build your own aircrafts which is govern by law of physics instead of programming an xxx.AIR file in the software like MSFS, and you will become a test pilot of your own creation.

In the ver 5.52 there is a very small instruction manual, and in ver 7.1 has some simple on-line instruction. This game is played on Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8ghz) videocard 64 MB and 500Mb Ram with a yoke, no rudder pedal.