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X-Plane 9 |  | From: Graphics Simulations Corporation
Category: Video Games
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $36.00
as of 9/8/2010 04:56 CDT details
You Save: $13.99 (28%)
New (13) Used (4) from $28.00
Seller: GoGamer
Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 1514
Format: DVD
Platform: Mac
Genre: Flight Simulation Games
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Macintosh
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 1055
Model: 1055
UPC: 740569000454
EAN: 0740569000454
ASIN: B0015392CI
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | The most realistic flight model available for personal computers. It comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, simulating aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie. | | • | Includes over 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more are freely downloadable from the internet. | | • | Land at any of over 18,000 airports, as well as test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads on building tops, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves | | • | 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. Real weather data can be downloaded, allowing you to fly in the actual conditions that currently exist! / Stunning new global scenery and atmospherics, including reflective water and volumetric fog | | • | Includes detailed failure modeling, with 35 systems that can be failed manually or randomly, when you least expect it! You can fail instruments, engines, flight controls, and landing. |
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Product Description
X-Plane is the world's most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator available. Welcome to the world of props jets single- and multi-engine airplanes as well as gliders helicopters and new Very Light Jets such as the Cirrus Jet.The most realistic flight model available for personal computers. It comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics simulating aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie.Includes over 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history) and several hundred more are freely downloadable from the internet.Land at any of over 18000 airports as well as test your mettle on aircraft carriers helipads on building tops frigates that pitch and roll in the waves.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. Real weather data can be downloaded allowing you to fly in the actual conditions that currently exist!Includes detailed failure modeling with 35 systems that can be failed manually or randomly when you least expect it! You can fail instruments engines flight controls and landing.Includes Plane-Maker which lets the player create airplanes and World-Maker which lets the player create scenery. Also included is Weather Briefer that makes a weather briefing based on actual weather conditions.System Requirements:DVD Drive Mac OS X v10.3 or later G4/G5 or Intel @ 1GHz System Memory: 1GB RAM Available Hard Drive: 60 GB Video Card: 64 MB VRAM Recommended: USB Joystick or yoke Internet Format: MAC 10.0 OR LATER/DVD SOFTWARE Genre: ENTERTAINMENT UPC: 740569000454 Manufacturer No: 1055
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
 Better than FS June 29, 2010
pkusmc
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The graphics and game play in this program is much better than Flight Simulator. If you're looking for realistic flights, you're going to love this game
It's a sim, not a game, and it is better than FSX June 8, 2010
Carl C. Gibson
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am running this game on a PC that cost right around $500 including a video card. 2.7 dual core, 6GB RAM, 1MB 9800GTI. It runs great.
Who is this game for?: This is a flight simulation, not a game. If you enjoy "pretending to be a real pilot" without buying a $500K plane and taking the time and money to get trained and licensed, this software is for you. If you want to jump in, take off, and do aerobatics without reading the manual or understanding anything about airplanes, this software is not for you. (yes, there is a manual online, but you have to either read some tutorials or know how to fly a bit from experience)
Visual: Really pretty when flying. I am getting 80+fps in the air and around 40 sitting at an airport. There is a GREAT free scenery download from the [...] website that adds some rudimentary familiar objects in certain cities (like the Washington monument in DC). While I think the game looks better than FSX over all, low level flight reveals a lack of specific 3D models out of the box (again, like the Washington monument in DC). The free scenery package mentioned before helps, but up close the models are rough to say the least. At low level flight, FSX looks better. At altitude, X-Plane 9.5 looks better.
Sound; Not a lot good to say here for X-Plane. Air Traffic Control in FSX is much more interesting. However, ATC works GREAT in X-Plane for what you need it to do in directing your aircraft. The actual sound of the voices however is robotic.
Controls: X-Plane shines here. While all the options may look intimidating at first, once you dial in your preferences you are set to enjoy the "game" in a customized way. You even get wonderful control over the graphics rendering and can customize it to get the most out of your system.
Tutorials and Missions: Well, they really don't exist in X-Plane. You can, however, set up your own "situations" and have complete control over the entire environment in which you fly and land. It just takes a little imagination.
Learning Curve: No worse than FSX. X-Plane actually makes more sense to me for some reason. However, with any flight sim the learning curve is long. Not only are you learning to fly and NAVIGATE, you are learning the software.
Flight Dynamics: I am not a pilot but I have had some stick time. Unfortunately, I have not flown any of the planes in the boxed version so my opinion here may not be worth much. That being said, planes "feel right" for the most part. Big planes are sluggish, small planes are nimble. Hot planes are tricky, trainer type planes are forgiving. The planes "feel" better than FSX so I would say the flight models are better. On the negative side, the light planes get hammered in moderate winds which is not realistic. Were it realistic to the level portrayed in X-Plane, several small planes would crash on landing every day. I really don't mind the "kite" feel of the small planes on landing as it adds a few degrees of difficulty for enjoyment. And I think there is a switch to turn down the effects, but I have not sought it out.
Instrument Flight: Flying on instruments is pretty realistic in X-Plane. All the tools are there for the learning. Since you can set the frequency of random (or even specific) failures, it is challenging (fun) to get your bearings once your Nav system tanks. All of the radio and navigation frequencies I have used so far have coincided with the real world information I have found on those airports.
Needed Extras: Since updates are free, not a lot is needed. If you are flying local, the supplied maps and navigation information might suffice, but there are several FREE and totally legal sources for maps and navigation on the internet. These are resources geared to real pilots and fit very well for use in X-Plane. If you are flying any lengthy distance, you will need to bookmark and/or print the relevant materials prior to your flight. I just use a laptop on the side to reference the sites I need. You WILL need a joystick or yoke. Rudder pedals would be nice but are not required (especially for joysticks with the twist feature). I play this on a 42" plasma so I will say a good monitor is nice to have.
Add-Ons: There are tons of free aircraft and scenery to be had. Some of the planes are quite fun and some are real quality builds. Like FSX, there are also a lot of third party "pay" planes and scenery to be had for a moderate cost.
I have both FSX and X-Plane and I haven't even installed FSX on the newer computer. For what I desire, X-Plane has it beat hands down. Yes, I wish it had some missions and tutorials, but I have found wonderful substitutes for those online. I want realism and there is more of that in X-Plane than FSX. I just landed at San Francisco in heavy fog and wind and will next be "bush flying" in Alaska. The replay value here is unlimited and will keep you coming back.
In our instant gratification society, a simulation like this is probably a niche product. I was flying shortly after install just to get the feel but after a week I have barely scratched the surface on what I wish to learn about "real" flying. It's not a game, but it will make you hold your breath and white knuckle an approach and landing in a rain storm with high winds at night. You will breath a sigh of relief when your wheels touch down. This sim can get the adrenaline pumping.
Lastly, I am not sure Bill's company will come out with another Flight Simulator any time soon as they appear to have shut down that division. There is NO doubt that X-Plane will be putting out bigger and better sequels and in the interim, they are providing their clients with free updates.
Splitter
 It is worth the trouble April 3, 2010
St. David, King of Georgia (Dallas, Texas)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
X-Plane is a simulator and not a game. It is not "plug-n-play" nor is it very user friendly. I have been flying X-Plane for years and still don't have it all figured out. It is rather detailed-expect to have to take some time to learn how the program works. That said there are many many pilots, aviation companies and people who just fly sims that think it is great.
The dvds from Laminar Research, the X-Plane parent company, support Windows, Mac and Linux. Some licensed or repackaged dvds from other companies may not support all three platforms and some may not have all the scenery disks. Be sure you know what you are buying. You do not have to download all 80G of scenery (or however big it is). You can select what places you want scenery for when installing. If installing the whole thing, expect to spend a few hours, even with a fast machine. A fairly up to date manual to get set up and fly can be found at the official website: [...] under the support heading.
To start out, you need to be sure that any necessary drivers are installed, the manual mentioned above can help with this. Then you will need to manually configure your graphics and Joystick, yoke, mouse or other input devices. The graphics settings can be found in the Settings>Rendering Options menu. Start with low graphics settings and then work up. If the processor(s) are being taxed by graphics set too high, and the flight model is suffering, XPlane always tries to keep the flight model realistic first. Too high graphics settings may cause lots of fog, even on clear days, or worse. Most major changes to graphics only change upon restarting X-Plane. To configure input devices (it will support a dozen or so simultaneously) go to Settings>Joystick & Equipment. You will need to calibrate your hardware and select which axis and slider control what. You will then need to center your Joystick/Yoke & pedals and select the amount of realism, deadspace and such. Then you will need to tell XPlane what you wish buttons to do. After setting your graphics and configuring your control devices you should be able to fly.
Updates and bug fixes can be found under the downloads heading at [....]. A warning about updating: Almost always updating X-Plane does ugly things to the preferences. The preference files can be found in the X-Plane folder under Resources>Preferences. It is best to delete or save them safely somewhere else if updating. Sometimes 3rd-party plugins (found in X-Plane 9>Resources>plugins) that worked before an update will no longer work correctly after an update. You may have to remove them. Be sure to not delete the plugins that installed with X-Plane. If you have room on your harddrive, you may wish to keep your pre-update version of X-Plane until you are sure you like what has been updated. X-Plane is always a work in progress. It is getting better and better, but some of the steps are a little rough.
Generally, unless you are experiencing a problem with something Austin Meyer, the author of X-Plane, is currently working on, he won't be very helpful with bugs and problems. If you chance to find a bug in something he is currently working on, expect a quick reply. He has a small staff which keeps costs low but also limits what he can do by way of product support. So what can be done to troubleshoot problems? The central meeting place of X-Plane users worldwide is [...]. With a little looking around the site and asking questions, bug fixes and solutions to nearly any X-Plane problem can be found.
The default planes that come with X-Plane are an odd group. Some are very nice and others are a bit crude. All were chosen and included to showcase various aspects of the program. At [...] a few thousand planes are available for free. Some of the free planes are very well done while others are half-finished projects or rejects. Download them and try them. Some of the half-finished planes just need a few tweaks in the included Plane-Maker program. A fun and well made plane designed in Plane-Maker that was nearly produced as a real-world plane is the free Evenblade twin turboprop by Sean Tabor. Benedikt Stratmann's free Boeing 737s are also excellent, but a bit daunting if you are not used to the complexity of flying an airliner. There are also links to many websites selling planes at [...]. Many of the payware sites have free planes also. Most of the planes have 2-D cockpits, but more and more are offering 3-D cockpits or both.
X-Plane can be a pretty hard program to set up and use. Get the manual from [...]. Download a few planes and some detailed scenery packages you really like at [....]. Once you get the hang of it, it is a great program.
 Boring! February 22, 2010
Chris A. Henretty
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Very realistic, but boring. In fairness, I haven't learned everything there is to know about the game, but I was looking for something that I could jump on a play quickly without lots of configuration. This game might be more fun in time, but just flying is pretty boring. I wish Mac had a game more like the Windows Combat flight sims. Much more fun and challenging to play.
Don't expect Microsoft Flight Simulator consistency December 24, 2009
Safari John (New Jersey)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Despite it advertising better modeling than MS Flight Simulator, it doesn't feel like it. Controls are twitchy and overly sensitive (even after hours of fiddling) and planes that should be dead-on in "feel" are nowhere near it. Why, for example, does the 172 get pushed and turned around on the runway by a 10 knot quartering head wind without the brakes on? It is absurd. Such a thing does not happen in FSX and it doesn't happen in real life.
The feel and rate of controls (trims etc.) between different planes are too varied to be able to consistently expect anything and everything is always a surprise. The biggest problem is that even a plane like a Beech 1900D feels like a kite in the simulator, and it's no fun hand-flying anything smaller than a 737 in IMC. This simulator may be good for the lower-end commercial simulation market, but it needs tons and tons of work for it to be anywhere near as useful as FSX was on the desktop.
And of course, there are no missions. What made FSX a lot of fun is the missions and add-on packs available. There is no such animal in X-Plane and it shows. It lacks the adventure.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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