X Plane

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $8.50

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PC Gamer (1-year)

Customer Reviews:

Something fishy here... [Posted on 2002-08-26]
Shell out forty bucks for this at Wal-mart. Get home, open the box. Nice pictures. Plop down in an armchair with the manual. Installation-easy peasy. Aircraft-simple. Flight controls-okay. Weather and part-maker, plane-maker, ground-maker-totally incomprehensible. Install, click 'play'. As soon as you start on the runway, you advance the throttle. Nothing happens. You switch to an outside view and throttle up again. Your rudder moves left. In frustration, you move the stick right. Your plane starts moving down the tarmac.
This and other quirks are fixable, but take a lot of adjusting. Another thing, in my aircraft folder, where are the 747, P-51, and other promised aircraft? Oh, I get it. I have to build em from scratch. Terrain-stinks. Object detail-blegh. Sharpness-very good. This is a SERIOUS sim meant only for advanced users. I dont know about you, but Im going back to the comforting simplicity of WW2 Fighters, FS, and the like.

THE BEST EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Posted on 2003-05-17]
Asome game,i love it,{go on the games web site newer verion there}This game flys with color's ,asome planes,you can even make your own plane its that easy,and im 12!ever wanted to put a huge roket on a rc helcopter with more than a thousend pounds of thrust?you can do it!,ever whantid to make your own plane?you can do it!ever whanted to sling shot a 747 of a aircract cairrar with 10 feet hie waves you can do it! This is the best Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm.... [Posted on 2004-07-15]
well, I have to admit..I DO NOT OWN THE GAME. but from the demo it wasn't very impressive. I own a whole bunch of flight sim stuff-Ch yoke, pedals-the works. When I started the demo I got these random alerts about the problems my computer was having but it said it could fix them. I plugged in my yoke and pedals expecting that the game would recognize them (considering that it did say to go to CH's website for sticks and yokes). I push the throttle...nothing happens. ? well, ok and I went to the settings and finally set up all the controls after about 30 minutes of frustration. (THE DARN THING DIDN"T COME WITH A READ ME OR ANYTHING..IT LEFT ME ALL ON MY OWN WITS) well, now that I set my controls (only half of them because half the controls weren't even on the list of controls. For a matter fo fact, the game only lets you look left and right, the rest is panning. It didn't recognize the hat switch of flipper switches for gears so I couldn't lower or raise gears. very frusterating. Well, then I thought: I've heard all this rage about the shuttle re-entry, let's try it! I go into the menu to shuttle approach and click it. It loads, and puts me in space..cool! All of a sudden an alert pops up saying space isn't in the demo. HUH? but it loaded me in here and im now stuck in this one screen and it glitches my comp. sigh Now I have to restart...oh well..I told myself: alright one more try...after about 2 minutes another darn alret pops up: "I have not recognized the 7.0 X plane CD so I am going to disable the joystick"...What the HECK? disable the stick? Well now I can't fly at all so I just went back to playing fs 2002 which is vastly more intelligent and fun. When I first used fs 2002 I recognized my yoke and pedals in the equipement tab. X Plane (even though it advertises CH products) doesn't even bother to recognize my yoke or pedals. So, maybe if I owned the game and had a manual it would make more sense...but if a demo is supposed to attract a buyer this sure did a terrible job of it, I'm not motivated to buy it AT ALL.

X-plane V5.52-V5.99 [Posted on 2004-12-19]
My wife bought it for me because I am a pilot and I enjoy flight simulations, but mostly the flight simulation games. We gave $30 for X-plane V5 but you can get this version now either for free or for under $10 if you look around. Really it's not worth anything so please do not run right out and buy it. At least try the downloadable demo first.

X-plane isn't a game, it's a flight sim program. A flight sim and a flight sim game are two completely different things. In a flight sim you just "fly" your computerized airplane from one airport to another. If you think that's incredibly boring you are right. In a flight sim game you get to blow things up, and others get to shoot you down, so there's never a dull moment in a real flight sim game.

I installed X-plane V5, I had nothing but problems with it. The graphics are bad. The flight model isn't realistic. I laughed when I read someone else's "good" review of the product and they said "It's so smooth!" Yes it is and the kind of smoothness that it has is not realistic. Graphic scenery viewers are smooth to; they have no character at all. Real airplanes have character.

The joystick on X-plane V5 allows for two joysticks but only allows for 3 functions and they were programmed wrong. I've only got one joystick on this computer yet the default in the X-plane sim was for joystick 2?

The airplanes do everything they can to turn upside down, I took screenshots of the F-22 that literally flipped over on the runway and took off down the side of the runway upside down, all without me ever touching the controls.

The graphics inside and outside of the airplanes and the terrain are without question among the very worst I've ever seen. The control panel is nothing but basic computer graphics thrown on the screen in a rectangle with a tiny window above so you can see out. Apparently there's an option that allows the user to change the graphics if they know how to create their own graphics.

Airplanes all fly by the principles of aerodynamics, but every type of airplane has a unique feeling and characteristics all of its own. In X-plane V5 each time you change aircraft it changes your control panel. It changes your speed and stall settings, but all the airplanes have exactly the same problem. They have no feeling to them at all.

Tired and not thinking clearly, I decided I should get the latest patches for X-plane. I went to the X-plane website and in my fatigue I missed the small link to the older files. The FAQ's were no help so I sent a message to the author, Austin Meyer who promptly sent me a rude message to let me know I was a stupid idiot and there was nothing wrong with his software. In three different messages he let me know I was a stupid idiot. Yes I am, I should never have allowed my wife to buy his software.

A software vender or author should never insult their customers for any reason. I was astounded at the great effort he went to to insult me. Don't make the same mistake I made with this software.

They say X-plane is better than MS Flight sim, I'm confident they paid the guy to say that so they could write it on the box. I have tested MS Flight sim 95 and 2000 and I can tell you X-plane is not better than MS Flight Sim. Being a pilot with a brother who is a flight instructor I can tell you that you will not find X-plane in his school, but you will find MS Flight Sims.

Anyone who wants to read the full review and see the graphics can do so on the old Independent Software Consultants website at Http://www.dream-link.org/ISC Just go to the simulation games and then to flight sims.

Accurate flight models [Posted on 2005-02-19]
I purchased this game to supplement my real flight training mostly because of its highly touted flight model. I have found that for the most part, this simulator provides a very true flying experience from a physics standpoint. Utilizing incremental slices of the aicraft's structure and airfoils, this program simulates the real effect of aerodynamic forces on these "slices" and combines this data into a composite flight model. Subtle realism is key here as all flight sims are effective in simple X-Y-Z planes of motion. Graphics are not the greatest, but the people who this simulation targets are hardly worried about such trivial details.
Bottom Line: If you're looking for one of the most physically accurate simulations available, you should give X-Plane a try. If you're looking for fancy pictures and scenery, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

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