X-Plane 9.30b4 - Fly an airplane in this OpenGL-based 3D environment. (Demo): "
Welcome to the world of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier.
X-Plane comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic SR-71 and Space Shuttle. X-Plane comes with about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several thousand more are freely downloadable from the internet. (See www.X-Plane.org as a good place to start).
X-Plane scenery is world-wide, with scenery for the entire planet Earth between -60 and +74 degrees lattiude. We also have MARS scenery! (thanks to the Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter, which mapped that planet's elevation) You can 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, 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! Real weather conditions can be downloaded from the internet, allowing you to fly in the actual weather that currently exists!
X-Plane also has 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 gear at any moment.
While X-Plane is the world's most COMPREHENSIVE flight sim, your purchase also comes with Plane-Maker (to create your own airplanes) World-Maker (to create your own scenery), and Weather Briefer (to get a weather briefing before the flight if you use real weather conditions downloaded from the net).
X-Plane is also extremely customizable, allowing you to easily create textures, sounds, and instrument panels for your own airplanes that you design or the planes that come with the sim.
X-Plane's accuracy (in flight model), scope (in aircraft and terrain coverage), versatility (in aircraft type and weather conditions), add-on programs (in aircraft and scenery editors), user-customizability, downloadable aircraft, and downloadable scenery makes it the ULTIMATE flight simulation experience for Macintosh.
OK now we have a REALLY cool new feature: A really improved 3-D airflow physics model and tools to SEE it!
First just LOOK at it:
Open the Cessna 172 or Cirrus Jet and take it to 10,000 ft and set the time of day to dusk or so in clear weather.
Now go to external view with the | key and hit the / key a couple of times, watching the result with each press.
The RED vectors are at 10% speed BELOW ambient.
The GREEN vectors are at ambient speed.
The VIOLATE vectors are at 10% ABOVE ambient speed.
Now try it at low speed, flaps down, nose up, near the stall, full power.
Now pull up into the stall.
Now you really start to SEE what sets X-Plane apart from: ALL the others.
You can SEE the propwash (accelerating the air-flow to violet under full power, or decelerating it to yellow on the engine-out).
You can SEE the downwash (the downward-moving vectors behind the wing).
You can SEE the wake (decelerating the airflow behind the wings due to the drag of the wing!).
Of course, this airflow, modified by downwash, propwash, and wake, impacts the wings, bodies, and even propellers that live in that airflow!
And this goes beyond anything we have done before: We now find the downwash and wake not just from each wing, but from each ELEMENT of each wing!
This means that if you have a flap or aileron on a wing, the downwash on the surfaces BEHIND that BIT of the wing
(such as the horizontal stabilizer) are affected differently depending on WHERE in the flowfield the various PARTS of the stabilizer are!
There will be more downwash on the part of the stab behind the flaps when the flaps are down, for example! Everything is handled PER-ELEMENT,
not PER-WING, so all the different flow off of and onto wings and stabs that varies across the span is considered!
Then it gets BETTER: This new 3-D model with wake looks at the geometry of each wing casting downwash and wake in real-time, so the origin of the wake and downwash
actually move AFT in real-time as you sweep the wings, for example, if you are in an F-14 or F-111!
And it gets BETTER: We now have an improved stall model that psuedo-randomizes the flow when any wing is stalled!
Pull aft enough to stall in the | view after hitting the / key see the flow and get ready for information-overload!
Try getting in various different planes at various different speeds, power settings, and flap settings, and hitting the / key a bit in the external view...
you will see how the streamlines and velocity vectors are affected by all of these things. Then turn on some turbulence if you want things to get really wonky!
Who ELSE does this math? NOBODY that I can find!
New command: sim/view/hold_3d_angle.
Assign any key you like to this command in the joystick button/keyboard command-binding screen
and then hold that key when in 3-D cockpit mode to keep your viewpoint from moving around with the mouse...
This makes it easier to click on stuff in the 3-D cockpit because the viewpoint is not moving as you move the mouse,
as long as you hold that key or joy button down!
New joystick axis: Nose-Wheel steering Tiller. Nice for airliners if you set that up!
The TILLER axis ALWAYS steers the nosewheel thru the 'lo-speed steering' range specified in Plane-Maker, no matter the aircraft speed.
As well, we have various framerate optimizations. You may, or may not, SEE these improvements because we now spend more time doing the 3-D flow-field math
for the new physics specified above.
Generic rheostats can 'wrap' their dataref values. Use this to make OBS knob that go from 360 back to 0 degrees.
Back-lit (additive) style lighting is now available on all instruments.
You should now have trim on the helicopters, no rocket thrust on the rockets without fuel, rudder key-control whether the mouse-screen is up or not,
Space Shuttle and B-2 aileron/elevator linkages are now hooked up properly, you should only hydroplane on WET runways, not icy ones, de-ice systems
should be able to keep all the ice off the jets, replay mode should show smoke-puffs from touch-down in the right place, and external cockpits should give
good engine indications. We fixed crash that could happen sometimes on Startup on Vista, and a panel jittering when you scrolled with a strange-size window.
Check 'Matrox triple-head' in the equipment settings dialog box and the sim will not try to zoom the cockpit across all three monitors.
ENV files will render correctly, and the runways will not flicker in the textured map.
Cursors for generic rotaries and rheostats work better, and the default rolling generic instrument will default to six digits.
VOR reception range is increased by 25%, and the show-hide for instrument groups fixed.
Windows plugins can override the mouse cursor without flicker, planet textures are fixed to not have a big black square over Southern California,
the Mac version can run without sound even if OpenAL is not installed, and Windows and Linux versions can run without internet!
Non-generic instruments will follow the correct lighting rheostat, and 3-d Panels should load using any naming convention.
Plugins replay mode dataref works, fixes x737 and ACARS plugin, and the engine start command is fixed, which fixes x737 plugin.
Linux build should properly detect whether it is a demo or full install, and you can animate a non-deck hard surface in an OBJ.
Custom full screen settings are saved properly in the preferences.
"
(Via MacUpdate - Mac OS X.)
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