X-Plane v5.31+ (Win95 Version) by Laminar Research

A snowy runway at Boston, with visible precip on the radar. When the wind blows, you can see snow drift and waft across the pavement with the same direction and speed as the wind! Note the great looking Airbus A330 panel. This is one of the big breakthroughs in version 5.3+

X-Plane is not something you'll find at Area 51 in Nevada, or on the X-Files TV show. I kind of wish the name would change, I would fear too many would think of it as another military sim or something, but I guess that really hasn't affected sales any for Austin. X-Plane can certainly be a simulation of anything you want with wings. That's where the name is appropriate. Can a simulation be everything and still be good? So many companies try to do too much and the result are programs or add-ons that have a big hodgepodge factor. Not so here. My original reviews of X-Plane were not as rosy as I've recently been reporting the program to be. In fact, X-Plane versions 1 and 2 were quite ghastly in some regards, from the point of view of a pure flight simulation with accuracy of weather modeling, sounds and graphics. But, that has all changed many many times since then. I believe the earlier versions were outstanding aircraft design tools, concentrating on aerodynamics - something I didn't spend much time with in those days. Now, X-Plane does that superbly, as well as the pure flying experience.

Night time departure getting ready to go at Boston. To appreciate the dark, you must be in a dark room and then let your eyes adjust to the nice lighting effects all around you.

THE X-PLANE WORLD

In a time when FS2000 runs at marginally acceptable frame rates, X-Plane runs at pure fluid rates similar to what I experienced on full-motion simulators! When computer hardware is more powerful than ever, why should we settle for troublesome frame rates on the world's most famous simulator? Why should a landing be destroyed by a sudden pause, or stutter? Why should loading a sound sample on touchdown, cause a glitch? Why should changing views stop the action for even a few seconds? Why should we put up with this? If you're saying "yeah" to all of these questions then you're like me. If not, you are a scenery lover and put less weight into frame rates and fluidity. As a real commercial pilot, I no longer can tolerate semi-good frame rates. Not when there's a simulator out there that improves its graphics, terrain, instrument panel, and sky on a regular bases, with frame rates that only get better with each revision! That's right. You get more to see, and more frames per second to boot!

Snow and lower visibility shown here. Notice how the city is barely visible in the background.

X-Plane gives me the most lifelike flight modeling and fluid feeling of motion I have ever seen in a simulation. Even my own creation, Flight Unlimited III, does not run quite as smoothly on my PIII 500 as X-Plane. Yes, the scenery is far more realistic, but I can tell the difference between 15 fps and 30.

I am giving up some passion I had for accurate global visual scenery in trade for the overall experience of fluid flight, which I recently experienced flying the 777 simulator at Flight Safety. It may cost some 50 million dollars, but the scenery on a level D sim is not as good as FS5 and similar to that of X-Plane! X-Plane has functional scenery as I like to call it. It serves its purpose to give you accurate world elevations and fairly nice visuals. But once again, the magic is in the flying! As in the real simulators, only the airports need to be detailed to a level that looks totally realistic. But, I don't want enough detail that would compromise frame rates, even for taxiing. X-Plane fits the bill there. X-Plane's airports are not perfect however. This is one of the flaws I'll talk about and get it out of the way while I'm on the subject. Taxiways are "willy nilly" and parking areas placed in non-real locations. You will not be able to follow a real FAA ground chart like you could in FS2000, or FLY!. In fact, at airports with more than one runway, you won't be able to even taxi to the other runways. Each runway has its own taxiway serving the landing and takeoff end, and that's it. Even more horrifying is the shock that many airports contain buildings, airport antennae, and other structures right on the taxiways. Gad! A few points have to be deducted on my review just for this, if not more. But, I can't let this sour me too much. All the other features will soon have you not mind this "minor" oversight.

Great "passenger view" out the right rear on the A330. X-Plane has no dumb looking interior blocking the outside viewpoint. The snow wafts across the ground!

SCENERY

The all powerful weather menu! Easy, yet offers so much to choose from.

Nighttime darkens everything nicely. You can easily set the time of day and watch it change in real time from there. X-Plane is really better at night, than during the day. At night, with everything dark as ink (as it should be), the city lights and airport lighting really are very convincing. Approach lighting is done very well, and the few taxiways that do exist are lit nicely as well. The big wow factor here is that each airplane has outstanding landing light effects. I'll venture to say the best in the business! Not only does the ground you're driving around on get lit realistically in a cone of light, objects you pass by also get lit! To be swinging around in an arc, only to have your beam hit a flapping windsock and illuminate it for a second, is a moment of total giddiness. Of course, it's all liquid smooth.

Outstanding landing light effects! Again, in the darkness, this is the best landing light show I've ever seen in a sim. The greasy runway will be seen only in your beams, at the darkest part of night. Adjust your monitor's brightness to really appreciate the finest beams in the west!

INTERFACE

WEATHER

A great view of low clouds and high terrain as an A320 prepares for takeoff from Colorado's Eagle County airport, serving the ski industry. I found out also, that ground cover changes color in winter, to a brown, frozen look!

Let's discuss the clouds. Until just recently, clouds were only one dimensional, "in or out" clouds only. Now, we have volumetric fluffy clouds, with transparent edges and foggy transitions. Setting scattered or broken clouds will give you a really nice artistic cumulous style clouds to see. An overcast layer will be solid, with little graphical tops or bottoms.

Another great shot of the surrounding mountains, and low clouds hanging in the valley just a few hundred feet above the jet. It looks soooo cooooollldddd.

However, as in the other clouds, you will get foggy transitions into and out of the soup. X-Plane will model low clouds very well. If the bases are just a few hundred feet off the ground, you'll be fogging in and out to a varying degree on your approach. It's very effective! At various times of the day, and different visibility, clouds will change in color and often bathe the horizon in pink hues.

Setting precipitation will make the clouds overcast. The interface gives you the choice of setting the intensity of the precipitation. The heavier the precip, the likelihood you'll have reduced visibilities in the muck. This is apart from setting visibility yourself. Rain shows up

Pretty good corner views showing some new interior cockpit art in the A320. Whoa! Is that Austin Meyer?!!?

as dots sliding over the windshield and side windows. The effect is okay, but outdated. It doesn't compare to the water effects of FU3 or FS2000. Again, with the great frame rates we are talking, I don't want fancy raindrops! Below 32F, all precip will be handled as snow. Snow falls and drifts in the wind, and yes, will turn the ground white. If there is wind blowing outside, the snow will drift and waft back and fourth across the runways and taxiways! At night, in your landing lights, this is awesome! Runways will automatically get wet and slick, depending on the type and intensity of the precip! This new feature is a prime example of the neatness newer updates of X-Plane bring to the table.

It is him! What's he doin' there? And, where's his uniform!? He'll always make you feel like a dope who can't read a chart. Don't ya just get that feeling?

The wind menu is powerful. You just drag and pull wind directions in three layers to the headings and speeds you want. Fast, simple and it works. So fast to change, it's one reason I don't use the real weather feature of X-Plane that often. The limitation here is 50 kts for all altitudes. So, for jet flying, simulating jetstreams is somewhat weak. A great thing, is the ability to set wind shear gusts, directional variations, turbulence and randomness, thermals and fpm pockets and even percentage of sunshine ground coverage to help in thermal activity! Wow.

Another cool night shot at EGE, showing what you can now do to aircraft visuals at night. Just like in FS, you can build separate nighttime lighting into your models.

Flying in the wind is very well modeled. If you program in some random variables you'll experience the changes in flight that are very close to the real thing. Windshear will surprise you and really get you if you program in the slightest amount of shear direction and speed changes. This is where the program has always had problems. The earlier versions of X-Plane were always way over blown when it came to windshears and wind gusts. Then Austin tapered down the winds of nature somewhat, but even today, the windshears are too violent. You can set a trend in the weather, such as slightly deteriorating. However, I find that even selecting just a tiny bit of weather change, results in a very rapid and over blown wind effect. For instance, if you set in winds that you want to be 10 kts gusting to 20, that will occur, but with the trend set on slightly worsening, within 5 minutes you'll be getting 70 kt gusts! Now, in real

A great side view showing of the beautiful A340. Nice scale model. Note the great clouds when you select broken or scattered layers. The sky in X-Plane never looked so good.

life, winds going from 20 to 70 is about as bad as lift could get, not just "slightly deteriorating". There seems to be no happy medium. I love the trend setter in the menus, and for the most part they work great, but when you just want some gustiness, you'll get a hurricane! No matter what the gusts are, the in-flight physics and feel you'll get flying thru the tempest is going to be very well modeled. For instance, my recent experience flying the big 777 simulator at Flight Safety encountered some hellish 70 kt tailwind gusts on final. Without even an indication of the shear (training pilot shut that part off on the MFD), my raw instincts had me flying the big jet right thru the windshear like a champ! I knew to get the nose up, add almost max thrust, and restle it right thru the blast. It all felt natural. It felt very real. It was real. And it reminded me of many windshear encounters I've had in flightsims, mostly X-Plane! X-Plane simulates the very best sudden windshears in a home simulator. In short, it just "feels right". The best come with thunderstorm activity.

Cockpit view of the A340.

Thermals are simulated as well as turbulence. You can program in the effects of thermals, percentage of ground coverage and even tops of thermals. This is very useful and a great way to practice soaring in the smaller craft and gliders. I just like this feature because it adds realism for sunny, bumpy, thermally weather we always get here in New England. This is a feature other sims don't even bother with. Thermals are the reason you get turbulence on sunny days. How could this be overlooked by other designers? In Flight Unlimited III, we had updrafts and downdrafts based on wind flow over terrain, but not even sunshine induced bumps.

Sunset view of the A340. Just look at that sky coloring! All this will gradually transition to a dark, nighttime scenario.

There is an entire thunderstorm category that you will love playing with. Again, it's as easy as the rest of the program. Set bottoms, tops, precipitation intensity, thunderstorms on or off, and microburst likelihood. All this will change based on the overall trend you have set. Setting slightly deteriorating weather will slowly over time add in rainshowers in places, lower the visibility slightly and increase the winds, microburst potential, shearing effects etc. After about 30 minutes of flying with the trend set on low like this, you'll start to see in some random locations, the development of thunderstorms. As in real life, lightning producing storms can be detected by just light rain or green on your radar. However, when you start seeing yellow areas forming on the radars, you can rest assured some convection is firing up. I can tell you now, as in real life, avoiding the yellows is a good idea. Again, however, there is room for improvement in the storms. They grow too fast, produce far too a violent outflow, and produce deadly wind gusts of 100 kts or so over the ground. Now this is

Inside view of sundown.

excellent and should not be changed, but in only one way. I wish Austin would reduce the chance of you finding one of these storms to maybe one out of seven or so. It seems all the storms will destroy you if you get near them. Again, this is great for realism, but not all storms in real life will destroy you. That's what makes them so frightening. You are tempted to get near them, but whether or not you'll get wholloped or not remains to be seen. In X-Plane, all storms seem deadly. At least that is the experience I've had when flying within 20 miles of the centers. Usually to simulate storms with no wind, like you might get in the south, is to

Great weather radar display. All echos are realistically "painted" and display in multiple color bands. They show true position and intensity of precipitation, being the only flight simulation other than FU3 to have ever incorporated weather radar that works! Will we ever see this in MS?

get thunderstorms up on the weather map, and then set the trend to stagnant, and take down the windshear bars and probability to zero. This way, you can have downpours, thunder and lightning but not too much violence. This will enable you to do takeoffs and landings safely, near storms. Reminds me of flying in Florida where storms rain themselves out, with little windshear.

You can easily view a full weather radar map, in the output menu. It's like having an inflight weather briefer all in one. Just another example of an outstanding product, within the whole experience.

The thunderstorms have awesome cloud to ground lightning strikes. Near storms or in clouds, you'll get the always famous X-Plane stobe lightning, or sheet lightning effects. Thunder will knock you from your seat sometimes, and give you quite a scare. Scenery and aircraft panels will illuminate brightly in the microsecond flash! The intensity, locations and sound of each strike is the best I've seen done in a sim! It follows a realistic pattern and maintains a high degree of variability. This is very convincing, and was one of the strongest parts of X-Plane since the very beginning. I hope Austin never tampers the wrong way with his storms, they are models of perfection in terms of sight and sound!

Boom! Cloud to ground lightning stroke caught on film! I had a hard time getting any on a screenshot, as just in real life, you can never hit the trigger fast enough. This one was taken after sunset, and as you can see, during the flash, everything is lit up! Note, the cool "strikefinder" on the panel of the Mooney TLS, indicating the exact moment and location that stroke occured. It works just like a real stormscope would.

When you fly into an area of weather on the radar, sure enough, at the right point, you'll get the intensity of precipitation on your airplane. Your visibility will drop, and if you have good ears, you'll hear the rain. (sound of precip. is almost inaudible, I have modified the wav files to be much louder on my own) You may enter cloud sooner than expected, as bases and true IFR will pop up unexpectedly. If you find yourself in a storm, just try to maintain level, and fly your way out the other side. If you are thrown inverted, just keep it upright as well as you can. All of this is very convincing, and will convince you to stay away! Attempting to land either a heavy jet or light single in a thunderstorm or near its "outflow" will result in sudden, bursts of airspeed change (windshear), aircraft attitude and sink rate. Your only

Block Island, RI from the air, giving you an idea of how coastlines are modeled.

recourse is to abandon the approach or if you're foolhardy, or think you can get it on the ground safely, then to just keep the plane flying, add power to prevent stalling, and keep the nose down in a light plane, to keep from stalling. In a big jet, the best method is to get out of there - adding max power, pitch up to climb, get the gear and flaps up. Continuing a landing in a microburst will take away the same amount of added speed you might get on final. For instance, in a jetliner on final at 130 kts, may gain 40 kts suddenly and be showing 170 on the airspeed indicator. You'll think, "I'm fine, I'll just reduce power to slow back to 130". Wrong! Soon, without warning, you'll loose not just the 40 kts you got, but another 40 on top of that as you come out the other side of the microburst. So, your speed will go from 170, back to

Taxiing around on a rainy, dark evening at Block Island, RI.

130 and then to 90, all in seconds! In the jet, your stall speed may be 100. At 90 kts, you know where you're going to go, right? If for some reason you do pull off a good landing, taxiing in a microburst may be deadly as well. Try slowing the plane down on a wet runway when shears are giving you another 50 kts over the wings. You'll be down to 70 kts, then suddenly get a shear good enough to bring you back to flying speed! Not a good scene.

Windsocks will flap and blow in the wind as they would in real life. They will show the proper direction. At night, illuminating them with your landing lights is very cool. Runways get wet when it's raining and get slick when it's snowing. This will reduce your stopping ability. A grand feature!

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