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The simulator community has you covered. And yeah, it works about as well as you can imagine (i.e. badly).

X-Plane 10, with AIPilotX's HD Mesh v3 and the Massachusetts Pro VFR Scenery will eat up 32 GB of RAM easily.

Flight simulation is one of those areas where I doubt there will ever be such a thing as enough memory. There's always something to model in greater detail.

Bullshit youself.

You don't need a 150 miles range missile to shoot down a plane that flies with more than mach 1 straight at you and is 150 miles away. http://www.x-plane.org/home/ur...

But perhaps I mixed up miles witk km ... does not change the fact that third worlds countries planes even if they have F-15s or F-16s, too, have far inferior targeting systems and usually no AWACS like support anyway. So you don't need stealth to pick them up without them noticing you.

This seems already to have been done.

Also, QantasToolbar has logged your IP address to make sure that you'll never sit next to a minor on a plane again.

Hopefully with enough more searching they will not seat you on the same plane as a minor.

This seems already to have been done.

Also, QantasToolbar has logged your IP address to make sure that you'll never sit next to a minor on a plane again.

Hopefully they'll do both. The other big flight sim program, X-Plane, has both community created free addons and commercial addons at additional cost from third parties. There's a big community around that and it adds a lot to the program. As people might expect, the stuff you pay for is usually better quality, althrough there is some really great free stuff out there.

It'd be nice if Microsoft encourages others to make content and provides tools to help with that. But I'm not sure that's part of their business model for this release.

Could such an aircraft be configured for mapping the surface of Mars?

Try it and see. X-Plane lets you fly on Mars. Yes, there's a Linux version too, and you can find a bunch of electric (and/or rocket) aircraft for Mars on X-Plane.org.

If you're looking for an alternative to Flight Simulator there is always FlightGear.

There's also X-Plane.

It's good that there are alternatives, but unfortunately on a scale that places MS Flight Sim at 10, X-Plane is a 7 and FlightGear is a 5.

This whole thing is a serious blow to flight simulator fanatics.

If you're searching Amazon it seems you're only looking for paid or official products, but why? Most X-Plane add-ons are free.

The biggest X-Plane enthusiast site is x-plane.org, which lists over 2500 aircraft and hundreds of scenery/airport packages.

X-Plane also runs on Mac and Linux, not just Windows. A stripped-down version even runs on iPhone.

Sir Richard Branson actually got arrested in the early days of Virgin Music if you read his excellent autobiography (evading VAT tax) and he had to pay it back or he would go to prison! Moller and Branson (Virgin Galactic) have determination and vision, which is exactly what you need when it comes down to being the next Henry Ford. Wonder how Scaled Composites (Virgin Galactic) and the Cartercopter guys view the skycar? I think it looks a lot more feasable than other flying cars. The time is now! As I've said before I am unconvinced of the saucer - but bring on the skycar! Try the model for free with X-plane http://www.x-plane.org/

Love the ambitious direction Moller have taken with this. I am excited that so many advancements in automation and control, miniturisation, materials etc. are bringing the Skycar so close to reality. Personally, I'm not that interested in the saucer - it was a logical engine test bed for the time - but the skycar is great. The model for X-plane works great. Try it out! It's free but you will have to sign up http://www.x-plane.org./ Some discussion going back to 2004 can be found here http://forums.x-plane.org/lofiversion/index.php?t9 966.html.

Love the ambitious direction Moller have taken with this. I am excited that so many advancements in automation and control, miniturisation, materials etc. are bringing the Skycar so close to reality. Personally, I'm not that interested in the saucer - it was a logical engine test bed for the time - but the skycar is great. The model for X-plane works great. Try it out! It's free but you will have to sign up http://www.x-plane.org./ Some discussion going back to 2004 can be found here http://forums.x-plane.org/lofiversion/index.php?t9 966.html.

Only one company has designed, built and tested a non-military supersonic plane since Concorde and Tu-144. It is Sukhoi for Gulfstream. SUKHOI-GULFSTREAM S-21. http://www.x-plane.org/home/spiff000/S21/S21specs. html

It is not completely clear what Lokheed Martin will do with the patents for the low sonic boom hypersonics and they are rumoured to have a Skunkworks project on it. Noone has seen it yet so the jury is still out on that one.

It is a very good indication about the tentative market that no orders were ever placed for a hypersonic built by Sukhoi and Gulfstream. Even putting the Ferrari and Rolls Royce of aviation together did not cause enough interest so I do think there is a viable market for this.

Here. It's a little out of date (v7.63), but for those of us who don't slum around with MSFS, it's a nifty little toy. And a real pain to fly, I couldn't manage 80 hours no way.

Taking a step back? Of course we're taking a step back.

Your argument appears to be that because it's bigger it's better. The Russians stayed with the original in-line rocket concept, and now we're admitting they were right. The Shuttle has not lived up to any of it's promises, and has proved to be a death-trap. I wonder how many years we have to wait before all those involved leave the scene, and we can finally admit that the Shuttle was a large mistake, instead of pretending that it was the best space vehicle ever designed.

Incidentally, I suspect that wings can be used to slow a spacecraft down safely, so long as you take a bit of time about it and go a few times round the world. The Space Shuttle was designed for a comparatively steep reentry, so as not to overfly hostile cold war countries and stay within the bounds of the continental US. If we look at the Sanger machine ( http://www.luft46.com/misc/sanger.html - see the flight profile, or http://forums.x-plane.org/lofiversion/index.php/t1 1159.html ) or the work of Terence Nonweiler ( http://www.aerospaceweb.org/design/waverider/waver ider.shtml ) we can see that skipping on the surface of the atmosphere is a credible braking manoever.

For those who want pictures:

http://www.x-plane.org/home/mf70/Current&Future.ht m
http://eaa.aviationuniversity.com/multimedia/img/e aa/CarterCopter-27-eaa.jpg
http://www.davidpride.com/AirVenture2002/images/AV 2_64.jpg

The big difference is that MS flight sim uses preset tables of parameters for each aircraft. This means that the situations simulated are limited to the extremes of these tables.

X-Plane on the other hand calculates the effect of airflow on the shape of the plane on-the-fly, allowing accurate simulation of _any_ situation of _any_ shape in _any_ sort of movement-through-air.
That's how X-Plane is able to simulate the atmosphere of Mars, and one creative mad genius even modeled a Steinway Grand Piano!

Pity that the links in the article have succumbed, I haven't been able to look at them.

I'm no addict to FPS. The only game that matters to me is X-Plane, and it exists on Mac. Hell, it was developed on a mac. The author seems to claim easier, faster development on Mac.

Crippling:
I have an ibook and a powerbook, and a big flat-screen TV. I cannot play it at an adequate resolution on the big screen using the ibook because apple decided to disabled screen spanning. The display is limited to mirroring, where I don't use the LCD's available resolution, a crying shame. I don't think any PC maker would deliberately cripple their hardware... Also, PCI graphic cards for powermac are notoriously more expensive than their x386 equivalent. Why is that? Is there a technical reason I cannot move my graphic card from a PC to a Mac and vice versa?

These limitations hamper the development of an ecosystem where PCs and Macs can compete head to head.
This ecosystem existed on the apple2 and the PC and made their success.

Here's more on the White Knight craft. An important but much overlooked part of the proceedings. http://science.howstuffworks.com/spaceshipone3.htm http://www.x-plane.org/Detailed/3881.shtml

If you feel like taking one of these for a little test drive, you can find a virtual version here.

You need X-Plane to use it. Check it out. X-Plane is actually a pretty sweet flight sim.

Here

Try http://goatse.cx instead.

Aside from many based on real aircraft (including dirigibles, space shuttles, etc) ther are some wacky ones at X-plane.org. Such as a TARDIS the teleports, and a Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano that "glides" (down, very quickly).

Aside from many based on real aircraft (including dirigibles, space shuttles, etc) ther are some wacky ones at X-plane.org. Such as a TARDIS the teleports, and a Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano that "glides" (down, very quickly).

X-plane already simulates both Space Shuttles and flying experimental planes on Mars, as well as other space-going crafts. Heck you can even take off into space with a Rocket!!

X-plane already simulates both Space Shuttles and flying experimental planes on Mars, as well as other space-going crafts. Heck you can even take off into space with a Rocket!!

X-plane already simulates both Space Shuttles and flying experimental planes on Mars, as well as other space-going crafts. Heck you can even take off into space with a Rocket!!

X-plane already simulates both Space Shuttles and flying experimental planes on Mars, as well as other space-going crafts. Heck you can even take off into space with a Rocket!!

There's a bunch of user-built aircrafts available. X-Plane comes with an aircraft modelling program.

I'm not an X-Plane user myself, so I don't know how difficult it is to build a model that actually flies. If the physics are really realistic, that'd be quite a challenge. The plane building program will probably lend you a hand, though...

Baumi

... has some Mars models (fliable) available here in case anyone wants to try and get a feel for the flight dynamics of this sort of trip.

Pretty interesting, though I don't suppose there's an ARES model for X-plane yet, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't one soon ...

Get the X-Plane demo and fly your virtual Solotrek around the world (or on Mars even).

Get the X-Plane demo and fly your virtual Solotrek around the world (or on Mars even).

Since I didn't see any posts for flight simulators, why not try X-Plane.

It uses OpenGL and runs on Windows, Mac, (OSX by Christmas) -- Linux port upcoming, and although I haven't tried, it supposedly can run with WINE.

There is also a great online community where one can get new planes, scenery, and utilities.

Oh and once you get it, feel free to land at my grandparent's airstrip - ID NA61. ;-)