Slashdot Mirror
X-Plane Flight Simulator For Linux
sho-gun writes: "It seems that Austin Meyer, creator of X-Plane, is going to be porting his simulator to Linux. X-Plane is an incredible flight simulator which models flight dynamics by using blade-element theory. Many big companies use X-Plane for development. Currently only the support programs (the programs that build the planes, scenery, airfoils) are available but the full application should be available soon, according to the website. Along side with the open-sourced
Flightgear,
this certainly is good news for flight simulator fans
that use Linux."
Uh.. slashdot is not just about free software.
Xplane (the world's most accurate flight simulator you can have without a military budget) being ported to linux is *fantastic* news.
Not everything needs to be free, bub. It's only free if people are willing to write it for free.
And while we're at it, we should also forbid the sale of talcum, flour, sugar, salt, cocaine, washing powder, and anything else that can be used to create faux anthrax scares. FBI and FEMA are busy enough as there is, without you pranksters sending your silly letters around.
So they got their flight physics right. But what about the calculations for structural strength, metallurgy, etc. So that we can also use the tool to determine what amount of fuel to carry, and which height to aim for...
question why don't the US military/air force open up their simulators ?
I thought in the good US of A that all projects that the government does the people of the US of A had access to the source
Unless
It was deemed that it was endangering security of the nation
Or
It was contracted out to a company and then they had all the IP
I don't see how a simulator could fit into any of the above
The dynamics of a fighter plane YES but not a Cessna
The military airports YES but not civil airport where the data is already published
Since the MS flight sim is ahead of most things what have you got to lose in asking ?
(Politely since the Military don't like question right now)
regards
john jones
p.s. I am not a citizen of the USA so am just wondering
Flight simulators have to stop somewhere short of reality, or you'd need a whole cluster of computers to do the calculations. There's no good mathematical way to calculate turbulence, for instance. Check back in another 10 years, and perhaps you'll have what you want.
But aside from the mechanics of flight is the human element of flying. Flight simulators are terrible (and I would say potentially dangerous) at simulating the real world flying environment. In the simulator, you don't have 10 different people in the traffic pattern, with a frazzled tower controller who gets confused every now and then. Or the terse language and procedures necessary for transitioning through 3 different airspaces.
But simulator time is cheap, as opposed to $50/hr for an old creaky Cessna 172. You also get what you pay for.
#1) It's not open source.
#2) It's not "getting a free ride" or anything like that. It's about bringing good software to another operating system.
What the HELL is the big deal with people charging for decent software?
I absolutely, 100% agree that most software is crap and isn't worth the bits it's written on. But there ARE pieces of software that are WELL WORTH what the author is asking for.
Mac OS X -- I didn't mind paying $129 for it. It's well worth the investment.
X-Plane -- this is a great flight sim that's worth the $49 I paid for it.
Adobe Photoshop Elements -- Finally, a photoshop that's priced reasonably. I paid $90 for it and didn't mind one bit. It's a great piece of code and worth it.
Veritas Volume Manager -- makes your life better. Worth the $$$.
Solaris -- Worth the $80 for the media. (Although I don't think media costs NEAR $80, Solaris is still worth $80.)
OmniWeb -- worth $29. Nice browser, nice features.
Not worth it:
Microsoft anything -- we all know why.
Sun Cluster -- Sun makes some of the sh_ttiest clustering software ever.
99% of other software.
---------
I guess my point here is that JUST because someone charges for software doesn't make it bad. The quality of the code determines whether it's worth it or not!
--nbvb
The people who really wanted to buy X-Plane already did -- months ago, when it came out initially. These people aren't likely to go out and buy it *again* -- even though it'll now run on their favorite OS -- unless they're TRULY dedicated to the game.
X-Plane came out in Feburary for Win32. How many games do you know of that you like so much that you'll buy it *again* after eight months? Not many!
If you want people to buy Linux games and buy them in reasonable numbers, you're going to need to release the Linux version at about the same time as the Windows version -- otherwise, only a few people are going to buy your game.
Suppose you've got your average gamer -- he dual boots between Linux and Windows. He goes into the computer store, and sees X-Plane for Linux -- $50. He then sees X-Plane for Windows in the bargian bin for $10. Which is he likely to buy?
The same applies to Mac ports of PC games, but to a lesser degree -- after all, outside of something like SoftPC, a Mac cannot run the same software as a Windows box -- where a x86 box that runs Linux box could also run Windows and therefore Windows games.
In any event, since Austin is doing the port for free, I guess they're not going to lose much on this one, even if nobody buys it.
Sorry.
X-Plane 6.0.4 came out on the 10th of October for Mac and Windows.
http://www.x-plane.com/
And you won't see it in the bargin bin, because the developer has gone to distributing it himself.
http://www.x-plane.com/order.html
"X-PLANE 6.00 IS NOT BEING SOLD IN STORES! IF YOU WANT X-PLANE 6.00, ORDER IT HERE!
X-Plane 6.00 is $59.99 +$10.00 Domestic or $30.00 International shipping.
This CD includes both Macintosh and Windows versions of X-Plane, as well as your choice of scenery CD.
Your purchase allows free updates through all 6.x versions."
It's never perfectly debugged but it's also never stopped adding cool details, features and stuff. These get divided among flight model features and eye candy. In the former category, Austin (yes, this is all ONE GUY coding it) added support for gyrocopters. (It's _always_ had helicopter support, which is rare). In the latter category, he's been enhancing the clouds and scenery hugely- even 5.66 (not the new version) already has very impressive 3D clouds, which don't even eat the frame rate that much.
The true geek factor in X-Plane is not even flying the planes- it's designing them. Using all the tools like Part-Maker, Plane-Maker (and these need to be included, 'scuse me for stating the obvious) you can literally design just about anything, right down to designing your own _airfoils_, using various third-party stuff to determine lift/drag/moment of the foil at various angles of attack, and then entering that into Part-Maker to bring the airfoil into X-Plane for use. Plane-Maker is about placing wings and elements anywhere, NOT about punching in 'stall, top speed' etc values: the utterly amazingly geeky thing about this sim is that it builds the flight model from just analysis of the plane parts, ten times a second, relative to things like AoA and speed and propwash and ground effect. So when you put something together in Plane-Maker, and it doesn't exist in the real world, you're actually using X-Plane as an aeronautical design tool, and instead of working out on paper whether the CG is too far aft, you save the plane, fire up X-Plane, 'get in the drivers' seat' and take the bastard up and see if it kills you ;)
That's about as cool as virtual reality gets, right there- and it's the heart of the geek appeal, to me: if you play with the sim this way you have to _be_ capable of interpreting behavior like a test pilot. The planes behave in amazingly unexpected ways. I've had a high-speed jet show a nasty tendency to pitch up sharply at a certain speed- puzzling until I realised that it was hitting Mach 1, and the shockwave was interacting with the wing geometry (!) Try _that_ in MSFS or Fly...
I've actually taken ideas from Slashdot into X-Plane: some time ago there was an article about Japanese ground-effect flying trains, so naturally what do I do? Go fire up Plane-Maker, and try to build a ground-effect vehicle that maintained a consistent ground height all by itself. Didn't quite succeed, but I did manage to make the most forgiving aircraft I've ever seen for zooming about really close to the ground... and now there's gyrocopter support, there's lighter-than-air support (and the Hindenburg), and the helos (and the SoloTrek- yes, the two-ducted-fan thing that you stand on), and whatever neat aero thing turns up next year on Slashdot, I am sure X-Plane will be able to handle modelling it. Hell, there's even an entirely fictional Japanese Anime Plane to play with. I flew it straight up into space and the stars came out, in a perfectly black sky, as I passed escape velocity. Now if we could model something _real_ that does that, we'd really have something...
Think of it as a commercial aviation design simulator for less than $50. There are in fact a _number_ of people using it to rough-draft real-world planes being built in real life... suffice to say, X-Plane getting a Linux port is _totally_ news for nerds, and if you're an aero nerd it is very much stuff that matters. It's probably the single coolest program I have, of any description. If you want a specifically opensource flight sim, Flight Gear has a lot going for it- but if your interest is strictly aviationgeek and not coder, X-Plane absolutely maims anything else out there, by a wide margin, even given that it's usually kinda quirky (5.66 was running nicely for me, though).