X-Plane - An Obsession For Realism

caseih writes "Popular Science is running an article on Austin Meyer, the creator of the popular X-Plane flight simulator. Although not an open source project, X-Plane has a devoted community of flight enthusiasts and developers who are striving to make it the most realistic flight simulator ever. In fact, flight characteristics are calculated in real time from aircraft design data, not static tables like MS Flight Simulator. PopSci has a neat picture showing X-Plane calculating the lift-drag vectors in real-time across an aircraft. Meyer's quest for realism in his simulations dominates the development and use of X-Plane."

Comments

Flightgear Anyone?

[niko9]

I am not familiar with X plane , but I wonder how it compares to the Flightgear project. One of the advantages of that project being open source was extensibilty. The project has all sorts of modding potential.

apt-get install flightgear for all you deb heads.
runs on win32 also

Re:Too bad it's proprietary (aka: useless)

[Deusy]

Why do that when there is a perfectly good open source flight simulator available in the guise of FlightGear?

If these people contributed that passionately to FlightGear then it would be awesome.

Re:Space simulator

[deniable]

You could always try Orbiter. http://www.orbitersim.com

To Answer Some Questions:

[peatbakke]

Yes, dynamic modelling is better than static tables. Not only is the performance more in line with reality, but it allows people to design airfoils and aircraft with the included software, and test their performance before any parts are fabricated. No guess work. Real engineering.

It's a hackers dream, because ALL of the flight controls and flight data can be imported/exported over a network. It also has a very sensible plugin system, and the author encourages people to come up with new and cool tools without any licensing restrictions. It might not be open source, but the architecture is very open.

X-Plane is the flight simulator of choice for many companies, including Scaled Composites, the builders of Spaceship One. It's also FAA approved for training towards commercial, transport, and instrument certificates.

Not only is the flight model incredibly accurate, but you also have to deal with differences in traction between tires on a wet runway, damaged windscreens from hail, and more equipment failures than you can shake a stick at.

It's amazingly beautiful with a reasonable graphics card and the latest scenery plugins, and it can use real-time weather information from NOAA.

It's not a toy or a game, even though it may be fun. It's as close to flying as you can get on your PC. I could go on and on, but it's probably better that you head to the web site. :)

http://www.x-plane.com/

x-p does have issues& flightgear isn't there y

[davids-world.com]

Indeed I believe the fact that X-Plane is not open source, and maintained by mainly one person in lose cooperation with a few graphics people is a major disadvantage.

It's absolutly amazing that Austin could achieve this, but the project is getting at it's limits. Why?

Even the 4th release candidate still has quality issues, or, with a less friendly word: bugs. The user interface is really, really bad. Not only does it use custom widgets, but the widgets do not follow the usual expectations. The dialogs behave strangely (exit buttons), and, for example, if you increase the rendering quality, the system drops you down to the nearest airport, which comes handy if you're flying a 747 and you end up on a helipad.

People also develop flight models and (photo)realistic landscapes (e.g. the Global Scenery Project or, e.g., Cormac Shaw's high-detail scenery for Ireland and his Aer Lingus Jets at the Irish Hub.) Stuff like that generally works much better, and there is a great variety to choose from!

I also tried to evaluate FlightGear. This project is not anywhere near X-Plane. If I'm not mistaken, they only accurately simulate piston engines (other engines are a weak approximation). Besides, FlightGear doesn't compile if you don't have certain libraries installed, which turned out to be a pain on OS X...

That said, I believe that FlightGear may outperform X-Plane in a couple of years. Until then, I'll stick with X-Plane...

WARNING WARNING WARNING!

[swordgeek]

I had a run-in with the X-plane people (Basically Austin and his buddy Mike Brown on sales) over their "guaranteed upgrades for life." In a word, they lied. Furthermore, they continue to lie, and are absolute ASSHOLES about it.

To be specific here, they will always make the latest patch available for the current version. That is, if they're developing X-P 6.x, then the latest 6.x patch is available. However...

1) You cannot get any older patches. This is a problem because several times the current versions has been buggy, unstable, or broken.

2) Once the initial 7.x release is out, you are absolutely SOL on downloading the final 6.x patch. He will NOT provide it under any circumstances, once he's decided to get rid of 'free support for life' on a previous version.

I'm sorry to have to post this. I think that X-P is a really cool program. I'm utterly amazed at how far he's gotten with it. However, his code review (poor), attitude ("fuck you!"), and flat out lying on support all lead to something that I'll never drop money on again.

Pity, really. If he lost his ego, he'd write better software.

You can read more about it here.

Re:x-p does have issues& flightgear isn't ther

[henley]

I'm a 2-year user of X-Plane, although I confess I've not been following the v7 beta stuff (I've stuck with 6.60 for now). I've logged hundreds of hours on the sim, and tinkered with the other tools available (e.g. I've modified aircraft etc).

X-Plane is a fantastic piece of work for a single person to have to his name. Probably the highest praise I can think to give it, is that it's not only the best at what it tries to do - simulate flight of all kinds - but it's also usable.

Having said all that, usable is about as far as it goes. It's not, and has never set out to be, a polished application with a glitzy UI. The interface for the sim and the tools is good enough and no better. If you need to get out and see what'll happen to an NF-104 at 100K feet when the control surfaces fail on you, then X-Plane is for you. But be prepared to adapt to it's interface, rather than have it teach you.

I've been looking at FlightGear recently too. And about all I can say about this right now is that it's clearly got promise, it looks good, but there's a looonnggg way to go. At least X-Plane lets me choose aircraft from a file selector dialog; I have to shut down FlightGear and use a different command line switch to load a new aircraft. It's clearly still very much for the Geeks for now, wheras I know there are professional pilots using X-plane.

Re:can I make my own plane?

[BitZtream]

Actaully, all aircraft for x-plane are made with 'Plane-Maker' which is included with it, as well as World Maker, Airfoil Maker.

These do require a LOT of work to make them fly properly, you have to design the shape of the aircraft in just about every aspect, assign weights, engines and power, everything is modeled, not based on a precomputed statstics table, right down to how the fuel in the tanks will effect weight, balance, and inertia.

This is why several companies such as Carter Copter (http://www.cartercopters.com), Piper Aircraft (http://www.piperaircraft.com/) and others use x-plane for development and testing of aircraft.

Carter Copter trained pilots for its new aircraft in X-Plane before the aircraft ever went airborn. Piper now makes its aircraft available as x-plane models for demoing to potiential customers. Bell uses it to keep its helicopter pilots certified on its experimental aircraft when they can't actually use the real thing. There is also an fragment of an email from Dave Rose (Biplane racing pilot) on the x-plane home page. He modeled his plane in x-plane as close as he could, and the race area, then after lots of practice, went out in the real aircraft and set a new record. Of course, the pilot had the skill to do it, but the simulator obviously had to be pretty realistic.

Mind you, to experience the simulation like these guys do, you need hardware to go with it, but the software is there. They use the same thing you get when you buy X-Plane as a normal home user.

And just a slight MSFS rant... compare x-plane 7 to MSFS2k4. Flight model wise: the wright brothers flier in MSFS2k4 flies almost exactly like the Lear45... just a lot slower. Graphics: MSFS excels here in populated areas where there are photo scenery packages available, and x-plane has none to speak of (with the exception of SoCal which is on www.x-plane.org) Outside those areas, its nothing special. Aircraft panels... well, MSFS doesn't have squat on X-Plane there, I've yet to see one in MSFS that looked 'good'. They both have ATC, both do alright, although neither is that great at simulating large ammounts of other traffic such as you would find at a large airport, however, both do have the ability to connect to VATSIM in order to fly with hundreds of other virtual pilots around the world. There is also somewhere a 'MMORPG' based on x-plane in development, haven't seen it in a long while, but it looked promising, last I saw it you could fly with several aircraft around you, and the ATC was automatic if no one was doing live ATC for that airport, neat stuff... but seems to have disappeared (this is all much like VATSIM of course). Give x-plane some photo realistic scenery and I think its just a superior product all around, definatly from the simulator standpoint, and from the game side as well.

I'm only disappointed I paid for msfs2k4, now I have to go buy x-plane7 (Yes, I shelled out the money for x-plane6). Okay, so now I sound like a x-plane salesman, so I'm just gonna shut up :)