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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."
Alot of other flight sims are games, X-Plane is not. This is a serious piece of software used by alot of professionals to model and simulate prospective aerospace designs. I can't count the times it has been emphasized to me that this is not a game. ...that said, it's damn fun sometimes.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I love X-Plane, precisely for the reasons posted: it's very cool that the simulation strives to be as accurate as possible, and gets better with each release. On the other hand, at least one journalist disagrees...
Yesterday, Salon had a ridiculous article(might be restricted to subscribers only, sorry) that claims that modern consumer flight simulators are too realistic, and implies that they should be banned or restricted somehow. And of course, as the headline promises, the article does indeed place some of the blame for 9/11 on such flight simlulators!
Bad Salon, bad. What is it with the media hating video games, anyways?
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
For a moment there, I thought this was a story on Mike Meyers and his next Austin Powers movie, featuring a futuristic X-Plane thingy that spoofs Moonraker.
I'm honestly not sure whether to be disappointed or not...
I'm sure the author would like nothing better than to give away X-Plane for free. The trouble is that there are some applications that require the bulk of one person's time, for years on end, if they are to be amazing. And, like anybody else, the creator of this work needs to eat.
I think we're certain to see a greater variety of open source freeware apps in the years ahead. But there just aren't enough people out there with serious expertise in both aeronautics and coding, who can pitch in and build an open source X-Plane in their free time.
You want 1001 small apps, from hard drive erasers to science calculators, the open source movement has you covered. You're also covered with the handful of huge apps, that everybody needs, since there are sufficient coders out there to recognize the supreme significance of these apps and donate bits of their time (take Mozilla and OpenOffice.org as two examples.)
But if you want something as niche as a world class flight simulator, sorry, you're probably not gonna get it open source. It's gonna take a huge effort from a tiny group of people, and they need to do it to the exclusion of other things. Like anyone else, they've gotta eat. And to call their code "useless" because it's not open source, that's unfair, mean spirited, and ignorant.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
At the end of page one:
"I have a moral duty to make it fly as realistically as I can."
Now consider: if every programmer was able and willing to make a similar statement about their code, what would our software "ecosystem" (as MS likes to phrase it) look like?
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.
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you know, one gets really tired of this kind of attitude. Did you read the article? This is his life's work, and I think he deserves compensation for it. X-plane (versions 6 and 7) is the only software I've paid for in the last 2 or 3 years, and I was happy to do it, because I'm supporting a real person, and getting a (albeit quirky) quality piece of software for it. I'm certainly a believer in the open source movement, I use it whenever possible, and I've contributed some of my work to the community. Anyway, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and code your own flight sim. (Or quit making inflammatory statements like code hoarder)
You could always try Orbiter. http://www.orbitersim.com
Passion isn't enough. This type of programming is not "write a text editor" or write a replacement for Notepad.
Its scientific, requires loads of specific realm based knowledge, and eons of refinement and highly technical skills.
Its a simulation engine that is precise and accurate. It's not just a toy.
OSS is great. But not for everything. Somethings are too narrow for a sufficently wide pool of programmers to latch onto and program on thier own. The number of OSS-comitted programmers, with aero-engineering skills, with 3D programming knowlegdge, with sufficent free time and sufficent drive to replicate this level of work is very, very, very small.
In relation to FS games, This guy here has got da bomb setup 9 PCs, 13 monitors, one plane. Since some idiot mod put me to -1 me down as troll for replying to an AC with the subject line of "eat shit and die", I'll try this again and wish a speedy death to the mod in question.
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
It was almost open source
Those of you who have visited the X-Plane site have no doubt found the article, but here's a quick bit for everyone else...
So what sort of planes can fly on Mars? Not anything from Earth, that's for sure. Not enough lift or thrust. A Cessna or Boeing will just sit there on the ground without even moving. Put them in the air and they drop like beveled bricks with no wings. Both of my Mars-plane concepts are much like the U-2 Spyplane (designed to operate at around 100,000 ft, in simlar density air) one with a HUGE high-bypass jet engine built AROUND THE FUSELAGE, and another with a smaller rocket engine in the tail, like the X-15. The rocket plane has a lower-thrust engine, with plenty of fuel, for about 30 minutes of flight or so... the JET plane can fly for hours!
Article link (you'll have to try to ignore the excessive use of ALL CAPS)
I've always thought X-Plane was cool, but after reading this article I was convinced... and that's when I read the article well over a year ago!
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/
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...
I used to support MS Flight Simulator over the telephone, so ive had to play with it quite a bit. Although I never really had to figure out how the game.. excuse me simulator, calculates flight data (ive had people yell at me on the phone for calling MS Flight Simulator a game.. you know, those people that dont play games and its a "simulator").
Anyway, to the point.
With MS Flight Simulator, when you build a new plane for it, you need to build a file that has all the information about how the plane reacts if it were to fly in the air. (it may be a bit different then this I haven't worked there for a couple years). I made a new plane in GMax, but used a different planes files and pretty much changed the model of the aircraft. When you go fly, it uses this file to figure out how winds, altitude, etc are going to react with the plane.
With X-Plane, when I build a model and fly it within the 'simulator', its going to use the actual model itself to calculate how the plane is going to fly. This seems pretty useful to someone who wants to design planes. They called it a 'virtual wind-tunnel' in the article (I only read the first couple pages).
So, the aircraft design data in MS Flight Simulator isn't based off the model of the plane itself, whereas X-Plane uses the model of the plane to figure out how it flies. I would say that for accuracy sakes, your better off testing and simulating stuff with X-Plane vs. Flight Simulator.
As a side note, Flight Simulator is the biggest pain in the ass to support. I would take a few calls a week from some ex-pilot who doesn't think a certain plane is flying correctly (it should be able to go this speed, or the panel doesn't have the gauges like they are in real-life). I really wish those kinds of people could come to my work and find out what kinds of things I can and cannot do.. If everyones plane flies the same way, I cannot really fix that.. Of course ive also talked to a guy who put a bunch of monitors into an old 737 cockpit for MSFS, and another guy who had 9 monitors hooked up, mainly using them for Flight Simulator. That product has some hardcore fans attached to it... (warning im a bit drunk and i tend to ramble, ill stop now..)
I spent perhaps half my life playing flight simulators of all kinds. I loved it. About 2 years ago I started playing X-plane, investing in the CH sim yoke and everything. I flew Cessnas all the time.
Finally, about a year ago, I decided that 15 years of simulators was quite enough, and I started to take flying lessons in real airplanes. The same aircraft - Cessna 172. I was expecting that with my many years of simulator experience, including 2 years with mega-realistic X-plane, I'd be able to waltz right in and fly the plane as if I was an expert.
Guess what? The plane kicked my ass. Flying it felt *nothing* like the simulator. Although x-plane may accurately simulate how the aircraft moves through the air, the air itself is in motion in very complex ways that aren't simulated. The plane moves around in ways the simulator never prepared me for. I couldn't land for shit until I'd done it in the real plane maybe 100 times, and I didn't get really good at it until about 300 times. I've taken some of my other X-plane addict friends up flying with me and let them take the controls, and they always say "It doesn't feel anything like the simulator".
And, completey separately from the actual aircraft control feeling unrealistic, no simulator I've ever played has done a good job of simulating the stress of a real flight. X-Plane does nothing to prepare you for trying to fly the plane while a controller is continuously talking in your ear to you and the other 10 airplanes in his airspace. X-Plane does not put you in a panic that you just intruded on a class B airspace boundary. X-plane does not wait until you're on short final, then tell you to start a climb, do a 360 and then reestablish yourself on final because a jet just got his IFR release. X-plane does not ask you to keep 3 other targets in the pattern in sight while landing. X-plane does not make you try to listen to the ATIS recorded weather information and controller simultaneously while also trying to fly through clouds on instruments. All of these things happen to me regularly in real planes.
(Admittedly, I do fly in the most complex airspace in the world - the LA basin - so maybe this is an extreme example.)
On the positive side, simulators do an excellent job of giving you an understanding about how navigation works (e.g. how to track VORs, when they're reversed, how to form a mental picture of where you are based on navaid information, etc.)
They won't use a plane next time. They have eliminated hijacking as a viable method of terrorism. In the past people on a hijacked plane would wait passivly because that's what was expected of them "no one move and no one gets hurt", which was generally true, the terrorists got to broadcast their message and then were arrested, people were rarely harmed, and if they were it was generally during an attempt to board the plane by anti-terror police/military units, not in the air. Now people must assume that not only will THEY die, but many others on the ground, potentially including their friends and families will die, so every person on the plane will do what they must to stop the terrorists, even fear of death from guns and knives won't stop them. In a crowded space a couple hundred people who have nothing to lose will beat out just about any realistic number of terrorists.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
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
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It's important to note though that building a 3d model for X-Plane is not the same as building one for MSFS. In X-Plane, the 3d model's shape is defined by the specifications set using the Plane Maker tool. For example, you type in a value for wingspan, and the wingspan of the model changes. In this way is the 3d shape each aircraft defined.
This is much more difficult (in my opinion) than modeling an aircraft in a 3d graphics package such as Maya or 3ds max, though it is necessary for the way X-Plane calculates flight models.