AVSIM Comercial Simulator Review X-Plane 9

Introduction

X-Plane 9 is something that a lot of people have been asking about on the forums, so I decided to take the time to write a true review of it for the purpose of trying to explain about X-Plane and clear up some misunderstandings. X-Plane is made by a small team called Laminar Research. The team that makes X-Plane is a very small group (9 people I think) compared to the ACES team that makes FSX, and the amazing thing is that in a lot of respects, X-Plane is actually better than FSX. X-Plane has never been about the graphics, it has always been about the flight modeling, and with the right configuration of hardware, you can even get the FAA to allow you to log hours using X-Plane. X-Plane 9 is designed for realism and versatility, and not for the masses. It is not for beginners by any sense. It includes a comprehensive editing suite as well, so that is a plus. The biggest plus is that X-Plane has is constantly being updated and improved. Patches come out frequently, and public betas and release clients are available. These patches not only fix bugs, but also add new things, and improve on current things. When you buy X-Plane, you get free updates to Version X.99 (X being the base version of X-Plane, in this case version 9). Also whenever I mention the org I mean X-Plane, and XPFW or X-Plane Freeware.

Installation and Documentation

X-Plane 9 is a massive install, and while you don’t have to install all 6 DVDs, it is recommended. The basic install, with only one of the six discs, is 13 gigabytes. When you fully install X-Plane, you are looking at it using 70 gigabytes of hard disc space out of the box. The reason for this is that the scenery is not auto generated like FSX. This means that it takes up more space on the Hard drive, but it runs much faster. You only have to install the first disc, and the rest can be installed when you feel like it in any order. If there is one thing to remember though, check the discs before you install, as I bought mine at a certain store, and on the first copy, the 6^th disc was delaminating and destroyed, and I didn’t find out about this until I got to that 6^th disc, 5 hours after the install started. I took it back and got a replacement, and the 2^nd copy worked, so I thought I may as well say, if you are going to get it, make sure you check all the discs first, as it will save you a lot of heartache later. The documentation is weak at best. X-Plane is not designed for beginners, and as that, you need to rely on the community for a lot of help. There are no flight tutorials, and the way they provide editor tutorials is by having you open up a example file and mess around with it to get the hang of it, which if you ask me, is kind of dumb because the least they could do is include some decent tutorials to help new people get to learn the system. I know that it has a basic explanation of the editor concepts, but I really would rather see a guided tutorial about it, that way people know where to look for what.

The Interface

The Interface has improved drastically since version 8, being much more user friendly and much more intuitive. On the v9 user interface, you have to scroll to the top of the window to reveal the menu bar, and when you scroll away, the bar hides again automatically. The aircraft can be sorted by folders and all you have to do to modify the folders is to go in to the install path and create new folders in the aircraft directory. The airport selection can be done by typing in a part of the name or the identifier code or just scrolling thorough a list. The one sad thing though is that you can’t set it up to filter by location like you can in FSX. This means that you have to filter by name or identifier, and the rest is all jumbled together. While this would be acceptable in a smaller scale, the fact that X-Plane has such a large area of flyable terrain (the whole earth) makes it unacceptable because of the pure problem of trying to locate an airport in the area you are flying to. The other cool things about the user interface include an option to set things such as joystick sensitivity in the controls menu, and the best part is to be able to pull up real time statistics on flight model things such as g forces pulled, airspeed, lift, drag, thrust, throttle, anything you can think of, even ground effect stats. The one main thing I wish it had was a main menu sort of like FSX’s. Having to boot into a flight to do anything is kind of annoying.

This is how you select an aircraft; note I added a lot of stuff…	That’s enough check boxes to make a rocket scientist wet his pants.

Flight Modeling

T he flight modeling is a gem, it calculates the flight models of the aircraft based on something called “Blade Element Theory” which allows for X-Plane to calculate the flight model based on the shape of the aircraft and airfoil, along with based on aircraft specs specified in the Planemaker tool that comes with X-Plane. There is a major catch here though, if you screw up on the Planemaker 3d model, or the statistics in plane maker, or the airfoil, your whole flight model will be COMPLETELY off. Note I Said Planemaker 3d model, that’s because there are 2 3d models usable, Planemaker and obj format. You have to do a Planemaker 3d model no matter what for the flight modeling, but you can overlay on top of and over that a 3d model made in say blender. That visual model is just eye candy, the Planemaker 3d model is all that matters in flight dynamics. This means that everything has to be at least very close to correct for accurate results. Also note that FPS affects the flight model very much and a crappy frame rate will kill your experience not just by causing a slideshow, but also due to the flight model getting worse with worse frame rates. I also have to note that I have seen a lot of people complaining about handling being too responsive, well the developers set the default sensitivity a bit too high, so you should go in to the joystick and equipment settings menu and configure that to be proper.

Also it should be noted there is a plug-in called XFCS which can be downloaded from the org, this will allow you to set limits on how aircraft like fighters can perform including G-Force limitation to prevent the pilot from ripping the aircraft apart with g-forces. I can say that most of the default aircraft in X-Plane handle like crap, but things such as the Cessna 172 have fixed versions on the org to download. I should note that crashing your aircraft doesn’t just mean a crash message like FSX, you can do a hard landing in a helicopter, or a belly slide in a aircraft, or ditch in the water and watch your aircraft sink (yes your aircraft WILL FLOAT and then SINK). Only landing nose down or such, where you are sure to kill the pilot, would actually cause a reset of the situation. Finally, I have to mention this; X-Plane is one of only two simulators that properly simulate one very important aspect of helicopter flight, the ring vortex effect on rotor blades. The only other simulator I have seen do this, is DCS Black Shark. FSX does not properly simulate this, so you can hover in place low to the ground with no side effects. X-Plane properly simulates the helicopter rotors stalling when you are hovering low and still. This will cause your aircraft to drop and possibly crash. FSX cannot properly simulate helicopter flight as it doesn’t have this function, but X-Plane does. This means that X-Plane is my sim of choice for helicopter flight (as long as it’s not the KA-50 :P). There is a specific reason I think this is better though, that’s because X-Plane handles the flight dynamics on the fly, which I feel is better because it can account for more things as they come along, rather than not doing anything because it doesn’t know what to do.

Sounds

The sounds are decent, they are essentially generic sounds, but include some nice touches such as wind howling as you go fast enough. I did notice it seemed like there was no sound for thunder though, which really was stupid, as you see the flash and hear absolutely nothing. Also there are no real rain sounds, which aggravates me. For aircraft you can add a sound folder with custom sounds. This helps for aircraft, but still doesn’t excuse no real environmental sounds. Also I should note the ATC really needs an overhaul, right now it is really bad. It literally is the robot voice that your computer makes by default, think Microsoft Sam.

The Community

This is the good part. The X-Plane community is VERY good at keeping things in check. They are also very helpful and are more than willing to explain something to you if you don’t get it. They will also help you debug the game if something seems to be going wrong. There are only 2 major forums for it, X-Plane.org and XPFW. If you get banned from one, you are screwed. Also the community is VERY tight knit, so piracy is scarce at worst, nonexistent at best, and if you try it, you will get caught VERY easily because everyone knows who each other is and it’s extremely easy to catch people when the community is small enough to keep track of who actually bought what when. This is a very good thing in my eyes, and also I said that as a warning to any would-be pirates in the community who may want to go try their crap in the X-Plane community. The community itself is very helpful and willing to work with people to fix problems. The community includes add-on makers, flyers, developers, and pilots, everyone you can think of. The community has a tendency to eject troublemakers quickly and that keeps the problems down. Overall, all these things factor in for a very good community. Why is this in the review in the first place? Well, let’s put it like this, I want to try to make it very clear what people are getting in to when they get X-Plane, especially because the community is such an important part of X-Plane.

Editing Tool Suite

The editing tool suite consists of 3 things; Planemaker, Airfoil Maker, and World Editor.

Let’s start with Planemaker: Planemaker is a tool to allow you to create your own aircraft with whatever you want on it. This is what is needed to make any aircraft work. You can choose from a myriad of options to customize your aircraft, and it goes by statistics of what the actual properties of the aircraft are rather than by pre-programming limits. This means systems, engine combustion chamber size, engine thrust, thrust vectoring properties, you get the idea. It can be used to model 3d objects, but it is much more worth it to go and learn to use Blender or AC3D and model objects that way with better detail and import them to Planemaker. For painting, if you want to buy a program, go with Photoshop, if you want to get something good for free, I recommend Paint.Net or GIMP. Both are free and open source and very effective at what they do. Paint.Net is more of a paint replacement though with a bunch of extra features such as layers and effects. GIMP is more similar to Photoshop.

Airfoil Maker is used to make the airfoils used to calculate the wing lift of an aircraft. This allows for increased fidelity in flight modeling. A good complement to this program is the program Java Foil.

The Aircraft

The aircraft in X-Plane 9 are a really mixed bag at best. Some such as the Piaggio Avanti and a couple others are very good, some are horrid such as the 777 or the 747 in ether the graphics or flight model or both. The best aircraft come from the community. Groups such as EADT and X-Plane Freeware make very good add-on aircraft. EADT has the x737 which has the most advanced freeware avionics for X-Plane. X-Plane freeware has a 757 and MD-80 in development, and has released a 767. Another good add-on developer is X-Plane Jets, they made an excellent freeware 777, but are starting to move towards payware. Various other community members make good aircraft. There is payware aircraft, but don’t expect PMDG quality, or PMDG price. The add-ons are a lot cheaper, but not as detailed. Avionics has been decent in some add-on aircraft, but they are nowhere as pretty or detailed as FSX aircraft. The nice thing though is that there are many freeware aircraft out there that are at least decent. This does include fixes for substandard out of the box aircraft such as the Cessna 172 and the bell 206. The virtual cockpits are good in some aircraft and crap or non-existent in others. This is due to that most aircraft are donated by the community for inclusion in x-plane, or are from versions as old as version 7, and also most if not all don’t have things such as 3d switches, I should note that the X-Plane freeware aircraft in development, along with the 767 do have all the switches and knobs 3d modeled, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Some 3d pits are a decent

Default Scenery

The actual terrain mesh is beautiful, much better than FSX defaults. The terrain is covered by a default terrain texture that repeats over various areas to give the illusion of flying over areas. That’s nice in some ways, but when I flew out of my nearby airbase, I noticed there was a major problem, why is there forest in an area that is mainly farmland and fields? The default scenery is a lot bigger than FSX, that’s because it’s got a really  good terrain mesh, but even with modern CPUs, nothing can run it full detail that is currently out there. There are roads, highways, and railroads in the scenery too, along with oil platforms and carriers patrolling the coast for carrier flight. I can safely say the world is not empty, there are trees now, a feature new in V9, and also there are buildings in towns. The water is reflective, which in previous versions wasn’t there. The airports really bummed me out though. Only the default airport LOWI has any buildings at it, every other airport such as KLAX and KJFK have nothing but tarmac, a windsock, signs, and lights. You can add additional scenery to fix this at some airports, or convert MSFS scenery to X-Plane using a third party tool, but honestly, that’s a major bummer. If you want photoscenery though, one good option would be to check out the org regarding g2xpl, which is basically tileproxy for X-Plane.

KLAX looks a bit flat. This is the story of every airport except LOWI.

Graphics

The graphics are good. They aren’t as pretty as FSX, but it performs a LOT better. I won’t go in to scenery, as that’s been covered, but for instance carriers have wakes behind them, and there is a workaround for HDR that’s decent. There are a few missing things such as engine start up smoke, rotor wash, you get the idea, but these really aren’t major to someone who cares more about how the aircraft fly compared to how they look. X-Plane’s developers have a philosophy that it’s better to keep support for older computers than force people to upgrade when they release software. This means the system requirements are very low. A computer that couldn’t even boot FSX can run this effectively. That’s not saying X-Plane is a graphical slouch, as they added trees and reflective water, but the general idea is to prevent causing older hardware to not work. Oh and yes you do get NVGs and sun glasses.

Ohhh reflective water!!!

Performance

Astounding, that’s the word to describe performance. What FSX fails to do is X-Planes specialty. X-Plane is capable of very good performance running on VERY old hardware. The only problem I have heard of is the lack of SLI support, which drags performance down on SLI enabled systems. Overall, when you play with decent setting, you get much better frames than you would with comparable graphics in FSX. Also, I want to note that X-Plane has a special trick built in to fix the lag problem, if the frames drop too low, it automatically rolls in fog to help improve FPS. Also I should note the FPS affects the Flight Model, and higher FPS = more accurate Flight Models, as the flight models are computed on the fly and it allocates as much resources as possible to it, but if the FPS is too low, it will adversely affect the FM.

Software Support

It needs to be mentioned that X-Plane is always a work in progress. As of version 9.20 the developers added a lot of new features such as the engine cuttings in negative g dives when a check box isn’t ticked in the editor for that aircraft. There is a reputation of 4 things getting fixed and 2 broken per patch. On the patches, there are usually community betas and release clients released. If you discover a bug you can report it at their site and in some cases Austin, the main programmer behind X-Plane, will reply to you in an e-mail regarding the bug and fixing it, or asking more about it, or asking for a source about a change. The patches are not just bug fixes, but also feature additions. Things that would be held back for the next edition of MSFS or put in an expansion pack are released as free patches for X-Plane. This includes flight model enhancements, new editor options, all sorts of cool stuff.

Failure Modeling

Failure modeling is much better than FSX in X-Plane. Just to give a few examples, X-Plane has bird strikes, wrong fuel being put in the plane, fuel cap left off, fuel and oil leaks, vertigo, micro bursts, water in fuel, fuel tank vent blockage, external power still on, door still open, control lock still in, runway lights and VASI/PAPI light failures, and just about any other system you can think of. X-Plane even features things such as when you over-g your aircraft, or over speed your flaps or landing gear, you have parts rip off your aircraft. My only complaint is how bird strikes and micro bursts are handled. The problem is they are modeled as regular failures, so when they happen, they can’t happen again in that flight unless you reset the failure. That is something that I feel needs to be fixed

 

 

Just some of the ways Murphy can screw your day up…

Environment

The environment has really been improved in X-Plane 9 compared to v8, and in some respects is BETTER than FSX. What is better you ask? Well the main thing is the clouds, which look a lot more realistic than stock FSX, now compared to some of the FSX add-ons, they don’t stack up, but out of the box they look much better. Some people complain that X-Plane is sunny all the time, that is incorrect, you just have to set it to ether download METARs off the net, or set it to a various weather setting in the weather options tab. The one big issue I have with the weather system is that the whole world is ether one weather setting or another. You don’t have one weather type in one area and a different in another area at the same time. I also have a few small issues, for instance why aren’t there fronts and such in X-Plane. The biggest improvement in X-Plane 9 over V8 though is the addition of reflective water. This actually feels a bit more realistic, however it is all one type, there is no difference between say Jamaica and New Jersey in water color. I should also note this, unlike FSX, X-Plane actually models wet runways, and the effects they have on your aircraft on the ground, along with if the weather is cold enough, that water on the ground turns to ice. Now this brings me to my absolute biggest beef with X-Plane’s environment, there is only one season modeled, summer, there is no spring, fall, or winter modeled. This NEEDS to change for it to be better than FSX in that respect. Also in the desert, in X-Plane, you will see cacti rather than in FSX where there are only trees and bushes. Also I should note you can have raindrops on the windshield, but they are just a static animation and can’t be affected by windshield wipers, or speed.

Ohh fluffy!	Wet runways, oh joy!

Hardware Support

X-Plane supports various specialized hardware along with various normal hardware. Just to give you an idea of what it supports, this goes from things such as Goflight modules, PFC hardware, Joysticks, Pedals, TrackIR, 3d Glasses, Throttle quadrants, Yokes, force feedback seats, RC transmitter converters, all sorts of stuff. The one main problem I have read about (I can’t test because I don’t have the hardware) is that SLI isn’t supported at all. This sounds like not a big deal, but when you don’t program with SLI in mind, it can actually slow down performance on SLI systems compared to non SLI systems. Speaking as a programmer now, this is because of SLI requiring special coding for it to work properly, if you want to read more, and aren’t afraid of developer speak, here’s a good start: SLI Best Practices. Crossfire to my knowledge doesn’t require any special programming, but since SLI does, it can get a bit screwy if you don’t make sure the code is designed for SLI. As far as hardware goes besides that, it is noted that it currently doesn’t support Matrox triplehead2go. This is mainly because of coding constraints in the way it is coded. This is something that may or may not be changed later on in a patch. There are plugins available from the community that add hardware support as well, but that isn’t really needed for the review, as I’m reviewing as much out of the box as possible.

Never fly alone

You can share the skies in 4 ways in X-Plane. First is AI air traffic, which can be anything from your aircraft library. This can be up to 19 aircraft. The problem with AI aircraft is they don’t take off or land, this was there in version 7, but you saw stuff like the space shuttle landing at grass strips, so it has been removed, and apparently isn’t a high enough priority to fix. Next is air combat, which I will go over later. Following that is situations, which involve things such as refueling, that also comes later. Finally is Multiplayer, which is what I really wanted to talk about. The default multiplayer is a connect to IP method. There is no game browser like in FSX, which kind of sucks. Me and one of my buddies tried to get it working, but we had a hard time doing it. In the connect to IP method, there is a option to share aircraft and views with other computers, don’t let this fool you, you can sit in the co-pilot’s seat in some aircraft, but you can’t share any kind of control, you are just a passenger. In order to get any sort of online working, you need to ether use IVAP or Squalkbox, which you can use to connect to 3 main servers, VATSIM, IVAO, or the X-Plane.org server. The first two are well known, but the org server is more for screwing around. This is all done though plug-ins though, and I really wish there was a server browser rather than the default connect via IP menu.

An interesting side note about flight modeling

I might as well get this off my chest right now. X-Plane has a neat little trick about flight modeling which is fun for anyone who wants to turn their computer in to a wind tunnel. You have a few options to output the flight modeling visually on to your monitor or a 2^nd monitor. These include drawing airflow lines on the aircraft. This also includes putting numbers on the screen that represent the flight modeling statistics. These things effectively turn X-Plane in to a virtual wind tunnel.

The lines, don’t cross them or you violate the laws of physics.	This aircraft is only being held up by ground effect	An Avanti gliding in for a water ditch

The most interesting place to fly of them all

It wouldn’t be a true X-Plane review if I didn’t mention the 2^nd world you can fly on in X-Plane, Mars. You read that correctly, you can fly on Mars in X-Plane. Before you get your panties in a bunch about how unrealistic it is to fly a 777 on Mars, if you try that you won’t get off the ground unless you go off a cliff. Instead there are specially designed aircraft for use on mars that come with X-Plane. On a side note if you try to use those aircraft on Earth, you will over g easily, and just by throttling up you will rip it apart. A few quirks come up on mars though, for instance seagulls on mars. This has become a bit of a running gag in the community though about how there really is life on Mars. This is one of those glitches that have taken on a life of its own. You should know that flying on Mars and Earth are very different, as on earth you can change directions just like that, and on Mars, you have to plan out your flight path a few miles ahead. While Mars isn’t quite as lively as earth, it still is fun as heck to fly there.

I hope that’s just dust….	Airborne on MARS!!!

Fox 3!!!

There is one major thing I have to point out; there is a rudimentary combat system in place in X-Plane. You can set up various AI aircraft on up to 4 teams and have them fight it out dog fighting. This includes firing missiles, which do damage, or guns, or dropping bombs, all sorts of weapons can be made in X-Plane, even nukes. Why this part is entitled Fox 3 you ask? Well Fox 3 is the US Military codeword for when launching an AIM-120 Slammer or AMRAAM Air to Air Missile. Fox 1 is the AIM 7 Sparrow, and Fox 2 is the AIM 9 Sidewinder. I could go a long time on writing about various terms the US Military has for air combat, but I’ll save that for a review of a combat flight sim.

DIE BANDIT!!!	MISSILE AWAY!!!	Yippe-ki-yay

A sticky situation…

FSX has its missions, X-Plane has situations. These range from refueling from a tanker, to dumping fire retardant on fires, to landing on a carrier, to de-orbiting and landing the shuttle at Edwards AFB. You can also create and save your own situations if you feel like it.

Refueling isn’t a cakewalk!

Now I regret never fully grasping how to hook up to a tanker	Landing on a carrier isn’t easy either

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X-Plane 9

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