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Guest GrantM

Thinking of switching to the Mac X OS...any ideas?

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I am on the verge of switching from the Windows world to the Mac OS world. There are several reason why but I won't go into that here. I am looking for info from those of you who use flight sim products on the Mac. Does it work well? What are the drawbacks? Can you use any of the great add-ons available? How about hardware peripherals for flight sims? Also, are there any fps issues as in the Windows world? What type of Mac OS are you using for flight simming?...etc., etc.Thanks,

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You probably do better to ask this question on the X-Plane or FLY! forum where there is MAC support for the flight-sim.Regards.Ernie.


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Guest CharlesH

Hi:I have a G-4 Dual 833 system with a 17inch digital monitor, which I purchased about 2 months ago. Fly 2 will not work in OSX you have to run it in OS 9.22. It works fine in this program. I think it works better than in a standard PC. Reason Fly 2 does not work in OSX has do with joysticks. Joysticks don't work at least most don't work in this evniornment. Hopefully, Apple will fix this so it can run in this platform. I would recommend you get Virtual PC for MAC, for Windows either 98 or XP. I have the XP version, and you can run Flight Simmulator 2002 in this. There are some sound problems and some graphic problems, but Flight Simmulator will run. Its quite nice. X-Plane does work in the MAC, I would also purchase Fly 2 for MAC. You can get it from Apple or perhaps other places also. There is a update available. If you have any questions, let me know. Do get Virtual PC, is a good investment if you want to run other PC products in you MAC.Charles char121h@pacbell.net

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Guest eko

On the Mac OSX side of the world, there is only one choice. X-Plane.It is native on OSX, and runs like a dream (Open GL). The amount of add-ons compared to MSFS is nowhere near as large, but many consider X-Plane to be one of the finest simulators available, and very realistic.

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Guest JonP01

I'm in a similar situation in that I no longer wish to use MS software for much longer and have been looking at alternatives. I had been thinking of Linux but was worried about my flight simming. After I tried x-plane and saw how well it ran, that put Mac right up there into contention. As has been pointed out, x-plane is native to Mac and ported to Windows, and it already runs great in Windows using OGL. After trying it you will laugh at how much time you spent with MSFS reading / talking / worrying / tweaking frame rates. I'm thinking I might end up running a Mac for x-plane and a Linux PC for office / internet stuff. Certainly the www.x-plane.org forums are full of Mac users if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it all.

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Guest Coneman

Hmmmm, I went the other direction. After years of using a Mac, I took the plunge and bought a PC, mostly for flight simming. I just got fed up with the lack of software and the extortion for hardware. I realize this is subjective, but started out on X-Plane on the Mac and am running FS2002 on the PC. Won't go back.Cheers,Todd

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I haven't heard anything in an awful long time but Macsoft was supposed to be porting MSFS2K2 to the Mac OS but It may not happen til MSFS2K4 comes out. :-)RegardsPaul:-cool


Paul Gollnick

Manager Customer/Technical Support

Precision Manuals Development Group

www.precisionmanuals.com

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Guest JonP01

My feeling is that as time goes by more and more options will open up for PC users who would like an alternative to the ubiquitous Windows + MSFS platform. Nothing ever seems to last very long in the IT world. Witness companies like 3dfx that came, saw, conquered and perished. I think that there will be a continued, subtle but solid push to make alternative platforms more freely available and that will only encourage developers to port their products to these alternate platforms or indeed develop for them natively. But it all boils down to anyone being able to walk into any PC store in the world, and the salesman says to him or her: "and what operating system would you like with that?". I've already seen influential trends that MS is starting to lose favour with every man and his dog. Witness the latest utterings from Telstra (arguably Microsoft's largest Australian business customer) about moving to a Linux / Star Office platform.

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Guest

I find the claims that Macs have better graphics and performance are just myths. They are more expensive and extremely limited in software options.Besides, they just seem effeminate and toylike compared to PCs. :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lolOk...JK........................................maybe. :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lol :-lol

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Guest Tim13

I was watching Tech TV, and they said that Apple has a group of engineers that are rumored to be working on getting OSX up and running on an Intel P4 PC system. Apparently, it is running quite stable as OSX.2 and the problems that they are running into are peripheral hardware compatibility.Supposedly they are doing this because Motorola who makes their CPU chips hasn't agreed to continue producing them, and (according to TTV) the fastest G4 chip is a little over 1 GHz compared to the PC which is about to hit 3 GHz. The thinking is that Apple could very well become like Microsoft and primarily be an OS producer while dabbling in small hardware items like the Ipod. If this were to happen, then you very well could have the choice of ordering a Dell or Compaq and having to choose Windows XP or Mac OSX.Tim13

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Guest

Interesting. A dual boot Win/Mac system would be great, especially if there was some cross-platform software application compatability.

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Well, thanks to all of you for your kind thoughts and helpful insight. I think I will still keep a Windows PC up and running while I explore the Mac OS world. I'm just a little of the constant changes in the Windows world. I'm a Senior Network Engineer working on my Win2k MCSE. I support the full Microsoft line of products for my company and have grown tired of being forced by Mircosoft to keep up the constant upgrade battle with all of their products. Each support pack, service pack, patch and hotfix brings new problems and challenges. The Mac OS seems to be more stable with less updating and patching. Anyway, I'll give it a try for a while to see if the grass is any greener on the other side.Thanks again for the excellent information.

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Guest Astrojet 112

>Hmmmm, I went the other direction. After years of using a >Mac, I took the plunge and bought a PC, mostly for flight >simming. I just got fed up with the lack of software and the >extortion for hardware. I realize this is subjective, but >started out on X-Plane on the Mac and am running FS2002 on >the PC. Won't go back. >>Cheers, >Todd Ditto !

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Guest eko

I own two Macs, one PC, and one Linux box. I bought the PC for gaming. Period. There is no question that if you want to play the latest and greatest games, a PC is the way to go.The Linux box is a development toy. Basically. To learn about it, and to familiarize myself with the way stuff works.One of my Macs runs my home recording studio. This Mac is almost 4 years old (been running overclocked for over 2 years) and still runs like a champ, with more than acceptable performance for what I ask it to do. It is running an older system 8.6, which has been the most rock solid release for music Apple has ever done. IMHO.My laptop is running dual boot OS9 and OSX (Jaguar). To say that Jaguar is stable is an understatement. I have never (not even Linux), been priviledged enough to run an operating system that just REFUSES to crash and give me problems. It's quite unbelievable.With a little know-how about cross-platform issues and how to deal with them, I can incorporate an OSX machine into just about any Windows environment with no fuss.Because of my gaming bent, I'm still using Windows 98SE on my PC. It's not the most stable beast in the world, but I have it finely tuned and it gets the job done. I have zero conflicts with any games I install. (Not true of Windows XP, I just couldn't get my hardware to play nice with it.) These are the sort of things I never have to worry about with my Mac.I don't think I could give up my PC at this point, and I certainly know I would never give up my Macs! :-) I'm not tied down to one platform, more than anything else because I want to know how everything works, on every popular operating system. If you have the means, I would definately recommend becoming a multi-platform user.

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>I support the full Microsoft line of products for my company and have grown tired of being forced by Mircosoft to keep up the constant upgrade battle with all of their products. Each support pack, service pack, patch and hotfix brings new problems and challenges.

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