Just looking at the xplane sdk it seems that you cannot control ai aircraft, i.e. create/destroy them, give them flight plans.

Mmm... I think you can, not sure to what extent:http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/AircraftMarco

It's the ai you cannot control. It looks like you can create an aircfraft in the sky but it is dumb and doesnt move, it's up to you to move it frame by frame and even then you can only do 7 according to this. So in essence you would then need to create you own simple flight model. fsx is nice that you can create a plane and tell it what it is doing then leave it alone. Leter you may remove it from the sim when its outside visible or radar range of your aircraft and create another nearer. All with a few lines of codes. Re-reading, you can do more than 7 but it then gets more complex.

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but are suburban streets as wide as 3 to 4 lane expressways and relatively, homes look way oversized !e.g.

Nope... not finding it.

Chapter 8 I beleve.

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but are suburban streets as wide as 3 to 4 lane expressways and relatively, homes look way oversized !e.g.

That was one ugly take off.

Turner, I have been browsing the manual and I can't find any way to do what you want. The closest thing in chapter 8 is setting ai to be in your 'team' so they will follow you about. Not exactly what you were after. Leen says it can all be done but I dont see it documented either.

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but are suburban streets as wide as 3 to 4 lane expressways and relatively, homes look way oversized !e.g.

That flight gives me the impression you are flying an RC plane. Just did not look/feel right to me.Bob

That flight gives me the impression you are flying an RC plane. Just did not look/feel right to me.Bob

really ...

That flight gives me the impression you are flying an RC plane. Just did not look/feel right to me.

Nope.............that's realism. I heard the FSX is like flying "bricks" in comparison....

X-Plane default C172 handling may not be accurate, but nor it is FSX default C172.Look at the real roll rate of a C172 (00:32):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLtkW9meHKk

Try doing that on FSX. You'll take much more to pass 90 degrees roll... Wouldn't you call FSX C172 a brick then? Marco

Most of what I saw was pretty much relate-able to high-aoa with too much control input at speeds barely supporting flight. Anyone who's done slow flight at 2-3kts above stall knows that abrupt changes on the controls makes some really adrenaline-driven recoveries. It's not completely unrealistic, but the pilot needs to learn basics about stall and general aerodynamics of airfoils. Maybe that will assist them with knowing why they were barely above crashing most of the time.At 50 kts (15 knots below minimum rotation/stall speed) the pilot of the video decides to rotate and can't get it to lift off, so he pulls back much harder to yank it into the air. Some bernoulli lift is traded for direct newton lift and is apparently just enough, but can't sustain, so the plane resettles. Eventually getting airborne. Most of the bad piloting is the direct result of the quick transition from bernoulli to newton-type lift and the interactions of airflow with the various surfaces of the aircraft. Not 100% real, but not terribly unrealistic either.

After playing with rendering options, I'm getting good results. X-plane 10 needs HDR on to really appreciate it. If your card can handle it, turn it on, but be sure to turn of anti-aliasing (as it is done by HDR). I have a GTX260 card and I found the best result was to use NVidia Inspector to over-ride game anti-aliasing, set it in the Nvidia and save it as an X-plane profile. For 200 cards, this seems to be the only way to AA with HDR to work correctly.Some things to try:Shadows on plane only - worth turning on - minimal FPS hit - the sun sliding across your 3D panel and wing shadows really make it more realistic (there are other dynamic shadow options for other scenery too)Have a look at your jet engines from outside - the heat effect is quite convincing as is the wing flexFly at night to really appreciate the night lighting and the star field

Fly at night to really appreciate the night lighting and the star field

Noooooo, not the stars, they are the worst graphical effect I have seen in the sim so far.