X-Plane 9 and Mk IX Spitfire

[SoundmanJohn]

Not sure if any of you are into flight sims, but there's a very nice low-cost package called X-Plane that runs on PCs, Macs and Linux and costs about £40. What makes this rather attractive at the moment is that a very nice & talented chap called Heinz Dziurowitz has recently released a very detailed Mk IX Spitfire and another very nice & talented chap called Will is busy producing various paint schemes, one of which might well turn out to be for ML407. The Spitfire package costs about £10

You need a fast computer, a decent graphics card, a joystick controller and a certain amount of patience and computer skills to use X-Plane and you will need Version 9 if you want to fly the Spitfire.

X-Plane isn't an arcade game, but is a very accurate simulator which, in the advanced (and very expensive) version, gets used a lot in proper flight simulators for training pilots. I've just started trying out the older version and succeeded in flying a B17 from Duxford to Lakenheath and landing very nearly on the runway!

This could be a very good way to while away the long winter evenings.

Regards,

John

Forgot to add the link! http://www.x-plane.com for the program and http://store01.prostores.com/servlet/x-planestore/Detail?no=137 for the Spitfire.

[rrmerlin]

Hi John, checked out those websites and they look very promising.  There appears to be a 50% off sale at this time for the X-9 package and the Mk IX add-on plus warbirds was also reasonable.  I will definitely have to update my processor from 1.7 to 2.0 gig or higher as the program is very speed intensive.  Looks extremely realistic.  I could actually identify some of the locations.  Thanks for the tip.
David

[SoundmanJohn]

Hello David,

yes, the whole thing is pretty good, but quite demanding of resources. I bought the warbirds package which I'm running on the previous version and it's great fun, although I've yet to discover how to get the P-51 to take off in a straight line! Once up in the air, things improve a lot and I can do wing-overs with the best of them! I bought the South East England scenery pack as well, which does rather slow things down a bit in high resolution mode (and doesn't include Bentwaters, but does have Duxford, Old Warden, Andrewsfield and assorted other ML407 haunts) and now I think I need a much more powerful computer and a high-end graphics card.

Hooked again!

John

PS - if you want the ultimate in flight-sim controls, these guys seem to have something interesting on the way, although it's been 'on the way' for a couple of years now!

http://www.simcontrol.co.uk/offboard.htm

[SoundmanJohn]

And here's the latest paint job for the Mk IX!

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=5823

Regards,

John

[SoundmanJohn]

Oh dear - the joystick arrived today (still waiting for V9, so no ML407 yet) and I've spent most of the day getting the hang of the program and the planes. There's a huge range of free planes to choose from and I've just been 'flying' a Harvard T6 in a thunderstorm. Took off from Duxford and headed for Audley End, but got horribly lost and ended up landing(ish) at Stansted. At least I'm getting down in one piece 75% of the time, even if it is in totally the wrong place. The joystick has yaw control that's activated by twisting the joystick, but now I have a yen for a pair of pedals for rudder control. Even on this simulator, I'm astonished at how bl**dy difficult it is to get these machines off the ground and then fly them in a way that actually makes sense, rather than just floundering around all over the place, which is what I'm doing at the moment.

Time to start seriously studying this flying lark and stop joyriding.

Bye for now,

John

[XH668]

Hi

Im very tempted by this

Ive looked and read but i cant find out where to buy this from?


Can anyone help

[SoundmanJohn]

If you're in the UK, you can get it from Amazon, or you can order direct from the USA from the main web-site. This company sell photo-realistic scenery for the UK, but you really will need a first class graphics card and a speedy machine to take advantage of it.

http://www.circle-software.co.uk/php/html/index.php

Regards,

John

[SoundmanJohn]

Version 9 arrived this morning, along with a huge world scenery pack! 6 DVDs in all, needing 70 GigaBytes of HD space, now installed and running, with ML407 as the first aircraft to take to the skies. I know it's not real, but it's as close as I'm ever likely to get.

Coming from Dublin to Gatwick yesterday, our Aer Lingus Airbus 320 had to do a last minute go-around as there was another plane stuck on the runway, so I'm going to have a go at that now, just for fun!

Regards,

John