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X-Plane is the world's most comprehensive, powerful flight simulator, and has the most realistic flight model available for personal computers.
Welcome to the world of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier.
X-Plane comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie. X-Plane comes with about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more are freely downloadable from the internet.
X-Plane scenery is almost world-wide, with scenery for the entire United States, Hawaii, Alaska, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan on the CD, and more scenery downloadable from www.X-Plane.com. You can land at any of over 18,000 airports, as well as test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads on building tops, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs.
Here are some key features of "X Plane Demo Patch":
· NMEA string output: drive any (real) moving map or other piece of hardware or software from X-Plane, where X-Plane acts like a (real) GPS to that device. (currently Windows-version only)
· New joystick button for straight ahead view when in 3d cockpit view.
· Special Controls in Plane-Maker:
· Flaps with pitch and roll can now be customized to apply to either flaps 1 or 2 or both.
· As well, they can be set to only phase in above 50% control deflection if you like.
· In the "Other Aircraft" screen, you can enter the heading, altitude, and speed ratio for the OTHER AIRCRAFT
· for the FORMATION FLYING option in the LOCATION menu.
· Check out the Special Controls screen in Plane-Maker...
· just like you can have the slats automatically deploy near the stall,
· now you can have the FLAPS do the same!
· Custom afterburner texture now possible per aircraft... see the example plane... the filename
· is simply airplane_name_flame.png. Do any afterburner or rocket textures you like for any plane!
· Glider winches are 950 meters, as per reality.
· Glider winches disconnect if the cable angle ever gets too steep, as in reality.
· Glider winches automatically disconnect if the line forces get way too high.
· New RMI type: ADF-1 VOR-2. This is a useful addition to many simple panels... you get an ADF and second VOR
· in one instrument... nice to complement an HSI that shows VOR-1 complete with glideslope. Now, of course,
· this whole "position-fix/vor radial" thing is a ridiculous old circus-stunt the from medieval days... any plane
· should just be using GPS with moving maps and ILS in this day and age, but if you want old-school, here it is!
· The 8 and 0 looked similar on the FMS in earlier versions...
· close enough that someone thought that 87.8 miles was 7.8 miles!
· He reported the bug as an error in the FMS, saying
· that the FMS gave too low a readout... CLASSIC mis-direction by a computer!!!
· In fact, it was only the FONT that was confusing him... so the fonts have now been improved
What's New in This Release:
· The total-energy variometer is now based on INDICATED airspeed, not true groundspeed.
· this is the way real total-energy varios work.
· The visual flight model ('/' key a few times to see it in different levels)
· now shows the PROPELLER forces per element... it's cool to see the varying lift distributions
· on helicopters and VTOLS when they are moving forwards rapidly, creating all sorts of strange
· asymmetric effects!
· Control systems with artificial stability can "flutter" at low frame-rates.
· While this can never be totally avoided (you need some speed to run a flight-control computer!)
· the worst-case flutter condition has been considerably reduced, improving low-frame-rate artificial stability,
· of course with no detriment to the high-frame-rate cases.
· New joystick buttons options: speedbrakes retract 1 notch, speedbrakes extend one notch...
· as well, if you hit the retract button when the brakes are already retracted, the brakes go the "auto-deploy" mode.
· Set the initial THROTTLE now in the map view when placing aircraft by clicking on the various maps. Kind of nice.
· Elec system: The battery voltage indicators now indicate the bus voltage, as in the real airplane...
· Turning on the generators will show a higher voltage if the generators are able to turn out more voltage than the battery...
· this is dependant on whether the generators are on, the engine they are connected to is turning fast enough, and they have not broken!
· Mods to the GPS NMEA output should allow altitude display on more receivers.
Requirements:
· Windows CPU Pentium 1ghz+
· Macintosh CPU PowerMac 800+
· RAM 512 meg
· Disk Space 8 gig
· CD-ROM any any
· 3-D CARD OpenGL
· RAM 16 meg
· Monitor 1024x768+
· Joystick/Yoke USB
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