Anyone using X-Plane 9.0?

[MALTBY D]

http://x-plane.com/
It looks quite good. What do you think of it?
I'm wondering if it's going to be the future of Flight Sim.

Reason I ask is that some day soon I'm bound to get fed up flying in the past with FS2004.
Since that is going to mean starting from scratch in FSX anyhow, it's not that scary a thought to switch over.
Maybe I'll have both when the time comes?

DM

[TSR2]

Some of that looks very interesting DM. Downloading Demo now. Doest really illude to whats available for it though...

[DanKH]

Must admit, that some of it looks not half bad, other areas .. Alp for instance look quite "peaky" ... Autogen/AI etc.?

Lets hear about the demo.

But certainly look as it has potential.... any SDK's?

Is development achievable? ...

[TSR2]

The other thing I notice is that version 9 DVD at $79 is a beta!!!!

[SkippyBing]

X-Plane is effectively a continual beta, updates are released every few months improving stuff and adding features people have asked for. The DVD unlocks that version of X-Plane, so the X-Plane 9 DVD will unlock all versions of X-Plane 9.0 thru 9.99 depending on when Austin gets bored of the engine and upgrades to version 10. The Demo includes all the features but the joystick is only enabled for about the first 5 minutes, and you don't get much scenery as that takes up several DVDs. I think the latest versions use an incremental upgrade system so rather than downloading each versions demo to get the new features a download just updates the files that have changed.
X-Plane had autogen scenery and traffic before Flight Sim, as for an SDK, it comes with everything you need to make add on aircraft etc. and then calculates their performance from the shape of the objects etc. certainly a different approach to FS. I think there are similar tools for scenery included but I never really played with them. I think I had X-Plane 7, can't remember if I upgraded to 8 or not, certainly graphically it used to be inferior to FS with better flight dynamics. The AI is nowhere near as comprehensive as FS, or at least it wasn't when I was using it.

[TSR2]

Thanks for that Skip. Do you know if version 8.* modles will only work on the 8.* engine, or is it backward compatible?

[MALTBY D]

Oh dear, at this rate it's not going to be the future of FS for me.
I downloaded the demo installer, but when I run it, it only ever displays a tangle of colours.

Tried a few times. Anyone know what the problem may be?
I've got the latest Nvidia drivers. Regular ones, not been messed with.

DM

[petermcleland]

Well that is a very interesting read. Austin has obviously been very busy over the years. I'm tempted to look at it but frightened of the steep learning curve

[TSR2]

OK, well...... It may be the most acurate FD out there, and maybe its because its been created by Mac geeks, and given that it hasn't had millions of dollers from the biggest software house in the world, it is quite light, but... if I were doing a demo for something, I'd have at least one aircraft that would be pretty good... not even great, but pretty good.

Its like flying really bad AI. The flying part may be very acurate, but the aircraft look awful.

[Garry Russell]

Indeed Ben

I've looked into it and tried the demo.

Superb sim no stutters but FS98/2000 quality add ons.

Garry