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Chapter 1
About X-Plane
1.1 Overview
X-Plane is the world’s most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator for personal computers,
and it offers the most realistic flight model available.
X-Plane is not a game, but an engineering tool that can be used to predict the flying qualities
of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft with incredible accuracy.
Because X-Plane predicts the performance and handling of almost any aircraft, it is a great
tool for pilots to keep up their currency in a simulator that flies like the real plane, for engineers
to predict how a new airplane will fly, and for aviation enthusiasts to explore the world of aircraft
flight dynamics.
Welcome to the world of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders,
helicopters and VTOLs. X-Plane contains subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, allowing users
to predict the flight characteristics of the slowest aircraft or the fastest. X-Plane also includes more
than 30 aircraft in the default installation, spanning the aviation industry and its history. Aircraft
included range from the Bell 206 JetRanger and Cessna 172 to the Space Shuttle and the B-2
Bomber. Additionally, some 2,000 additional aircraft models can be downloaded from the Internet
(X-Plane.org, the X-Plane.com Links page, and Google are good places to start looking), many of
which are completely free. If those aren’t enough, users can design their own airplanes and test-fly
them!
The full X-Plane scenery package covers the Earth in stunning resolution from 74 ◦ north to
60 ◦ south latitude. Users can land at any of over 33,000 airports or test their mettle on aircraft
carriers, oil rigs, frigates (which pitch and roll with the waves), or helipads atop buildings. They can
also realistically model the flight of remote-controlled model aircraft, perform an air-launch in an
X-15 or Space Ship One from the mother ship, fly re-entries into Earth’s atmosphere in the Space
Shuttle, fly with friends over the Internet or a LAN, drop water on forest fires, or shoot approaches
to aircraft carriers at night in stormy weather and rough water conditions in a damaged F-4. The
situations that can be simulated are unbelievably diverse!
Weather in X-Plane is variable from clear skies and high visibility to thunderstorms with controllable
wind, wind shear, turbulence, and micro bursts. Rain, snow, and clouds are available for
an instrument flying challenge, and thermals are available for the gliders. Actual weather conditions
can be downloaded from the Internet, allowing users to fly in the weather that really exists at their
current location!
X-Plane has detailed failure modeling, with multitudes of systems that can either be failed
manually at an instructor’s command, or randomly when users least expect it! Users can fail
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