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Chapter 2
Quick Start Guide
This chapter is designed to allow a first-time X-Plane user to get the simulator up and running in
as short a time as possible. The goal is to be in the air and flying within ten minutes of completing
the installation while still learning the essentials of the simulator.
This chapter will gloss over a great deal of background information, and configuration of many
non-essential options will be skipped entirely. It assumes that the computer X-Plane is being installed
on is capable of running the simulator with its default rendering options. Note that the
minimum system requirements to run X-Plane are a 2 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a DirectX
9-capable video card with 128 MB of on-board, dedicated video RAM (VRAM). However,
the recommended specifications are a 3 GHz multi-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a DirectX
10-capable (DirectX 11 preferred) video card with 1 GB of on-board, dedicated VRAM. X-Plane
will take advantage of as many cores or distinct processors as you can afford. Having 16 cores split
among 4 CPUs is not required by any means, but Version 10 would be able to use every one. No
more than 4 GB of RAM is necessary, but the more VRAM you have, the better—X-Plane 10 can
easily use 1.5 GB of VRAM at the maximum settings.
Where the process differs between installing on Windows and Mac OS X, the differences have
been noted.
After getting off the ground initially, you may want to continue reading the full manual, or
simply keep it for reference. If you have any issues while following this guide, check the rest of
the manual—the problem is very likely addressed there, and you’ll save time for both yourself and
customer support.
Detailed information on installing and configuring X-Plane can be found in Chapters 3 and 4.
Detailed information on joystick configuration can be found in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 contains
more information on setting up and flying the aircraft.
2.1 Installing X-Plane
Before installing, we recommend uninstalling any old or demo versions of X-Plane. You can do this
by simply dragging the old X-Plane folders to your Recycle Bin (called Trash in Mac OS X).
1. Insert the first X-Plane DVD into your DVD-ROM drive and wait for it to spin up.
If you are using the earliest set of X-Plane 10 discs (printed around November 2011), download
the updated X-Plane installer from our web site. Launch that installer rather than the one
on your installation DVDs, then skip to step 3.
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