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Chapter 5
Flight in X-Plane
X-Plane, of course, is a flight simulator. A typical flight consists of some, if not all, of the following
steps:
• choosing an aircraft,
• going to a location (either an airport’s runway, a location some distance out from an airport
in order to make an approach to the airport, or a random location),
• setting the weather and time of day, and
• actually flying.
In addition, you might take advantage of a number of features of the simulator either before or
during a flight. These include using instruments in the aircraft’s panel, switching your view of the
aircraft, visualizing your flight (either on a 2-D map or in 3-D), and creating files to share your
flight with others.
5.1 Setting Up a Quick Flight
As of X-Plane 10.10, the first thing you see when you launch X-Plane (unless you disable it) is the
Quick Flight screen, as seen in Figure 5.1. This screen combines miniature versions of the dialogs
which are used to open aircraft, choose an airport, and set up the weather.
Choose an airport from which to take off by using the upper-left box in this window. You can
either type the airport’s name or identifier in the text box to search for it, or scroll through the
full list. Click on an airport to select it.
To the right of the airport selection is a box displaying your X-Plane directory. This is used, in
combination with the “cover flow”-like view in the bottom left of the window, to select an aircraft.
By selecting the X-Plane 10 folder, or the Aircraft folder, you will be able to scroll through all the
aircraft you have installed. Clicking on a more specific folder will expand it, and the cover flow
view will show you only the aircraft in that folder. The frontmost aircraft in the cover flow is the
one which is selected.
Set the time of day and weather using the rightmost boxes. Click on one of the rectangular panels
to select the time of day and weather conditions shown in that panel. By checking the always track
real date and time box will make the time in the simulator match your computer’s time. Checking
the use real weather will cause X-Plane to occasionally download the real-world weather in your
aircraft’s location.
Finally, when you’ve finished setting up the flight, press the Fly with these options button.
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