Description
X-Plane is a flight simulator using the blade element theory. It runs on several computer platforms. It provides a real time simulation of flight using actual weather info, aircraft systems performance and failures, accurate topographical data and real world navaids (over 25,600) and airports (over 21,000). X-Plane is bundled with tools to design and modify aircraft, navaids and scenery. Also, various aircraft models have been included such as the Boeing 747, Piper Malibu, F-22 Raptor, Cessna 172, Bell 206, X-15, and Space Shuttle to name a few.
This version differs from
the previous in the following major areas:
- Higher frames per second.
- Higher resolution computer generated scenery based on Shuttle SRTM data: Global-Scenery - comes on 7 DVDs worth 60GB of data.
- 3D cockpits with same detail and resolution as 2D cockpits.
- New Aircraft format allowing for more wings, flaps, bodies and gear.
- Version 8.40 for Mac is a Universal Binary and runs natively on Intel Macintoshes.
X-Plane uses the so called blade element theory (19th century) to calculate aircraft behaviour. In essence this theory regards each surface as an airfoil and calculates the forces acting upon to derive its velocity. Hence the way the aircraft handles and behaves is governed by its shape, weight, centre of gravity (CG), drag and thrust. Other flight simulators have chosen to use tables for aircraft performance. One benefit of that approach is that less powerful computers can perform the simulation. By using different factors for density, gravity, X-Plane will allow for flights in a different atmosphere. An included example is Mars.
Plug-Ins enhance this simulator further by adding for instance realtime online flying, flight planning and control. X-Plane can output data which can be fed to such as motion platforms, displays, navigation systems or home-built cockpits. It can also receive data from external sources such as RC-flight controls, Garmin GPS system, or your own flight model. Different angles of view can be output to up to 5 individual monitors (or streamed over the LAN/Internet).
X-Plane's flight model and supplied design tools are used in visualisation, aircraft model testing and feasibility studies for real life aircraft. A library of standard NACA airfoils has been included. There are a number of companies that use X-Plane, such as NASA, CarterCopter (helicopter), and Terrafugia (Transition - street legal aircraft). While other companies such as C74 offer design services for aircraft builders and DARPA. People from all walks of life (engineers, aviation enthusiasts, pilots, lawyers) have offered their design to major registries such as x-plane.org, and avsim.com. The X-Plane aircraft and scenery collections total over 1,500 submissions and updates.
Some of these X-Plane versions have been certified by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for authorised flight instruction such as Flight Level Aviation and Simtrain. These implementation can be equipped with motion platforms which are controlled by X-Plane.
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This entry was contributed by
Cyborg (605)
