The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 9 out of 10]
- Developer: Laminar Research / [Product Page]
- Price: $49.99 (thru September)
X-Plane has been around for quite a while, but I think I last looked at it at version 1.0 or so, and it's now reached version 7.0. What started as basically an instrument flight rules (IFR) only simulator has progressed into a very nice all-around simulator. The program's features are too numerous to go into here, but they include excellent physics for everything from gliders to helicopters to commercial aircraft to the space shuttle, amazing weather, 18,000+ real-world airports, and a slew of user-controllable variables.
One other feature is the ability to record any flight (or segment thereof) by clicking control-space at any time. I used this feature to make a short QuickTime movie showing a takeoff roll and climb out from LaGuardia, followed by an approach and landing at John F. Kennedy (in near-zero visibility, led by the auto-pilot). The movie runs 4.6mb, and you'll need QuickTime 6 to view it -- download it here. One technical side-note ... X-Plane doesn't capture audio, so I used Ambrosia's excellent freeware utility WireTap for that task, and then finished the project in iMovie.
One final cool feature of X-Plane is its openness for modification. There are a world of third-party add-ons available in the way of scenery, planes, sounds, and more -- start on the X-Plane links and resources page, and go from there ... and make sure you check out the X-Plane secret page :).

