 X-Plane 8.0 (DVD-ROM) Deluxe
Author Company: Graphsim Entertainment
Category: 
X-Plane 8.0 (DVD-ROM) Deluxe 1 stars (X-PLANE) - Wow what a disappointment ...
File Size: 33.92 kB
OS: Windows 98 / NT / 2000 / ME / XP / VISTA
License: DVD-ROM - Time Limit, free to try, 39.99 to buy.
Software Developed by Graphsim Entertainment
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Description :
X-Plane 8.0 (DVD-ROM) - 1 stars (X-PLANE) - Wow what a disappointmen
X-Plane 8.0 (DVD-ROM) review:1 stars (X-PLANE) - Wow what a disappointment. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! If want a game that is not realistic this is the game for you. Every aspect of this game is no where near what happens in the real world. I'm not saying that any other simulator will be 100% realistic, but Flight Simulator is the closest thing. Like I said it is not like real life, but it is 98% acurate. The only 2% that's not realistic is that you can't feel the G-forces. If you wnat to waste thirty dollars buy X-plane. If you want to learn how to fly in the most realistic experience go with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 and/or 2004.5 stars (Move over Microsoft, or should I say Microsoft who?) - (6/18/05)
MS Flight Simulator, and most other consumer sims, use static quantitative flight models that essentially are a series of numerical quantities for each aircraft concerning thrust, turn rates at a give speed, lift, etc. X-plane is a revolutionary consumer flight sim that uses real aerodynamic fluid-like physics to "derive" a flight model in real time, by simplifying the forces into "blades" acting upon the aircraft...almost like having a wind tunnel in your computer. It uses the same concept of software that aerospace companies utilize for testing airframes and roughing-out control software prior to a prototype being built. In fact, I hear some smaller companies are now using it for that purpose rather than buying the previous software only available at high prices to major engineering firms. X-Plane is also approved for some aspects of early pilot training by the FAA. There is also an add on for the planet Mars available from the X-Plane website, as well as a Space Combat Simulator.
The usual flight procedures are included in X-Plane. There's no lack of them there. Also, because of the nature of the derived flight models, an aircraft modeler is included. Yes, X-Plane is luring those strange people who make model airplanes in their basement. But the rest of us get to benefit. There are a lot of freeware aircraft out there. All they need are the blueprints for the aircraft and its control surface/engine specs. The aircraft WILL perform just like the x-plane (prototype) version of it would if it was recreated based on the model built for it. You might need an engineering degree to do this perfectly, but it is available.
This modeling aspect of X-Plane is to some degree also its biggest weakness. Inherently stable aircraft, if correctly "designed" in the modeler, will perform pretty much as they do in real life. Active pilots will be amazed and feel very good about their simulated flight time on X-Plane. But because so many aircraft are inherently unstable, don't expect the fly-by-wire (i.e. the software between your controls and X-Plane's derived fluid/Newtonian flight model) to be as real or forgiving as the real ones. No one, except maybe a software engineer for the actual aircraft, can be expected to get the FBWS perfect. The more unstable the aircraft, the less likely the bedroom programmer's FBWS will be anything near what it should be, let alone a true replica of the real deal. The real F-22 is very unstable, but can perform turns and stalls that would pop a blood vessel. In DID's hard to find Total Air War, the F-22 used a standard non-fluid, non-derived model, but represented more of the filtering and limits placed on the pilot from the FBW system. It never let you turn so quickly or at the wrong angle-of-attack that your aircraft would immediately become uncontrollable or cause you to suddenly red/black out. In X-Plane, while it is certainly a more accurate representation of the real airframe (and quicker on its feet without those FBWS limits), you will be messing with elevator trim and trying your best to be restrained in your control inputs. Some aircraft will just seem uncontrollable unless you're a test pilot...hence the title of the sim: X-plane. It's as if you're flying early, or in some cases, outright pre-FBWS prototypes. Other aircraft are simply unpilotable in their current form. There is an occasional habit by the modeler to simplify some of the freeware airframes to compensate for this, but purists will likely disapprove.
Also, the tail rotor compensation on light helicopters is way off and you'll suddenly start going into a main-rotor-induced spin. A little rotation left or right if you're adjusting collective rapidly is completely authentic, as is the liberal amount of slide slip and environmental effects (which will become worse the lighter the airframe). But the FBWS and tail rotor compensation is seriously not doing its job in the most basic way here. Also, I have not been able to find a way to switch the cyclic to being "sticky", so to speak. When I push the stick forward and then release, I want the chopper to stay pitched forward. In X-Plane (at least in the default setting) the main rotor pitches back to level, requiring you to have the stick pushed constantly for forward motion. In real life non-digital systems, that's realistic. But few if any of us at home have long pole cyclic sticks we can plug into the computer. The Comanche (may it rest in peace) used a digital stick on the side that was "sticky". Janes Longbow 2 and the Enemy Engaged series are the same way. Why on earth X-Plane has been designed with the helo controls this way is beyond me, but it needs fixing...or at least an option to turn it off.
The graphics are extremely demanding. This sim is not efficient D3D like Total Air War, but is some rather inefficient Open GL. You need top of the line stuff for this. If you're using a widescreen (even HD) TV or DLP projector, it has to be at least 1024 X 768 resolution compatible. Otherwise, you'll be unable to read the text, and there's a lot of text to deal with, in the menus, on the gauges, on the HUD's, etc. It would have been nice to see a 640 X 480 mode for those of us who like to run sims through our big screens. The learning curve is likely very high for most, but considering this is as real as it gets, you can probably buy some piloting books and they'll be completely translatable here. This isn't a perfect flight simulator. There are few weapons and fewer if any missions (not much to do but fly), and some of the aircraft models & cockpits are either incomplete or visually lacking. But if you want the best in terms of physics, scope, realism, and long term expansion, there's nothing even close.
(8/5/05) Additional comments:
X-Plane is still the best sim to fly a Cessna I've found and gets the basic feel of flight better than anything else out there, in spite of its flaws. Some of these criticisms are repeated from the previous post because of how important they are. Bare with me; it's a little scatterbrained in delivery. A copy of this was sent to Laminar Research.
Nasty building graphics pop ups in v8.15 for Windows. Terrible. The disappearing/pop up problem is even worse with things like roads and those connecting different runways at an airport. Kind of difficult to find the correct runway when some lanes keep disappearing then reappearing. Taxiing seems futile.
The artificial stabilization system leaves a lot to be desired. I sometimes get duck paddle effects with the control surfaces going up and down frantically and the nose bobbing uncontrollably. At best that's about as good (probably worse) as the flawed first generation Lightning II fly by wire that resulted in one of the first YF-22's belly-slamming on the tarmac. This stabilization system doesn't seem capable of independently controlling surfaces, but rather moves them all in unison back and forth. The NASA F-15 model is ridiculous, in spite of how much work the authors put into it. Same thing with all the F-16's. It doesn't matter how painstaking they make the model and specs, if this X-Plane FBW FCS can't do its job, X-Plane becomes a sim for non-FBW designs, only. How adjustable, expandable, and programmable is X-Plane's FBW system? It needs to allow the modeler to dictate which control surfaces/thrust vectoring are used for which control inputs at given angle of attacks, speeds, and flight levels, with the stabilization system using this as a basis for how it will then compensate in small, then progressively larger amounts. And this must be either a lot of ranges, or continuous, adjustable curves. Besides these "flight laws" and how the aircraft & X-Plane stabilization system is to achieve them, there also needs to be Limiting available, to prevent stalls, over-G -- for both the pilot and the structure, etc. X-Plane's fly-by-wire & stabilization system is its biggest fault right now.
Your video card's gamma and contrast corrections appear to get reset by X-Plane into a slightly desaturated, washed out, fuzzy "default" setting compared to when you've tweaked everything and view it with the start menu open. Click back into the sim (start menu gone) and it returns to default.
There should be a feature to enlarge the HUD/HMD text in flight and make it different colors, like red and yellow. It's sometimes a little difficult to read. At least we can zoom into the cockpit dials in 3D mode, but the HUD/HMD "projection" onto your vision needs to be expandable physically. Perhaps a zoom option while in 2D mode would suffice.
The virtual cockpits need to be just as clickable as the forward cockpit. Might be asking a lot, but it would sure be nice. Maybe it's possible and aircraft designers just aren't using it.
The set "resolution at start up" check box does not work properly. What it's supposed to do is change your res and color to that set in the sim. It doesn't. If I'm in 800X600 and I go into X-Plane with that box checked, everything is pushed over to the side and I don't see the whole screen. If I uncheck it, go to the desktop and set that exact same resolution (say, 1024X768), X-Plane obviously runs fine at that setting.
The lack of sticky cyclic option makes helicopters near unflyable for the average simmer with an ordinary joystick HOTAS.
With damage modeling on (control surface failures during impact or high-G, etc) there's no way to go back to a normal, non-damaged aircraft after an incident without completely reloading the aircraft. Even if you go to the separate failures screen and move all the bars over, it's still a broken aircraft. If you restart on the runway, it still seems to be broken. I don't like having to completely reload the aircraft again.
There needs to be slightly more transonic buffeting when passing through Mach 1. It's good that there's the proper wavefront-induced reduction in your acceleration and from external views there appears to be buffeting on tanks & weapons loadouts, but I can't see any of it from inside the cockpit. Neither is the buffeting altering control response to the extent it should. Even the HUD with reference to clouds and stuff should be showing a little bit of your aircraft's buffeting, but it's not. Actually, I don't think we're seeing the proper amount of slight buffeting during very high or low angles of attack, though you're certainly losing control responsiveness if you attempt to bank under those conditions.
Several of the more unstable aircraft constantly seem to want to tip gradually to one side, usually the right. My joystick's not the problem. I've checked the alignment, deadzones, etc. I've also made sure wind and thermals are turned off. Strange anomaly, though some of it may be attributable to or worsened by specific aircraft designs. It seems frequent enough not to be the former, however, and seems more a larger issue.
I had a troubling incident where all the 2D cockpits themselves were slightly off to one side and above where they should be. When switching to VR cockpit the HUD (where I was looking) was where it had been in the 2D view (off center), but everything else (including the 3D pit) was back to normal. External views were also off center. I couldn't fix it and had to reinstall X-Plane (copied my Aircraft directory somewhere else first, of course).
8/9/05:
The problem with flapping surfaces seems only to occur with canards and/or thrust vectoring. Appears to be a problem specific to the Aritificial Stability System, which is necessary with those types of aircraft components. This crude system just isn't up to the task.
So far I've only found 3 helos that have proper tailrotor compensation: the Sea king (comes with X-Plane), all the UH-60 Black/PaveHawks, and all three of the Comanches. Unfortunately, the Comanches are all incredibly touchy and unstable, which is what you'd expect without a good quality FBW. Of the Seaking and Blackhawks, I found the Blackhawks to be most representative of proper helo flight. For all the other choppers (assuming you can download them off the .org site and open them up in the program after installation) there seems to be a commercial sim slant to the rudder. You're expected to have the pedals pressed all the time, with only minimal tail compensation to start. On some choppers this is realistic, but for home computer use is an even worse situation to be in than not having a sticky cyclic. There is a way to get around this issue (sort of). You go into the joystick config and turn off your rudder. Then in the Centering screen you turn on automatic tailrotor coordination. It's not perfect, but on the helos that aren't totally glitchy (like most of the v.7 Aerospatials) they become flyable, with the limitation that you now have zero rudder control, of course. But at least it brings the spinning under control and doesn't require a $1200 commercial trainer system to get them to function adequately.
If you just noticed, I did in fact say v.7 above. It turns out that most of the incompatibility problems between 7 and 8 are gone with the release of v.8.15. So most of the v.7 aircraft can now be used in v.8.15. The only problems seem to be some glitchy vr cockpits, but there's so much variation in those even amongst v.8 aircraft that it's not that big of a deal. F-117, UH-60, F-86, Mig-15, Prowlers, A-10's, Saturn V rockets...there's a lot of quality stuff that's been languishing in the v.7 archives that you can now use again. There's a P51 in the v.8 archives, though, that is right on target in terms of handling. Definitely check it out.
(8/15/2005)
I got emails directly from one of the head programmers, Ben, as well as the creator of X-Plane, Austin Meyer. They will attempt to look into each of these issues for v8.20, which is of course free to those with any v8 DVD. Unprecedented costumer support: cordial, informative, and eager to find solutions. I'm very impressed. This thing can only get better.
This is the DVD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "Buy Now" button below for around $39.99 USD.
Click to buy with discount via Amazon
    
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