My GameSpot User-Review for X-Plane 8
I put a very exhaustive user-review on GameSpot for X-Plane 8.0 and I figured that I would echo it onto my blog.
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The scenery has received a major overhaul as of 8.30. Current version is 8.60 beta 4. Updates are very frequent + FREE.
The value is incredible — $50 for X-Plane and your local world region or $70 for the whole-world of scenery. The core Sim is only 1/2 Gigabyte. The 8.0x-8.2x scenery and probably also the x-plane + local-world-rgion only needs about 10gb of space. The 8.3x+ full-world scenery needs 60GB of space for the scenery, but for anything that is not landmark buildings, it is really awesome with topological accuracy that Microsoft can’t beat.
The updates just keep flying out. Got cars on the road now, tire traction modeling (code back-engineered from up and coming high-realism civilian/racing driving sim), simulation of multiple engine contra-rotating propfan aircraft (any transmission ration/setup you can think of actually), even multiplayer or AI air combat, though their is no gore or explosions — a hit means smoke puff and engine shutdown.
The air traffic now uses the same flight modeling as the player’s plane (as of 8.5x+) and if they are military, they are automatically hostile if they are in a different force/color than you, even if your plane is not military or armed! Get a comprehensive version history since 6.06 here
The UI is still geek-optimized, no missions (I personally don’t care for them but I’m sure others do), you’ll never get high-realism cityscapes with high-detail landmark buildings, and plane-maker is clunky for the fuselage design, so if you are looking for acceptable-realism casual-user eye-candy, you are better off with Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X.
X-Plane is the most realistic flightsim available, and the consumer version ($50 w/ new world scenery) is exactly identical to the FAA approved version ($500 from PFC or Fidelity except for the aircraft and extension code bundled into their panels (mostly for FAA regulations surrounding mandates for physical hardware control). So when your are flying Barry Leger’s F-22 or an by Morten Melhuus Ultra-Realistic 737-700 (Login required to view; terrorists like uber realism like this you know), you know you are getting the most realism you can get out of a consumer-priced flight simulator ever. Some of the low-cost payware 3rd-party aircraft have exceptional eye-candy at the aircraft level that rivals even Microsoft’s aircraft. Two great sites are c74.net (May be developer of FAA approved aircraft for the FAA approved version of X-Plane, regardless, these are very realistic and pretty looking) and Shade Tree Micro Aviation (Confirmed as source of FAA approved aircraft for the FAA approved x-plane at the X-Plane Features Yahoo Group)
