From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2002 - 19:28:19 MST
Well, since I know that there are a number of people here who get off on
cool weird and odd aircraft and spacecraft, as well as cool programs, I
want to shout to everybody to check out X-Plane from Laminar Research
(www.x-plane.com). This is the coolest flight simulator I've ever seen.
It not only provides the greatest level of visual, navigational, and
aural detail of any flight sim, along with the largest collection of
aircraft, but it allows you to design your own aircraft, instrument
panels, parts, skins, as well as ground objects and airfields. It EVEN
allows you to decide what PLANET you want to fly on. Fly on Mars,
anyone?
There are numerous user websites out there where you can download other
people's aircraft designs. You can build and fly not only prop planes,
but jets, HELICOPTERS, and even ROCKET PLANES and Missiles! One user
site has designs for such things as a Titan Missile, a Gemini Capsule in
both orbit and reentry, a DynaSoar spaceplane, and the standard issue
X-Plane comes with the Space Shuttle which you can fly on a reentry from
orbit into Edwards, White Sands, or Kennedy Space Center.
You can fly vintage oddball planes like various German jet and rocket
planes from WWII, as well as a super flying wing bomber design that was
never built. You can fly various real historical X planes, from the X-1
and X-15 to the XVF-1 Pogo (I know Spike will get off on that one) to
the current X-45 Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle.
The Classic version of X-Plane is available for free download, and I
bought the current version on CD at K-Mart for just $29 a few months
ago. This program gets my vote for Most Extropic Sim.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:32 MST