X Plane on iMac

[Alan Mallows]

Hi Flyers,

 

 

 

I am about to upgrade my old iMac to a new one, and so I am addressing the possibility of moving to X Plane 11, and running it in OSX. Has anyone done this and are they willing to share their experience and opinions?

 

 

 

I am currently an FSX user, and I have a windows PC for that alone. I am very keen to get rid of both, but I have some specific requirements that may preclude this, or at least set a direction.

 

 

 

Firstly, I am a VFR Piper Warrior II flyer in Victoria, Australia, and I use FSX with Plan G and Active sky Next to plan and rehe[Mod - Happy Thoughts] my flights. I also like to rehe[Mod - Happy Thoughts] ATC calls when possible, but this is rare these days. So I need Australian scenery, including small airfields, mapping, flight planning and the ability of controlling the weather. Integration with my iPad EFB would be nice too.

 

I recognise that some of this may require me to run Windows on the iMac, and I would be willing to do this, but I'd prefer not to.

 

I have looked at the difference between the X Plane 11 recommended system requirements, and those of my chosen 27 inch iMac, and I find that the only difference is in the graphics card, and I don't know how much impact this may have on my X Plane experience. I have tried the demo in Windows and I found it sensational when compared with FSX, so it may be ok. Everything else I do with a computer is perfectly handled by the iMac.

 

This is an exciting journey and not something I've needed to start since the introduction of FSX all of those years ago.

 

Over.

 

 

 

Foggy

[Richard Murphy 1302086]

I've been an X-Plane user since v. 8 and I've always used it on an iMac. Version 11 has been a major upgrade and right now v. 11.3 is in beta and promises to deliver more advanced ATC options (among other things).

 

My current iMac is a late 2015 model running OSX Mojave, with a 4 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 RAM and an AMD Radeon R9 M395X graphics card with 4 MB onboard RAM. I have my settings optimized for 30 fps but do get occasional mid-flight program crashes (very disappointing after all the preflight setup). This phenomenon started with the upgrade to v. 11.26 (the current released version) and I haven't been able to find the cause.

 

When you get your new iMac I'd advise loading it up with the fastest processor, max RAM, and fastest graphics card you can get. It looks like that is what I will have to do in order to keep up with the improvements in X-Plane v. 11.3.

 

Good luck and good flying!

Orion515

[Alan Mallows]

Thanks for that. I will take your advice and await the next generation of iMacs, as they may offer better value than the current ones.

 

My upgrade project is moving slowly forward. I do however have some new issues to solve, since playing with the demo version of XP 11:

 

 

 

I attempted a scenery conversion process using some of my extensive Australian scenery and the process resulted in a huge window of hieroglyphics and when I tried to fly again XP11 just crashed to the desktop. what did I do wrong?

 

I am trying to replicate what I've been doing in FSX, which is to manually enter a VFR flight plan into Plan G, export it to FSX, which lets me load it into the GPS and then I go flying, with the GPS showing the way and Plan G showing my track. I've tried exporting the plan to .FMS but my version of XP11 appears to have nothing to do with this format, and only accepts .fpl, .fdr and .rep. How does one make files in these formats?

 

 

 

Foggy

[Christopher Collins]

Firstly, I am a VFR Piper Warrior II flyer in Victoria, Australia, and I use FSX with Plan G and Active sky Next to plan and rehe[Mod - Happy Thoughts] my flights. I also like to rehe[Mod - Happy Thoughts] ATC calls when possible, but this is rare these days. So I need Australian scenery, including small airfields, mapping, flight planning and the ability of controlling the weather. Integration with my iPad EFB would be nice too.

 

Greetings fellow Australian Pilot! I fly from Bankstown myself - mostly the Piper Cherokee Six-300 these days - but I've flown plenty of hours in the smaller Cherokees since I started flying.

 

The X-Plane stock scenery is actually quite reasonable for Australia - it's certainly more comprehensive than FSX was. You can find some individual airstrips on x-plane.org, and there was a bunch of "VOz" sceneries at one point which could be used to fill that out further.

 

ORBX is also starting to support X-Plane and I would expect them to invest more effort into converting their catalog with time (but not without charging us for the privilege. oh well).

 

I also advise you hunt down the ISDG airports - they were excellent for freeware, but the group responsible seems to have fallen dormant and finding them is not as easy as it once was.

 

It's also quite easy to use WED + WEDomaker in combination with the ERSA (to verify roughly where it is, and any frequency [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ignments, etc) to quickly throw together a minimum implementation (just the pavements/runways/taxiways that is) of a country airfield for use in X-Plane. I have an updated Crookwell (YCRL) that I just haven't gotten around to finishing up for example and distributing (it has gables and actually looks like YCRL from the air now!), and most of that was throw together in about 20-30 minutes.

 

EFB integration with OzRunways and AvPlan are relatively straightforward - both seem to have adopted the X-Plane data feed as "standard" integration paths, and have instructions on how to enable that and configure the EFB to accept it. That will give you your moving map support, but not traffic.

 

I attempted a scenery conversion process using some of my extensive Australian scenery and the process resulted in a huge window of hieroglyphics and when I tried to fly again XP11 just crashed to the desktop. what did I do wrong?

 

You'll need to provide more detail - direct scenery conversion is not a trivial process - was there a set of instructions you tried to follow? Which tools did you try to use, how did you try to use them? was there any discernable text in the output, and what did it say?

 

I would also not expect to be able to load such scenery with the demo - the demo is restricted to the KSEA area not by lack of scenery data, but by internal restrictions too - I believe it won't even load world tiles outside of KSEA whilst it's in demo mode.

 

I am trying to replicate what I've been doing in FSX, which is to manually enter a VFR flight plan into Plan G, export it to FSX, which lets me load it into the GPS and then I go flying, with the GPS showing the way and Plan G showing my track. I've tried exporting the plan to .FMS but my version of XP11 appears to have nothing to do with this format, and only accepts .fpl, .fdr and .rep. How does one make files in these formats?

 

The way you use .fms files is a bit non-obvious for FSX/P3D users at first as X-Plane doesn't handle flight-plans in the same way that FSX does - it's purely a GPS/FMS concern, not a simulator global one.

 

You need to put the .fms file into the "FMS Plans" folder inside of "Output" (in your X-Plane folder). Once you've done that, it should be loadable via the GNS (as a saved flightplan) or FMS (as a coroute) directly, not using the X-Plane menus.

 

Also remember that both the GNS and FMS support direct flightplan entry - you can also punch in your flightplan as you would on the real device.