What a plane! This has been awaited for a long time by many enthusiasts. As far as this tag has a meaning, it was expected to be released as a "study level" plane. And Black Square delivered! I have done only four flights so far, but those proved to be an excellent experience. See my YouTube channel for two videos. There is so much you can learn and do in this addon. And it flies so well. Here are some highlights: Every knob, every circuit breaker, every lever is working. You can use a choice of Garmin instruments or the GTN750 devices for navigation. Excellent autopilot on board, linked to ..read more

  I want to state my opinion clearly: Microsoft Flight Simulator is now on another level. Whenever I try X-Plane again, I get more and more convinced that I do not want to fly it anymore. MSFS is better on almost every level now. Let me explain. When MSFS first appeared, it was downplayed as a nice graphical game, but not a realistic flight simulation. It is fun to re-read the postings on their forum again. I always defended these developers. After all, they just made the whole world flyable, with volumetric clouds, full support for seasons, real weather, and volumetric clouds. That is fa ..read more

  My system prevented me to start X-Plane or the X-Plane-Installer all of a sudden. I cannot tell if it happened after an update of the GeForce drivers or independently. The X-Plane window would not open, although the program was clearly running due to the Task Manager and even produced a log file. The same happened with the Installer. After trying the usual means to get the programs back to work, I found the only solution which worked. I downloaded the Vulkan Runtime from vulkan.lunarg.com. This should not be necessary because the runtime is included in the graphics driver by GeForce ..read more

  A new kid on the blog is here, the Piper Comanche 250 by A2A Simulations. This developer is well known in the X-Plane and FSX community for its accurate and realistic planes. You do not only get a study-level plane with all details working but also a lot of external work to be done, including persistence and failures. So, it is no surprise that a high-quality addon by A2A was highly anticipated on Microsoft Flight Simulator. Now, their first product for MSFS is here and they delivered their know quality. This is one of the best GA planes you will find. The only problem is that it is a ..read more

URGENT: Download and install before end of May 19 (today) to use your old license! The new version of Active Sky for X-Plane 12 is here, finally. Updates seem to take longer and longer. There is simply not enough demand for flight sim software, it seems. And some developers are held back by international conflicts, I heard. Nevertheless, it has been done. You can now get realistic weather via the ASXP plugin. For X-Plane 12, you need to buy a new version unless you download it before end of May 19. This blog is not read by many, so I am afraid you will read this too late. In X-Plane 11, there ..read more

Recently, X-Plane 12 stopped working, demanding new Geforce Drivers. I thought that would be a good opportunity to completely reinstall the simulator. It will also go to another drive. The default C: is occupied by the growing Microsoft Flight Simulator. Moreover, it is not the fastest SSD on my computer. I am no longer very fond of X-Plane. The main reason is Microsoft Flight Simulator, of course. MSFS is simply a far superior simulation of the world around us. The planes and the flight dynamics may be worse in some places, but many of these issues have been removed already. If the developme ..read more

  The sim update SU11 gives us a new plane, the Airbus A310-300, programmed by iniBuilds. The reason for this give-away I do not know exactly. The company mentions a "long-term partnership with Microsoft Flight Simulator". Most likely, Microsoft simply bought this add-on for cheap money. I would call it the first study level aircraft to be included in the sim for free. In X-Plane, I paid good money for a similar plane by iniBuilds. The A310 is a somewhat historic plane, especially the passenger variant. It is used by some military. FedEx seems to run them still. But the free addon only ..read more

  Each update of the simulation brings improvements and problems. This is no different with SU11. Luckily, most problems are caused by plugins which are not yet updated for the new simulator version. That is why some people recommend to move the content of the community folder to some other place, and returning it only as needed. I never followed this advice and did not have much problems.  Updates might also require to change settings. Often, we set something to fix the buggy or lagging behavior of a previous version. Those settings might need adjustments. If unsure, just return to ..read more

  I did not write in this blog for quite some time. Me personally and the world in total were busy with other topics. But it is time to continue the blog. We were all very disappointed with the development of the FlightFactor Airbus. After losing their main developer, nothing went forward. The plane did not make any progress and each update generated new problems. The fear was big that this would happen again.  We should have known better. Fenix proved so far to be in the same league as Zibo or Toliss. Those are avid developers who want to deliver the best. Microsoft Flight Simulato ..read more

  It's out. The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse? Or is it the great breakthrough for X-Plane? Neither is correct, of course. Obviously, it is a big update, so let us study what we got and what not. We start with the visual enhancements. The most prominent visual enhancement are the clouds. Using Vulkan, Laminar Research were now able to draw so-called "volumetric" clouds. Instead of a mixture of images and simulated fog, the clouds are now soft balls with 3D structure. I am not a big fan of these marshmallow clouds, but they seem to be the best we can do at this time. MS ..read more