islandmon Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Indeed, Austin Myer creator of XPlane is offering his latest version with ... 7 DVD's of the topography of the entire planet ( and Mars ) based on NASA Radar interferometry ($29 for all 7 DVD's and incredibly still just $50 for Xplane ) ! What does this have to do with Landmark you ask ? Answer is sweet ...the XPlane Simulator inlcudes every airport and NavAid and is fully GPS capable which means that you can navigate with precision to any spot on planet Earth's surface ... image then that you fly a jet to a location of choice then hop into your helo and land it precisely on a location ... check your alitmeter ... it will readout the correct elevation above MeanSeaLevel based on the GPS coordinates and the NASA Radar datum... kool. You can also work the problem the other way to obtain the GPS Coordiantes based on long/Lat. And the entire NASA database is exportable to GIS . You can also take screen shots and make movies as you fly over the terrain. One other thing ... for realism you can buy the SAT Images which map via GPS to the NASA datum in the XPlane database. Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted December 20, 2005 Author Share Posted December 20, 2005 Helo cockpit views ... heading towards the development site. Quote Link to comment
Marietta Posted December 20, 2005 Share Posted December 20, 2005 Sounds like a lot of fun! Would you need a G5 to run this? I have a G4 with 700MB Ram Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted December 21, 2005 Author Share Posted December 21, 2005 X Plane is configurable based on horse power ... I even run it on my old Ti PowerBook ... video RAM determines screen resolution. These screen shoots are 'High' ... there's also 'Extremely High' which requires 128mb VRAM. One other thing ... these are images of me flying a vintage SK60 Navy 'Sea Stallion' over to the location of my property ! Yeah .. way kool ... Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted December 29, 2005 Author Share Posted December 29, 2005 Errata: vintage Sikorski S61 ' Sea King ' previously owned by the Royal Air Force ( flown by Prince Charles during early phase of his Helo-training ) and subsequently auctioned on eBay : ) Quote Link to comment
wv_vectorworker Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 bump this up as it looks a lot better quality than Google earth which has since come out for the Mac. loads of fun and useful for site investigations. Quote Link to comment
Peter Huggins Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 Hey islandmon, I am a pilot and regularly use FS2004, which I have heavily customized with local geodata, aircraft etc. I am interested in XPlane. Does it have the full range of capabilities that FS2004 does? The screenshots look pretty awesome. Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted February 9, 2006 Author Share Posted February 9, 2006 Peter as a pilot you will definitely appreciate XPlane's attention to details... extreme precision ... every NavAid for every certified airport is included for the entire planet. The topomapping is beyond compare. As far as I know it is the only FAA Certified FlightSim for the PC. The XPlane community is awesome. The are options for everything you can image including contorting the runway elevations to match the real existing earth contours. The range of weather capabilites is stunning. Quote Link to comment
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