Advanced Simulation in X-Plane 10

X-Plane is the most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator available. As such, there are a great number of features available that go beyond simply taking off, flying around, and landing. These include tools like the logbook and checklists, and features like equipment failures and damage modeling.

Keeping a Logbook
Each time an aircraft is flown in X-Plane, the program logs the flight time in a digital logbook. By default, X-Plane creates a text file called &ldquo;X-Plane Pilot.txt&rdquo; in the X-Plane 10/Output/logbooks directory. Inside this text file are the following details of previous flights:
 * Dates of flights
 * Tail numbers of aircraft
 * Aircraft types
 * Airports of departure and arrival
 * Number of landings
 * Duration of flights
 * Time spent flying cross-country, in IFR conditions, and at night
 * Total time of all flights

To see your logbook, open the About menu and click Logbook. You can load a logbook by clicking the Choose Pilot Logbook button and navigating to your logbook, or you can create a new logbook using the New Pilot Logbook button.

Working with the Air Traffic Control


X-Plane 10&rsquo;s air traffic control (ATC) system is powerful and realistic when you want to practice real-world protocols, but completely unobtrusive when you want to just fly. Although AI aircraft (i.e., those that you have turned on using the Aircraft & Situations dialog box) will always follow the guidance of the air traffic control, they will also work around your aircraft if you are not interacting with the ATC.

Note: You will only be able to hear the air traffic control chatter if ATC audio output is enabled; to confirm this is the case, open the Settings menu, then click Sound.

All interactions with the air traffic control occur via the on-screen ATC menu. To access this menu, simply press Enter (Return) on the keyboard.

In order to make a request or hear from the air traffic controllers, you must have your COM 1 radio tuned to the proper frequency for the request. Filing a flight plan is independent of any controller, so that option is always available. However, once the flight plan is filed, you must tune to the Clearance Delivery, Ground, or Tower frequencies (if available, in that order as in the real world) to get clearance for takeoff. After you get clearance, you tune to the Ground (if available) or Tower frequencies for your taxi clearance. When you get to a hold short line, ground control will hand you off to tower and then you&rsquo;ll receive handoffs throughout the rest of your flight when necessary; keep tuning to the proper frequency to continue to receive air traffic control guidance. Note that the Local Map dialog box (opened from the Location menu) will display the relevant frequencies for any airport that you mouse over.

As in the real world, any ATC interaction begins with filing a flight plan. Thus, the first time you press Enter during a flight, the only option available will be &ldquo;File Flight Plan.&rdquo; Click that line of text to display the Flight Plan dialog box (shown in Figure 1).

In the Flight Plan dialog box, you have the option of filing an IFR or VFR flight plan. In order to file an IFR flight plan in the real world, you must have an instrument rating. Doing so will cause air traffic controllers to monitor you throughout the flight, and it will get you clearance for instrument approaches in bad weather. A VFR flight plan, on the other hand, can be filed by any pilot, with only visual approaches being normally available at your destination.

Next, you must enter your departure and arrival points, in the same ID format as the points appear in the X-Plane maps, as well as your planned cruising (enroute) altitude. Pressing the File button will register your flight plan with the X-Plane air traffic control.

With your flight plan filed, you can bring up the ATC menu again by pressing Enter, then click &ldquo;Request Clearance.&rdquo;

Changing How and Where the Aircraft Starts
By default, X-Plane starts your aircraft with engines running on a runway, ready to take off. If you prefer to start your own engines or taxi from an apron (also called a ramp) onto the runway, you can do so by opening the Settings menu and clicking Operations & Warnings. There, in the pane labeled &ldquo;Startup,&rdquo; you can un-check the box labeled Start each flight with engines running or check the box labeled Start each flight on ramp.

Note that not all aircraft models have engine starters built in to their instrument panels. If yours does not, you can either add one in Plane Maker, or you can simply come back to the Operations & Warnings menu and toggle the engine start box again.

Using a Checklist
X-Plane has the ability to display a simple checklist in the simulator. This checklist must be stored somewhere in the X-Plane directory as a plain text (.txt) file.

To load a check list, open the Special menu and click Open Checklist for Use. After locating your. txt file, you will see the checklist displayed line-by-line in the upper center of the screen. You can use the forward and back buttons to go to the next and previous lines, respectively. When you finish, you can go back to the Special menu and click Toggle Checklist for Use to hide the file.

If you prefer to see the text file all at once (rather than line-by-line as in the checklist view), you can select Open Text File for Viewing from the Special menu, then use Toggle Text File for Viewing to turn it on and off.

Changing How Damage Affects the Aircraft
By default, X-Plane does not remove parts of the aircraft when the craft&rsquo;s limits are exceeded. However, by opening the Operations & Warnings dialog box from the Settings menu, you can enable the following (located in the bottom left of the window):


 * remove flying surfaces in over-speed, which causes X-Plane to remove wings and other flight surfaces when you exceed the aircraft&rsquo;s maximum speed by some percentage.
 * remove flying surfaces in over-G, which causes X-Plane to remove wings and other flight surfaces when the g-forces acting on the aircraft exceed the rated maximum by some percentage.
 * remove flaps in over-Vfe, which causes X-Plane to remove the flaps if they are extended at speeds greater than Vfe ( the maximum flap extension speed, noted with a white arc on the airspeed indicator).
 * '''remove gear doors in over-Vle, which causes X-Plane to remove the gear doors if they are extended at speeds greater than Vle ( the maximum gear extension speed).

Additionally, with the reset on hard crash box checked, X-Plane will automatically reload your aircraft at the nearest airport in the event of a fatal crash.

By making these damage modeling features optional, X-Plane allows both easy, possibly unrealistic flights, as well as much more accurate, more challenging simulations.

Setting the Weight, Balance, and Fuel
To modify an aircraft&rsquo;s weight, balance, and fuel, move your mouse to the top of the screen, click on the Aircraft menu, and click Weight and Fuel.

The dialog box that appears will have the Fuel/Payload tab selected. Here, you can use the sliders to set the aircraft&rsquo;s center of gravity, the weight of its payload, and the amount of fuel in its tanks.

An airplane can typically stay in the air at very high weights, but it will have a hard time getting off the ground initially. Additionally, moving the center of gravity forward (left on the slider) makes the plane behave more like a dart, and moving the center of gravity aft (right on the slider) makes the plane more unstable, and potentially unflyable. Flying a plane with the center of gravity far aft is like shooting an arrow backwards&mdash;it wants to flip around with the heavy end in the front and the fins in the back.

Since X-Plane calculates in real time how the plane is burning fuel, and the engines need fuel to run, and the weight distribution of the fuel is considered in the simulation, the fuel put on board does indeed matter.

Simulating Equipment Failures
X-Plane can simulate countless aircraft systems failures. The Equipment Failures window, found in the Aircraft menu, lets you experience what happens when important pieces of equipment don&rsquo;t do what they&rsquo;re supposed to in flight.

The World/MTBF tab of the Equipment Failures window controls things outside of the airplane, such as bird strikes and airport equipment failures.

With the World/MTBF tab selected, the mean time between failure setting is visible at the bottom of the screen. When the use mean time between random failures box is checked, the simulator will use the value to the right to determine how often, on average, each piece of equipment will fail. For instance, if the MTBF is set to 1000 hours, X-Plane will decide that each piece of hardware in the plane has about a one in a thousand chance of breaking each hour. Since the airplane has a few hundred pieces of hardware, that means a failure might occur every 5 to 20 hours or so.

The other tabs in this window let the user set the frequency of such failures, or command specific failures, for hundreds of different aircraft systems.

The general failure categories are:
 * Equipment
 * Engines
 * Flying Surfaces
 * G1000 (if you have a real G1000 attached to X-Plane)
 * All Instruments, and
 * NAVAIDs

Enabling a Smoke Trail
A smoke trail, as might be used by an aerobatic airplane in an airshow, can be enabled behind your aircraft by opening the Aircraft menu and clicking Toggle Puff Smoke. This control is assigned to the &lsquo;x&rsquo; key by default.