Flight in X-Plane 10

X-Plane, of course, is a flight simulator. A typical flight consists of some, if not all, of the following steps:
 * choosing an aircraft,
 * going to a location (either an airport&rsquo;s runway, a location some distance out from an airport in order to make an approach to the airport, or a random location),
 * setting the weather and time of day, and
 * actually flying.

In addition, you might take advantage of a number of features of the simulator either before or during a flight. These include using instruments in the aircraft&rsquo;s panel, switching your view of the aircraft, visualizing your flight (either on a 2-D map or in 3-D), and creating files to share your flight with others.

Opening an Aircraft
When launching X-Plane for the first time, the default airplane will be loaded. After that, X-Plane will load the aircraft that was being used the last time you quit the program.

To open an aircraft in X-Plane:
 * 1) Move your mouse to the top of the X-Plane window, causing the menu to appear.
 * 2) Click Aircraft, then click Open Aircraft, as in Figure 1.
 * 3) At the top of the Open Aircraft dialog box is a drop-down menu. It displays the name of the folder you are currently viewing (initially, this is the folder of whatever aircraft you have open currently). Click the up/ down symbol on the right side of the folder name, causing the directory hierarchy (the organization of your folders) to be displayed, as seen in Figure fig:aircraft_hierarchy_flight . At the top of the hierarchy is the main X-Plane folder, and at the bottom is the current folder. For example, if you are in the folder for the F-22 Raptor, the hierarchy shows: [[Image:Folder_hierarchy_in_open_aircraft.png|thumb|400px|alt=Working with the directory hierarchy in the Open Aircraft dialog | Figure 2: Working with the directory hierarchy in the Open Aircraft dialog]]
 * 4) X-System folder
 * 5) Aircraft
 * 6) Fighters
 * 7) FA 22 Raptor
 * 8) Click on the line that says Aircraft to move to the main aircraft directory.
 * 9) The folders in the Aircraft directory are divided into categories&mdash;for example, there are fighters, general aviation craft, gliders, helicopters, seaplanes, etc. Double click on the class you are interested in.
 * 10) The navigation box in the lower left of the window now shows the aircraft classified in that category. Double click on an aircraft&rsquo;s folder.
 * 11) X-Plane aircraft files, which are what we need to click on to open an airplane, are denoted by a &ldquo;.acf&rdquo; extension. Double click on an ACF file to load that aircraft. For instance, Figure 3 shows us opening the Cessna 172. In a moment or two, the aircraft will load and be placed on the nearest runway.



Choosing a Livery
A livery (an alternate paint scheme for an aircraft) can be selected in X-Plane by moving the mouse to the top of the screen, clicking the Aircraft menu, and clicking Open Livery. If alternate liveries are installed for the current aircraft, you can select one using the radio buttons in this dialog box. Close the window to re-load the aircraft with the livery you selected.

Choosing an Airport or Location
X-Plane&rsquo;s aircraft can be relocated to virtually any airport on Earth. It can place your aircraft on a runway or apron, or it can start you in the air on a 3 or 10 nautical mile approach to a runway.

To select an airport, first move your mouse to the top of the screen, causing the menu to appear. Click on the Location menu, then click Select Global Airport. In this dialog box, you can search by name or ICAO identifier through the complete X-Plane airport database. This represents nearly every airport on the planet (currently more than 32,000).

The Select Airport dialog box is divided into three parts. In the top left is a listing of every airport name, arranged by airport name, with the airport&rsquo;s identifier listed to the right. To the right of the list pane is an overhead view of the currently selected airport&rsquo;s layout. The bottom half of the window displays rows of &ldquo;quick start&rdquo; buttons. The buttons in the &ldquo;Takeoff&rdquo; column (on the far left) will transport the aircraft to the specified runway. To the right of these buttons are the &ldquo;Final Approach&rdquo; buttons, which will transport the aircraft to the specified distance away from the runway on the button&rsquo;s left. Finally, the &ldquo;Ramp Start&rdquo; buttons will transport the aircraft to the specified ramp for takeoff.

To search the available airports, type either the airport name or the airport ID into the white box below the list pane (labeled &ldquo;Apt:&rdquo;). For instance, you could obtain the same results by searching for &ldquo;KLAX&rdquo; or &ldquo;Los Angeles Intl.&rdquo; You could even just type &ldquo;Los Angeles&rdquo; and scroll through the results.

Alternatively, use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to move through the full list. To travel to an airport, click on it once in the list pane to highlight it (causing a grey box to appear around it), then click the Go to This Airport button.

Note that if the aircraft is moved to an area that does not have any scenery installed, it will end up on a runway which is hovering above the ocean down below. This is referred to as &ldquo;water world&rdquo; and it is covered in detail in Appendix,  chap:water_world.

For a full explanation of the airport identifiers used in X-Plane, see the X-Plane Airport and Navigation Data site&rsquo;s FAQ for X-Plane Users.

Other Ways to Choose a Location
You do not have to choose a location for your flight using the list of world airports. You can have X-Plane choose a random location near you by moving the mouse to the top of the screen, clicking Location, and selecting Get Me Lost. You can also choose a location visually from the 3-D globe by selecting the Planet Map from the Location menu. The controls in the bottom right corner of this dialog box move your view of the globe as follows.

The large round button spins the globe up, down, left, or right, depending on where along its edge the button is clicked. The buttons below this each have two small triangles. On the left is the button to zoom out, and next to it (labeled with two larger triangles) is the one to zoom in. Below the zoom buttons is the center on acft button, which, when clicked, centers the map view on the aircraft.

Clicking a location on the planet map will transport the aircraft to the airport nearest where the map was clicked. To close the window without relocating the craft, click one of the Xs in the top corners or press the Enter key.

Changing the Environment
The X-Plane environment consists of weather, time of day, and date, each of which can be modified at will.

Setting the Weather
X-Plane&rsquo;s weather simulation is highly configurable and remarkably realistic. Weather in X-Plane can be set in four ways. The first, and most complicated, is to simply set the weather uniformly (and statically) for the whole world. This is the way most people set the weather in older versions of X-Plane. New in Version 10 is the ability to set randomly generated, highly plausible weather patterns based on a few parameters such as cloud coverage, intensity, and temperature. Using a similar system, you can manually &ldquo;paint&rdquo; weather patterns using the mouse, indicating where you want cloud systems to be. Finally, you can download the real-world weather from the Internet and have X-Plane reproduce it.

To edit the weather settings, bring down the menu by moving the mouse to the top of the screen. Click Environment, then click Weather, as in Figure 3.



Setting Uniform, Static Weather for the Whole World
To set static weather for the world, first open the Weather dialog box from the Environment menu. There, select the large radio button at the top of the window labeled &ldquo;set weather uniformly for the whole world.&rdquo; Here, there are portions of the window devoted to clouds, wind, precipitation, thermals, and water conditions.

In the upper left of the window, cloud types as well as the top and base levels for three different cloud layers can be set (as seen in Figure 4). These heights are measured in feet above mean sea level (MSL).



The pane below the basic cloud configuration has a number of buttons, labeled cat-III, cat-II, cat-I, n-prec, and so on. These are quick-set buttons, and pressing them will automatically set some general weather conditions.


 * Cat-III sets the weather up for a Category-III ILS approach. These are extremely low instrument conditions, with basically zero ceiling and visibility.


 * Cat-II sets the weather up for a Category-II ILS approach, with terribly poor ceiling and visibility.


 * Cat-I sets the weather up for a Category-I ILS approach, with poor ceiling and visibility.


 * N-prec sets the weather for a non-precision approach, with a 3 mile visibility and a 400 foot ceiling.


 * MVFR sets the weather marginal VFR flying conditions, with about four miles of visibility and a 1,500 foot ceiling.


 * VFR sets the weather to good visual flight rule conditions&mdash;clear, sunny skies.


 * CAVOK sets the weather to clear and visibility OK. Typically pilots refer to this as CAVU&mdash;Clear And Visibility Unlimited.

Below the quick-set buttons is a set of sliders. Click these and drag them to change their setting.

The visibility slider adjusts what its name suggests, measured in statute miles.

The precipitation slider sets the level of precipitation. Depending on the temperature around the airplane and in the clouds where it is formed, this will be in the form of rain, hail, or snow.

The thunderstorms slider adjusts the tendency for convective activity. The weather radar map in the lower-right of the window shows where the cells are forming. Flying into these cells results in heavy precipitation and extreme turbulence. The turbulence is great enough that in reality, airplanes can fly into thunderstorms in one piece and come out in many smaller pieces.

Taking helicopters into these icing and thunderstorm situations is interesting because their very high wing-loading on their rotor and the fact that the rotor is free teetering causes them to have a pretty smooth ride in turbulence. They are still not indestructible, though, and they are subject to icing on their blades just like an airplane.

The turblnc turbulence) slider automatically sets all the sliders in the center of the screen that control the wind and turbulence. Drag this slider down to the left and hold it there for a few seconds to set all of the wind and turbulence to zero for a smooth flight.

Next, in the bottom left corner of the window, the temperature at the nearest airport and the barometric pressure (air pressure) at sea level can be set. Keep in mind that the &ldquo;standard atmosphere&rdquo; is 59 &deg; F (15 &deg; C) and 29.92 inches mercury (1013 millibars).

The middle column of this window controls three wind layers. Each layer has an altitude, wind speed, shear speed, shear direction, and turbulence associated with it. X-Plane will use the high, middle, and low altitude settings to interpolate between the layers. The circles to the right of each altitude setting change the direction from which the wind is coming. Click and drag near the edge of the circle and the wind will come from the direction that you let go of the mouse button (for instance, for wind moving from the south to the north, click the very bottom of the circle and release the mouse button there).

Enter the thermal tops, thermal coverage, and thermal climb rate in the upper right of this window. These controls are mainly used when flying gliders. In addition to thermals, X-Plane also runs air up and down the terrain as wind blows into mountains, simulating the effects that real glider pilots have to keep in mind and try to take advantage of. Try setting the wind at 30 knots or better at a right angle to a mountain range and running along the upwind side of the mountain range in a glider&mdash;you should be able to stay aloft on the climbing air if you stay pretty low. Drift to the downwind side of the mountain, though, and an unstoppable descent is assured!

The runway conditions drop-down box is found on the right side of the window, directly beneath the thermals controls. Conditions can be set to clean and dry, damp, or wet, and wet and damp conditions can be either patchy or uniform. At low enough temperatures, as in real life, a wet runway will become an icy one. This control is automatically modified when increasing the amount of precipitation.

Beneath the runway conditions is the wave height and wave direction for bodies of water. Changing the wave height, in feet, will also modify the wave length and speed.

Finally, beneath the runway conditions is a visual representation of the weather X-Plane generated based on your parameters. Clicking the Regenerate weather now button will cause X-Plane to generate a new weather system with those same parameters.

Setting Randomly-Generated, Realistic Weather
By far the simplest way of generating weather is to use weather that you exercise only a small degree of control over. In this case, X-Plane creates a weather system with some amount of uncertainty in it, allowing you some control over the features of the weather system without bogging you down in the details.

To use this randomly generated weather, first open the Weather dialog box from the Environment menu. There, select the large radio button at the top of the window labeled set random and only semi-controlled weather patterns.

In the left side of the window now are five sliders. These are as follows:


 * Coverage, which controls the amount of cloud coverage in the weather system. With the slider all the way to the left, there will be no clouds at all; with it all the way to the right, there will be full cloud coverage.


 * Intensity, which controls the degree of storminess to the weather system. With the slider all the way to the left, there will be no storms, whereas with it all the way to the right, there will be a great deal of storms.


 * Temperature, which controls the probability of encountering icing or thunderstorms. With the slider all the way to the left, the weather will be very cold, with a high probability of icing. With it all the way to the right, the weather will be hot, with a higher probability of encountering thunderstorms.


 * System size, which sets the size of the weather systems in the area. With this all the way to the left, there will be many small systems. With it all the way to the right, there will be only a few large systems.


 * Randomness, which controls how closely the weather matches the parameters you set. With this all the way to the left, it will match very closely to what you specified. With it all the way to the right, the incidence of random changes is greatly increased.

After setting the sliders as you want them, click the Regenerate weather now button to have X-Plane create a weather system with those characteristics. Close the Weather window and you&rsquo;ll be ready to fly.

Drawing or Adding to Weather Patterns by Hand
You can add to an existing weather pattern, or create a completely new one, using your mouse to specify the location and intensity of clouds.

To do this, open the Weather window from the Environment menu and select the large radio button in the top of the window labeled paint weather patterns by dragging the mouse.

Here, the largest pane in the window represents the airspace around your aircraft. You can click and drag anywhere in this box to have X-Plane randomly generate clouds there. Drawing clouds twice in the same area will increase the intensity of the clouds there. Finally, at any time, you can click the Clear weather button to clear all weather features in your area.

When you&rsquo;ve finished drawing the weather patterns, close the Weather window and you&rsquo;ll be ready to fly.

Downloading Current Real-World Weather from the Internet
The final method of setting the weather in X-Plane is to download the weather from the Internet. To enable this, first open the Weather dialog box from the Environment menu. There, select the large radio button at the top of the window labeled grab real weather from the net. Check the box labeled Download Real Weather file &lsquo;METAR.RWX&rsquo; from the net. X-Plane will automatically download the weather in your current location, and it will set a timer to re-download weather in one hour. If you want to download weather at some other time, you can always come back to this window and press the Download right now button.

Setting the Date and Time
The date and time in X-Plane can be set by first moving the mouse to the top of the screen (causing the menu to appear), clicking Environment, then clicking Date & Time. Dragging the top slider changes the time, given as both local and Zulu time (that is, Greenwich Mean Time or UTC). Changing the date, the second slider, will accurately track changes in the length of days and nights within X-Plane. For instance, there are fewer daylight hours in December than in June in North America, as in the real world.

If the local time offset from GMT in your location is not what X-Plane expects, you can modify it using the correction from GMT, measured in hours.

Finally, you can check the always track real date and time box to keep X-Plane in sync with the date and time set in your operating system.

How to Fly
When flying for the first time (both in X-Plane and the real world), it&rsquo;s a good idea to use a relatively simple aircraft. The Cessna 172 is an excellent choice in this regard, a fact attested to by the millions of real-world pilots trained in this model. For instructions on opening an aircraft, see the section &ldquo; sec:open_ac&rdquo; of this chapter.

Before beginning, be sure you have configured your flight controls, if applicable, per the section &ldquo; sec:config_controls&rdquo; of Chapter. If you are not using flight controls, you will have to fly with the mouse. In this case, there will be a small white plus sign (+) in the center of the screen. If only this cross is visible, with no white box around it, X-Plane is indicating that the pilot&rsquo;s &ldquo;hand&rdquo; is not on the stick. This means that the mouse is free to move anywhere without impacting the flight controls. To grab the stick (and thus take control of the aircraft), click the left mouse button in the vicinity of the little white cross and a white box will appear around the cross. The mouse button should not be held down, only clicked once to turn the box on (i.e., to grab the stick) and again to turn the box off (to release the stick). When the box is visible, the pilot&rsquo;s hand is on the stick and any movements of the mouse within the box will position the flight controls accordingly. Thus, moving the mouse directly below the cross will command some up elevator (causing the plane to climb) and not will not impose any roll commands (which should keep the aircraft from changing its bank). Likewise, keeping the mouse lined up exactly with the cross but deflecting it to the right a bit will cause the plane to bank to the right without altering its pitch.

To take off, the airplane must first be located at the end of a runway. X-Plane relocates the craft here whenever the program opens, an aircraft is loaded, or the location is changed. To take off in the Cessna 172, slowly advance the throttle, then release the brakes (for instance, by using the &lsquo;b&rsquo; key) when the throttle reaches its halfway point. Continue to advance the throttle and be ready to feed in some right yaw (using the right rudder or the twist on the joystick, if applicable) as the airplane accelerates. The tendency to turn to the left is normal in single engine aircraft due to the turn of the propeller.

Don&rsquo;t worry if it takes a few tries to learn how to keep the aircraft on the runway&mdash;a Cessna can take off in the grass just fine. If the airplane turns off the runway as it&rsquo;s accelerating, just keep on going. Normally, the pilot will rotate (that is, apply some up elevator by pulling back on the yoke or stick) at about 60 knots in the Cessna 172. Once the aircraft leaves the ground, push the stick forward a bit to momentarily level off and allow the airplane to build speed. Once the craft reaches 80 knots or so, pull back gently on the stick again and resume climbing. Building airspeed before climbing this way will help keep the plane from stalling.

Note that if a crash occurs that damages the airplane too badly, X-Plane will automatically open a new airplane and place it at the end of the nearest runway (which in some cases may be a grass strip). If the impact is only hard enough to damage the airplane without necessarily destroying it, the aircraft will just sit there and smoke. If this happens, you will need to move your mouse to the top of the screen, click Aircraft, then click Open Aircraft to get things fixed. If only it were so easy in the real world!

Using the Instruments and Avionics
When using the forward cockpit view, the mouse can be used to control the instruments in the panel, just as the pilot&rsquo;s hand would be used to manipulate the instruments, switches, and other controls.

To operate a button, just click it and release. To operate a switch, do the same to change its position. For example, to bring the landing gear down (on planes that are able to), click with the landing gear switch. Of course, this control will look different in different aircraft. Keep in mind that the &lsquo;g&rsquo; key could also be used or a joystick button could be assigned to toggle the gear.

To turn knobs, move the mouse to the &ldquo;plus&rdquo; or &ldquo;minus&rdquo; side, whichever is necessary, and click to move the knob. Click repeatedly for greater movements.

To easily see the controls within the cockpit that the mouse can operate, open the Instructions dialog box from the About menu and check the box labeled Show mouse click regions in the cockpit. This will draw a thin yellow square around the areas of the instrument panel that can be manipulated with the mouse.

To get a quick description of the instruments in the panel, open the Instructions dialog box from the About menu and check the box labeled Show instrument instructions in the cockpit. After closing the window, you&rsquo;ll see a description of an instrument whenever you hold the mouse over it.

A Note on Radio Tuning
Avionics in most airplanes utilize twin concentric knobs that allow the pilot to tune the radio. For example, there will typically be a large knob on the surface of the radio, with a smaller knob sticking out from the large one. The large knob controls the integer (&ldquo;counting number&rdquo;) portion of the frequency and the smaller knob controls the decimal portion.

For example, imagine that the COM1 radio (the communications radio number 1) needed to be tuned to 128.00 MHz. In a real aircraft, the pilot would turn the big, lower knob until 128 was visible in the window, then turn the small, upper knob until 00 was visible.

X-Plane is set up the same way. When hovering the mouse in the vicinity of one of the radio tuning knobs, two counter-clockwise arrows will appear on the left of the knob and two clockwise arrows on the right. The arrows closest to the knob are physically smaller than those on the outside-these adjust the decimal portion of the frequency. The outside arrows are larger and adjust the integer portion of the frequency.

Using the Views
You can change your view of the aircraft using the View menu, or by using the keyboard shortcuts listed in the View menu. Note that the characters in brackets to the right side of each menu option are the keyboard shortcuts for each view. For example, to select the forward view, one would press the W key, and to turn the view 45 &deg; left, one would press the Q key.

Using the menus or the appropriate keyboard shortcuts, you can select a view or modify your current view. The controls for view selection affect the type of view that you are using. For instance, you may choose to be in the cockpit, looking forward at the instrument panel, or you may select an external view, perhaps where you look at your aircraft from the point of view of the nearest air traffic control tower. View selection controls are described in Table table:view_selection.

After selecting some view, you can modify the view using translation (moving left, right, fore, or aft), rotation (spinning about your point of focus), or zoom (changing the angle of view). The default keyboard shortcuts for these effects are listed in Table table:view_mod. Note that in many cases, it is desirable to translate fore or aft rather than zooming in or out.

There are two modes for the 3-D cockpit. Clicking &ldquo;3-D Cockpit Command Look&rdquo; in the View menu, or pressing Shift + 9 on the keyboard will activate the 3-D cockpit without tying the direction of your view to the mouse. This means the only way to move your view around is by using the View menu, the keyboard shortcuts listed in Table table:view_selection, or a button assigned to your flight controls. This mode leaves the mouse free to click on things in the cockpit without affecting where you are looking. On the other hand, clicking &ldquo;3-D Cockpit Mouse Look&rdquo; in the View menu, or pressing Shift + 0 (Shift + zero) will tie the direction of your view to the mouse. In this case, moving the mouse to affect some control in the cockpit will also change where you are looking.

In either 3-D cockpit mode, you can use the keyboard shortcuts or the View menu itself to change where you are looking. These are described in Table table:view_mod.

View Modification Controls

View Selection Inside the Cockpit

View Selection Outside the Aircraft

Letting X-Plane Fly Your Aircraft
X-Plane has the capability to fly an aircraft using artificial intelligence (AI). The AI system can both take the aircraft off and fly it around.

To enable the AI&rsquo;s control of the craft, move the mouse up to the top of the screen to bring down the menu bar. Click Aircraft, then select A.I. Flies Your Aircraft.

With the AI controlling the airplane, you are free to experiment with the different views and also to practice raising and lowering the aircraft&rsquo;s landing gear, flaps, and so on. Furthermore, this is an excellent way to practice tuning radios.

In addition, you can have the AI control your view by opening the Aircraft menu and selecting A.I. Controls Your Views.

Getting Quick Instructions
If you need simple, sparse instructions on performing common tasks in X-Plane, you can move your mouse to the top of the screen, click the About menu, and click Instructions. Here, the tabs labeled &ldquo;Flight Controls,&rdquo; &ldquo;Cockpit Control,&rdquo; &ldquo;Keyboard,&rdquo; &ldquo;ATC,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Tech Support&rdquo; describe these common questions relating to the X-Plane simulator.

Checking the Show mouse click regions in the cockpit box will display a yellow box around the controls in the cockpit which can be manipulated with the mouse. Checking the Show instrument instructions in the cockpit box will display a short description of an instrument when you hold the mouse over it.

Saving and Sharing Your Flight
X-Plane offers a number of ways to save and share a particular flight. These are:
 * Situations, which note the current location, environmental conditions, and properties of the aircraft in use.


 * Replays, which store a &ldquo;recording&rdquo; of your entire flight since the last load. These are only replayable in X-Plane, but they have the advantage of being made up of X-Plane data points storing your aircraft&rsquo;s location, so you can change your views during the replay.


 * Movie files, which begin and end when you toggle them and record exactly what you see on the screen. These have the advantage of being playable in Quicktime and other video players.


 * Screenshots, which store an image of a single moment in your flight and are viewable on any computer.

In each case, you can save the flight and replay it yourself, or you can upload it to the Internet for others to see.

Creating a Reusable Situation
A &ldquo;situation&rdquo; in X-Plane is a file readable only by X-Plane. It is essentially a &ldquo;snapshot&rdquo; that makes a note of the aircraft you are using, its position in the air or on the ground, its payload, the amount of fuel in its tanks, and so on. It also includes information on the environmental conditions of the flight, including cloud conditions, temperature, and time of day. Furthermore, any other aircraft you have loaded will also be noted.

To create a situation (a. sit file), move the mouse to the top of the screen, click File, then click Save Situation.

By default, X-Plane saves your situation file to the following directory: X-Plane 10/ Output/ situations/

This is especially useful for quickly loading and practicing a specific type of approach, or for recreating a specific combat situation. The situations can even be sent to other X-Plane users; all they need is the. sit file that you created.

To load a situation in order to fly it again, open the File menu and click Load Situation. Navigate to the location of your. sit file and double click on it to load the situation.

Creating an Replay
A &ldquo;replay&rdquo; in X-Plane is essentially a &ldquo;movie&rdquo; of your flight which notes the aircraft&rsquo;s location and attitude at each time step, beginning at the last time you loaded an aircraft or traveled to an airport and ending at the moment you click the &ldquo;Save Replay&rdquo; button. This file is only viewable in X-Plane, but because it is so complete, you can change your view as much as you like while replaying. This is in contrast to a Quicktime movie, which records only what you see while you&rsquo;re recording.

These files, like situations, can be shared with and replayed by any X-Plane user.

To create a replay (a. smo file), move your mouse to the top of the screen, click File, and click Save Replay. By default, X-Plane will store your replay in the following directory: X-Plane 10/ Output/ replays/

To load a replay, open the File menu as before, but select Load Replay. Navigate to the location in which you saved your. smo file and double click on it to load.

Creating a Movie
In addition to file types readable only by X-Plane, you can also create more universally readable movies. The downside to these Quicktime movie (.mov) files is that they record exactly what you see when you record them. You will toggle the recording on, fly around a bit, then toggle the recording off; the resulting. mov file will contain what you saw on your screen while flying around.

To record these movies, you need Quicktime 6 or later installed on your computer. After recording the movie, you can edit it in a program like iMovie (installed on new Macs by default) or Windows Live Movie Maker.

Before recording your movie, you may want to set up the Quicktime movie&rsquo;s specifications. Do so by moving the mouse to the top of the screen, clicking on the File menu, then clicking Quicktime Movie Specs. In the dialog box that appears, you can set:
 * the frame rate of the movie (measured in frames per second)


 * the resolution of the movie (width only; height will be calculated automatically from the width), and


 * the time multiplier, indicating how many frames to skip when doing a time lapse video.

In choosing a frame rate, know that videos produced at 15 frames per second will look jittery. Film and television use 24 and 30 frames per second, respectively. In choosing a resolution, keep in mind that an x-resolution of 720 pixels is 720p, and that increasing beyond the resolution you&rsquo;re using on your screen will give no benefit.

To begin recording a movie, either press Ctrl + Spacebar or open the File menu and click Toggle Movie. After flying whatever you intended to record, turn the recording off by either pressing Ctrl + Spacebar or clicking Toggle Movie from the File menu. A file called &ldquo;TK&rdquo; will appear in your top-level X-Plane directory, found by default on the Desktop.

Your Quicktime file can be played back on virtually any computer. If Quicktime is not installed on the computer you want to play the file on, you can get it from the Quicktime Download page on Apple&rsquo;s web site.

Capturing a Screenshot
The final method of saving or sharing your flight is to take a simple screenshot. This can be done either by pressing Shift + Spacebar, or by moving your mouse to the top of the screen, clicking the File menu, and clicking Take Screenshot. The captured image (a. png picture file) will appear in your top-level X-Plane directory, located by default on your Desktop.

These. png screenshots can be opened and viewed on any modern computer, regardless of whether X-Plane is installed.

Visualizing and Replaying Your Flight
In addition to being able to save replays for later playback (as described in the section  sec:saving_and_sharing above), you can visualize your flight up to your present location in a few different ways. You can view your flight path on X-Plane&rsquo;s 2-dimensional maps, or you can toggle the 3-D flight path and view that path in the main simulator. If you want to replay your flight, beginning at the last time you loaded an aircraft or location, you can use X-Plane&rsquo;s built-in replay function, which has shuttle controls to play, rewind, and fast forward, just like you would expect. Finally, if you want to visualize the path taken by a real-world aircraft, you can format its flight data recorder information in a way that X-Plane can interpret. X-Plane will treat the data in the FDR file just like a regular replay, so you can play, fast forward, and rewind as usual.

Viewing the Path Taken by Your Aircraft


The path taken by an aircraft up to its current location can always be seen as a trail behind the aircraft when you toggle the 3-D flight path on. To do so, either press Ctrl + P on the keyboard, or move the mouse to the top of the screen, click on the Aircraft menu, and click Cycle 3-D Flight Path. Doing so once will cause X-Plane to display a violet-striped line behind the aircraft. Cycling the flight path again will put that line into perspective by drawing lines intermittently from the flight path to the ground. Cycling it once more will give a semi-transparent black bar extending from the flight path to the ground (seen in Figure 5). Cycling the path once more will turn off the flight path lines.

To reset the 3-D flight path, either press Alt + P on the keyboard, or open the Aircraft menu and click Reset 3-D Flight Path. The flight path will also be reset whenever you load an aircraft or a location.

A similar effect can be had in 2 dimensions, from an overhead perspective, by opening the Local Map dialog box. The aircraft&rsquo;s flight path since the last reset will be shown on each of the map views. For more information on using the navigation maps here, see the section &ldquo; sec:maps&rdquo; of Chapter.

Using the Built-In Replay
You can replay your flight, from the last time you loaded an aircraft or a location up to your current location, by toggling the replay mode on. This can be done either by pressing Ctrl + &lsquo;r&rsquo; or by opening the Aircraft menu and clicking Toggle Replay Mode. In the top of the window, you will see shuttle controls to (listed left to right):
 * stop playback,


 * play backward faster than real-time,


 * play backward at real-time speed,


 * play backward slower than real-time,


 * pause playback,


 * play forward slower than real-time,


 * play forward at real-time speed,


 * play forward faster than real-time, and


 * stop playback.

Additionally, you can click the shuttle slider and drag it to quickly jump around in the playback.

To return to the flight, either press Alt + &lsquo;,&rsquo; or open the Aircraft menu and click Toggle Replay Mode once again.

Replaying a Flight from a Flight Data Recorder (FDR)
The final method of visualizing a flight is to load a information from a flight data recorder (FDR). This is useful primarily in accident investigation and re-creation. In that case, you would need to take the data from the &ldquo;black box&rdquo; of the aircraft you&rsquo;re interested in and put it in a format that X-Plane can read. That format is the Flight Data Recorder (or. fdr) format. This is plain text file formatted in a particular way, which means that you can make your own FDR files relatively easily from the data you have and then re-create the flight in X-Plane.

The FDR file specification can be found in X-Plane by moving the mouse to the top of the screen, click on the File menu, and clicking Load Flight Data Recorder File. The lower half of this dialog box lists both the preceding data values (file version, aircraft, tail number, and so on) that are required, as well as each of the 100 or so data values that each instant in the flight data can have. These include the time stamp of that instant, the aircraft&rsquo;s location (in latitude, longitude, and altitude), the indicated airspeed, and more.

You can use the scroll bar above the file specification box to look through all the data values, and you can mouse over individual values to get a description of them. Note that even if your instantaneous &ldquo;snapshots&rdquo; of the aircraft do not use a given parameter (such as the engine pressure ratio, perhaps), your data file must use a dummy value as a placeholder.

After formatting your data for X-Plane as an FDR file, you can load it using the Load Flight Data Recorder File dialog box. Click the silver square labeled &ldquo;Flight Data Recorder file,&rdquo; navigate to your file, and double click on. Then, when you close the dialog box, you will be greeted with the standard replay shuttle buttons with which you can replay the flight.

Viewing the Behind-the-Scenes Flight Model
X-Plane models flight by breaking an aircraft down into a number of little pieces and finding the forces acting on each piece. By clicking the Show Flight Model option from the Special menu (or by pressing Ctrl + M on the keyboard) and moving to an outside view (e.g., by pressing Shift + 8 on the keyboard for the chase view), you can actually see all the forces calculated on each piece of the craft. With some wind and turbulence turned on in the Weather screen, you can even see the pseudo-random velocity vector flow field around the airplane. The velocity vectors seen are the actual vectors interacting with the aircraft, and the force vectors (the green lines coming off the plane) are the actual forces acting on the plane&mdash;nothing is just for show here. This is the actual work that X-Plane is doing.



The green bars extending from the control surfaces of the aircraft indicate how much lift each section of the surface is generating; longer bars represent greater force. The red bars, likewise, represent drag, and the yellow bars represent lift from vertical control surfaces.