SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Laminar Research X-Plane 8

This Cessna 140 shows an example of a 3D cockpit. The C-140 is an extremely fun airplane to fly and it shows all the characteristics of a tail-wheel aircraft including a propensity to ground loop if you are careless on the rudders and brakes. (Cessna 140 by Tracy Walker and Mike Baker)

The C-140 is a good airplane to show off the environmental effects of X-Plane. I set a direct crosswind of 30 knots in the sim and the light Cessna weathervaned immediately into the wind. Setting the wheel brake and pulling in a bit of elevator raised the tail off the ground, showing that the lift computation includes wind and gust effects. When taxiing care must be taken to position the controls appropriately or you risk getting blown over onto a wing or your nose.

The atmospheric effects in X-Plane are some of the best out there. The cloud layers and translucency are very believable and the fog and haze effects accurately depict real world visibility situations. You may notice a haze layer creeping in after you start X-Plane. This can happen if you have the option selected on the rendering setup screen that fixes a minimum FPS value. In order to unburden the system and increase FPS above the minimum selected, X-Plane will automatically reduce the world view distance via haze. You can deselect this setting if you prefer to manage your own view distances.

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