X-Plane Version 9

X-Plane is one of the most advanced flight simulator software packages for personal computers and includes complete scenery of the planets Earth and Mars. X-Plane creates a realistic flight model by computing the forces that act upon each part of the aircraft. This includes turbulence, ground effect, and downdraft simulations. Even the weather is realistically simulated using weather data downloaded in specified intervals.

The terrain is modeled according to the data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, and the environment is animated using road traffic simulations.

X-Plane 9 includes more than 25,000 airports. Efficiency improvements have reduced memory usage and increased loading speeds. Additional aircraft models have been added, and the tool to build your own airplanes has been enhanced.

The software is currently available for $39 and comes on eight DVDs, which includes all required data.

A free and open source alternative to X-Plane is FlightGear, which has been under development for ten years and has come a long way. It is a highly realistic flight simulator for use on ordinary PCs. It has been developed on Linux but is also available for most other common platforms. The wide range of aircrafts and terrain, and the realistic simulations of the aircraft behavior and the environment, including the sun, moon and earth make it both fun and instructional.

FlightGear's simulation engine and 3D graphics rendering are so advanced that the system is used for all kinds of projects, such as a system for analyzing oscillation problems in jets, or as a visualization tool for unmanned aerial vehicles. A FlightGear based simulation was used as part the TV show Justice to provide illustrations in a plane crash investigation.