There are a couple of excellent tutorials on basic flying, instrument navigation, etc. See the X-World page for a comprehensive set of links.
Hal Stoen maintains a page with an extensive set of stories and tutorials.
Charles Wood has put together a comprehensive web site on flight sim navigation.
StudentPilot.com has a ground school web site with basic information on flying.
The complete user's guide from the FLY!2 flight simulator is available online. While a lot of this manual is specific to using FLY!2, there's a lot of material on flying in general that applies to X-Plane.
To learn about IFR flying, Don Nyveen recommends The Pilot's Manual, Instrument Flying by Trevor Thom, Aviation Supplies & Academics Inc.
The Airplane Flying Handbook is published by the FAA and is available from their web site.
AOPA maintains a web page with free online courses.
http://www.whittsflying.com/ - a web site with a huge, if somewhat rambling, collection of articles on all aspects of flying.
Read the books and web pages and still aren't clear on how a VOR works? Here's a link to a neat VOR trainer applet.
eFlightManuals sells PDFs of the actual operating handbooks for a large number of commercal and military aircraft, current and historic.
JustManuals.com also sells PDFs of a number of aircraft operation and training handbooks.
SmartCockpit.com has online operating handbooks of many of the major airliners.
A 747 procedures handbook is available from Precision Manuals: select "downloads", then "other downloads", "Documentation". Then "747 Queen of the skies" or "737 NG". Download the manual.
In fairness, it's seriously out of date. It's from like version 6 or thereabouts. I thought there was a new manual in development, but it hasn't been heard from for some time. However...
Live with it. X-Plane is a fast-moving work in progress. Any documentation you find will always be out of date. The X-Plane web site describes what's new in the current version; check these FAQ pages for topics, especially the Flying and Navigation page and the Detailed History pages.
Tracy Walker has created a good tutorial at http://x-plane.org/home/suncoaster/xplanesite.html.
There is an older one (from approximately V5) at http://legoplane.freeservers.com/.
The Incomplete Guide to Airfoil Usage at http://www.ae.uiuc.edu/m-selig/ads/aircraft.html lists the wing airfoils of a large selection of aircraft.
Theory of Wing Sections (below) has performance charts of many of the common airfoils. NASA also published these charts as a PDF, available from X-Plane.org. (Membership is required to download.)
See Robin Peel's Airport and Nav File Definition page.
I've collected from various tech list postings the following list of links for airport charts and approach and departure procedures:
Sectional charts of the US with a nice Google map type interface: http://skyvector.com/.
The EAD home page is a centralized resource for all European airport data, run by Eurocontrol.
This is the links page on the Eurocontrol website:
http://www.eurocontrol.int/ais/links/europe.htm
Bosnia - http://www.bhdca.gov.ba/ais.htm
Canada - http://www.navcanada.ca/ContentDefinitionFiles/Publications/AeronauticalInfoProducts/
CanadianAirportCharts/CanadianAirportCharts_current.pdf
Germany (Military) - http://www.mil-aip.de/pages/aip_eng.html
(SIDS/STARS on http://www.mil-aip.de/pages/procedures.html )
(German civil AIP seems not to be available online)
Slovenia - http://www.caa-rs.si/eng/aip.php?arhiv=&idm=84&kid=3
Spain - http://ais.aena.es/aipesp/Hoja_presentacion_AipEsp.htm
(Click on "AD" on top of page then "AD2 - Aerodromos")
USA - http://avn.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=naco/online/d_tpp - airport diagrams, standard arrival and departure procedures and more.
USA - http://www.airnav.com/
USA - http://www.razorsedgesoft.com/diagrams.htm (airport charts)
USA - http://map.aeroplanner.com/mapping/chart/aptsel.cfm
(has many from rest of world too but this requires membership)
USA - http://www.naco.faa.gov/ - home page of the National Aeronautical Charting Ofice.
More from Massimo Marino:
http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/pubs/aip/html/aipad2.htm AIS United Kingdom
http://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/html/frameset_aip_fr.htm AIP France - Charts for France and the DOM-TOMs
http://www.vacc-sag.net/ vACC-SAG - Charts for Germany/ Switzerland/ Austria
http://ca.ivao.org/charts IVAO Canada - Charts for Canada
http://naco.faa.gov FAA NACO - Charts for the USA (Click on Online Products, then digital-TPP on the left hand side - that will lead you to a search page
http://www.aena.es/csee/Satellitecid=1078418725163&pagename=AIS%2FHome_AIS&SMO=4&SiteName=NavegacionAerea&Section=1&c=Page&MO=2&lang=EN_GB AIP Spain - Charts for Spain
http://www.slv.dk/Dokumenter/dscgi/ds.py/View/Collection-94 AIP Denmark - Chart for Denamrk, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands
http://www.lfv.se/templates/LFV_InfoSida_70_30____2555.aspx AIP Sweden - Charts for Sweden
http://www.ais-asecna.org/en/index.htm AIS ASECNA - Charts for select African countries
http://www.aip.net.nz AIP New Zealand - Charts for New Zealand
http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/publications/aip.asp Airservices Australia - Charts for Australia
You can communicate directly with X-Plane's UDP (networking protocol). Roy Coates maintains a web site with a lot of reference material and several useful utilities.
You can write plug-ins, which are loadable pieces of software that run as part of the X-Plane application. Ben Supnik maintains a web site for plug-in development. A good place to start is this page for the complete beginner.
Warning: The content and format of X-Plane's UDP messages tends to change from version to version. The X-Plane developer community recommends for most applications that you build a plug-in and handle your own network communications. The plug-in interface is stable and does not require you to track version to version changes (unless you want to take advantage of new features).
John Denker has written an online book called See How It Flies that covers many different theoretical aspects of flight, ranging from basic math and physics to flying technique.Back to the main page
Here's a couple of books I found very useful and informative:
- Mach 1 and Beyond by Larry Reithmaier, 1995 by Tab Books (McGraw-Hill). Available from Barnes & Noble, US $19.95
An excellent treatment of basic aerodynamics, supersonic flight, and jet engines. Lots of detail, illustrations, and graphs, but stops short of hairy math.
- Jet Engines, Fundamentals of Theory, Design, and Operation by Klaus Huenecke, 1997, Motorbooks International. Available from Barnes & Noble, US $29.95
Detailed, down and dirty treatment of how jet engines work. Lots of photos, charts, and math. Covers everything from theory to details of construction.
- Modern Combat Aircraft Design, by Klaus Huenecke, 1987, Naval Institute Press.
More of a glossy coffee table book than the above, but has a good treatment of the unique features of military jets. Lots of technical detail, diagrams, charts, etc.
- Theory of Wing Sections by Ira. H. Abbott and Albert E. von Doenhoff, 1959, Dover Publications. Available from Barnes & Noble, US $14.95
The definitive textbook on how airfoils work. Tons of math and tables. Better brush up on your calculus before you try to make it through the theory section. Perhaps more important for X-Plane aircraft designers, this book includes performance charts of all the standard airfoils. (If the charts are all you're after, you can get them for free in NACA TR-824 above.)