What is X-Plane®?

X-Plane® is a registered trademark of Laminar Research. (OK - you saw it here. Consider it said for the FAQ site. I'm not going to put in an ® next to each of the hundreds of appearances of the name "X-Plane" in this FAQ.)

From the X-Plane web site:

"X-Plane is the world's most comprehensive, powerful flight simulator, and has the most realistic flight model available for personal computers."

To learn more, see the X-Plane description page and the overview FAQ page.

About the FAQ

The FAQ are maintained by Andy Goldstein. Laminar Research has no responsibility for this material. The material published here is believed to be true, but I'm not in a position to verify everything. Caveat lector! If you would like to contribute material to the FAQ or make corrections, please email me directly.

Thanks to Billy Verreynne, Ron Lindenfeld, Robin Peel, Cormac Shaw, Ben Supnik, Papamac, and others for their contributions.

Updated for Version 8.64

Last revised: 4-Nov-2007. (Recently updated topics are highlighted in green.)

Tech Support

Let's be clear about this - I run the FAQ because I feel like it, not because I'm employed to provide support for X-Plane. Please don't email me directly with tech support questions - unless they're really interesting I will ignore them.
If you bought X-Plane direct from Laminar Research, you are eligible for tech support direct from Laminar Research. Also see Laminar's tech support FAQ.

You can also send questions to the tech list, where

they will be seen by many people capable of answering them

the answers will be visible to others as well.

RTFM!!

Please read this stuff. Please read the material on the X-Plane web site , especially the links under the "X-World" heading. There's a huge amount of data out there to help you get started. The folks on the X-Plane tech list are more than happy to help with individual problems, but will get irritated if there are too many questions on stuff covered by the FAQ or tutorials.

What is the Tech list?

The Tech list is a mailing list for technical discussion about X-Plane. It's for talking about how to run X-Plane; how to fly the planes or how they work; how to build planes; dealing with video card issues; you name it. You join it by sending an email to x-plane-tech-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. After you join, your first post is moderated. This is a measure to keep spammers out of the list. Subscribing establishes a profile for you at YahooGroups. You can modify your profile by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups. You can also read tech list postings out of the YahooGroups archive and search the archive for old material.

There is also a moderated announcement list and an X-Plane chat list for more general discussion about aviation.

How do I unsubscribe from the Tech list?

There is no better way to annoy the folks on the tech list (and get abuse heaped onto you) than to ask this question of the tech list. You do not unsubscribe by sending mail to the Tech list. You unsubscribe by sending a blank email to x-plane-tech-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. There have been a number of complaints that the unsubscribe address does not work, particularly from AOL users. (There may be something in the AOL software that gets in the way.) Instead, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups and change your profile to "No email, read from the archive."

Topics

More About X-Plane
Installing and Upgrading
Configuration - Making it Work
Flying and Navigation
Resources - how do I learn about...
Version 8
Version 7
Version 6
Version 5
Detailed History
Networking
Video Cards and Hardware
Aircraft - format and conversion
PlaneMaker and Aircraft Construction
Generation 8 Global Scenery
Scenery, Airports, and Navaids
Building Scenery
Theory