Folks, ages ago, I used to "fly" with Microsoft's Flight Simulator. Spent hours doing instrument flying, other stuff that I would not dare do in a regular airplane. For you young guys, it wasn't a shooter game, a knock-em-out-of-the-sky-with-laser game at all, but a real flight simulator. I notice that a version is still in production today. PC-only. hmmmmmmmm! Does anyone know if Microsoft's Flight Simulator would work for a MacBook Parallels rig? The graphics would certainly be the question. I was trying to find a demo, but can't. I would love to have this working on my Mac.
It probably won't work in Parallels, but you could try X-Plane, which has a Mac version and is generally considered one of the best flight simulators available. http://www.x-plane.com/
Larry, Fs would work in a boot camp partition since it requires 3D, but not in parallels. I am beta testing the new version and on my AMD 64 dekstop it has problems. On the boot camp partition is seems to kill the usb connections constantly and have not had time to troubleshoot it. Mike Vidal Maybe you have flown some of my planes?
I downloaded X-Plane for the Mac. Incredible looking simulator, although the demo doesn't give one enough time to get a feel of the product. At least the price is very good for what you get. Thanks for the info about Flight Simulator. Well, I just thought it might have been a good idea. Heck, I used to fly the thing on my Atari!!!
Yeah..... and in my case, they started me out on a 747 or 777! Sure. All I wanted to do was fly a Cessna 172. The 747 started taxing down the runway, I ran off the concrete into something. The next thing I knew, a side view switched in about 1/2 mile away, and smoke was all over the run way. I don't think did too well....! I was still trying to learn the controls to avoid the mess when these boxes kept popping up asking me to buy the product. Well, anyway... It looks like a good product, but a one week time-cripple demo would certainly been more appropriate. Ah well.... it would be a hoot to have a simulator of this genre that could work with the limited graphics that we have, if anything, just to show things off a bit.
Hi The demo time of X-plane is only for joystick input. After 5minutes, the simulator is full working for instrumental fligh. I use X-plane since version 5, and it is much, much better than MS. But you neddto buy rudders and joystick for better experiencie. Also, there is plentyof free add-on on the net
I just bought x-plane myself after trying it out (after seeing it recommended here). It is really terrific but the joystick that they sell is not particularly good (no Z-axis rotation). However, the documentation is unimpressive so expect to spend a lot of time learning to use it. As for running x-plane vs. running MS Simulator in Parallels (which I doubt will work), my view is that the Parallels system is brilliant for "office-related" stuff and utilities that are occasionally needed but are not available for native Mac. I don't see Mac/Parallels (or indeed Mac/Bootcamp) as a replacement for high-end Windows gaming - if that's what you want to do, it's far more cost effective to have a Windows box around.