If you’ve ever suffered a spat of turbulence and wondered how you’d do at the controls of an airliner—who hasn’t?—it's time you took a spin in X-Plane 11, the industrial-grade flight simulator you can download to your desktop.
You’ll first marvel at the instrument panels, the realistic sea of buttons and dials that control autopilot, the engines, flaps, radio comms, among scores of other functions. You'll take in the high-res scrolling landscape beneath you—or above you, whenever you learn that no, you cannot fly better than the pros. And then, you'll feel the plane: the flexing wings, the spinning of the engines when you hit the throttle, the deep hum when you deploy the landing gear.
This dedication to the reality of flight has long made Laminar Research's X-Plane the go-to game for aviation enthusiasts and actual pilots, taking off for fun or honing their real-world skills. The 11th release of the program that helped kill Microsoft’s Flight Simulator a decade ago, just dropped in beta and available as a free demo, has pushed the realism yet further.
Laminar Research
