Mac Flight Sims

[Janner]

I've noticed that most of the flight sims are all designed to work on Windows. Does anyone know of one that will run on my Mac? Otherwise, i'd have to dump my old PC for a new one. All said and done, the flight sim would cost over a grand. :(

Please don't make this thread a PC vs. Mac grudge match...

jan

[aeropal]

...

[Janner]

no... but i'll give it a shot...

[FlyingOsca]

Hi People. I'm new to RC modelling but was given a Sig 4 Star 60 kit to build 2 years ago and have just finished it. I have only flown control line up to now so would like to get some stick time on my Mac using a Hitec Transmitter. Does anyone out there know of a Mac sim / interface which would be available. I am runnning OSX 10.3.9. I am starting to think I am on an impossible quest as all sims seem geared up for PC's which I don't have, nor want. Any help, advice or info would be appreciated.
Cheers!

[bluesky123]

FlyingOsca,

Try the search trick first. :)
This question was discussed here many times!

In short, there are only a couple decent simulators for Mac that I'm aware of (my apologies to the respected parties if I missed their products): a commercial sim X-Plane and a freeware Slope Soaring Simulator or SSS.

X-Plane is a great full-size sim, but it also inculdes a couple of models, which look prety decent. Therea are also some additional downloadable R/C models for X-Plane. SSS is a freeware and it's awesome for slope soaring gliders. I was amazed how realistic the gliders feel!

To control these sims on Mac, you'll need a true USB interface (there are some serial PIC interfaces with embedded USB-to-Serial bridges, they will NOT work on Mac). The interface I used with X-Plane and SSS on Mac is a USB cable sold by milehighwings.com.

Boris

[jswjimmy]

well, just to clue you guys in. even mac is moving to pc. apple is dumping the ibm power pc cpu for an intel x86 cpu.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html

[martimer]

Jimmy,

That is true, but will not help us Mac users get a flight simulator. The rest of the hardware is different and the OS is vastly different.

[VinceHaworth]

Jimmy,

That is true, but will not help us Mac users get a flight simulator. The rest of the hardware is different and the OS is vastly different.

yeah - a bit like trying to push a large boulder uphill :rolleyes:

This is what really p***ses me off about mac fans - they are great for this, great for that, much better than windows blah blah blah. Then you try and do something slightly off the main stream and, guess what? A windows pc is better. :D

[FlyingOsca]

Bluesky123

Many thanks for your advice and info. I am looking at the X-Plane sim. Hopefully I will have a result soon. Thanks again

[FlyingOsca]

Bluesky123

Many thanks for your advice & info re flight simulators for MAC. I am looking at the X-Plane sim, hopefully I will have a result soon. Cheers !!

Flyingosca

[martimer]

Let us know if you get a transmitter to work with X-Plane. I have heard that it can be done, but my JR 8103 never worked.

[FlyingOsca]

I have a friend of a friend living in Hungary who says he has managed to get his transmitter to work with a Mac Simulator.. Don't know if it was X-Plane but I will try to get the info out of him asap!

[bluesky123]

What's a big deal to "connect a transmitter to Mac"? A true USB interface, which reports itself to the OS as a joystick, works equally well with Windows and Mac (starting with MacOS X operating system) computers!

The hard part is to find a simulator, which runs on Mac. I used to work at a software company, which shipped its products on multiple platforms, including Mac. So, when something went wrong on Mac, it was a major pain th the a$$ to debug your code there. It is considerable more expensive to develop Mac software than to write Windows application, that's why there are so few R/C simulators for Mac...

[jrjunkie]

well, just to clue you guys in. even mac is moving to pc. apple is dumping the ibm power pc cpu for an intel x86 cpu.

Whoa there big fella. Lets just straighten this out before you give some innocent kid the wrong idea. :)

Mac is NOT moving to PC. Apple is "dumping" the 'power pc' architecture for 'x86' architecture. The reason for this is simple, IBM made promises and didn't deliver. Apple (Steve Jobs) wants performance, now. Intel can deliver. Apple will retain its amazing, beautiful, secure and reliable operating system, OS X and it will only run on a Mac. There will be NO Dells with OS X.

For anyone wondering, this will not solve the simulator problem. They are built on 'Direct X', a Micro$oft proprietary, closed source, 3D standard. So, without any more M$ bashing, their refusal to use the standardized 'Open GL' libraries effectively handicaps the rest of us.

[Mr Rowl]

OS X ... will only run on a Mac

Apart from all those people who have got it running on standard PCs and even, with a little more work(!), XBox etc. I expect to see it on PSP soon - following in the footsteps of linux and windows...


For anyone wondering, this will not solve the simulator problem. They are built on 'Direct X', a Micro$oft proprietary, closed source, 3D standard. So, without any more M$ bashing, their refusal to use the standardized 'Open GL' libraries effectively handicaps the rest of us.

Incidently, Microsoft plans to handicap (i.e. totally shaft) OpenGL much more in the future:

http://www.opengl.org/

And in addition, there's nothing intrinsicly wrong with DirectX being proprietry, closed source, or a 3D standard. In fact almost all the OpenGL _implementations_ (e.g. nvidia's drivers, whatever Apple uses etc) are proprietry, closed source, and there to make $. But this isn't the right place for a "Microsoft/Apple are evil" debate...