by Jane Garvey

Although the state of airframe design is relatively stagnant, the same can’t be said of avionics and software development, especially the latter. As our series on IFR training programs has shown, this software has improved considerably during the past five years.

When we last examined this software, we regarded X-Plane as the winner among the IFR trainer programs, at least for people with high-end computer systems. Although the intervening years have yielded enhanced weather modeling among the remaining PC-sim survivors, X-Plane remains a serious and extraordinarily capable program. But we think you’ll be happier with it in the long run if you’re a bit of a geek. …