Hi George,

George Graham:
After reading the great article in EAA Mag about the X-Plane flight
simulator, I went online and bought a copy. I installed it and the
scenery disk per instructions, even logged into the online help and
downloaded the Cozy IV airplane. I can fly it from my home airport
(ksrq) in Florida. I have made great progress for my age, with a very
complicated piece of software.

But I have very basic questions still unanswered, so I'm hoping that
one of you can help me out. I have version 8.60

I suppose you are using Windows or a Mac? I am using Linux, so some
things might not match perfectly to your system, but I'll try to give
you at least some hints.

1. Do I have to leave the DVD in the drive always ? It goes into
demo mode if it is not found in the drive.

Yes, you have to. This is the "copy protection" the guys from Laminar
Research choose to use, so the app will only run when the DVD is in the
drive. It might be able to rip an image to disc and mount it as a
virtual DVD, but I never tried that cause my DVD drive is nice and quiet.

2. Which scenery files do I need to fly locally ? What I see is very
poor.

I can't remember the installation procedure well, but if I remember
correctly, you could choose if you wanted to install the Version 8.20
scenery for the US during installation. Did you select that? If so, the
scenery might be as good as it gets already now.

To check this, please go to the folder on your hard disc, which you
installed X-Plane to. Check the Resources\default scenery folder if it
holds a number of folders starting with "820". If so, you at least have
scenery 8.20 objects installed. Then check, if you have a folder named
"DSF 820 Earth" in there. This should again contain another folder
called "Earth nav data", which holds the actual description folders for
every tile in 8.20 scenery. So inside
%YOURXPLANEINSTALLATION%\Resources\default scenery\DSF 829 Eart\Earth
nav data, there should be lots of folders with names like "-50+050".
Each of these folders contains a number of .dsf files, which are the
actual information of how the world should look like.

Still, X-Plane's scenery is clearly inferior to MSFS, which is designed
a lot more for eye-candy. In contrast, the flight model of X-Plane is
much more realistic, so the flying experience itself is more authentic.

3. How can I obtain an instruction manual ?

The manual should be located in the
%YOURXPLANEINSTALLATION%\Instructions folder. Simply open "X-Plane
Manual.html" in your favorite browser and you got the manual.

4. Is there a better way to find answers ?

Good question. x-plane.org might be a good place to start, there are
lots of forums mainly focusing on X-Plane:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?act=idx

Tjark