Flight sim for Mac

Staggerwing · July 13, 2013, 11:03:59 AM

I need a good suggestion for a flight sim for my iMac that is relatively cheap and available online. The 'puter is a 2008 with 2.4 GHz processor so I can't handle anything too heavy, performance wise, but my beefier Win7 box won't be set up for a while yet and I need something to scratch the flight itch. I'll consider civvie or combat. I'm running OS 10.8 in case it matters. Thanks all.

PanzersEast · July 13, 2013, 12:07:55 PM

Are you looking for commercial aviation or combat?

PE

Staggerwing · July 13, 2013, 12:14:09 PM

Either one, as long as the combat sim allows for some random sightseeing as well. I want to keep it cheap as I will go back to simming under Windows in a month or two. I just ran across a freeware game called 'Flightgear' so I'll give that a try, assuming it's not too buggy.

Yskonyn · July 13, 2013, 08:23:06 PM

What about Xplane 9?

Staggerwing · July 13, 2013, 08:53:28 PM

I have x-plane 9 for Win somewhere in the midst of all my post move chaos. Did Laminar put both Win and OSX versions on the disks?

jomni · July 13, 2013, 09:01:03 PM

X-Plane 10
Not cheap and you need the DVDs

Yskonyn · July 14, 2013, 05:03:35 AM

I am not sure actually, I just seem to recall that it runs on a Mac as well.

steve58 · July 14, 2013, 10:17:24 AM

...never mind. ::) Just saw in your post above you already found this...

While I've never used it myself (I have MS Flight Sim and Xplane 10), you might want to check out FlightGear. Its a free MS Flight Simulator/Xplane clone.

"FlightGear is a free open-source flight simulator. It supports a variety of popular platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and is developed by skilled volunteers from around the world."

Here are some links to the Mac version:

http://www.flightgear.org/download/
Has links to the latest version 2.10

http://macflightgear.sourceforge.net/home/
The site shows a link to ver 2.6, so may not be very up to date. I did see these specs on the site though:

2.6.0
•Intel Macs (core2 2.4GHz or better is recommended)
•Powerful GPU (Discrete GPU is recommended. Integrated GPU is OK, but you'll get low frame rate)
•Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
•Network connection (for multi player and scenery download)

Looks like the base program is about ~740MB. Additional planes and especially scenery would be lots more...

Staggerwing · July 14, 2013, 01:37:32 PM

Thanks for taking the time to look, Steve. I tried Flightgear last night but for some reason, when I hit the 'start flight' button- nothing happens ???. I may try to research it but I'm also going to go rummage around for my x-plane 9 disks and see if they have the Mac version on them. *crosses fingers*