Hi Kendall,
I am not with Laminar Research or any other company implied in this message; just a flight simmer.
Congratulations to your school in promoting aviation and planning to setup a flight simulation scenario.
The comments from Lazy.se are quite relevant as X-plane is resource hungry meaning you need a good fast component system.
If you eventually setup a 3 screen system for your cockpit visual make sure the screens (televisions above 27 inch or monitors up to 27 inch) are the same size and model.
If and when you purchase x-plane you can install the software on as many computers as you want, but, you can only run one copy at any one time. You will need to purchase a additional licence for each computer being run at the same time.
Do you need an overall "professional licence" version? I don'y know. Will a professional licence allow you to run additional units at the same time? I don't know. I suggest you contact Laminar Research direct at [email protected] I am sure they will guide you on what to do.
I would suggest your report recommends the purchase of a purpose built windows based PC. Serious flight simmers have this type of system. A purpose built unit also allows you to upgrade components as and when needed and also when affordable. Other brands/manufacturers don't have this ability other than adding additional RAM. These purpose built machines have specifications equal to or greater than the recommended specifications. The details can be found at https://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-11-system-requirements/ My additional advice is to go for an Intel CPU coupled with an NVidia GPU. Other systems/brands have been known not to work as expected.
Also have a look at the youtube videos created by Michael Brown found at https://www.youtube.com/user/col2mab/videos Michael offers some very good information in setting up and using X-Plane particularly a quad screen system. I am quite sure you will get some useful information to use for your report. MIchael owns a company called XForcePC which builds PCs predominantly for X-Plane. Laminar Research recommends this company as the supplier of PCs suitable for X-plane within the USA
Good luck with the assignment.
Glenn