X-Plane on a Mac

Question

I've tried the Demo on my MacBook Air 11 inches and it works surprisingly well. I know that it's got a graphics card of 1.6 GHz (Intel Core i5), but it meets all of the other requirements.

The question is: if I were to download the full version onto an external hard drive, would this little computer be able to handle the game? Though it seems like the answer should be a clear no, the demo runs well without any major issues. Those requirements are the only thing stopping me from making this purchase. I'm rather perplexed.

Thanks for your help and attention!

Answer 1

The demo is a good indicator. That being said, an external hard drive (as opposed to an internal HD or SSD) could slow things down a bit. Depends on the connection with the laptop.

Did you try the demo with you sitting on 16L of KSEA? That's runway 16 left of Seattle Tacoma International Airport with the stock Cessna. What's your frame rate? Is the view acceptable?

Frame rate rules. Find out here:

http://wiki.x-plane.com/Setting_Up_X-Plane_for_Best_Performance

Comments

I've flown all over the Seatac area (even to KTIW!) My frame rate's anywhere between 21 and 50 per second, depending on who knows what. It's very stable and I only ever get a stutter immediately after changing aircraft or location. This is, however, extremely brief.

I think I'll buy it then and run it off of the external hard drive. If all you have to wait on is loading, then that's no big deal.

Answer 2

If you have tried the demo on your laptop and it runs well for you, the default full sim should work basically the same. If you want to start adding fancy third party aircraft or HD scenery, all bets are off though! ;)

As far as running off an external hard drive goes, the only problem you may see there is slower load times if the external drive is slower than the built in one. We don't use the HD while flying in a way that affects FPS, so your frame rate should stay about the same.