With Blade-element theory, a wing, for example, may be made up of many sections (1 to 4 is typical), and each section is further divided into as many as 10 separate sections, then the lift and drag of each section is calculated, and the resulting effect is applied to the whole aircraft.

Blade-element theory and other computational aerodynamic models can be used to compute aerodynamic forces in real time or to pre-compute aerodynamic forces of a new design for later use in a traditional lookup table type of simulator. It is a way of modeling the forces and moments on an aircraft by individually evaluating the parts that constitute it. These simulators do a good job of simulating the flight characteristics of the aircraft they were designed to simulate (those with known aerodynamic data), but are not useful in design work, and do not predict the performance of aircraft when the actual figures are not available.īlade-element theory is one method of improving on this. Traditionally, flight simulators try to emulate the real-world performance of an aircraft by using lookup tables to find known aerodynamic forces such as lift or drag, which vary with flight condition. X-Plane differentiates itself by implementing an aerodynamic model known as blade element theory. Switching the planet to Mars is an option that comes with the game, and although the air is thin, flight is possible. It allows flight from -70 degrees south to 74 degrees north. It comes with five scenery disks, and one with scenery and the actual simulator. X-Plane also has a plugin architecture that allows users to create their own modules and aircraft, extending the functionality of the software by letting users create their own worlds or replicas of places on earth. X-Plane is packaged with other software to build and customize aircraft and scenery, offering a complete flight simulation environment. X-Plane is a flight simulator for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows by Laminar Research.

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