[Nobody]

Aloha,
I'm considering buying X-Plane 8. I found the X-Plane.com system requirements confusing:
G4 or G5 1ghz, 512 meg, 10 gig, DVD, OpenGL, VRAM 16 meg

They go on to say:

"NOTE: THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ABOVE FOR VERSION 8 ARE FOR RUNNING WITH THE GENERATION-7 SCENERY (an option for version 8 of X-Plane). HOWEVER, IF YOU TURN ON THE "GENERATION-8 SCENERY" OPTION IN THE "RENDERING OPTIONS" SCREEN, THEN YOU DOUBLE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS on the Macintosh! All that detail takes a good chunk of RAM!"

And that's the confusing part, is he saying that the minimum for X-Plane 8 is a 2 ghz G5? That's an exclusive club.
I have a G4 1.25 GHZ PowerMac, 80 GB, 768 MB, and 64 MB of VRAM. Would I be wasting my money on X-Plane 8 unless I stick with version 7 scenery?
Also, what are people's opinions, pro and con, of X-Plane 8?
Thanks!

[Peter Cohen]

I reviewed X-Plane 6.5 back in 2003. It was -- and is -- the best Mac-based flight simulator on the market. But it's not a game -- it's a simulator. It has a wonky interface that takes some getting used to, but it's very powerful if you take the time to get to understand it.
The generation 8 stuff is a big difference, but it's not absolutely necessary. You'll be able to get away with using the older scenery without missing too much, but if you upgrade to a really faster machine, you'll see a difference.

[Nobody]

Thanks Peter. Have you or someone else tried X Plane 8? What Mac did you use and how were the results?

[griffman]

I have the demo of X-Plane 8 on a G5/2.0GHz machine (with the ATI 9800 Pro and tons of RAM). It seems to run just fine, though there's not direct "Use X-Plane 8 scenery" switch that I can find. But I turned stuff up to a moderate/high level, and it seemed fine. Certainly 7, which I do own, works fine. It's an amazingly nice simulator, especially if you like the technicalities of flying (the clouds are awesome, and the turbulence/wind are very well done).
-rob.