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I am a student pilot thinking about using x-plane 10 (home/desktop version) on my home PC to practice some of the mental parts of flying as well as run through procedures.

Does anyone out there know how accurate the simulation model for the x-plane home version is - I'm especially curious to know how realistic the simulator responds in these flight scenarios:

- Full power climb at low airspeed. Is there a left turning tendency?
- Forward slips
- Cross-control stalls

I am currently using Microsoft Flight Simulator X, which does not seem to model these scenarios very well.

I'm interested to hear about your experience using either of these simulators.

Can't answer all of this as I'm too early in my student pilot days (only had a discovery flight so far and I'm currently saving my pennies to take more lessons). However, I have been playing around with X-Plane quite a bit, so I can try to answer some of your questions.

First, is there a reason why you're going with 10 instead of 9 right now? I'm asking because 10, despite being on sale, is still in beta with frequent bug fixes going out. If you don't mind things being a little buggy until the kinks are worked out, it should be fine, but I figured I should warn you. 9 is rock solid, however, and pretty cheap ($30 from X-Plane.org).

Second, you better believe there is the left turning tendency! I ride on my rudder button (don't have pedals yet) during the whole take-off and climb with the X-Plane Cessna 172.

As for the other questions, I'm not familiar enough with them to answer, sadly.

I have both flight sims. I can tell you that X-Plane does have the torque component. The problem I have with X-Plane is that when I use Track-IR, if I move to much, my head sticks out of the cockpit and if I sit back to far, I seem to be sitting in the back seat. So, because of that situation, I use Microsoft X more often because of this problem as well as it is easier to setup.

If anyone has a solution to the X-Plane/ Track IR issue, please let me know.