I’ll knock out some replies to this later tonight - getting ready to go fly circles in our G1000 King Air…
A few quick comments though. Absolutely, the X-Plane demo is free from what I can recall. It has a limited demo flying area…and I’m not sure if it still limits you for time…but it would be a good indicator before you buy. I would NOT buy a disc version (I have that) and it sucks that you can’t covert it to a digital version…so I’ll probably end up rebuying it on Steam at some point. It is continuously upgraded by the developer…which is really nice.
Some good names have been working on third party stuff (Carenado, Aerosoft, Level-D) but really there are already some really high quality payware devs out there. And some of the free stuff is really good too.
The scenery isn’t up to Orbx type quality or quantity yet - but I’ve found the default stuff to be adequate…but I’m not really much of a VFR guy except for the bush flying. The terrain can be upgraded by downloading and installing (quite easy) free HD and UHD meshes that really make the scenery pop:
Regarding performance - X-Plane can bring your system to its knees if you max out everything…so be realistic and play with the settings…
I’ll be back after some circles…
BeachAV8R