Product Description

SimCity™ 4, features new simulation and graphics engines, new regional game play and thenew ability to track the lives of individual Sims as they go about their daily routine, SimCity 4 isthe most realistic, powerful and personal SimCity experience ever. Lay the groundwork for theircities by molding mountains, carving valleys, seeding forests and laying rivers. Build a worldclasscity with stadiums, airports, universities, and real-world landmarks. Feel the rhythm of thecity: peaceful protests and rowdy riots, noontime crowds and nighttime calm. Control everyaspect of your city and see the results for better or worse.

• Sculpt mountains, gouge valleys, seed forests, and bring forth animals to create a world allyour own.
• Summon volcanoes, release tornados, and call down meteors and lightning.
• Build a world class city with stadiums, airports, universities, and real-world landmarks.
• Deploy emergency vehicles and join in the action as they battle blazes, mobs, and more.
• Place your Sims in your city to get the inside scoop on what's going on around town.
• Connect a massive region of SimCities, each sharing and competing for resources.

Features

• Create and control the most life-like metropolis you can imagine
• Take your Sims from "The Sims" into your SimCity
• Dispatch police cruisers to fight crime, send out the Mayor's limo to quell a rioting mob, or cap an erupting volcano threatening your citizens
• Form mountains, carve valleys, plant forests, raise oceans, and more
• From mellow traffic flow to commuter hell, noontime crowds to nighttime calm, partygoers to troublemakers, the movement in your city is ever-changing and unpredictable

Reviews (28)

Should be Crash City not Sim City
I bought this game for my son and I am now spending many minutes a day rebooting his MAC computer. The game locks up the entire system and requires a hard reboot each time. If this was an automobile from GM of Ford the roads would be littered with wrecked cars. Don't waste you money.

Great game, but you need a patch to fix a performance issue
I played all the previous versions of Sim City back in my bad oldWindows days and really enjoy the game.But for some reason this version will paralyze even a fast Mac.I'm running this on an iMac 1.8GHz G5 with 1GB of memory, and after about 10 minutes of play I have to quit and restart the game because the response becomes impossibly slow.Very frustrating.Haven't tried the updater yet, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

UPDATE (Apr 05): Installed the updater and it appears to have fixed the slow response problem.

Very Good...if it has update!
I have noticed many people have said just how bad Sim City 4 is. The thing to solve these problems is to get the updater It will make Sim City much better!

Graphics not a problem...if you fix them!
Lots of these reviews complain about the graphics on this Mac version.I had the same problems too - unexpected crashes and VERY slow game performance, on a pretty new G5 tower.

Doing two things will fix these issues.In the game's video/display options panel, switch off the page scrolling, and reduce the graphic detail.That's all it took to have this game running great.The manual should cover these quirks but it doesn't.

One final tip - learn the keyboard commands (found on the back of the manual) as it will speed up gameplay hugely, and totally compensates for no scrolling.

Not worth it!
Ok so i was a fan of Sim City 2000 which I found a demo of on a CD I didnt know i had. So I put it in and played Sim City 2000...and played and played and so on so I soon got the full thing. I became addicted to it. When Sim City 4 came out, i wanted it so much but I only had a mac. When it came out I bought like the first day! When I played I was sooooo dissapointed. nothing seemed to work right, the airplanes shadows became square and the streams on the airplanes was stretched all the way across, it kept crashing, and the industrial zone turned white, edge scrolling messed up sooooo slooooow. When I played it on a PC at my friends house, it was beutiful! Not a single bug! I ditched the game and played 2000 again finding it much better. Now I only play for like 10 minutes before getting bored. Seiously on this, NOT worth spending $40-$50 on this pathetic game. Maxis should be ashamed of themselves to take so much care in the PC games then throw it on a mac bugs and all. NOT worth it! Keep your money while you can! In other words, it doesn't take good graphics to make a good game. So get with it Maxis!! ... Read more

Product Description

X-Plane is the most comprehensive and powerful flight simulator available for the personal computer. X-Plane simulates anything that flies: single-engine fixed wing props to multi-engine jets; gliders to dirigibles; helicopters to spacecraft to VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier.

Features

• The most realistic flight model available for personal computers. It comes with subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, simulating aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic SR-71.
• 29 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history), and several hundred more are freely downloadable from the Internet.
• Scenery that spans the Globe. You can land at any of thousands of airports, as well as test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads on building tops, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs. Weather is variable from clear skies and high visibility to thunderstorms with controllable wind, wind shear, turbulence, and microbursts. Rain, snow and clouds are available for an instrument flying challenge, and thermals are available for the gliders! X-Plane can download real weather data from the Internet, allowing you to fly in actual current conditions!
• Detailed failure-modeling, with 35 systems that can be failed manually, or randomly when you least expect it! You can fail instruments, engines, flight controls, and landing gear at any moment.
• Includes Plane-Maker which allows you to create your own airplanes, and World-Maker which lets you create your own scenery. Also included is Weather Briefer which produces a weather briefing based on actual weather conditions downloaded from the net.
• Extremely customizable, allowing you to easily create textures, sounds, and instrument panels for your own airplanes that you design.

Features

• 35 systems can be failed manually or randomly
• Comprehensive and powerful flight simulator
• 29 aircraft spanning the aviation industry and history
• Scenery spans the globe; easily customize your own airplanes
• Variable weather; fly actual current conditions with Internet downloads

Reviews (2)

X-plane 8.0 - Rule the world with it
When I got it from the factory.All I got it the DVD in a plastic holder and that's it.No box, no instruction book.Nothing.

I had to get into the program and find out how to fly planes (X and otherwise) on my own.All I got this game for wa to train actor on Boeing 777 on a Mac, before we got them in flight simulators up in Seattle.But this game turned into much more.

If you can run up a B-52, take-off, circle and land; you can fly anything.I've landed a B-52G twice.But think crash.Not don't crash.What does the load vectors do.Will it take-off with four engines.What if all engines shut do on take-off?Crash land.Anyway.That's $100,000+ flight training at Alteon in Seattle (a private flight training company) for $50.Which you want to pay?

Some of the flight sims are a pain, like the X-15.Even if you load Edwards AFB or even Denver, you end up over water or desert that I have no idea where I am.The Space Shuttle is even worst.

But the MOST DIFFICULT plane to fly is the Cessna 172.You end up side ways, when you an at V1.And by the time you at V2, you're screwed.Commit, pull up and take-off.You're in the air or you've crashed.

Mike Rossi

Have fun!!!!

Xplane is great!
X-Plane 8 is the latest and greatest in the long-venerable series of what is arguably the worldÕs best flight simulator.X-Plane is not really a ÒgameÓ, so to speak. It is a very realistic flight simulator with all sorts of bells and whistles and more aircraft, airports, scenery, and scenarios than you could ever ask for.

After opening the box, one is greeted with a DVD-ROM and a manual about 200 pages in length.For those who have never flown a real airplane or a flight sim, the manual devotes quite a bit of time to introducing the controls and terminology of the simulator.One minor annoyance is that in the lead tutorial for new users, the aircraft discussed in the manual is not included in the actual sim, at least not that I could find in version 8.I made do with a different craft, though.But the manual is otherwise a very welcome addition in this world of software that generally comes with little useful documentation.

Once you get through the tutorials and the terminology and you are ready to fly, navigating the sim is quite easy, though not entirely Mac-like.The dialog boxes and menus look different than a Mac user may be used to.That might be expected for a cross-platform game such as this, though.Even so, it is extremely easy to load your chosen aircraft (You want to fly a Hindenburg?Sure, why not!), pick your airport, file your flight plan, and then be on your way. You may configure weather conditions and daylight to your liking.X-Plane 8 even gives you a chance to fly the space shuttle and to fly several planes on Mars, using real-life conditions (though not real life aircraft, since those do not quite exist yet, nor do airports exist on Mars in real life).

The graphics in X-Plane 8 are truly beautiful.Scenery comes in two versions: one version for older, slower computers, and one version for those with better hardware set ups.The minimum specs call for a machine with 400 MHz processor and 32MB VRAM.I found that to be slightly unrealistic.Sure, you can run X-Plane on such a set up, but the graphics will be low-res and the experience will not be as pleasurable.This sim just about screams out for a system like the new iMac G5, with its 1.8+ GHz processors and 64MB of VRAM.Indeed, it plays smoothly and comfortably on such a system or on the PowerMac G5 as well.

Game play would probably be best with a real joystick, but I was able to use a small game pad or my mouse quite well.If you really get into the simulator, purchasing a suitable joystick would be a worthwhile investment.

X-Plane has FAA certification and is used in many training environments.That we hobbyists get to use it just for fun is a real treat.This is a world-class, top-notch flight sim, and it is bound to thrill anyone with a sense of adventure and a desire to explore the world through flying. ... Read more