Mars for X-Plane10 (v1.1, 2015-10-18)

Welcome

What better way to explore Mars than with a flight simulator! There is no tedious 10-month journey to get there, and it is easy to terraform the atmosphere so that it can support flight.

The only pre-requisite is X-Plane 10, since X-Plane 11 killed off the possibility of satisfactory aviation on Mars. This package provides various Mars-related resources:

The base mesh. This is a 3D surface, covering most of the planet (between latitudes -88 and +88), to which overlay .dsf scenery can be added. [For those interested in technical details, I have notes about the overall tool chain used to generate this package.]
Airports. There are many airports that may be installed, as a convenience when exploring. They are quite bare in appearance, however they are well-equipped with navigational aids. See below.
Advice for installing the data, and for configuring X-Plane 10: installation notes.

See also the Gallery for examples of what Mars looks like in X-Plane, and a printable map of airport locations.

Airports

Robin Peel supplied Martian airports for X-Plane 8, based on an earlier set by Bryan Butcher. Those airports are now updated to formats used in X-Plane 10.21+, and have been supplemented by additional navaids: all runways now have ILS approaches, and there are NDBs close to each airport.

All airport information is tabulated/plotted below, and a course calculator is provided, to help navigate between airports. To use the calculator, click on one airport in the map, then on a second airport. The course and distance will be displayed by the calculator. N.B. Bearings are true degrees — because Mars no longer has a magnetic field.

Airports	Elev	Lat	Lon	Great circle	Rhumb line
MAAB					↓
↓	↓			↓
MACL					↓

Airport data Click on a name, or to see all.

Preview

History

Version	Date	Notes	XP Versions
1.0	2015-09-12	Initial version	10.36
1.1	2015-10-28	Improved extent and color of dunes. Fixed artifacts.	10.36 – 10.51