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in2tech

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 23, 2012
136
13
I purchased a brand new MBA 13" i5 128 SSD 4 GB RAM about 10 days ago. I went with it instead of the MBP because I wanted the thin light weight and just SSD as I have a 500 GB external and cloud accounts with several vendors including Apple iCloud.

So I like simulation programs flight and trains. Did not know that the same company that I had downloaded an iPad version of the train simulator also had it in the Mac App store so got it immediately.

But when I went to download the X-Plane 10 demo I figured it would never work in a million years on a MBA! To my surprise I was wrong. Of course I can't use it in max settings but really close to it and good enough for me. I am still amazed it works at all :)

One thing though when playing both simulators my MBA fan stays on pretty much the entire time and freaks me out. Is this a problem in the future? I went to Apple retail store Sunday to ask a few questions about my new MBA and already had Trainz Simulator and told him about the fan staying on.

He stated pretty much that it's the way the MBA was designed and it was suppose to stay on to keep the MBA as cool as possible. I don't think Trainz Simulator is going to be a problem since I purchased it in the Mac App store and it doesn't appear to be as intensive as X-Plane, but if X-Plane id going to cause issues I just won't even by the full version at all in the future, and will delete the demo in a few days! But I am really liking this X-Plane thing the more I use it:)

What are you thoughts?

Thanks!
 

Northwestern

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2011
235
0
It's normal that the fans go loud on a MacBook Air when running games like fps, strategy or simulators. Adventures and puzzle games are running calm.

I can recommend aerofly FS. I am playing it on a MacBook Air i7, 4 GB, Intel HD 3000 (late 2011) and I can run this flight simulator on maxed out settings. It looks much better than X-Plane on a MacBook Air, but it only covers Switzerland.

I like to try Trainz Simulator too, but I am waiting right now for Sid Meier's Railroads release on the Mac App Store.
 

in2tech

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 23, 2012
136
13
So if I purchase X-Plane 10 in the future is there anyway to put most of the files on an external hard drive and boot the main files from the MBA SSD. Is this type of thing even possible for such a huge program? The demo runs great for me so I would like to get it in the future if I can get it to work on my 128 GB SSD!

If not I'll just have to wait until the future when I either get a bigger SSD or another MBA in the future with a larger SSD to start with!
 

Macman45

macrumors G5
Jul 29, 2011
13,197
135
Somewhere Back In The Long Ago
I purchased a brand new MBA 13" i5 128 SSD 4 GB RAM about 10 days ago. I went with it instead of the MBP because I wanted the thin light weight and just SSD as I have a 500 GB external and cloud accounts with several vendors including Apple iCloud.

So I like simulation programs flight and trains. Did not know that the same company that I had downloaded an iPad version of the train simulator also had it in the Mac App store so got it immediately.

But when I went to download the X-Plane 10 demo I figured it would never work in a million years on a MBA! To my surprise I was wrong. Of course I can't use it in max settings but really close to it and good enough for me. I am still amazed it works at all :)

One thing though when playing both simulators my MBA fan stays on pretty much the entire time and freaks me out. Is this a problem in the future? I went to Apple retail store Sunday to ask a few questions about my new MBA and already had Trainz Simulator and told him about the fan staying on.

He stated pretty much that it's the way the MBA was designed and it was suppose to stay on to keep the MBA as cool as possible. I don't think Trainz Simulator is going to be a problem since I purchased it in the Mac App store and it doesn't appear to be as intensive as X-Plane, but if X-Plane id going to cause issues I just won't even by the full version at all in the future, and will delete the demo in a few days! But I am really liking this X-Plane thing the more I use it:)

What are you thoughts?

Thanks!


I'm amazed! X-Plane is hugely VRAM and RAM hungry...Particularly the video. I run it on a 27" iMac 3.4GHZ with 2GBVRAM and 16GB RAM...Don't worry about the fans and the heat....It heats the iMac up big time too...I can run it in maxed out settings but I'm just surprised that the MBA can run it at all. I tried it (only out of curiosity) on my MBP 17" 16GB RAM 1GB discrete GPU, nad it ran pretty well, but that machine got super hot too. I wouldn't try to reduce the fan speeds though, your little MBA is working very hard indeed.
 
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