SimPlates brings you the world’s largest collection of real-world IFR approach (and other) charts for the serious flight simulation enthusiast to your fingertips! SimPlates is not a flight simulator program in and of itself, but can be used as a companion on your Mac concurrently with your enjoyment of your preferred computerized desktop flight simulation program to help expand the realism and excitement of the experience. SimPlates has been called "a must have for the serious flight simulator enthusiast" and "a great addition to your flight sim bag" by major flight simulation websites in independent reviews.
SimPlates includes over 70,000 real-world IFR plates, including approach plates, SIDs/STARs (Departures/Arrivals), Airport Diagrams, Approach types include ILS, VOR, VOR/DME, NDB, LLZ, SDF, GPS, TACAN, Helicopter and Visual. With so many plates, SimPlates provides very good worldwide coverage. For most countries and major airports of the world, if you are looking for a plates, SimPlates will likely have it. However, the coverage is not universal - please see http://www.dauntless-soft.com/products/simplates/airportlist.asp for the current list of inclusions and coverage notes. While most countries of most interest to simmers are quite up to date, a few are a bit older.
Supplemental features include an integrated WORLDWIDE Airport/Facilities directory and a worldwide NAVAID (Navigational Aid) directory.
The basic way that you use SimPlates is just like pilots from those flying small Cessnas to those flying the largest Boeing and Airbus airliners do every day. As you virtually approach an airport on your computer, bring up its corresponding plates in the SimPlates app. Use the plate as a guide in flying the approach to landing - just like a real world pilot would. SimPlates is useful for virtual pilots of many desktop flight simulation programs, including Flight Simulator (all versions including FSX, FS2004, and MS-Flight), X-Plane, and more.
While SimPlates are real-world plates, they are NOT SUITABLE FOR REAL WORLD FLIGHT OPERATIONS and MUST NOT BE USED FOR REAL WORLD FLIGHT OPERATIONS OF ANY SORT, PERIOD. As SimPlates is intended for flight simulation entertainment use, the plates are not kept up to date with real-world aviation changes (worldwide subscriptions for real-world current data cost thousands of dollars per year from other sources). However, for serious flight simulation entertainment use, the massive collection of plates represents incredible value and capability.
Simplates friendly interface makes it easy to find exactly the plate or information you are looking for quickly. As the totality of plates exceeds a whopping 100gb, the plates themselves are not included with your initial download from the AppStore. Rather, they are downloaded on demand when you select them in the app – this generally takes only a few moments per plate, but does require you to be online. Any plates you have downloaded into SimPlates remain on your device (unless cleared) so that you can continue to use them even while offline. While this works great - this might mean that OCCASIONALLY the server might be unavailable for short periods.
++THE VERSION NOW AVAILABLE HERE IS OF THE NEW SIMPLATES ULTRA version which is a great leap forward in terms of plate coverage to the previous generation of SimPlates and has an improved user experience. The app looks and works great! Thank you all for the great feedback and kind words about SimPlates on simulator forums. Were glad youre enjoying the massive number of plates (way more than any other sim product has - including expensive subscription based services) and we continue to update the plate database further with more plates still. Happy simming!+++
Thank you for checking us out and happy sim flying!
