Ok, so i have to weigh in on this debate between what sims are the best.
Firstly, about me, I am a real life pilot, and hold FAA and EASA commercial pilot licences (USA and European), EASA PPL Flight Instructor, and i am a gamer.

About the game: its not a game. its a flight simulation software. do not buy if you are looking for a
"fun game to mess around on and earn steam acheivments etc etc", nor will it teach you how to fly planes or anything of the sort. there is no arcade mode, there are no leaderboards, there are no charachter perks etc.

About the flight simulation programme: I first had my taste of flying a plane on Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 (or 98, i forget) on a crappy little PC with a keyboard and mouse. as i grew up and my interest grew and flight sims developed, i hopped from flight sim to flight sim and i have played ALOT of different ones, and in my proffesional training, i have even used things like lockheed martin's Prepar3D flight simulator with full 737 and A320 cockpit mock ups. For home simming, i dont think anything beats XP10 though. I will be drawing comparisons in my review with 1 other game which this is often compared to - FSX (Microsoft Flight Simulator X/10) (im not even going to compare against "Microsoft Flight", that sim was pathetic....)

The differences

FSX is a flight simulator, and a game in one package. it can both teach you how to fly a plane (atleast the basics) and give you fun missions to complete and rewards you with in game acheivments. It also is able to replicate, rather well, realistic flight dynamics and aircraft performance. however, i feel that FSX is a bit more buggy, alot less "modable" (free 3rd party aircraft were difficult to install in my opinion) and it feels a bit outdated.

XP10 is, i have to admit, a little less user friendly. the menus and interface do not seem as polished etc, but boy is there alot you can do. Free 3rd party aircraft are relatively easy to install, a multitude of plugins exist that you can download, such as ground vehicle tows to push your aircraft back from the stands etc and there just seems to be alot more freedom in the game.
Carrier landings for example. FSX, it was very long winded, very procedural, and a bit tedious if you "just wanted to have a go at planting the damn plane on a deck". and with only the F18 to chose from, it was a bit bland. with XP10, even though the scenario would be unrealistic, i can just load a boeing 747 and click "land on a carrier" and try landing a jumbo on a nimitz carrier.
Weather is very customizable, and can download real time actual weather with a click of a button which is pretty cool.
Loads more stock aircraft to chose from
loads of different scenarios (i believe you can fly on mars if you wanted, that is atleast true of my experience on XP7,8 and 9 so i assume its on 10 too)
You can try and bring down a space shuttle from orbit, and many other things that FSX just cant do with the base programme.

Yes there are issues, yes some of the stock 3D cockpits are a bit naff and not done properly, but i have never really found it such a big deal. and if you want the true realism, be it on FSX or XP10, you wont fly stock aircraft anyway, you would go and buy 3rd party aircraft by proffesional 3rd party Devs that make accurate models and cockpits etc.

you WILL need a joystick and rudder pedals, or at the minimum, a joystick with twist function for rudders. you can play with just a mouse, but lets be honest, that sucks. FSX you can play with a keyboard, but even then, joystick set up rules.

so overall, what would i buy? both. i have both. i use them for totally different things. i use FSX and 3rd party payware aircraft and payware photo scenery to practice VFR aircraft navigation, and i use XP10 to practice aircraft procedures and general handling and flying, or to test myself in all sorts of different aircraft in different scenarious, like finding myself in a middle of thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere with various system failures.

again, i would stress, XP10 is NOT a game. it features "weapons", where FSX does not, but these are only for novelty value. they do not replicate the actual fire control systems or anything like that. This is a flight sim that enthusiasts or proffesionals can use.

If you are looking to buy your first flight sim or you want to learn how fly a plane, go and buy FSX
If you are looking for a world war 2 realistic flight sim where you can fire guns and down planes, go and get IL2 Sturmovik 1946 or Wings of Prey
If you are looking for a arcade combat flight sim, Tom Clancy's Hawx
If you are looking for a realistic combat flight sim with modern fighters, get Lock On
if you are looking for a simulator to practice advanced things on, or experiment, or design your own creations and fly them (basic engineering knowledge required or willing to take the time to research how plane maker works), then this is the sim for you.

edited 19/08/16 for spelling mistakes - it took me all this time since writing to find out i could edit! :D

In many of the negative reviews of X-plane there seems to be a mismatch between the reviewers expectations and what X-plane is. If you're looking for aerial combat you'll be far better served by DCS World. Flight simulation whether you go FSX, P3D or X-plane is more hobby than a computer game. If you were going to get into model railways you may start with a small basic train set. If the bug bites, you soon want to add switches, scenery and new locomotives and stock. That's what x-plane is; a flight simulator starter set.

You get a couple of basic aircraft, a sky and a barren planet (inhabited by only deer and birds). X-plane does itself a disservice with most of the included aircraft as they are far from representative of quality of aircraft that are available. X-plane's clouds are stonefish ugly.
All the main simulators have pro's and con's. X-plane's smaller community is very committed and self reliant and there is a smorgasbord of freely available utilities and addon scenery. Some of which are pretty damn awesome considering they are free. You can get a very decent simulator experience with freeware alone. For sure, you will not minutely scratch the surface unless you're prepared to research and learn.

Personally I'd recommend budgeting for an addon aircraft in addition to X-plane. I'd suggest a Carenado HD aircraft, not because there aren't other worthy aircraft, just that if you are starting into X-plane, Carenado are consistently high quality and you're less likely buy something disappointing. If you want to go a bit further, Skymaxx Pro will fix X-plane's underwhelming skies.

Flight simulators may bore your socks off but they may also change your life. X-plane is a starting point for a hobby that may be with you for years.

Here's my take on the civilian flightsim hobby as it currently stands: More than ever, it is a period of transition and I believe the future looks good. I have and use both FSX and X-Plane and therefore have a foot in both camps. It's a case of fully realized capabilities versus future potential. From another perspective I see one nearing the end of its 32-bit lifecycle and the other very much in its 64-bit adolescence.

Background: I've been flight simming since SubLogic's C64 release, and have been firmly entrenched in the Microsoft FS camp on PC since FS5.1, although like everyone else in the day I had and used Flight Unlimited, FLY! and ProPilot. We loved the variety and happily used them all for what they had to offer. For me FS2004/FS9 was the watershed, and I was entrenched for a decade in the sim using all the familiar add-ons and a full suite of GoFlight hardware. Unfortunately my computer was firmly stuck in 2004 as well, so I avoided migrating to FSX. I was aware of and had messed around with XP during my biannual pilgrimage to Oshkosh, even chatting at length with Austin Meyer, but I was already too deeply invested in the MSFS camp. I'm certain that many can relate.

I've been a licensed private pilot since 1991, with a multi-engine endorsement and lucky enough to have had exposure and stick time on some pretty cool equipment. Now as most real world guys will tell you, flying a computer is NOT the same - I don't care if the flight models are based on lookup tables or basic real-time elemental calculations, it's just not worth arguing over. Get over it. Where there is tremendous value in simming however, is the 'process' of flight - planning, procedures, checklist habits, instrument scans, IFR approaches. For true immersion in the system look up PilotEdge and add that to your mix no matter what platform you fly.

I was fortunate enough to finally build a cutting edge computer recently. As a treat, I picked up FSX-SE to see how she'd run on a modern box. Looked good and I was enthused enough to purchase Aerosoft's A320/321 (an absolutely excellent add-on BTW). Then the dreaded terrain.dll crashes started on flights lasting longer than about 60 minutes. While I understand these errors may have been largely addressed in the new FSX-SE beta patch, I am very grateful for them. They gave me pause and saved me the hundreds of $$ I was prepared to pour into the scenery and add-ons in order to bring it up to the available standards: Orbx, UTX, ASN, PMDG, et al. It's a slippery slope most know only too well, and when you finally stop and look back at all the resources you have dedicated, the thought of migrating to something totally new seems not only daunting, but is likely financially unwarranted as well.

While waiting for a decade old piece of software to get patched by a third party so that I could run it on modern equipment and proceed to spend a great deal of money and tweaking time to get it to run correctly, the light bulb went on for me. Here I was at a crossroad and I was prepared to reinvest in the same old song and dance. Yes, it's the one tune everybody knows, but there was an opportunity to learn a new one. Even though I tried and failed to get the X-Plane demo working, I purchased the full version (10.35 currently) in order to give it an honest shakedown, flying it exclusively for a week. What that week gave me was an appreciation for just how immersive, smooth and realistic XP can be.

I spent a good deal of time reading the related forums, familiarizing myself with the tips, tricks and FAQs. I found the stock 172 and Baron okay (certainly the equal of their stock FSX equivalents), but added the beautiful Carenado C340 for some GA flying. (Aside - the C340 is a nice looking package and I'm glad I have it but there are some unforgivable faults that required modifications to actually work - in particular the CDI when tuned to an ILS. Basic stuff. For shame.) Then the FlyJsim 737-200 for some good old fashioned radio navigation at jet speeds. Wonderful aircraft, beautifully modelled cockpit and convincingly realistic performance numbers. Definitely a pilot's plane. The coming IXEG 737-300 looks incredible. And I needn't mention that PMDG is developing for XP with a DC6 to be followed by one or more of their 7xx series...

Sparse scenery? To me it looks far and away better than stock FSX. It's nicely scalable to the hardware you're running, and XP definitely makes proper use of modern hardware. The stock mesh is great, autogen works well, the road traffic is cool, and the night lighting is the stuff of pilot training heaven. But here's the kicker - there's so much freely available from the community. I've managed to populate my XP world with all the airport scenery I will be reasonably using with a few visits to the XP ORG. And if you have a look at what's possible using world2xplane... the future looks not only bright, but incredible. Need I mention no terrain.dll CTDs or OOM errors?

Stock XP weather is in my opinion better than stock FSX. Dressed up with ASN and REX however, and FSX has a strong lead. But based on how close XP is getting with aircraft and scenery, the weather engine won't be far behind.

Stock ATC is crap. But so is FSX's. Sorry, it's just not real. I alluded to it above, but try PilotEdge to see what real ATC is. Full stop.

This has become a rather long piece, sorry about that. I suppose I felt I had a lot to say about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. MSFS has been how it was, and largely how it is now (I include P3D here). Is it time for change? One platform is nearing a developmental dead end, albeit with some wonderful add-ons, and one is just beginning to realize its potential with continuous and meaningful support.

I'll continue to use both platforms for now, I mean why not, I own both and enjoy each for what they offer. Let me be clear though - I will not be adding anything further to my FSX ecosystem, but will simply enjoy what I already have. FSX will be limited to getting my bus fix with that awesome Aerosoft A320, at least until the sim crashes with the latest .dll or OOM error. For the price of a decent FSX add-on, I would urge you to give XP a fair evaluation.

In the end I see FSX as an old woman all gussied up in makeup and a new designer dress. She looks great and is pleasant to spend quality time with, but be careful if you go out dancing - she may fall and break a hip. Now have you seen the new girl in town? Dances funny, but she's smart, modern, and has some really cool moves. You may want to meet her.

My future in the hobby is with XP. I know I am not alone. Developers take note.

I have been waiting a while to purchase this sim, now that it is on Steam it left me no choice but to pull out my wallet. This has to be as realistic as it gets when it comes to flight simulation. There is a lot to learn and a great community backing this product. While you can set everything up to be off the ground in seconds it leaves the option to make everything as complex as you would like. From startup to landing you can control just about everything.

I am working on my PPL, have been for quite some time. This now affords me the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and so much more all without the associated costs. My next lessons will only be after many more hours of X-Plane, a great product!

This works with muiltiple monitors, however the recommended setup is to use multiple computers over a network the acheive this. I use stereo vision across three monitors, my only hope is that they can figure out a better way to scale it when using this option, for now I distort my field of view and it works well.

This game is meant to be a full simulation of flight, and in no way is a simulation "game". After this past weekend and around 10 hours playtime, probably only 5 which were spent in the sky, I feel like I could legitimately fly a Cessna 172. I honestly don't believe I would fly highly efficiently, but yes I could get off the ground and land.

You NEED a controller or joystick to make the game reasonable in difficulty. There are no tutorials so learning will be a lot of trial and error(hence the 5 hours on the runway). I used an Xbox Controller, but don't bind acceleration to a thumbstick, bind it to A and B. If it is bound to a thumbstick it will naturally rest in 50% throttle, you can fine tune thrust in small increments with keys.

I do plan on buying a HOTAS setup(ideal), but they are pricey for good ones. The graphics are decent and can easily be modded with free content downloads(100's) on the xplane forum to suit individual tastes. Modding is easy, took me less than an hour to put in 4. I will most likely replace more textures/meshes later for further realism. This game will kill your harddrive space, especially when putting in UHD or HD texture meshes(google alpilotx), its free.

The tons of freeware, mods, plugins, textures you find for this game easily double the worth of it. Please not though there are no objectives, money, progression in this simulation. IT is purely a SIM. Travel time will be accurate as you fly, I spent an hour or more flying over Lake Michigan from Ohare to South Haven, MI in what has to be realistic travel time(Cessna 172).

Don't buy this if you want a game, if you want to learn - buy this.

Have been waiting a while to buy this on steam (heard a bit back that it was supposed to be coming and I had played on an earlier version many years ago), very glad I bought it, not only is it a realistic simulator with a ton of control configuration options (it might all seem a little daunting at first, but persevere) but I am getting great pleasure out of learning to fly with Xplane...

At the time of writing this review I have just done my first proper fight on Xplane 10 from Blackpool (EGNH) to Manchester (EGCC) - not a long flight (chose the route as these are local locations) but after earlier sims which basically gave you heading waypoints and large visual clues after clicking on a destination this was much more challenging. Used the VOR system to navigate to Manchester, during the flight Xplane taught me how several of the instruments worked that I glossed over playing previous flight simulators on PC.

With my plane drifting a little to the left I had to correct my heading a few times (by a small amount) but eventually arrived at my destination. No clue how to use the local air traffic controllers (yet) I just picked a runway and landed...

Learnt quite a bit from that hour playing the game and I can see it teaching me a lot more, I used to love flight-sims and played a lot but this game made me feel a complete novice again (especially after so long not playing any sims). However lack of arcade-game style assists, popup help and hand-holding made me feel like I really accomplished something in the game when I finally touched down. Been a while since I both enjoyed a game and felt like I achieved something.

Worth the asking price? For me yes :)

edit: I have added some comments to this review, including a very short version of how I used VOR to navigate, system specs and controllers being used.

I rate this software as recommended because I personally enjoyed this simulator, as a person interested in aviation. This simulator may NOT be enjoyable for everyone. Here, I list the pros and cons of this software and further down below, a list of the traits and circumstances one may have in order to enjoy this simulation.

PROs:
+Somewhat realistic flight characteristics (for aircrafts with accurate flight models)
+A global-scaled scenery covering the entire planet Earth
+Accurate weather/atmospheric pressure simulations (with the ability to download up-to-date real-world weather data)
+Simulation on areas outside of the earth (you can fly spacecrafts in and out of space)
+Highly complex and realistic aircrafts that can be bought at online stores
+A huge amount of downloadable contents on the internet ( http://forums.x-plane.org is a good place to start)
+The package includes a plane-make that allows you to create your own aircraft (with some difficulty)
+Realistic navigation (waypoint/ILS/NDB/VOR) simulation and positioning
+Includes many flight operations (for example, flap, bleed air, electrics, engine operation)
+Interesting situations provided (including landing on a aircraft carrier, flying a X-15 from a B-52, space shuttle re-entry, ect...)

CONs:
-Sceneries have low resolution
-Some Terminals and some cities are not included on Sceneries (Fan-made scenery enhancement may somewhat relief this problem)
-Default aircrafts are mediocre
-Accurately simulated aircrafts are often costly (a well-made aircraft normally cost $30 to $85 without discount, which are more expensive than X-Plane itself)
-Joystick and rudder hardware are required for an accurate simulation (a nice set costs around $300 to $500)
-No crash simulation
-Complex aircrafts consumes quite a bit of FPS (my 5 year old MacBook AIr is having trouble with some complex airliners)
-Consumes a large amount of disk space
-Lacking tutorials to fully explain flight operations and menu options
-Menu is difficult to use, with unclear labels and bad categorizing

If you fit most of these circumstances below, I believe you may enjoy this simulation:
1.*You have a interest in aviation and piloting
2.*You're willing to spend time and effort to explore this simulator
3. You had success on other flight simulators/flight simulation games/real world piloting (don't tell me that flying in GTA V counts as flight simulation)
4. You have, and is willing to spend a formidable (for a software) amount of money on this flight simulator
5. You can accept low resolution world textures and not-so-good visual effects
6. Your computer is more powerful than a 5 years old MacBook Air

X-Plane 11 is probably better, consider buying X-Plane 11 instead.

X-Plane 10 isn't perfect, but unless you have a million dollars to spare it is the best flight simulator you can get. Study, learn, fly, enjoy. It doesn't get much better.

Warning to the average Steam player . . . This is not a game . . . It is a simulation. I do not recommend for the jump in and go type. I like this game alot for its simulation value. X-Plane has a very advanced engine for aircraft simulation and for someone who likes realism . . . this is the air sim for you. If you like checklists prior to taking off . . . this is the game for you. If you like to jump in and go with no thought then don't waste your time with this sim. On the other hand if you want to learn how to fly a plane well enough to consider getting your PPL then download this gem and start learning!

Awesome. One of the few games I buy at full price without waiting for it to go on sale.
This is a SIMULATOR. It is about as complex as what it simulates, flying an airplane. Expect there to be a learning curve. Expect it to be rather technical. Even for those of us who grew up on the MS flightsims (I started with MSFS 98), it can be a challenge.
You WILL need a pretty hefty system to get the most out of this sim scenery-wise. The scenery itself can go from simplistic, just a few trees and buildings, to....realistic? heavily forested areas, congested traffic jams, city scapes, etc.