Career Mode · X-Plane 12

A pilot career for X-Plane 12

Create a pilot, earn your licences, take missions from the board and fly them in X-Plane. The app sets up each flight, watches how you fly and land, and pays you for it.

Download Watch the video

Free
Open source · MIT
Windows 10/11
X-Plane 12
English · Français

See it in motion

Career Mode flies in X-Plane 12, with its real flight models, weather and scenery.

X-Plane 12 – Official Trailer

For now this is the official X-Plane 12 trailer by Laminar Research, the simulator Career Mode runs in. A Career Mode video is on its way.

Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Then the video comes from youtube-nocookie.com.

How a career works

Career Mode is a Windows app that runs next to X-Plane, with a small X-Plane plugin that connects to it on its own.

Create a pilot and pick your first licence: airplane, helicopter or glider.
Pick a mission on the board and press Accept & fly. X-Plane loads the aircraft and places it at a stand of the departure airport, with the mission HUD on screen.
Fly it. Land, stop and set the parking brake: the mission completes, and the result shows in the app and in the sim.
Grow your career. Earn money and experience, add licences, rent or buy aircraft.

What's inside

Missions

A board of missions from your airports, flown in the aircraft of your own X-Plane install. Each shows its pay and, for a rented aircraft, the estimated cost. If X-Plane isn't running, the app starts it at the departure, with real weather.

Licences and theory exams

Each licence takes a training course, a timed multiple-choice exam, flight hours and a checkride. The questions come from about 370 written ones (air law, meteorology, navigation, IFR and more) plus generated numeric ones: crosswind, density altitude, wind triangle, CG, Mach.

Checkrides

An examiner gives you tasks in the HUD, one at a time: steep turns, navigation to a fix, an engine failure, a stabilised approach, a landing on the aiming point. Graded against real test standards: altitude ±100 ft, heading ±10°, bank ±5°.

Aircraft, market and money

Rent wet by the block hour, or buy from sellers: have the aircraft inspected, haggle, pay cash or take a weekly loan, have it ferried. Owned aircraft wear, need their 100-hour inspection and stay where you parked them.

Career clock

Each pilot has their own date and time, which only moves forward. Booked missions leave at a set local time. Rest, or wait it out and watch the days go by, with the bills paid on the way.

Gliders, winch and ground crew

At gliding fields the ground crew tows you out to the winch with a golf cart, a wing walker runs with your wing, and the cable lets go over the winch. After landing, ask for a tow back to the launch point.

Emergencies

On the ground, call an ambulance, the fire brigade or the rescue helicopter from the tab at the edge of the screen or the plugin menu, or bind them to keys.

3D hangar

The app's pages sit over a 3D hangar with your aircraft inside, drawn from the models of your own X-Plane install.

Your difficulty

From Very easy to Realistic: the exam length, the time limit, the pass mark and the checkride tolerances follow it. Each pilot keeps their own settings. Permadeath exists only on Hardcore, and is optional there.

Requirements

Simulator	X-Plane 12
System	Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Anything else?	No .NET to install. The installer adds the Visual C++ runtime and WebView2 if your PC lacks them.
Internet	For updates, and for X-Plane's real weather.
Admin rights	Not needed: it installs for your Windows user only.

Install

Download CareerMode-win-Setup.exe and run it.
The installer isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you: choose More info → Run anyway.
The first launch runs a short setup: language, your X-Plane folder (found on its own), the plugin install, airport indexing (about 10 s) and an aircraft scan.
Create your pilot, then load any flight in X-Plane. The plugin connects to the app by itself.

Updates

The app checks for updates when it starts and every 4 hours, and downloads them in the background. Press Restart to update, or it installs when you close the app. It never updates during a flight.

Uninstall

Windows Settings → Apps removes the app and its X-Plane plugin. Your career stays on your PC.

Make it your own

Career Mode runs node graphs in the sim: wire your own logic in the graph editor, Blueprint style. See Scripting House.

Download

Not released yet

The first public release is being prepared. The installer will appear here, and updates will then arrive on their own.

Source code

C# (.NET 8) with SQLite and a plain HTML/CSS/JS interface, a C++ X-Plane plugin, and a C++ 3D hangar.

Source code on GitHub: coming soon