In all the hoopla regarding the latest 2.1 firmware upgrade to the iPhone (fixes many of the lingering issues I still had since previous posts on the subject), one piece of iPhone news may have been overlooked. Laminar Research, the developers of the popular and highly accurate Flight Simulator for the Mac, PC, and Linux, have released a version of X-Plane 9 for the iPhone. Their Flight Simulators on the bigger platforms are so accurate and well liked by the Aviation community that the FAA even allows its use for logging flight time towards certification.



I downloaded and tried the simulator out. Although limited in many aspects regarding terrain range and instrument simulation (relying instead on a HUD), the simulation itself is fairly solid for a mobile App. The graphics are quite nice for the iPhone, especially the external flyby views. Controls utilize the Accelerometer and some on-screen sliders and buttons for Throttle, Flaps, Landing Gear and Brakes. You also have your choice of various planes and high level of control over the weather and time of day.

Per Austin Meyer, the creator of X-Plane:
The iPhone is not QUITE as powerful as a Quad-Core desktop, so I had to really scale it down to a perfect little ’slice’ of X-Plane.

You can choose from the Cirrus Jet, Columbia-400, Cessna 182, and Piaggo Avanti, with flight physics that are about 95% as accurate as X-Plane for desktop, so the flight modeling is really just amazing for a little device of this size.. really just stunning.

I’m surprised that the launch of this Flight Simulator on the iPhone hasn’t garnered more attention. I didn’t see it on the Apps, Games, or Entertainment pages of the iTunes Store yet, so it may still be below the RADAR (so to speak), but you can find it by following this link to get it from the App store. It goes for $9.99.
Read More...

Tags: iphone, games, gadgets, flight simulator, simulation, x-plane, apple, apps

My wife and I picked up the iPhone 3G (she went black and I went white). There was a long line to get it at 8AM at the mall on a Saturday, a full month after the launch, with about 60 people ahead of us. However, like many people out there, we’ve encountered some problems.

My reception has been fine, but my wife’s iPhone had weak 3G reception in NY where she works. We’ve also encountered various issues with App updates via iTunes after upgrading to 7.7.1. Clearing out the iTunes App Section and re-downloaded the apps we had helped with that issue. We were both on 2.01 firmware, so when 2.02 came out, we eagerly updated. That firmware upgrade actually helped with the 3G reception issues for my wife in the City, but we started encountering issues with Syncing Apps purchased on the iPhone back to iTunes and downloading updates to our apps from the iPhone AppStore. I encountered errors that said that downloads/updates have failed and that they would be available the next time I synced my phone with iTunes. Checking for Purchases from iTunes allowed us to download the updates and sync them back to the iPhone, but not being able to update via the iPhone and not being able to transfer Apps purchased on the iPhone back into iTunes (the transfers look like they start, but then they fail without an error) was becoming a major pain.

After searching the web and various forums for days, I found the solution. The problem seemed to be that we restored from a backup made on our old iPhones to the new iPhone 3Gs we upgraded to. The Solution? I had to fully restore my iPhone to Factory level without utilizing a backup and build off a fresh version of the 2.02 (latest) Firmware. The process was painfully long: first restoring the iPhone to scratch, then building it up slowly with my Apps, Settings, Photos, Music/Videos, Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, MobileMe Settings, Ringtone settings, Settings for each App that took forever to move over, re-downloading my eReader books, etc... and on...and on...


But when I was done, and all my Apps were back in their proper places... TADA!!! My phone was fixed!!!

I was now able to:

• Sync iPhone AppStore purchases back to iTunes
• Download updates from the iPhone AppStore successfully
• have GPS come up MUCH quicker than before (satellite acquisition was much faster)
• have no 3G issues (so far)
• have no lag for Contacts screen loading from MobileMe
• have no lag for onscreen keyboard anymore

I thought I would have to wait for another Firmware or iTunes update, but now everything is pretty much perfect. The process was tedious but well worth it!

Read More...

Tags: iphone, 3G, bugs, issues, problems, solved, solutions, restore, transfer, apps, itunes, firmware, apple, att