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