X-Plane 9 by Laminar Media ($9.99,
App store), "the most flexible and realistic flight simulator on the market for desktop computers" is now available on the App Store, allowing you to control an aircraft with the iPhone's accelerometer and touchscreen, all with the power of the mysterious "blade theory".
After a long loading screen, X-Plane 9 suffers no hesitation and places you directly on the runway. With no introduction or explanation, you are left to muck about with the controls and hope everything will be O.K.
Trusting my natural desire to put the throttle as high as possible, it was not long before I discovered how to take off from the runway and into the sky. The graphics are spartan but they get the point across, and for something as small as the iPhone it's pretty impressive.
The controls are very responsive, and really make you believe that you may be able to fly a plane when the situation arises (don't be so naive). Soon I was doing barrel rolls, attempting loop-de-loops, and seeing how far I could fly downwards before having to pull the plane up again. While doing this, I could observe my plane from several different angles.
It'll be a couple minutes into your first flight that you'll realise you're not totally sure what happens next. Supposedly you should go find somewhere to land, but there's no indication of where a runway might be, or a map of any kind. I found a runway eventually, but I had a suspicion it was the one that I took off from.
So it seems like there is not much to do but fly around at this point. But to inject a little spice into things, X-Plane offers you 4 planes to choose from, a multitude of skies, and times of day. You can also adjust all sorts of parameters like wind and turbulence, if you decide to dive in that deep. Yet curiously, you can only fly around Innsbruck, Austria. Hmm.
Technically, X-plane 9 is very impressive, with great controls, options and graphics (for the platform). However, it's clear that this is a simulator more than a game, with no mission structure in place, and no clear direction for someone who isn't already a flight simulator fan. So at $9.99, you might not be getting what you expect - though if a clearer structure is offered in a future version, X-Plane 9 will be a game to look out for.
Topics: iPhone apps, iPhone
