Finally... Compelling Argument For Spending $400 On A Cell Phone

The folks at Laminar Research have now brought the acclaimed X-Plane flight simulator program to the iPhone.

That's right -- MacWorld reports that by taking X-Plane Version 9 and removing much of the worldwide database, navaids, all but four of the aircraft types, some of the accuracy of the simulator, and all but one airport, they've gotten X-Plane down from 60 gigabytes to 7.

Granted, the world is now limited to within a few dozen miles of Innsbruck, Austria, but who among us wouldn't love the chance to go mountain flying in the Alps in an indestructible airplane!

MacWorld's Rob Griffiths writes the simulator uses the iPhone's built in accelerometers to allow the user to climb, descend and turn, just by tilting the phone. He reports the sensitivity is just about right, the scenery is realistic, and there are four planes available... although the Cessna 172, Cessna 400, Cirrus Vision jet, and Piaggio Avanti all share the same, crude heads-up display, unlike the realistic, fully-implemented instrument panels in the desktop version.

"On the heads-up display, you'll see everything you need to fly-airspeed and altitude indicators, an artificial horizon with flight path indicator, a compass (with a needle that points to the one airport), and throttle and flap position indicators," Griffiths writes.

He also reports a few bugs, but X-Plane has an admirable history of getting such things fixed: "Despite being based on version 9 of the desktop product, it's important to note that this is a version 1.0 release. As such, I ran into quite a few things that either didn't work quite right, or could be improved with a software update."

"Unlike X-Plane for the Mac, X-Plane for the iPhone isn't intended to be a pure flight simulator with incredible realism in all realms; its main focus is on having fun while providing a somewhat realistic and visually interesting flying experience. By that definition, X-Plane for iPhone is a tremendous success," he lauded.

It's hard not to note the irony. With digital accelerometers, 8 or 16 gigs of memory, and heads up instruments, this scaled-down version of X-Plane has way more modern technology than a real 172!

FMI: www.macworld.com, www.apple.com/iphone, www.xplane.com