Don’t let the name fool you: X-Plane 9 isn’t the ninth version of X-Plane for the iPhone. (Heck, the App Store is barely nine weeks old.) But it does represent a direct port of the beloved X-Plane 9 flight simulator for Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you’re thinking the iPhone and iPod touch lack the graphics and processing horsepower to emulate such robust platforms, think again: X-Plane 9 flies like an eagle and looks great doing it.
The “game” lets you pilot a Cessna 172, Columbia 400, Cirrus Vision, or Piaggio Avanti. You can choose between four times of day—midday, later afternoon, dusk, and nighttime—and five weather conditions: everything from clear skies to a torrential downpour. Other tweakable flight settings include cloud bases, visibility, wind speed and direction, and turbulence. In short, there’s plenty of variety here for weekend pilots.
X-Plane can set you up with an instant random flight or put you on a final approach to test your landing skills. It probably goes without saying that the sim takes full advantage of the accelerometer: Your iPhone is the flight yoke. Cooler still, when you switch to chase-plane view (one of four available views), you can pinch and expand to zoom out and in, and even swipe your finger to rotate the camera around your plane. Meanwhile, the cockpit screen contains a simple, unobtrusive heads-up display, with throttle- and flap-control sliders on either side and brake/gear buttons at the bottom.
Such limited and basic controls may bug hardcore flight-sim fans, but let’s remember we’re talking about a three-inch screen here. The real quibbles are with X-Plane’s repetitive terrain (rolling green mountains, anyone?), semi-severe aliasing along mountaintops, and poorly implemented cloud line: When you fly above or below it, you literally see a line move up or down the screen. Also, when you crash, your plane simply smacks the ground and sits there. Would a little fireball or some debris be too much to ask?
Even so, X-Plane handily accomplishes its primary goal: to provide users with the illusion of flight. Laminar Research deserves due credit for bringing the X-Plane franchise to the iPhone in such high style.
X-Plane 9 lets you fly the slightly pixilated but thoroughly engrossing skies. It’s a fun and relaxing diversion and a great showpiece for iPhone gaming.
Looks and feels like a desktop flight simulator. Great accelerometer-based controls. Lots of plane- and environment-tweaking options.
Not much variety in the terrain. Crashes are no fun. A little on the pricey side.
