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Austin Meyer’s been busy with his iPhone / iPod Touch X-Plane releases. Announced today is X-Plane-Helicopter.
X-Plane-Helicopter for iPhone is a fun little ’slice’ of X-Plane that is just the right size to fit on the cool little platform that is the iPhone and iPodTouch.
We actually managed to get about 95% of the flight-model accuracy, many of the weather, sky conditions, and times of day, the Grand Canyon flight area, and 4 cool helos into this little sim!
We have had about 4 free updates for the standard X-Plane so far, and more are planned for both X-Plane, and X-Plane-Helicopter as well!
You get some very interesting birds to fly, including:
- Robinson R-22: The lightweight, efficient trainer.
- Bell-206: The turbine-powered mainstay of the helicopter fleet.
- BlackHawk: The massive military cargo and troop mover.
- Sea King: The huge land/sea rescue helicopter.
These fascinating and varied machines are modeled very realistically, so the flight you get on the iPhone is actually almost as realistic as the full FAA-Certified flight-model used in X-Plane for desktop… You get almost all the flight-model realism of this certified sim: On your phone.
As well, the flight-area is the Grand Canyon, giving you amazing views as you fly your helos across (and into!) the various canyons and valleys, giving the most visually-stunning simulation we have yet released, with the most challenging and realistic flight-models we have produced for iPhone so far.
Now, a quick lesson: The COLLECTIVE control is on the LEFT of the iPhone screen… drag it DOWN GENTLY to INCREASE the pitch of the main rotor, thus causing the helo to lift. As you drag this collective down, you will notice that the throttle AUTOMATICALLY increases on the right side of the screen. This is because the throttle governor automatically increases the engine power to maintain the desired rotor RPM as you increase the load on the rotor by increasing the rotor pitch. This is how the real helicopters work, and how we simulate them on the iPhone.
The tail-rotor is controlled for you automatically, since your iPhone does not have any anti-torque pedals plugged into it.
If you are ready for the best scenery and most fascinating and challenging flight model available on the iPhone, then you are ready for X-Plane-Helicopter.
The simulator is a stand-alone application (it doesn’t require the previously released X-Plane iPhone application – read our review here). It costs a very reasonable $4.99 and can be downloaded from the iTunes Store here.
Check back soon for our full review.
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