aka, G-OCOK*, Flying the Super Decathlon in Infinite Flight Sim.
I must begin this review with the caveat that I've never flown a real aircraft in my life, I've flown in a fair few in my time, but I've never been at the controls. I've also always been put off trying a flight simulator on my laptop due to the cost of a decent one and all the fancy peripherals you seem to need, so finding Infinite Flight for my iPad was definitely serendipitous; predictably, I was looking for something else at the time, but I digress...
The first thing that struck me about Infinite Flight was the professional look of the thing. The App Store page featured some beautiful in-game photos and plenty of information about the sim. Reviews seemed largely complimentary, and it seemed you got a fair bit for your £2.99, more than enough for a good few hours of fun before needing to scope out the in-app purchase options. Neither is it a huge download, weighing in at around 35.6Mb, so it's unlikely you’d need to prune your apps to make room for it; having said that, now I’ve downloaded some of the additional free aircraft and bought the “London” region expansion (more on that later), my Infinite Flight has grown to a healthy 165Mb.
Once I'd downloaded the basic sim package, I had a poke about, keeping my virtual feet on the virtual ground until I'd seen what the app had to offer. So, just what do you get for your £2.99? I'll gloss over the beautiful graphics and the high quality rendering of the aircraft and scenery, you'll see these aspects yourself when you download Infinite Flight. In terms of sim content, you get:
- 17 aircraft (with a further 18 available through in-app purchases), everything from a Cessna 172 light aircraft to a Boeing 747-400. Also included are several modern airliners, a couple of military jets (A10 and F/A-18), a military transport (Boeing C-17 Globemaster), the Space Shuttle, Spitfire Mk VIII, and my personal favourite at the moment, the Super Decathlon aerobatic trainer.
- 7 regions covering thousands of square miles (Amsterdam, Netherlands; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Oshkosh; San Francisco; Southern California; Sydney, Australia) and featuring a total of 1145 different airports for you to take-off and land at.
- Instrument Landing System (ILS), Autopilot, Pilot’s Logbook and Achievements.
- Adjustable Weight and Balance for the aircraft.
- User defined flight plans.
- User configurable weather, time and temperature, so if you've a burning desire to attempt a winter night landing you can, and best of luck to you!
After a couple of (mostly successful!) flights around Amsterdam in The Netherlands, I decided that if I was to properly get to grips with Infinite Flight, I'd prefer to do it somewhere at least vaguely familiar, so I coughed up a further in-app purchase of £2.99 (yes, the same price as the basic sim) for the new “London” expansion.
To be honest, calling it “London” doesn't truly reflect the scope and content of this expansion, which features an additional 128 airports including London Heathrow, Stanstead, etc. plus several RAF stations, and a good selection of smaller airfields, including a few I'd never heard of, Farthing Corner, Top Farm and Little Snoring to name but three of the latter; also included is White Waltham airfield, formerly an RAF station and the home of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during WW2. Geographically, the “London” expansion covers an area from an imaginary line drawn through Birmingham, Leicester and Peterborough, south to London and its environs, and down to Southampton on the south coast. Not bad for three quid, eh?
So there I was, sitting in the cockpit of my Super Decathlon parked up at a little grass strip airfield somewhere in Southern England (I have no idea where. I figured once I could take-off and land reasonably successfully I'd start taking notice of which airfield I was at!).
I'd decided on the Super Decathlon after my introductory flying lesson (part of the app’s Help section) in a Cessna 172, which handled like a brick; apologies to Cessna owners, but it did. I got a bit ahead of myself after that and thought (note the word “thought”) I could fly the Boeing C-17 Globemaster, I couldn't! So, in an effort to master this flight sim lark I went hunting through the available aircraft for something with a high wing and only one engine; for the uninitiated, the Globemaster is a military transport aircraft with four jet engines, which turned out to be three too many for me to handle. The Super Decathlon seemed to tick all the boxes, so off I went, up, up and away...
Pilot's eye view from the cockpit. Photo © Flight Development Studio LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Super Decathlon in flight. Look, that's me, that it!
Here's a tip: if you're landing an aircraft with a two wheel plus tail wheel landing gear arrangement (as opposed to a three-wheel, tripod arrangement like the Cessna), once you're down don't just slam the brakes on, toggle them on and off or else you'll come to a stop and tip forward onto your nose; as usual, don't ask me how I know this, OK?
Buoyed by this success, I wondered if I could handle something, well, a bit more
I bounced twice but I was down in one piece, cue some frantic toggling of the brakes and the Spit coasted neatly to a stop...somewhere on the grass - I could just about see the tarmac from where I ended up, but no flames or piles of twisted metal. I'd done it! Now I wouldn't blame you one bit if you thought I was making this all up, so here are a couple of pics to prove it. The first is me flying the Spit, and the second is us on the ground in one piece.
Spitfire MkVIII in flight.
Spitfire MkVIII on the ground after a successful landing.
It's also great to see a group of developers who obviously care about their product and about keeping in touch with their customers and fans, so below you'll find links to the Infinite Flight blog, and their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Apparently there are many videos of various aspects of Infinite Flight on YouTube, you might want to check those out too.
Infinite Flight App Store link
http://flyingdevstudio.blogspot.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/infiniteflightapp
https://mobile.twitter.com/flyingdevstudio
In the 48 hours** I've owned it, I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of what Infinite Flight has to offer, for example I'm only now beginning to get to grips with setting a flight plan, but from what I've seen, this app definitely gets a 5 star rating from me.
So, Dear Reader, what’s your opinion of flight simulators in general and, if you've tried Infinite Flight, of it in particular? Please, do let me know, and if you've any tips for me, I'd appreciate them.
Now, where did I leave my flying helmet...
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* The sub-title of this post is a reference to the registration number of James May's (yes, him off BBC tv’s Top Gear) Super Decathlon aircraft, which is based on his catch phrase on the show; go on, read it out loud, you know you want to! It's also a pretty apt phrase for when you pile your virtual aircraft into the virtual ground for the umpteenth time; don't ask me how I know that!
** correct at the time of writing.
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