Updates to X-Plane Mobile

About the X-Plane Mobile Updates
The X-Plane Mobile line of flight simulators for the iPhone and iPod Touch receive free periodic updates. As the graphics, flight, and interface technology are improved in one app, we will be periodically updating all the various X-Plane Mobile applications with that new technology, so much more is still in the wings!

For example, when the RAM and frame rate were optimized for X-Plane Airliner, those changes were released in a free update to the "X-Plane 9" app as well.

Installing the Updates
To get the latest updates to all your mobile X-Plane applications, go to the App Store (found on the device's "home page") and tap Updates down at the bottom of the screen. There, simply select Update All (as marked in the image below). The device will prompt for the username and password which were used to purchase the applications, then it will automatically download the updates.


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Version 9.20 (Update 11)
Version 9.20 is here, the eleventh free upgrade to the X-Plane line-up! We now have improved rendering, showing stars at night and more realistic water as well.

The "X-Plane 9" app also has slightly better frame-rate, and improved multi-drag, which is good for zooming and dragging and rotating the maps. This also applies to operating the tail-rotor and collective at once in X-Plane Helicopter. We also have two new planes for X-Plane Extreme in this update: The X-15 and B-52! Google them to see how they go together!

All X-Plane Apps
Improved Rendering: Stars at night. Kind of nice. Better water rendering. Better mouse-response on the map and window scaling, translating, zooming, etc. The multi-touch on the maps is really nicer now. If you fly off the edge of a level, you now wrap around the other side, on all X-Plane apps... this is especially useful for X-Plane Extreme, where you cover ground really, really fast. Frame rate optimizations.

Standard
Final-Approach buttons should always work well... there were a few hilly-terrain cases that started you off a bit low, but those should be addressed.

Helicopter
Improved multi-touch: Collective and tail-rotor control are now possible at the same time... just put one finger on the collective, one on the tail-rotor... you can now control them both at once!

Extreme
New planes: B-52, and X-15. Neither is much fun on it's own, but load up the X-15 and switch to an external view to see why they are good together! Hit Google and do some research on how the X-15 was flown, and landed. What you learn there will directly impact how you fly the sim, since the sim is pretty realistic! New scenery area for Extreme: Edwards Air Force Base! This is a nice huge flying area for you!

Space Shuttle
This has to be one of the more advanced iPhone apps...

There have been 10 free updates to the other X-Plane programs so far (with more planned), and future free updates to this app will include more re-entry options (perhaps trying it from even FARTHER out than 600 miles?) and perhaps some more detailed missions as well!

X-Plane Trainer
There have been 10 free updates to the other X-Plane programs so far (with more planned), and future free updates to THIS app will include more flight-training scenarios... maybe steep turns and stalls?

New Flight Model Additions
As requested: An AUTOPILOT on the glass-panel planes! Turn it ON to lock your ROLL AND PITCH. Hit HDG to hold current HEADING... Hit it AGAIN to go BACK to holding ROLL! Hit ALT to hold current ALTITUDE... Hit it AGAIN to go BACK to holding PITCH! All of this is exactly like the Garmin 1000 GFC-700 autopilot in my Columbia-400. As well, hit the AUTO-THROTTLE button to hold your current AIRSPEED by adjusting throttle.

As we get multiplayer and racing going on, the following becomes important: If you hit another plane in flight, the result is... interesting.

New Scenery and Sound Enhancements
Visible afterburners: Bad as heck on the B-1 in Extreme. And now it gets good: They move with pitch in the F-22! This is NOT gratuitous motion, as in every "game" I see: This is the actual deflection used to steer the plane in pitch, as determined by the Fly-By-Wire system and your control inputs. I have always been annoyed at the cheap, unrealistic animations of all the GAMES out there, where tires, control surfaces, afterburners and the like have simple, gratuitous motions. In X-Plane, you are actually seeing the real deflections that are actually being used by the physics engine!

The sky color change with altitude... This is kind of nice in the SR-71 where you can find yourself around 100,000 feet!

New data presented for the other guy: Gear, flaps, stabilizer trim, wing sweep, flight-control deflections, speedbrakes, rotor-disc angle for the helos, afterburners and afterburners-angles for the jets: The works! This stuff is visible in the AI plane you fly against in X-Plane Racing and X-Plane Extreme, and the multiplayer friend you are racing against in X-Plane Racing, or flying with in all other flavors of X-Plane!

New skidding and touch-down sounds! Touch-down skid is even realistic, tracking the moment of inertia of the wheel, tire friction with the runway, and touchdown force! In the real plane, a hard landing just gives you the sound of a hard thump, but a really soft landing gives a long squeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaakkk of the wheels as the slowly spin up to speed due to the low load on the tires to spin them up! X-Plane for iPhone simulates all of this accurately! This is NO GAME: The physics are are REAL! Can you touch down smooth enough to get a nice long squeeeeaaaakkk on touch-down?

New Flight Interface
You now have a pointer to the other guy on your HUD, right around your compass-rose. This is kind of convenient if you get separated from the AI, or want to find your friend in multiplayer-flights!

NEW GENERAL INTERFACE ENHANCEMENTS:

'Final Approach' buttons are now available for all starting locations, as per common request.

Compass rose on the map to see your map heading... kind of nice as you rotate it. Remember: Drag the map with 2 fingers to control it!

X-Plane Helicopter has option to invert the collective now... Push the collective up to raise the craft. This is a bad idea, and not recommended for real helo pilots, because in the real helo, you pull the collective toward you to raise it, an action much more ergonomically similar to dragging your thumb toward you on the iPhone, and this option reverses that logic so that you push your thumb away from you to increase collective--the exact opposite of what you do in the real helo!!!! So, this option is backwards from the best ergonomics, but people kept asking for it!

Minor Enhancements
Frame rate improvement! We are working amazingly hard to squeeze out every last percent of the performance this thing has! Our iPods become quite hot when we run X-Plane on them, if that is any indication of what is going on here!

Minor tweaks and refinements to various aircraft to make them a hair more realistic.

Other recent New Stuff
New instrument panel type for ALL X-Plane flavors. This new instrument panel is the 'Heavy' mechanical type, for planes like the King-Air, MD-88, and the like. This panel is also used in the B-1 Bomber in X-Plane Extreme. So we now have three instrument panel types: General Aviation standard, Heavy Standard, and EFIS.

New flying regions for all flavors of X-Plane, with new refinements in the appearance of many scenery areas. We now have desert, forest, midwest, snowy, Southern-Californian, and other scenery texture-sets for scenery in Florida, Alaska, Swiss Alps, deserts of the Southwest more.

We now have landing, taxi, navigation, strobe, and beacon lights on the planes, where appropriate. This makes them look kind of nice, and makes the planes visible from far away. This is especially nice for X-Plane Extreme, where the other B-1's, B-2's SR-71's, and F-22's can get away from you pretty quick.

The pause button stays lit now when paused, and pauses the sound as well, which is kind of convenient. The helos should be a hair easier to manage in the Helicopter version as we refine the flight-model a bit more.

Countless general enhancements from user-feedback: Refinements in sound, graphics, flight-model, and interface. We are now really starting to load up with planes, other planes to chase (in X-Plane Extreme now, soon to come to the other flavors as well), scenery areas, and instrument panels. X-Plane Mobile is starting to become a pretty 'deep' application, with lots more to explore in each update.

MULTIPLE FLYING REGIONS! These were the number-one requests from customers: More planes and more scenery, and now we have them!

X-Plane 9 and X-Plane Airliner have both gotten more planes added (as free update 9.05) and now we are adding more flying areas as well for this free-update 9.06. In the Settings menu, you can select varied flying regions such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Southern California, the Grand Canyon, Catalina Island, and Hawaii in the various X-Plane flavors! (9, Airliner, Helicopter). We are now over a total of one thousand airports, NAVAIDS, airplanes, and maps across the four flavors of X-Plane, distributed so far as a total of 3 new products and 10 free updates for a total of under $19.99.

Better scenery! We have tuned the textures and graphics technology as well! The scenery should look quite a bit more fascinating and varied and real in all apps! So now we have not only many different flying areas, but each one looks much better and more realistic as well... and of course more is still to come!

Better Frame rate! The frame-rate for 9.06 is a decent bit better than it was for 9.05 thanks to careful tuning of the scenery.

As we move into the sixth free update for X-Plane, and second free update for X-Plane Airliner and Helicopter, we are getting into a power and variety of flight simulator that is starting to rival desktop products... for $9.99 or less on your iPhone and iPod Touch.

This is simply stunning technology and power... more than I could have imagined possible, and, of course, we are not done yet! More free updates and products are to come as we continue to improve our technology to use every last bit of iPhone performance.

Considerably better flight model! We have also improved the accuracy of the drag modeling of the fuselage, making the cruise, deceleration, and glide performance much more accurate.

All-new EFIS, as recommended by an airline pilot that uses X-Plane airliner for iPhone to practice for his 6-month checks in the multi-million dollar big sims! This new EFIS is applied to ALL X-Plane apps! X-Plane for iPhone is now moving into the same territory as the desktop: Pilots are now using it for keeping up their skills to fly more safely in the real thing. This is especially funny because airline pilots take flight-checks every 6 months in 10-million dollar full-motion flight-simulators... and are now starting to sit in the lobby of the flight-training buildings where these sims are housed practicing on their iPhone to be more brushed-up for the check!

X-Plane Helicopter now has new sounds, as well, and more accurate auto-rotation performance thanks to an improved engine governor.

We now have a PAUSE button, because people asked for it.

As we move forwards, we will come out with more flavors of X-Plane (priced at $9.99 so anyone can afford them) and release even more free upgrades as we continue to improve our technology... and what is really amazing is that as we develop new technology for one simulator (such as the new EFIS system recommended by a real airline pilot for Airliner, or the new thrust and flight-control systems we are working on for another product) we will distribute this technology to all the flavors of X-Plane as free updates (as we are doing for 9.06 for all flavors of X-Plane today) so that each version of X-Plane benefits from the new technology of the others. At the end of the day, we have the most powerful line of products for iPhone, I am quite sure.