X-Plane Mobile (redesigned)

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I love this game on the desktop, and starting up the mobile version and flying a couple approaches in a great timekiller. It feels remarkably similar to the desktop app, widely regarded as one of the most realistic flight simulations available. Unfortunately, it shares some UI design issues with desktop application.

To make things clear - I am not involved with the creation of X-Plane - that is Laminar Research. I'm a fan only. If you want to learn more, go to X-Plane.com.

If you want to learn more about the issues I have with the design of this App, and my solutions (and promise not to get mad/sue me if you're involved with the creation of this App), click the more button below.

X-Plane, even on the desktop versions, has long had a UI that could be considered, at best, servicable. Some of this can be forgiven - with the purchase of USB dongles, X-Plane can be used as a commercial flight simulator. Also, it's one of the few (and possibly the only) readily available flight simulator to actually use your 3D model as the aerodynamic model. It's a complicated piece of software, so I can forgive some things not being user friendly. With the latest update (9.3) and the demise of the Microsoft Flight Simulator team, the desktop engineers have put effort toward making some things more user friendly. No longer do we have to set our monitor resolution using a separate set of up and down arrows for each digit - instead we get an almost modern dropdown (and the ability to manually specify a resolution if it's not available.

Unfortunately, the desktop version still needs UI polish, and the iPhone version has its own set of problems to be ironed out.

Different versions of the iPhone app exist, with different focuses - airliners, extreme planes, general aviation, and others. The UI differs slightly, but the changes I've made to the airliner version would carry across.

The startup image is confusing. Is this a space simulator? It's re-used from the desktop version of X-Plane 9, but that doesn't make it any better.

A better option is to actually show a relevant aircraft. Some of the style was borrow from vintage airline ads.

The game starts off paused, which is good, but the information overload is bad.

Reducing the on-screen text to a minimum clears things up, and makes the purpose of the 'paused' state clear - to show the menu bar.

It's hard to tell what these menu buttons actually do. Some change the view, one brings up the options menu, and one pauses the game. This last option is strange - why not just pause the game when the menu is visible, since it takes time to decipher the buttons. In addition, 'pause' isn't really an option - just a game state. Why place it here?

We know from studies that iPhone users are trained to expect certain design choices - such as menubars along the top or bottom of a screen (and in a consistent location within an app). I've move the buttons to the bottom bar, and given them clearer purposes - HUD/forward view, instrument panel, external view, flight model view, options, and instructions. In the case of this screen, text descriptions for the external views are given to show their purpose.

Throt? Sbrk?

Illogical abbreviations don't help an already cluttered interface. There are some things we can remove, though. The speed and altitude tape can go, and the airspeed, Mach, altitude, and vertical speed condensed. Also, the slider controls get representative icons, and hints on the bar backgrounds themselves. The compass, VOR/ILS and gear/brake buttons have been cleaned up as well.

The instrument panel just doesn't work. I'd recommend pressing the knob you want to turn, then dragging up or right to increase the value or dragging down/left to decrease.

Selecting an airport is also a challenge. You only get a couple airports per region, and only a few runways per airport.

Instead, I think it's a better solution to break the selection process into steps - a scrollable list (with the movable map behind it) populated with all tower-controlled aiports, then allowing you to set your position on or approaching a runway.

Perfect? No. But it's an improvement on what is an incredibly fun iPhone App that just needs some polish in the UI department.