The coolest gadget EVER.

flyingcheesehead

flyingcheesehead

Taxi to Parking
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Feb 23, 2005
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UQACY, WI
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iMooniac
C'mon, you know what it is:

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That would be X-Plane.

Running on my iPhone. :goofy:

You can set weather (wind, turbulence, ceiling, vis), pick from four airplanes (C172, Columbia 400, Piaggio Avanti, and Cirrus SJ50), set how heavily the plane is loaded and its CG (!), and what time of day or night it is. Here I am, about to crash the Avanti short of the runway at dusk:

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Probably tilt the iPhone for control.

I will admit, that's pretty cool. What would make it uber-cool is if you could use the wifi/3g to fly on VATSIM.
 
I am glad he didn't have access to this while truck driving or we'd all be in trouble on the highways.
 
skyflyer8 said:
I am glad he didn't have access to this while truck driving or we'd all be in trouble on the highways.
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Nah. The truck had cruise control.

I already saw how the Ice Road Truckers set the cruise (they were sometimes limited to 25 kph) and twisted... and got out of the of the seat. :hairraise:
 
Wow, I didn't know I could buy an app that quickly. I had it purchased and downloaded before I saw your second screenshot. :yes:
 
dmccormack said:
Are those iPhone screenshots?

Pretty cool..
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Yup.

For those who have iPhones and want to take a screen shot, you just press the power and home buttons (the only buttons on the phone!) simultaneously. The screen will flash white briefly (like a flash) and click to indicate that you got the picture. It'll be sitting in the "Camera Roll" and will sync with your computer. I actually didn't sync with the computer, I just tapped "send to MobileMe" and it uploaded to the album I selected. Sweet.

How do you control the airplane?
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TMetzinger said:
Probably tilt the iPhone for control.
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Yup, Tim's got it. If you look at the screen shots, there are sliders on the left and right (the darkened areas) for throttle and flaps. You can either drag the control to where you want it, or just tap where you want it to end up. At the bottom are the buttons for landing gear and brakes. Pitch and roll are controlled by tilting or rotating the phone (roll can be controlled by either tilting the phone left/right or "rolling" the phone left/right, it seems).

I will admit, that's pretty cool. What would make it uber-cool is if you could use the wifi/3g to fly on VATSIM.
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Oh, knowing how Austin Meyer adds freakishly huge numbers of features to every new release of X-Plane for computers, it wouldn't surprise me too much to see the VATSIM thing sooner or later.

I'm guessing that one of the biggest limitations is storage. Each app is limited to 2 gigs. There is a limit to the area that has terrain on the iPhone version (I flew out over the "ocean" after flying it for quite a while). Who knows, maybe I flew to where the ocean really is... I guess the airport where you start is somewhere in Austria.

I think another cool feature would be to use the location feature of the phone to automatically put you at the closest GA airport to where you're actually standing. Real weather would be neat too.
 
mikea said:
I already saw how the Ice Road Truckers set the cruise (they were sometimes limited to 25 kph) and twisted... and got out of the of the seat. :hairraise:
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Not that big of a deal, in that case. When you're driving on one-way roads (which most of the ice road is - There are separate northbound and southbound "lanes" for much of it) and there is no other traffic and you're going 10 mph, it takes a while to get in trouble.
 
FlyNE said:
Wow, I didn't know I could buy an app that quickly. I had it purchased and downloaded before I saw your second screenshot. :yes:
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..and now you'll be distracted by your phone all day tomorrow.
 
Erice said:
I found this link to the story behind the development of X-plane for the iPhone (and iPod touch). Interesting reading.
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WOW. They wrote it in two WEEKS? Having never written anything for the iPhone before? Amazing... Admittedly, being AT Apple HQ to do it helped! But still, that's impressive.
 
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TangoWhiskey said:
WOW. They wrote it in two WEEKS? Having never written anything for the iPhone before? Amazing... Admittedly, being AT Apple HQ to do it helped! But still, that's impressive.
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Troy,

Just watch the X-Plane web site once a week or so. See how fast he comes out with updates, and read the list of new features on each .01 update. It's absolutely insane what Austin Meyer is capable of.

Heck, it's insane that one guy with a few helpers can make such a product at all. How many people do you think Microsoft has working on MSFS? I'm sure he works hard, but he's gotten the rewards for it as well... Shiny new Columbiessna 400, Corvette, etc. Taking home 7 bucks a pop on the 4th most popular iPhone/iPod Touch app won't slow that down any. :no: :D
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Troy,

Just watch the X-Plane web site once a week or so. See how fast he comes out with updates, and read the list of new features on each .01 update. It's absolutely insane what Austin Meyer is capable of.

Heck, it's insane that one guy with a few helpers can make such a product at all. How many people do you think Microsoft has working on MSFS? I'm sure he works hard, but he's gotten the rewards for it as well... Shiny new Columbiessna 400, Corvette, etc. Taking home 7 bucks a pop on the 4th most popular iPhone/iPod Touch app won't slow that down any. :no: :D
Click to expand...

My friend Ben is a programmer for Austin. Pretty crazy stuff, let me tell you. I'm definitely computer savvy, and the programming jargon that comes out of his mouth makes absolutely no sense to me.

Jason
 
Another "iPhone rocks" moment...

The other night, I was practicing with my dad for a musical gig we played in Monday. Sat down with the horns, and asked... "Uh, do you have a tuner?" "No."

"Hmmmm..." *poke poke poke* "Okay, my iPhone now has a tuner. Cool."

So we tuned up, started to play, were horribly off tempo, so...

*poke poke poke* "Now it's a metronome too." :D

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(And yes, you set the desired tempo just like you would if the metronome pictured was real... You drag the weight up and down! :rofl:)
 
Kent,

Keep the Kool-Aid coming. It's starting to sound like a pretty cool gadget . . . something I can't live without!
________
Suzuki RV125
 
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KennyFlys said:
The Google Android phone is coming. :)
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Yep...Apparently I quit T-Mo at the wrong time, got info today that for the first time ever, employees are getting the first crack at the phone. Dammit.

The G1. Which is 3G. LOL. I hope that's the ad campaign for it.
 
SkyHog said:
Yep...Apparently I quit T-Mo at the wrong time, got info today that for the first time ever, employees are getting the first crack at the phone. Dammit.

The G1. Which is 3G. LOL. I hope that's the ad campaign for it.
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Oops! :)
 
bluesky74656 said:
Sigh... if it ever hits Verizon. I fell in love with my iPod Touch.
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It'll be at least 2012 - AT&T and Apple have an exclusive contract in the US until then. Such a long-term deal is fairly unusual in the tech business, but they did develop the Visual Voicemail together, among other things, and AT&T probably wanted to be sure they got their money's worth.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
It'll be at least 2012 - AT&T and Apple have an exclusive contract in the US until then. Such a long-term deal is fairly unusual in the tech business, but they did develop the Visual Voicemail together, among other things, and AT&T probably wanted to be sure they got their money's worth.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see the iPhone never be available for Verizon or Sprint. That would require developing a CDMA platform; right now, the iPhone is GSM exclusively.
 
jmaynard said:
I wouldn't be surprised to see the iPhone never be available for Verizon or Sprint. That would require developing a CDMA platform; right now, the iPhone is GSM exclusively.
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Well, remember back to the early days of the iPod - There was one and only iPod (just like there was one and only 1st-gen iPhone).

Then, there were two or three 2nd-gen iPods - 10G and 20G at least. Now, there are two 2nd-gen iPhones - 8G and 16G.

I bet that as soon as the contract is up, there'll be a CDMA iPhone as well as the GSM one... Unless AT&T really sweetens the pot somehow, or Verizon keeps behaving like their customers' mother.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Then, there were two or three 2nd-gen iPods - 10G and 20G at least. Now, there are two 2nd-gen iPhones - 8G and 16G.
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The difference here is that the different storage capacities don't take any fundamentally new engineering; it's just how many flash devices, or which disk drive, Apple uses. A new phone technology would require some significant reengineering, definitely a different circuit board, and probably some different RF components in the case. Apple could do it, surely; whether the substantial differences are worth it to them when balanced against the costs is another question entirely.
 
jmaynard said:
The difference here is that the different storage capacities don't take any fundamentally new engineering; it's just how many flash devices, or which disk drive, Apple uses. A new phone technology would require some significant reengineering, definitely a different circuit board, and probably some different RF components in the case. Apple could do it, surely; whether the substantial differences are worth it to them when balanced against the costs is another question entirely.
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True - I guess I didn't complete my thought.

After those first two generations of iPods, we got the iPod Mini. After a while, that was phased out and the iPod Nano replaced it. Now, there's the iPod Classic, the iPod Nano, and the iPod Touch, which all "required significant engineering."

The thing is, they may have to charge more for a CDMA iPhone because that'd be a Verizon/Sprint thing only, since most of the rest of the world uses GSM. The market would be smaller, so they'd have to charge more to recoup those engineering costs. Or, they could do a multi-mode phone like those Verizon international phones. However, that would force them to charge EVERYONE more so that they could reach a few extra people.

I think it'll all depend on how nice Verizon is to Apple for the next couple years.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
...I bet that as soon as the contract is up, there'll be a CDMA iPhone as well as the GSM one... Unless AT&T really sweetens the pot somehow, or Verizon keeps behaving like their customers' mother.
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Remember? Apple went to Verizon FIRST with the iPhone. The "we disabled bluetooth synching in your phone because you don't want that" company couldn't see a good fit. :rolleyes:

I expect Verizon may never see the light.
 
mikea said:
Remember? Apple went to Verizon FIRST with the iPhone. The "we disabled bluetooth synching in your phone because you don't want that" company couldn't see a good fit. :rolleyes:

I expect Verizon may never see the light.
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OTOH we still don't have BT synching on our iPhones :D

Thanks Ken, for the review. The amount of free applications available now is astounding in many ways. I was bitching the other day that the iPhone didn't have native vCard support, or any other way to easily email one of my contacts to someone. Then the lightbulb came on, I spent three minutes on the app store, well, you know the rest...
 
alaskaflyer said:
OTOH we still don't have BT synching on our iPhones :D
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Well, with the sheer amount of STUFF the iPhone syncs... Can you imagine how sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow that would be?

Thanks Kent, for the review.
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You're welcome. (Fixed that for ya. ;))

The amount of free applications available now is astounding in many ways. I was bitching the other day that the iPhone didn't have native vCard support, or any other way to easily email one of my contacts to someone. Then the lightbulb came on, I spent three minutes on the app store, well, you know the rest...
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Yeah, that's what's so cool about it. Almost anything you can imagine, you can now do, thanks to the huge number of apps available. It seems like the majority of them are free, too! Even the ones that aren't, most seem to be in the under $3 range, and only a very few cost more than $10.

Oh, and you don't have to pay for them monthly like with other phones. :rolleyes: You buy 'em, and you're done. :D
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Well, with the sheer amount of STUFF the iPhone syncs... Can you imagine how sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow that would be?
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Well, I don't really want to synch, so much as I want other Bluetooth functionality besides a wireless phone headset. Number #1 on my list: Stereo bluetoothing of music without the clipon dongle thingy. #2: unit to unit sharing of photos, vCards and notes via bluetooth.

You're welcome. (Fixed that for ya. ;))
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Oops :redface: That was a typo I swear.


Oh, and you don't have to pay for them monthly like with other phones. :rolleyes: You buy 'em, and you're done. :D
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Unlike Verizon.
 
mikea said:
TETHERING. Bluetooth or USB.
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I'm sure *Apple* would love to provide that functionality, but since it's against AT&T's terms of service to tether any phone, I guess we'll have to wait until the exclusivity contract runs out. :dunno:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I'm sure *Apple* would love to provide that functionality, but since it's against AT&T's terms of service to tether any phone, I guess we'll have to wait until the exclusivity contract runs out. :dunno:
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I gotta hope the lightbulb goes off and they let you tether with a plan akin to the datacard plan. After all, the card is using exactly the same network. I say "akin" because I'd hate if they charged you teh same as more as the 100% all data all the time datacard when you only want to tether once in a while.
 
Looks like I have a couple of downloads to go fetch for the phone.

I rarely rave, but I rave about my iPhone. It rocks.
 
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