Infinite Flight’ Review – Will This Flight Never End?

‘Infinite Flight’ Review – Will This Flight Never End?

Infinite Flight is a hardcore, realistic flight simulator. In March of 2011, Flying Development Studio released their flight simulator on Windows phones. They recently broadened their audience with the iOS iteration of Infinite Flight . There is certainly a market for highly sophisticated simulators like this one, but does the concept translate to a motion and touch based platform?

Infinite Flight first and foremost attempts at “reaching maximum realism of flight on mobile devices”. The game boasts five authentic airplanes, realistic physics and heads-up-display, two regions with over 140 airports, customization time of day, editable wind settings and visibility options. During our review, only the Cessna 172SP G1000, Cirrus SR22 G3 Turbo, and Super Decathlon were available to be used.

Movement in Infinite Flight is fairly intuitive. The player simply tilts the device to maneuver. Depending on what plane you use, the handling is a little different. To control your speed, a slider becomes visible when you touch the left side of the screen. Several other virtual buttons allow you to swap between several camera angles and edit your HUD.

When you first boot up Infinite Flight , you have the option of playing a tutorial mission that details the different elements on your heads-up-display and moving your vehicle. Once this brief lesson is over, the rest of the simulator consists of taking off, landing, and cruising through the sky. The game does a decent job providing a realistic experience, but there is not any motivation to return once you have mastered the tutorial lesson.

Similar to the gameplay, the two environments look identical. The mostly flat terrain has a blurry image of the landscape pasted on top, and the sky is either a shade of blue or orange. Visually, Infinite Flight gets the job done, but there is no detail or polish. It would be interesting if you could fly into a city and jet around the buildings, or at least see the airports on the ground rather than the map. The only purpose the ground serves is to keep you from infinitely moving vertically as well as horizontally.

The sound in Infinite Flight is reduced to simply the roar of your plane’s engine in the background. The pitch changes with the speed as you adjust with the slider on the left side of the screen, but other than crash sound effects, there is nothing to fill the silence of drifting through the empty sky.

What Infinite Flight needs above all else if mission and location variety . The skies would be a much more lively place if you could see commercial airplanes traveling from one airport to another, hear radio chatter from airports, and maybe even pass a flock of birds once in a while. The locations could benefit from a few 3D buildings projecting from the surface, and if Flying Development Studio desired, cities with moving cars and lights as well as sounds of the cars honking and the like to simply bring life to the bland, flat ground and the distant, monochrome skyboxes. Missions would keep players returning to beat the game. What if you could fly from one airport to another as a commercial cruise, taking passengers from one location to the next. The player could then be judged based on his time and gentleness during the flight. Scores could be assigned for different routes, and if the developer was inclined, leaderboards could be included.

I am aware that Flying Development Studio was not building Infinite Flight to be the most engaging experience, and that realism was meant to be the focus of the game. If they wanted their game to be realistic, why is the game an empty sandbox? Players could learn real, pilot terms while being directed by air tower support, and fly their airplane like a real commercial flight. The lack of feedback and direction makes Infinite Flight devoid of life and purpose. Flight simulator fanatics might find something to toy with in this bare-bones sim, but the rest of us will stick with the computer and console counterparts.

Learn more about Infinite Flight at the developer’s official website, or follow them on twitter. The iOS version is available universally on the App Store, for both iPhone and iPad for $4.99. The Windows 7 version is available on Zune Marketplace.

[review pros=”Incredibly realistic wind and plane physics” cons=”Lack of visual variety, Minimal interactive elements without any direction lead to a lacking game experience'” score=50]