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Laminar Research has put up a dedicated page for X-Plane 9 on the iPhone, and it includes a list of improvements, fixes, and additions the upcoming patch will contain. Most notably, they were able to improve the framerate performance by 25% for X-Plane 9 ($9.99).
Other features are the ability to calibrate the position of the iPhone/iPod Touch for flying in any position, higher contrast interface, the computer setting the power and flaps for you on final approach, and changes made to the interface settings.
The page also includes a great story about how X-Plane 9 came to be on the iPhone/iPod Touch, and a retelling of their experience when visiting the Apple headquarters. I highly recommend giving this story a read, it’s very fascinating.
ANYWAY, after about 5 days of the most time-pressured, intensive, focused work I have ever done, Ben went home for the weekend and I remained in the hotel, continuing my 16-hour workdays, but by myself in the hotel room over the weekend. Late Sunday night, Ben was back from Washington DC with some hard drives with tons of X-Plane scenery-building tools, and we were right back to work charging into the next week with 10-hour days at Apple, and another 6 hours back at the hotel each night. As the end of the week approached, and X-Plane for iPhone began to solidify, X-Plane finally went to Steve Jobs for his final approval or rejection for the Keynote. The Verdict: “No-Go”. The sim is fine, and Steve likes it, but it is not FAST-PACED enough for a keynote demo. Bummer! BUT, really, NOT a major problem… we still got the sim developed in only 14 days, and it is selling like hotcakes now at the AppStore, walking right over SPORE and dueling with StarWars for the #4 position of all paid apps as I write this. Not bad for 14 days with only barely-minimal food and sleep! (And another 7 days of the same (16-hour work-days) when I got back home to tune, test, and tweak, and then about 3 more days of the same for 9.01, which runs a good bit nicer).
[...] site fingergaming.com reports that iPhone version of X-Plane took 14 days of development (conversion) initially, and then [...]