Flight Simulator Boeing Hawaii
Thetis Games
Available free on Android
If it’s your dream to soar through the clear blue pacific skies as a dashing pilot cruising the airways then do not download this app.
If, however, you recently saw the movie Flight and want to see what it would really be like if your pilot was a drunk cocaine addict then this might be for you.
After a few minutes trying to get to grips with controls (I wasn’t able to find any instructions in the app so I just started jabbing the screen until I got the hang of it) I decided that the problem is less my lack of coordination and more a horrible control interface. Making the subtle changes to your flight path that are necessary to control the plane is impossible so the best I was able to achieve was to send my aircraft on and endless vertical climb.
The game is riddled with bugs as well. Despite claims to be using a physics engine developed by Nasa my aircraft had no trouble fly through the ground, and was apparently incapable of crashing, unlike the app itself which crashed twice while I was using it. Scenery frequently disappears leaving you flying into a endless blue void, it frequently becomes impossible to switch back to an OTS view after choosing one of the others, and constant pop-up ads distract from any ‘fun’ that you might be having.
I could chalk some of these problems up to the phone I’m using and it’s possible this might run better on a tablet device (I’m working with a respectable Samsung Galaxy S3) but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I never used to feel like I had much in common with Mr T, but thanks to Thetis’s flight simulator I now share his suspicion of planes.
