Rebuilt from nothing after seventeen years: a gyro-driven horizon that stays honest through a turn, real barometric altitude, and physics that finally add up.
A primary flight display that runs on the device already in your flight bag.
IFR Cockpit turns the gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer and GPS in your iPhone or iPad into an attitude indicator, airspeed tape, altimeter, vertical speed indicator and compass, laid out the way a glass cockpit lays them out.
Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of an app first published in 2008. It looks the way it always has. Everything behind it is new.
A HORIZON THAT STAYS HONEST IN A TURN
An accelerometer cannot tell gravity from centrifugal force. Every phone attitude indicator has to solve that, and most do not: roll into a coordinated turn and the horizon drifts back towards level while you are still banked.
Here the attitude comes from the gyroscope, and the acceleration of the turn itself is worked out of the reading using GPS ground speed. Bank into a turn and the horizon shows the bank you are actually flying. Accelerate down the runway and the nose stays where you put it.
A REAL ALTIMETER
Altitude comes from the barometer with your own altimeter setting applied, not from GPS height. Set it in inches or hectopascals, drop to standard 29.92 with one tap for the climb through the transition altitude, or match it to your GPS altitude. Negative altitudes read correctly, for fields below sea level and for standard pressure on a high day.
Devices without a barometer fall back to GPS altitude and say so on screen.
VERTICAL SPEED THAT ANSWERS IMMEDIATELY
Vertical acceleration is blended with the barometer, so the needle moves in a fraction of a second instead of lagging behind a once-a-second pressure reading, and it still cannot drift.
NOTHING TO SET UP
Down is simply where gravity points. Hold the device upright and the horizon is level. If your cradle holds it at an angle, fly straight and level and press TRIM once.
Landscape and portrait, iPhone and iPad. Turn the device in its holder and the horizon rolls with it without disturbing the pitch.
ON THE DISPLAY
• Attitude indicator with pitch ladder, bank scale and slip indicator
• Airspeed tape with the operating range arcs for your aeroplane
• Altimeter with rolling digits, altitude bug and a fine deviation scale
• Vertical speed indicator
• Compass ribbon with heading bug and rate of turn
• Six second trend vectors on speed and altitude
• Optional G load
• Classic and Glass colour schemes
• A live sensor page showing every raw value
V-SPEEDS FOR YOUR AEROPLANE
Presets for the Cessna 172, Piper PA-28, Diamond DA40, Cirrus SR22 and gliders, or enter your own stall, flap and never-exceed speeds and the arcs follow.
DEMO FLIGHT
Try everything without leaving the ground. The demo flies a circuit from the runway: take-off roll, climb out, a steep turn, and back down to land. It is a genuine flight model rather than an animation, so the instruments agree with each other. Roll into the steep turn and watch the load factor rise and the airspeed decay with it.
BUILT FOR THE COCKPIT
The screen stays awake, the refresh rate can be capped to save battery on a long leg, and the whole display scales from an iPhone to a 13-inch iPad.
HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS
This is a training and situational-awareness aid built on consumer sensors, not a certified instrument. The speed tape shows GPS ground speed and is labelled GS, because there is no pitot tube in a phone. Never use this app as a primary reference for aircraft control or navigation.
Took the app flying in my plane this evening. The app's horizon stayed almost horizontal the whole time even through 30-45 degree banked turns. It dawned on me that if the app uses the iPhone accelerometers, it *should* indeed indicate horizontal when in a coordinated banked turn. The accelerometer "feels" the same thing as the seat of your pants in a turn ... a force a little more than 1 G and directly down in your seat (also straight down in the iPhone's reference plane, so it shows no bank at all when you fly a proper turn). I don't know a lot about the iPhone hardware or programming ... so correct me if I am wrong ... but the app's behavior flying today suggests that the bank indicator uses accelerometer data, and that strategy will not work for actual flight. Pitch info was pretty close at constant speed but again the iPhone does not have an attitude reference system that allows you to detect pitch (or bank) accurately. When accelerating or slowing in level flight, however, the accelerometer causes the pitch indicator to show pitching up or down inappropriately. The GPS-based data (speed and altitude and VSI) were accurate as expected. Sorry... The app would be great if the iPhone had attitude reference hardware required to measure actual pitch and bank.
Cockpit
Rocker Ronnie
Not very useful due to lazy design work. The basics are excellent, but it's like the designers never used it. In particular, the heading is shown only digitally and is to small to read. No excuse for that. If they would make the numbers larger it would me OK. If it had large digits AND a compass rose it would be an Awesome app. I recommend you wait until they upgrade it.
You need to understand what you are buying
MattDux
This is not a game, but a utility that takes GPS and accelerometer info from the iPhone and presents it in a EFIS-like package. I am very pleased with it (Private Pilot/ASEL/Aircraft Dispatcher), and I would only add that it needs a "cage" mode where you can mount it in the car and reset it (cage). My iPhone holder in the car is not perpendicular to the ground, and most panels are angled up at the pilot anyway. Just add a "cage" function and it would be just great. I'll have to use it in the real cockpit sometime.(Also, think about adding a airspeed trend line, a small arrow that points to what the speed will be in 8 seconds, given current acceleration. Boeing and Airbus both have this feature).
Not too impressed
Captain elliott
Overall not that bad. Does get boring pretty quick. I couldn't see a usefull application in the cockpit. I did take it flying the other day and it's true the accelerometer doesn't sense change in movement in a coordinated level turn, simply shows wing level. However the ground track heading info as well as the airspeed and altitude were within approx 5%. So that was impressive. But overall not usefull in an aircraft with opperating avionics. Maybe, just maybe usefull with loss of pitot static system. But not likely!
2.0.1 is a tuning release. Everything in it is about the instruments moving continuously rather than a sample at a time.
THE COMPASS STRIP TURNS SMOOTHLY
On the move the display shows ground track rather than heading, because a magnetometer surrounded by metal is not worth trusting. That track came straight from the GPS course — published once a second, in whole degrees — so the strip stepped a whole second of turning at a time, and the faster you turned the harder it jumped. The track is now carried on the gyroscope between fixes and each course is worked in gradually, so a turn sweeps instead of ticking.
THE SPEED TAPE STOPS WHEN YOU DO
Coming to a standstill, the tape used to keep counting down for a second or more after the vehicle had actually stopped. It now reaches zero as you stop.
SPEED COMES FROM THE ACCELEROMETER
Ground speed is now derived almost entirely from the accelerometer, with the satellite fix only trimming it rather than driving it. The reference the acceleration is measured against was rebuilt so that a long brake can no longer wash it out, and the mounting angle is recalibrated automatically every time you come to a standstill — so the tape is at its most accurate exactly where it used to be at its worst, in stop-and-go traffic.
DRAWN AT FULL REFRESH RATE
Both tapes and the compass strip are now drawn from the current model state at the display's own refresh rate, rather than only when a sensor reading happens to arrive.
Version 2.0.1
The developer, Drobnik KG, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Drobnik KG
Size
728.1 KB
Category
Entertainment
Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.