I should probably preface this post with the following statement: I do not want your money and I have not been employed by the CIA, flown F-16's, or what have you.
I do have an interesting concept for an ipad/iphone game that I thought I'd just put out and gauge the reaction from our local pilot crew and even those who aren't pilots. Hopefully the "Angry Birds" of flying games.
Basically, what the game would try and do is help you improve or hone your basic instrument scan while being as entertaining as possible. The premise is that you are an airline captain and the newbie F/O is flying the current leg but it is your job to keep him in line. His name is Dopey and comes complete with soundbites like "Aw shucks" and "You got 'er Cap'n". You are presented with the basic 6 pack of instruments (hsi in there), a mag compass, vacuum gauge, gear lever, and throttle. Also there are several drop down menus to correct the first officer on altitude, speed, heading, swap radios frequencies, and one to catch the systems failures for points. There would be missions ranging from easy, medium, and hard and last anywhere from 3-5 minutes. No hand flying, it'd all be done by selecting headings on the hsi, moving the throttle between the preset settings (take off, climb, cruise, descent, approach), and correcting Dopey the first officer.
It'd be pretty simple, the game ATC would clear you to take off and climb to a set altitude, fly you around on vectors with you making sure dopey stays at cruise speed, on heading, and on altitude, while also allowing for any number of instrument failures that you'd have to cross check between the other instruments and dopey. The errors correcting themselves once you had selected the correct type. And finally concluding with you putting the gear down and descending on an "approach" to the destination. Some other features along with heading and altitude changes, ATC would be giving you a multitude of frequency changes. You'd lose/gain points based on quick and correct actions or for tuning the wrong frequency or letting Dopey get too far off course. Possibly failing completely if you didn't detect an instrument error within a time frame or for letting the aircraft get off course, altitude, stall/overspeed. Perhaps even having the option of timed turns if the HSI goes down.
I know the down side is that it would be hard to get non-fliers into it, but as I said before I just wanted to see what our local pilot/flight simmer community would say. This being less than a sim, but something entertaining to play while you wait 15 minutes at the dentist's office, etc. While still providing at least some sharpening of the instrument scan skills.
I was especially interested in knowing whether or not some of the high time guys would even bother.
