I should perhaps declare some parameters and disclaimers here. Note the word 'casual' above - with flight simulators, there's an entire spectrum from a simple flight in a Cessna or Airbus to enjoy some scenery and 'being up there', to life-enveloping realism where you take ostensibly a real commercial flight from gate pushback through ATC (Air Traffic Control) and then multiple hours of real time flight, to landing in a planned destination on ALS approach.
In between these two extremes there's me - and probably you, reading this article. Occasional flight sim players won't be too bothered about the finer details, while hard core sim fans will already be set up and will know all this already. But slap in the middle there's a choice of (at least) four major mobile flight sim systems, within which you can traverse most of the sim continuum.
As a gamer and reviewer I'm in this category, not using all the features, but also wanting to appreciate more than the very basics, which is partly why I was 'Pro' for most of what you'll see below.
I should also note that this is all just a snapshot in time - all four applications are constantly being improved, not least server-side, with new scenery, liveries, objects, and so on. Thankfully, three of the titles are available as free trials, so there's a lot of flying and playing that you can do before you decide on a winner and feel obliged to dip into your wallet.
| Titles (all on Pro setting as needed) | Aerofly FS 2021 | Infinite Flight | Rortos RFS | X-Plane 11 |
| Cost | £9 one-off cost | around £10/month for 'Pro', £75/year | £4.50/month for 'Pro', or £27/year | £5.50/month for 'Pro', or £45/year |
| Tested on (all available for each, though) |
iOS 14.5 | iOS 14.5 and Android 11 |
Android 11 | Android 11 |
| Planes available (not counting livery changes) |
23 | 60 | 39 | 16 (including 3 military) |
| Plane detail (including undercarriage animations) |
Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent |
| Interactive cockpit controls | Yes | No | No | Limited to major controls, throttle, flaps, etc. |
| 3D scenery objects | 200 airports in the USA and selected other countries |
20-odd airports so far, more coming | 500 worldwide airports (35 in 'HD' with ground traffic) |
11,500 airports |
| Ground object collision | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Ground detail | Excellent (for supported regions) | Poor (by comparison) |
Excellent | Excellent |
| Interface | Simplified, can be hard to see icons against landscape | Easy and full, always clear against scenery | Intuitive and clear, but slightly fiddly (small touch targets) | Intuitive, easy |
| Weather realism (including clouds, rain) |
Clouds and winds, but no rain |
Limited clouds, no rain | Excellent | Excellent |
| Multiplayer, Air Traffic Control | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autopilot/Copilot | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Real time, real world flights | No | No | Yes | No |
| Replays available (e.g. to admire what you did) | Yes, via pause/rewind system | Yes, via Home screen, all previous flights are recorded! Terrific. | Yes, but only after flight | Yes, at any point |
| Crashes | None, flight gets reset | Yes, but no graphics | Yes, but no graphics | Yes, with graphics |
(By the way, if you're an enthusiast for any of the above games and I've got any of the stats or features wrong then do please get in touch - these are huge and complex bits of software and there's no way I could exercise every last option!)
The table above is your main reference point here in terms of comparison, but before I deliver my own verdict(s) I need to present a truckload of screenshots, by way of illustration. During gameplay and testing (hard work, but someone's got to play these games - they're not going to fly themselves... Oh wait... auto-pilot!), I captured about 20 or 30 screens for each. Which is way too many for a humble web feature, so I've picked the half dozen or so for each that are most interesting, pretty, or representative, along with comments. You'll soon get a flavour of each.
Screenshots
Aerofly FS 2021
Buzzing a city in an old WW II fighter bomber! The interactive cockpits are modelled well for each of the 23 available aircraft.
Back to a modern Cessna and plaing with the interface and camera views. Information is at the top, camera and views are on the 'view' control on the right. On the left, throttle and flaps.
Planning a flight, here trying landing at London City Airport. I loved the way you can jump between aircraft, locations, and conditions, with 'Start' on the home menu always jumping back into 'reality'.
Loads of structure detail in supported countries and areas. Here I'm doing a flyby over Gatwick (probably) in HUD mode, with all information overlaid, albeit hard to see against detailed views...
The cockpit modelling is extraordinary - you can pan and zoom around and a lot of switches and controls can be activated and controlled by touch...
The online world is inhabited by many others and it's not uncommon to find your landing or takeoff overlapping with some other player's. Don't worry, you don't actually collide, but it's a little disconcerting at times!
That aforementioned landing at London City Airport in progress, again in HUD mode... Will I make it? (I did!)
The aircraft exteriors are astonishingly detailed - here the backwards-nose-cam captures the nose wheel retracting, even the recesses are modelled and rendered!
Circling and about to land in a Cessna on a small airstrip in England's 'green and pleasant land'...
Just a bit of fun. Lighting up (the beautifully rendered) afterburners in an F-15 Strike Eagle on a lazy UK airstrip - time to buzz the locals!
Infinite Flight
Infinite Flight is the most 'serious' sim here (arguably), and comes with a visible co-pilot! Sadly the cockpit is far less interactive than the competition, mind you, you're reliant on the (admittedly excellent) on-screen controls.
In the air and looking around, note the view and ground detail, note the on-screen controls, here setting up the auto-pilot. Note the lack of visible copilot (not applicable, presumably, depending on different aircraft).
Ground services are modelled too, so you can request a pushback (though without visible truck!) - useful when at a gate in a 747!
Infinite Flight has the fewest modelled airports, but there's plenty of detail in the ones created so far. OK, so you can just taxi through buildings, but at least they look good!
Gear almost retracted and taking off. The controls are very intuitive, but in fairness I've been flying IF on multiple platforms for a decade, so there's familiarity too...
Great aircraft modelling, look at the lovely animated flaps and spoilers...
Ground detail is the most generic in Infinite Flight, rarely seeming crisp and detailed (even artificial detail would do) - it looks great from 10,000 ft but a bit ropey at 2,000 ft.
Rortos RFS
Ahead of asking for pushback, here I'm starting the engines - it's all modelled (optionally) in RFS...
Lighting effects and comprehensive weather give RFS a really cinematic look. The controls and readouts are a little small and fiddly, but everything does work.
More great visuals, here flying above the light cloud cover. Note all the multi-player chat messages scrolling through the window, top-right.
Super ground detail, no idea whether each house is accurate, so perhaps a lot is 'AI-created', but it looks fantastic. Here coming in to land with full flaps in HUD mode.
When the landing goes wrong - RFS even models damage and - here - animated fires. Oops. Note also the optional navigation and cockpit data panes.
Planning a trans-Atlantic flight... Just for fun - in reality you're not going to sit with your phone 'flying' for six hours! The interface is clear and obvious though, even choosing runway or gate at each end, depending on how thorough you want to be!
Taking off in poor weather - this is the UK most of the time, after all!
Unique to RFS, you can program in possible failures, to give a challenge when things go wrong mid-flight!
Coming in to land and swiping around for a good view - the panes are swiped in to check on my landing/nav lines...
Airport detail is superb, complete with animated pushback trucks.
X-Plane 11
Rewinding a fly-by of an airport. All very pretty and good detail, though note that you can fly or taxi through everything - it's all cosmetics.
Great weather modelling here, including rain! Inside the cockpit, you have to put the wipers on!
Taking off - note the intuitive circular controls for spoilers, flaps, trim, and undercarriage. The cam/view control is top left.
Great, realistic exterior plane modelling yet again - mobile flight sims have come so far in recent years!
See the detail inside the spoiler and flap mechanisms, for example. There are videos online comparing views from window seats with simulated views, as here, and they're getting closer and closer.
Multi-player (in Pro mode) is a nice idea, but in practice there's far too much going on. So you're queueing for take off behind a 747 and err... an F4 Phantom fighter-bomber, and then an Airbus passes through you, jumping the queue, and then an F15 Eagle crashes on the runway. It's all go, go, go, in multi-player mode in X-Plane 11!
For example, here's the real time plot of who's online at this airport right now. Err... yes. Best avoided. Or don't fly with any of this turned on and you'll have a better flight experience!
Buzzing the tower in a small civilian plane - again plenty of fun airport detail. On a gloomy day, remind me to head into settings and change it all to glorious sun!
Verdict
I do have a personal favourite, but in fairness, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with all four contenders. Once underway in each, they were immersive, realistic and enormous fun. Rortos RFS and X-Plane 11 are slightly wilder in terms of gaming challenges (rain, failures, etc.), while Infinite Flight is a slightly more serious simulation environment and Aerofly FS is a super all-rounder if your chosen flying region is supported yet. But all four have numerous 'pros' and relatively few 'cons'.
For me, Aerofly FS 2021 just wins out, for two reasons. Firstly, and slightly selfishly, although detailed airport and scenery coverage is limited worldwide, the UK (where I live) is very well represented - admittedly this would play less well for a reviewer in France or the Middle East, and so on, but I was delighted to find my entire country here in detail (along with large chunks of the USA and, oddly, Switzerland).
Secondly, and more fundamentally, Aerofly FS 2021 is a one-off cost - and quite affordable at under a tenner in UK money. In these days of us all being 'nickel and dimed' to oblivion by monthly subscriptions for everything, I rail against yet more monthly commitments. For a flight sim game that I might play intensively for a month and then not pick up again for six months, perhaps, it's galling to have to either pay per month in the interim or have the hassle of remembering to cancel a subscription and then revive it, just to fully pay a game. So Aerofly FS wins for me by only requiring one purchase. In fairness, the other three titles can be played with basic airplanes, scenery, and features for free, i.e. without 'Pro' subscriptions, so my slightly strange suggestion would be to leave my 'winner' til last, trying the other three for free and seeing if one feels 'right' to you. If you're still not sure, then pay the £10 and get Aerofly FS 2021.
I had in mind a third reason, and that's that Aerofly FS 2021 is simply gorgeous in terms of aircraft graphics, lighting, and scenery - but then so is RFS and X-Plane, with Infinite Flight not too far behind. As the screenshots above show, they all look superb, with stunning camera views that would have seemed like science fiction ten years ago - such is the compute and graphical power of modern smartphones, that almost anything can be rendered and animated in real time.
Links
- You can buy Aerofly FS 2021 here in the iOS App Store and here in the Android Play Store
- You can grab Infinite Flight here in the iOS App Store and here in the Android Play Store
- You can grab Rortos RFS here in the iOS App Store and here in the Android Play Store
- You can grab X-Plane 11 here in the iOS App Store and here in the Android Play Store
PS. I'm also conscious that there are other flight sims for mobile - many more. If you think that there's a major contender I should have looked at then please suggest away in the comments.