RC Heli – Indoor Racing

I’ve always wanted a radio-controlled helicopter! They just seem so full of possibilities, like having an oversized pet insect to fly around the house, but after flying a virtual chopper around in RC Heli I’m pretty sure that if I had a real one I’d just wind up destroying my walls and/or taking a rotor blade in the face.

Ethervision’s RC Heli – Indoor Racing is a really well done RC helicopter simulator that comes with free flight and race modes, a nice suburban house to fly around in, and there’s also a great tutorial that teaches you how to control the two joysticks that move your aircraft to and fro. Be warned though… controlling pitch and yaw is a lot harder than working a steering wheel and gas pedal! I suppose this is probably because most of us have never tried it before in real life, but with some practice even a total moron will get it eventually.

The left joystick controls the rotor speed and the right joystick is for everything else, and once you figure out how the combination of the two affect movement it can be pretty fun to cruise around your virtual house. In free flight mode you can fly up and down the stairs, fly into the microwave (the door is very conveniently left open), fly everywhere except outside, but make sure you get back to your landing pad to recharge or your flight won’t last very long. There are a few different landing pads positioned throughout the house and you’ll be able to recharge as long as you get reasonably close to landing on one – you don’t have to be dead-center on the circle (phew!).

Race mode ain’t bad but it sounds a lot more exciting than it really is; you’re being timed but you don’t get to race other helicopters. Instead, you’re flying around to different checkpoints marked with floating coins, and so far I’ve only managed to make it to 4 or 5 checkpoints because I’m just that bad at steering! The good news is that there’s a global scoreboard for each of the five tracks, so if you get really good at flying you might someday be able to steal the RC Heli crown from the current champ and obviously classy guy, P3N15PUMPE. The game also supports iPod music and lets you fly from three different views including one in the cockpit.

If there’s one thing I want from RC Heli in the future it would be GUNS! Yeah I know, guns aren’t very realistic and this app definitely falls under the simulation category of games, but even though flying around is fun it does get pretty boring after a while. Gimme some guns, unlimited battery life, and stuff to shoot at! How about a little helicopter war? That would be a blast. A bigger environment would also be great, but the existing house is pretty spacious so I’d still be more excited about the prospect of some nice cartoon violence to spice things up.

If you’ve never flown a radio-controlled helicopter before, RC Heli should provide for some interesting downtime as you try to master the mechanics of flight. Actual RC hobbyists might just be bored with this app because, let’s face it, flying the real thing is probably way cooler, but I think Ethervision is off to a great start here.

iTunes Link – RC Heli – Indoor Racing
Version 1.01
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1