Imagine this, youre in the middle of a long flight in FS2004 or FSX, happily watching your progress as the autopilot maintains your course... Suddenly, reality interrupts, your wife/girlfriend/significant other wants you to go shopping with her!!!! Being the loving flightsimmer that you are, you leave the 737 making its way across the sky, and jump into the car to make your way across town.
Bonus, she thinks youre great!.. Aha, but you have a secret weapon... "FSXFollow."
You get to the mall and excuse yourself, you suddenly have a strong need for coffee (while she looks in the stores.) You rush to the wifi hotspot (better if you have an iphone with data plan) and start up the program on your iPod Touch or iPhone. You look for the name you already assigned to your flight when you logged onto the website back home, and there you are... Quicker than the server can take your order, youre following the progress of your flight superimposed on Google maps. FSX users can even request a screenshot, so if you left the cockpit in VC mode, thats what youll see on your mobile device, a regularly-updating screenshot of whats happening on your monitor back home in FSX.
Yes, you are a great partner, leaving your flightsim to go to the mall... But the flightsimmer went with you... Thanks to FSXFollow.
So plus points...
1) Inexpensive.
2) Able to use even when you are not at home.
3) Just "plane" fun!
4) Awesome customer support.. I had a problem early Sunday morning, and had received an answer plus revised exe file within an hour!
5) Designer willing to look at ideas to improve the product.
Minus points?
1) Just a little limited so far, but lots of room to grow.
2) In FSX I found that when requesting screenshots it slowed down my sim, but that may be my old computer or even internet connection here in the prairies of Canada.
3) No aviation charts yet, but the developer says hes looking into that, and thats fine by me because it shows his willingness to listen to customers and respond willingly to new ideas.
All-in-all, after testing in both FS2004 and FSX, I like this. If I still had my home cockpit, (Im going to re-design it!) Id have an opening in the panel to slot my iPod behind, thus adding a small moving map very very cheaply to my setup....
Four stars for now, with the expectation of it becoming five as this program grows.
(Ps.. I am not affiliated with the company that designed it)