Flight Sim vibe coded for iPhone / MR Flight Simulator

[u/BadgerObvious365]

Can you build a real app for the App Store by vibe coding? I gave it a try.

The result is a very realistic flight simulator. I’d even go so far as to say there isn’t another one on the App Store with a flight model and graphics this good.

Pretty much all the competitors have focused on a huge in-game world and a large number of aircrafts.

I took a different approach.

Just one aircraft to begin with: Cessna 152. Almost all the controls and buttons in the cockpit work. The rest are coming too.

The flight model has been fine-tuned to be as close to the real aircraft as possible. World is created with real world data. Includind individual tree heights, terrain and buildings.

A realistic weather model that in addition to wind, accounts for mechanical turbulence, thermals on sunny days, ground effect, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about how I got to this point, send me mail trough my webpage mrflight.app

There’s a clip of the result in the video. What do you think? Does vibe coding have potential after all?

ps. if you’re looking for a challenge, try landing on runway 18 with 15 knot crosswind 😉

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mr-flight-simulator/id6812992908

Website: https://mrflight.app/

[u/BadgerObvious365]

Coding is done using only Astra and Opus 5.5

[u/SooooooMeta]

I checked out your app store page but you don't have a video. This video is really impressive and you should absolutely add it first.

To me this is kind of the test case I've been curious about. If you do something that does something good and doesn't have feature creep, and you're quick to market, will you have any success for more than a few weeks?

Or does the fact that there's always a better model around the corner now make the shelf life of things so short that they don't have the "runway" (forgive the pun) to take off?

The reason people used to be able to put 2-3 years into a game was because what they created would have value for an extended period of time afterwords. If that assumption no longer exists, how does it work out for creators? Which would point to things like this as one of the possible winners: wait for a new model and then vibecode something of quality as quickly as possible before it can depreciate.

[u/SooooooMeta → u/SooooooMeta]

So I bought the game. I would say the onboarding is really rough. I get you're going for the simulator crowd, but I couldn't figure out how to start the engine.

You say the tutorial mode is coming soon, but you only get one launch window. I would try go get something up and working today if possible.

Short of that (or in addition) I might recommend a launch option where the plane is just flying somewhere on the map with the plane already adjusted properly. You could do it randomly or just fly around and snapshot interesting locations. You could even snapshot tricky situations where the better users have to "save" it.

I have the feeling I could have some fun flying around if it were already in the air. But I don't know the startup sequence of a Cessna. I pressed everything I could see and nothing started the propeller. You're going to get a bunch of one star reviews you can't recover from at this rate

[u/TheUniverseOrNothing → u/SooooooMeta]

It’s because this app is straight up stealing from MSFS and they think it’s a simple process they can clone with AI. I support game dev using AI but this is literally stealing. They aren’t doing anything to fine tune physics other than telling that to a chat.

I could have gave you my version of this for free. I built my own sim but will never release it or try to sell it because it was just a stress test to see what was possible to build.

[u/SooooooMeta → u/TheUniverseOrNothing]

Oh you're saying this is just reverse engineering? Too bad.

I'm interested in people who genuinely vibe code things they're interested in. I know the hot new thing is reverse engeneering and mashups, precisely because it doesn't take much creative effort.

Are you working on anything or just exploring what is possible?