Looking for a cheap thrill (ride)? Why not avoid paying the $50 admission and standing in endless lines at your local theme park and instead ride a tiny roller coaster that you can keep in your pocket?
Ziconic’s SkyCoaster 3D puts a miniature roller coaster simulator inside your iPhone. The application lets you take a ride on countless insanely impossible twisty and turny coasters. Thanks to a procedural track-generation engine, each and every trip is unique. And if you manage to stop hurling your virtual lunch as you ride the rails, you’ll notice that you’re surrounded by beautiful panoramic backdrops. You can also adjust settings to your own ride preferences, tweaking track length, complexity of corkscrews, loops and coaster acceleration among other things.
Ziconic says their upcoming 1.1 version (due the week of 2/23/2009) will include the ability to ride on suspension coasters, lets you adjust your point-of-view, and adds a nighttime backdrop among other things. Unfortunately, there aren’t any plans to take advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer, so you’re at the whim of the coaster’s own acceleration and virtual gravity. Stupid laws of physics.
You can find SkyCoaster 3D over at the iTunes App Store for just 99 cents.
