Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 06:53 am
F-Sim Space Shuttle – Education Game Review
F-Sim Space Shuttle is a Education/Racing/Simulation game from SkyTale Software GmbH, first launched in 29th January 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 901+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes F-Sim Space Shuttle Stand Out
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to land the Space Shuttle? Now you can find out. F-Sim Space Shuttle is a critically acclaimed flight simulator for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. It simulates the Space Shuttle approach and landing in incredible detail and accuracy. We’ve tried to combine realistic flight dynamics with stunning graphics and fun game play: Each landing attempt takes just a few minutes. Our landing analysis and scoring system tells you exactly how to improve your next landing. It will make you come back and try again.
No ads, no in-app-purchases.
Each flight starts at either 10,000 feet, already aligned with the runway, or at up to 50,000 feet, before banking into the heading alignment cone. During descent, the Orbiter is an unpowered glider, so you will only have one chance to get it right. Astronauts used to call it a flying brick: because of its 200,000 lbs. gross weight and low lift over drag ratio, the approach is six times steeper and two times faster than a typical airliner approach. Landing the Orbiter takes practice, but the built-in autopilot demo and tutorials will get you started. After your first safe touchdown, chase that perfect landing, compare your high scores online with your friends, earn medals, and unlock achievements. Experiment with different weather conditions, night approaches, and even emergency scenarios or system failures. At the end of each flight, watch a replay from different camera angles.
You control the Orbiter’s pitch and roll axes by tilting your device. Alternatively, you may switch to on-screen analog sticks. Rudder, speed brake, gear, and chute are usually handled by the autopilot, but you can have full manual control if you like. For beginners, we’ve added rectangles that visualize the desired approach path. Simply try to stay within the corridor of rectangles, and they’ll guide you right to the touchdown point. Advanced pilots can turn them off and rely on the instruments in the head-up display (HUD) instead. The simulated guidance, navigation and control (GNC) systems are authentic replications of their counterparts in the real Orbiter, and the HUD features all the instruments real Space Shuttle commanders used to employ to skillfully land this unique aircraft. Now it’s your turn to give it a try.
Here’s what others have said about it:
“Because this app is so visually exciting, so technically deep, so sophisticated, so beautifully done in its realism, effects, and documentation, it earned a perfect 5/5 rating, Outstanding.”
John Martellaro, Senior Editor for Reviews, The Mac Observer
“I was excited to see that I can enjoy flying the space shuttle realistically also on my iPhone and complement my addiction to our Space Shuttle Mission Simulator on PC when I am on the road.”
Alex L., www.space-shuttle-mission.com
“Absolutely awesome app that is a must for shuttle huggers and aspiring astronauts.”
Chris Bergin, Managing Editor, NASASpaceflight.com
F-Sim Space Shuttle takes full advantage of modern iOS devices, but also runs smoothly on older hardware. We’ve tested it on all iOS devices, and iOS versions 3 to 7.
This Education game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, F-Sim Space Shuttle is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 31st December 2014
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
This is a relatively minor upgrade. New features include
• support for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus screen resolutions
• enhanced user interface on iOS 7 and iOS 8
• a new replay manager: F-Sim Space Shuttle now stores replays of the 10 most recent and the 10 best flights. You can watch them later or save them as video
• MFI game controller support. Tilt controls are still the preferred way to control the orbiter, but if you have an MFI game controller, you can now use it as an optional control input (switch to analog controls in the options menu when your game controller is connected)
We hope that you like this update and kindly ask to rate or review it in the App Store.
We are already working on a major update and on a new flight sim app. Stay tuned!
Download & Availability
F-Sim Space Shuttle is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get F-Sim Space Shuttle on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Great shuttle landing sim, in every way! Very high quality graphics, intuitive controls, and after landing it gives you analysis of your approach, with the option to record your playback from different angles! The details are super, as well; the radio chatter, the HUD, adjustable wind effects and failures. There are enough settings to keep you challenged and interested, from simple to complex. We got exactly what we were looking for and more, so if you're looking for a great shuttle landing sim that's easy to set up and will keep you coming back, this is it.
Awesome flight simulator. Would love to see a launch added.
This is the best app for anyone who loves our space program and misses it. This is so much fun, great graphics, not easy to hit the mark, but really fun to work the HUD and come in for a landing. Love it.
As a pilot, we are amazed at the quality of control dynamics- feels very realistic (not that we have ever landed a shuttle!). Fun- and we still play it all the time when we find ourselves with some down time waiting for something.
Love playing this game when we only have a minute or two.
We're a private pilot and had dreamed of flying the Shuttle, until they were retired. For a few bucks, almost feels like we have.
What a fantastic experience. It's not horribly difficult to hit the runway, but to do it safely is really difficult. The controls are awesome, the replays of your landings are awesome and the replay ability is surprisingly nice as well.
This app is perfect. It's just what you want it to be.
We are a former real life USAF pilot (Call sign Animal) and long time PC flight sim junkie! This is a really cool app. All you have to do is land, right? It's not as easy as it sounds. Any one can land on the runway. Try for a perfect landing. We highly recommend this app.
Even though this only simulates a Space Shuttle landing, and only from the time after re-entry has already occurred, this is such an amazingly fluid and lifelike simulator that it puts all other iPhone flight simulators to shame. If it could include re-entry and launch scenarios with the same level of detail, then it would deserve six stars instead of five.
This is a really great STS landing sim. If any others exist in the App Store, surely this one has them beat.
Buy this one! Awesome, smooth graphics and a fun game. Follow the predictor, stay on glide slope, and remember to flare. This game presents a fun challenge of energy management. You are a flying brick…have fun.
Well worth the money, very very realistic. Sounds, HUD, everything is amazing.
Awesome app! Very realistic! Recommend it to anyone. Only app we have ever bought that we are satisfied with.
This game is fantastic! We cannot put it down and we've never killed the battery on our phone but we have killed it twice today alone! We can't stop playing this game. It's so realistic and the graphics are great! We've encouraged five people to purchase this app. Yes all five people have purchased this app.
Excellent simulator. We've plated multiple multiple times.
Best landing simulator there is.
Incredible graphics very realistic extremely educational.
Between this and aerofly we can't explain just how real these sims are in terms of flight characteristics and handling.
Awesome game!! They did a great job on this one.
Really really fun! The only improvement we would have is to be able to control speed, landing gear, flaps ect. Otherwise it's still a great game/ simulator.
Well we don't know why all the bad comments saying its a ripoff And a bad game but we like it. The full approach and the final is cool. The weather,time,and place is cool. Haters: 4$ REALLY WHAT THE HELL us: mmm. 4$ for this game ima gonna buy it now cuz it's cool we mean 4$ is hardly any money besides its a good app. And now we know what it is like to land one THE GAME – :D SO KEEP IT UP AND MAKE MORE GAMES.
Although you can only do shuttle landings, it is highly realistic. You can select a certain airport, what kind of approach you want, wind velocity, navigation accuracy, time and weather, autopilot and failures. The heads-up display or HUD is highly realistic, it shows you your altitude, speed, gravitational force, the HUD even shows you and how for the speedbrake is to adjusting to that setting, you can load of visual flightpath that has rectangles that you fly through, and you can turn that off and only rely on the HUD to navigate. You can pitch up and bank using analog controls or use tilt controls. Things you can manage or put on autopilot are the landing gear and parachute, rudder, speed brake and pitch correction. There is a landing analysis that shows you what you need to improve on, statistics to show how often you bail, crash, crash land, hard land, safely land, make a bounces landing, good landing, and perfect landing. You also have many view options and the record feature is amazing. We play this game a lot and we don't often get bored. A suggestion of ours would be to add re-entry and raise the price. We are a space fanatic and own a some space themed games, and for the iPhone, even though it does not even takes place in space, we think this is the best.
There's nothing we would change in terms of the way the app acts, but would pay anything to see a full flight version from launch to re-entry and landing. That would be worth whatever the price would be.
We Love this app we've logged more than 5 hours … U just wanna keep flying when you fly it you'll know what we mean.
This game comes to the top when talking about simulators. We love this game.
This is one of the best simulators we have ever seen, it is full of detail, and has pretty much zero lag on our ipod4. Great job!!! Keep up the great work.
As the owner of Leading Edge Flight Training we don't have much interest in flight simulators as we are flying all day long. Then someone handed us a phone with this loaded up, and we thought oh great just what we want to do. But this simulator simply blew us away, Now when we have a few minutes to kill, we reach for F-sim. No candy game or bs sim with generic point and go flight characteristics even comes close.
This game is awesome! Did a great job.
In an overcrowded market, this app shines through due to the developer's effort in creating a challenging environment that both informs and entertains. We remember watching shuttle landings on TV, and the commentary that was always present was that "landing the shuttle is like landing a brick." This app reflects that view, without being overly complicated or grandiose. We hope that the developer's excellent effort will be repeated again, hopefully in other shuttle sims.
Just like flying the real Shuttle.
Excellent!!! A must have if you enjoy a challenge. Great detail and graphics. Only thing we would add is a space flight or on orbit challenge.
This is such a realistic and easy to play simulator even a five year old can safely land the shuttle. The ability to choose the weather conditions keeps the game interesting because night landings are more difficult than day landings. The ability to rewatch record your landings can help you improve your landings. All in all we think this game is an incredibly fun and realistic simulator that everyone should try.
We rarely write reviews or give 5-star ratings, but this is a truly incredible simulator. The visuals and sound effects are top-notch and the physics engine really gives you a feel for how the shuttle handles as a heavy glider (they used to call it a flying brick because the rate of descent was so steep). Totally worth the purchase price for any armchair astronauts and people who enjoy flight simulators.
Challenging and just an all-around great landing simulator, very well done. The playback feature plus amazing graphics are really handy when you want to go back and break down your landing. The attention to detail in this app is unreal and it was well worth the price in our humble opinion.
We have been playing this for a year and just got our first good landing. Sooooo much fun and challenging.
Easily the best and most realistic flight sim available. Nearly 1000 landings and we're still hooked.
Amazing space shuttle landing simulator.
Awesome graphics, great communication between shuttle and space center.
We have been using this sim for a while now and have only had one perfect landing… We love difficult challenges, makes the success all the more fun. Graphics, audio, and controls are really good.. Highly recommended.
Outstanding app but limited in many ways by the great graphics and technical aspects. We've become a complete geek about this app and would love additional length of flight from just before reentry to where this game takes you. Great job and very challenging! Thank you.
We Love This App!!!! We had the privilege to fly the real simulator and this app does it justice… WOW!!! Keep up the good work guys.
The landing sim is OK but can you update a LAUNCH simulator and a docking simulator and a re entry andcirclezaicon sim and igot a perfect landing.
This has proven to be a lot of fun for us. It's challenging. Once you get the hang of it, it's quit addicting. We like it.
We had this game before in 2009 or something. Now we played it and it is just a remarkable app for its price. Period.
This app is so realistic, we hold our breath every time we make a landing! Before we knew it we had made over 120 landings. Now we're watching all the documentaries about the Shuttle program. One of our favorite features is being able to watch a replay of our landings from different angles.
Wow! Incredibly hard and addicting at the same time! Really a lot of fun.
At first we thought how good could a flight sim be that lasts all of about 5 minutes that only simulates the landing of the S.T.S. (Space Transportation System). Well it turns out that in our opinion it is not good at all, but rather fantastic and excellent and challenging, and it looks real great too. There are many options that can be set to make landing the shutel as difficult and challinging or as easy and simple as you want, and it is all modeled very very accurately. We give it 5 stars all around. It's just Super Super Duper.
Awesome! Just add docking at ISS, reentry, separations, and launch.
Excellent game with the best support and enhancements of any other app we have.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.10
- Size: 74.03 MB
- iOS: 5.1.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: SkyTale Software GmbH
Last updated: 31st December 2014 | Genre: Education, Racing | Developer: SkyTale Software GmbH