Off 2 3.0 — watch your flight from high above, and chat with the phone locked
Off 2 3.0 is the biggest update yet. It brings a new way to watch your flight, and chat that keeps working with your phone locked. Like everything else in the app, all of it works without any network.
Tap the info panel and the camera rises high above the Earth, like an inflight map, and follows your aircraft with the horizon level. A long press replays your whole flight in the same look, with day sliding into night along the way. The aircraft now turns smoothly onto each new leg, like a real airliner, instead of turning sharply over each waypoint.
The globe itself has been reworked. Map detail loads about twice as fast and fades in smoothly instead of popping, and the edge of the globe and the city lights no longer shimmer as you move. The atmosphere is rebuilt with real light scattering: a glowing horizon, soft haze and a sunset ring along the day-night line. The Moon now sits where it belongs, and its silver glow lights the right part of the night side.
On iPad and iPhone Duo, settings, aircraft, itinerary and chat open in a panel beside the globe, or in the bottom half in portrait, so your flight always stays in view. On iPhone Duo the panel sits on the fold.
Chat and position sharing now go phone to phone. Nearby Off 2 users can chat and share their GPS position without any network, even with screens locked. Messages and positions hop from one phone to the next, so a whole cabin can be covered. Connections come back on their own after a drop and start as soon as the app opens. A private message is retried automatically; if nobody received it, it is marked as not delivered and a long press sends it again. A long press also copies any message. Messages never leave the aircraft, but they are not encrypted, and the Peer Chat help now says so.
The aircraft database grows to the Boeing 737 MAX 8, 9 and 10, Airbus A220, A320neo and A330neo, the 777, 747 and 787 families, Embraer E-Jets, COMAC C919 and more, now grouped as Operators, Airliners and Biz Jets, with photo credits. New users get a short welcome tour that explains what Off 2 does and asks for permissions only on its last page.
And also: support for the Air France Aircon Hub onboard WiFi, a more accurate arrival time right after takeoff, an Apple Watch complication that follows the live arrival time, and an optional high-resolution globe that downloads correctly again.
Full details on the Off 2 app page. Get the update on the App Store — a free update for existing owners.