Air Manager vs SmoothTrack
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Air Manager
Design custom flight simulator instrument panels on your iPad. Connect to popular simulators like X-plane and FS2020 to use your iPad as a primary or secondary instrument display. Offers over 1000 free instruments and intuitive touch controls for a realistic simulation experience.
- Custom instrument panel design
- iPad as primary/secondary display
- Connects to X-plane, FS2020, P3D, FSX
- Over 1000 free instruments
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
- Control simulator functions via touch
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Air Manager lets you design custom flight simulator instrument panels on your iPad. Panels can connect to X-plane, FS2020, FS2024, Prepar3d and FSX. Use your iPad as a primary instrument panel and have your computer monitor for outside view only, or use your iPad as a secondary com stack to easily set frequencies through the iPad touch screen. Air Manager comes with more than 1000 free instruments. Add, drag, scale, build your instrument panel in only a matter of minutes. Save your created panels, and switch between them quickly. User friendly No difficult settings or downloading and configuring of third party applications. You can download the necessary plugins from our website for free. We offer a complete solution! Place instruments anywhere you like Tap an instrument to add it to the canvas, hold and drag to rearrange, and pinch to scale, it’s as easy as that. Loads of free instruments The application comes with more than 1000 free instruments, and this collection keeps growing. Buttons, Switches and Knobs Controls like Buttons, Switches, and Knobs let you control the simulator from your 2D panels, so your Flight Simulation is super realistic. Setting a radio frequency or the altimeter setting, moving electrical switches, and controlling the autopilot are just a few examples of what you can do without directly accessing the flight simulator. Multiplatform and multi simulator The Air Manager plugin runs on Microsoft Window, Mac OSX, and Linux, both 32 bits and 64 bits, and is compatible with Laminar Research X-Plane 9, 10 and 11, Microsoft FSX and Lockheed Martin Prepar3D.
SmoothTrack
Enhance your simulation gaming experience with phone-based head and eye tracking. This app allows for intuitive, 6-degrees-of-freedom head movements to control your in-game perspective without any extra hardware. Seamlessly look around cockpits, check blind spots, or zoom in on details with natural head gestures.
- 6DoF head tracking
- Optional eye tracking
- No extra hardware required
- Works with FreeTrack/TrackIR games
- Customizable view presets
- Exaggerated head movements for control
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SmoothTrack 2.0 uses the head and eye tracking AR capabilities of your phone to provide the simplest and best head tracker for 6 degrees-of-freedom head movements in your sim games. ----- "The best new controller on the market." - Charlie Hall, Polygon Customer reviews: "SmoothTrack just works. Less than 5 minutes to install, setup and fly. Love not being tethered to my desk! 5 stars!!" "This worked perfectly and way better than expected! Totally enhanced my experience with MFS 2020!" --- It's a near magical experience to seamlessly slightly move your head and have your game perspective immediately play along (the movements in the game are exaggerated so that you only have to make slight movements of your head to control the camera). Additionally, since version 2, your eyes are also optionally tracked and will nudge the camera based on where you're glancing on screen! - Simply lean forward to get a closer look at your Flight Simulator cockpit! - Look a bit up to see the overhead panel of your A320! - Simply shift your head a bit to the right to see the direction of the space station you're approaching in Elite: Dangerous! - Look a bit left before a hard left turn in Euro Truck Simulator 2! No headset or extra equipment of any kind is required! Simply set up your device so that it can see your face. Using simple camera gestures, you can shift your perspective in-game. Also, if you want, you can store views (say, a copilot angle, or a cockpit closeup) as Quick Views for easy access later. Your head movements are slightly exaggerated which enables you to look out of a cockpit side window with just a slight movement of your head to the left. Any game that supports the FreeTrack or TrackIR protocol will work with this, including: - Microsoft Flight Simulator - Microsoft FSX - DCS World - Elite: Dangerous - IL2: Sturmovik - Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Kerbal Space Program - ...and many, many others! Email and Discord support is provided if there are any issues (or if you have any ideas for new features!).
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: SmoothTrack at 86% against Air Manager's 31%. SmoothTrack also leads on rating (4.7 vs 3.1) and price ($14.99 vs $22.99). On ads, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Air Manager costs $22.99 and SmoothTrack $14.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
SmoothTrack holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 3.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SmoothTrack has 249 ratings behind it against 27, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 31% of Air Manager's written reviews are positive against 86% of SmoothTrack's.
Air Manager ships an update every 10 months, SmoothTrack every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on September 18, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Air Manager | SmoothTrack |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $22.99 | $14.99 — better |
| Rating | 3.1 (27 ratings) | 4.7 (249 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 30.8% of reviews | 85.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 27 | 249 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 10 months | Every 4 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.6 — better | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 897 MB | 10 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sim Innovations B.V. | John Goering |
Customer experience
Air Manager
SmoothTrack
Bugs and requests
Air Manager
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
SmoothTrack
Reported bugs
2 issues- Tracking issues with certain phone positions
- Compatibility problems with some devices/OSes
Requested features
3 requests- Background mode support
- Ability to use rear camera
- Improved UI and customization options
In-app purchases
Air Manager
No in-app purchases
SmoothTrack
No in-app purchases









