Privacy
Last updated 13 September 2026
NOD is a head tracker for X-Plane 12, and a product of Design By, operated by Otium Creations (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in South Africa (2025/557746/07). This page explains exactly what the NOD iPhone app does with your camera and your data. It describes how the shipping app actually behaves.
The short version
NOD uses the front camera to work out where your head is. That happens on your iPhone. The camera image is never saved and never sent anywhere — not to your Mac, and not to us. What travels to your Mac is head position and angle, as numbers.
NOD has no accounts, no servers of our own, no analytics and no advertising.
The camera
NOD uses Apple’s ARKit face tracking through the TrueDepth front camera to measure the position and angle of your head. NOD asks for camera permission the first time you set it up, and explains why on the same screen.
- Face tracking runs on your iPhone. Camera frames are read, measured and discarded as they arrive.
- NOD does not record, save or export photos, video, depth maps or a face model.
- No camera imagery reaches your Mac, and none reaches us.
- NOD tracks one face and does not attempt to identify anyone.
What NOD sends to your Mac
NOD finds the NOD companion for X-Plane on your local network using Bonjour, then sends it small messages over your local network. Each message contains only:
- your head position as three distances (left/right, up/down, forward/back), measured as a difference from the neutral you set with CENTER;
- your head angle as three rotations (yaw, pitch, roll), measured the same way;
- housekeeping values: a message counter, a timestamp and a flag saying whether a face is currently visible.
That is the whole message. There is no image, no audio and nothing that identifies you or your device beyond the network address your Mac already sees.
What your Mac sends back
The NOD companion replies with flight information from X-Plane — airspeed, altitude, heading, vertical speed and the simulated aircraft’s position — so the app can show instruments and a moving map. This is simulated flight data from X-Plane. NOD does not use your iPhone’s location services, and the map shows where your aircraft is in the simulator, not where you are.
Your local network
NOD needs Local Network permission because your iPhone and your Mac talk to each other directly. iOS asks for this the first time NOD looks for your computer. This traffic stays on your network: it goes to the Mac running X-Plane and nowhere else. If you refuse the permission, NOD cannot find your Mac.
What NOD stores on your iPhone
NOD keeps a very small amount of information on the device itself, and nowhere else:
- whether you have completed setup;
- your tracking-feel preference and which instrument panel you last viewed;
- how many seconds of successful tracking you have used against the free allowance;
- a plain-text diagnostic log of app events — connection states, timings and errors — stored inside the app and cleared each time tracking starts. It contains no images and nothing personal, and it is not transmitted anywhere.
Deleting NOD removes all of it.
Purchases
NOD Core is a one-time purchase handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. Apple processes the payment; NOD never sees or stores your payment details. The app asks Apple whether this Apple Account owns NOD Core and unlocks accordingly. That check works offline, because it reads what Apple has already placed on the device.
Apple’s own handling of your purchase is covered by Apple’s privacy policy.
What NOD does not do
- No accounts, sign-in or profiles.
- No NOD servers, cloud storage or database. NOD has no backend.
- No analytics, crash reporting or usage tracking.
- No advertising, advertising identifiers or third-party tracking software.
- No third-party code libraries of any kind in the app.
Apart from your local network and Apple’s own App Store services, the NOD app makes no network connections.
Your choices
Camera and Local Network permissions are yours to grant or withdraw at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security or in NOD’s own entry in iOS Settings. NOD needs both to work; withdrawing either stops tracking and removes nothing else.
Who is responsible
Otium Creations (Pty) Ltd operates NOD and is responsible for this policy. As a South African company we are subject to the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013. NOD is built so that little of it arises in practice: the sensitive information the app could produce — camera imagery — never leaves your iPhone, and we operate no servers that could receive it.
If you have a question or a complaint about privacy, write to us at the address below and we will answer it.
Children
NOD is a flight-simulator accessory intended for a general audience. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age.
Changes
If NOD’s behaviour changes in a way that affects this page, we will update it and change the date at the top.
Contact
Questions about privacy: admin@otiumcreations.com