posted 02-22- 01:21 AM               

Guys, we are about to reach a new level of WW2 flight sims. If the multiplayer turns out to be solid and support as many as they say (32 H2H, 16 player co-op) then it will be THE sim to ownwhen it's released.

(Remeber this is pre-beta)

Flight models are solid, you feel the plane with the stick and it's not a yank and bank sim. I lost to much energy chasing a mig and put my 109 in a spin. Before I know it I was loosing alt pretty fast and after a few moves I got control of it just 600FT from the ground. Once I got some speed up I then turned back onto my target and went after him.

you also really feel like your flying a plane. Speed is the first thing you notice, your not just putting a long slowly. your really moving and covering some ground!

Damage is also good with bullet holes int he wings canopy and all look great. First shot from the enemy must have been a cannon cause it blow most of the verticle stab off. After that the plane yawed a lot more after the tail was damaged.

FR's are high most of the time but i'm sure debug is slowing it down some. 3d clouds are the best i've ever seen and do NOT effect frame rates on or off.

Planes are modeled, as far as I can tell, to spec. It's not that the planes have a really high polygon count (well, they do have a pretty good count) but the little things one the plane have been modeled to really bring out the over all beauty of the planes.
Cockpits are just outstanding with working joystick, working rudder pedals (I really love the pedals) The cockpit reflections could be turned down some at times it's hard to see anything outside of the glass past the nose.

When this game is finished and released we will see the dawn of a new age. If you haven't done it now, go pre-order this game right away!

since this game wasn't sent to me I can't post screen shots. I am going to conntact greg next week and see if I can do an offical preview of the game and post screen shots for the preview.

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Tony "Razer" Martin
FS Hangar

posted 02-22- 01:25 AM               

God I hope I get to try out the Beta version that I signed up for... This sim will be THE next God in flight sims it sounds.

Tell us more Razer. Hows the GUI? What options are there in terms of realism settings and graphic options? Hows the campaign like? Are the views good? What kind of views are there? Is there a flyby view? Do the planes have radio wires? Can we skin them to put on swastikas? (I know I spelled that wrong but tis late..) Hows the back ground music? How good is the manual? How stable is it? Hows the ground handling? Do the shadows of the planes look good? What are the lighting effects like? As soon as I can think of more questions I'll post them!

PLEASE show me the way to enlightenment... Its ben a loooooong time.

posted 02-22- 01:58 AM               

Lens flares are designed like they should be. In the cockpit you don't see them since that's suppose to be from the pilots view but once you go to exteranl camera views you get them. Very well done!

Shadows can be as detailed as the plane and look like a real shadow or can be turned down to look something like the plane or can be turned completely off.

Yes there is a fly-by very and a killer fly-by sounds.

Views are simple from what I messed with. you have cockpit cam, external cam, fly-by and chase cams. You also have player to target and player to wingman cams. Theres more but I never used them.

autopilots seem to be very dynamic. Not only does it fly the plane but you have a waypoint autopilot for the newbie flyers.

I haven't checked out all the options cause I wanted to fly but i'll check it out later.

Remember this is a pre-beta copy so i'm sure the manuals are still in the works as well as all release stuff (music and stuff like that, not in this copy)

Ground handling is good and it's pretty stable once I solved an early bug on Voodoo5 cards (could be on others but i only have a V5)

I'll tell you more when I stop playing and start looking around. Remember i'm sure things will change during the beta but this is the best looking pre-beta i've ever seen.

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Tony "Razer" Martin
FS Hangar

posted 02-22- 12:16 PM               

I've got some questions on the view system that I couldn't get answered on the simhq forum:

In this build...

How do you check your 6 when in padlock mode? Is there something there that allows you to take a look quickly and return to padlock without having to lock the same target again? OR, is it just assumed that if you're going to use padlock you're not going to be able to do anything else...

posted 02-22- 02:01 PM               

I'm going to do more testing today and maybe tonight to check out all the options and the view system.

Terrain is nice, it's like SDOE but more detailed and the towns are larger. Airfields are simple forward bases (at least the one i've been flying from is)

There are hills, and i've seen pics of big mountains but there is only a few missions in the per-beta version.

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Tony "Razer" Martin
FS Hangar

posted 02-22- 02:12 PM               

If Razer is this jazzed, I'm fairly salivating! Do you have a link for pre-order?
I have already heard good things about Oleg Maddox's product. It may be time to plunk
my money down on this contender...

posted 02-22- 02:32 PM            

-Stark