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Ok... this one got my attention real bad  :-*

Wings of Prey is a WWII air combat arcade/simulator.
So far, I only played the demo and it is great.

GRAPHICS
The game looks awesome... plane models are very nice, clouds, sky, sun and light/shadows are beautyfull. The ground is extremely detailed. I managed to fly over the port of Dover under a heavy bombing and I could see the city in nice details, the port with lots of ships and the countryside with crops, farms and small houses. I could see the bombs falling to hear the sound latter on. Fire was ok (not FarCry-ish, but good). I saw bombs falling on the water and making a large splash. When you hit an enemy the damage model is very good with parts flying over and a trail of black smoke and parachutes... nice visual indeed!! Good attention to details: guns sound different when you hear them from inside or outside the cockpit and they sound badass guns  ;) . I was shot but not downed, having holes on my wigs I kept till the end of mission

DIFFICULTY
three level of difficulty: arcade, realistic and simulator. Arcade mode is very, very forgiving and you can fool around as you want, you'll hardly stall or crash. Realistic is a bit tougher, but doable, something inbetween both extremes. Simulator was impossible to me. I stalled and crashed and couldn't hit more than a couple of bombs on my target... in this level of difficulty you get to control absolutely everything in the plane; fuel mixture, radiator temperature, G-force will make you fade etc... and is very hard to keep your bird steady to a smooth kill.
On any level of difficulty you can choose to take off and land or start on air, ready to fight!

TUTORIAL
Three lessons with basics of flying, navigation and combat.
Way points (in arcade and realistic modes only) appear as yellow floating flags. Enemies are marked in red and friends in blue. Arrows on your screen show you where they are without making the screen a carnival (good choice of colors and tones). Lock on a target and you get a camera view on you bottom right corner where you see an image of your target. If its a fighter, you get to see the cockpit and the pilot's face, if your mission is to bomb something, you see your ground target.
You can see your airplane as in 3rd person view, or your cockpit with all details on your controls with nice shadows as you fly. Move your controls and you see movement in the cockpit. Or in a HUD view, where you can aim and shoot better.

DEMO
You have two missions: Deffend Dover against german bombers and another one where you have to bomb some german city (by the way, the whole campaign takes place in Europe, no Pacific theatres). Pretty easy to accomplish on arcade... challenging but doable on realistic mode and very hard on simulation mode  :-X

So far its only available for download (since december 25th) on STEAM  (http://store.steampowered.com/app/45300/)and on YuPlay (http://yuplay.com/story.php?title=Wings-Prey-9) for nasty US$49,99  :(

Not sure if it will make to the stores as a retail version... which is pretty annoying, actually... some members here like to have what they pay for on a nicely done DVD boxset and not on a virtual product.

PC only, of course, but apparently is the PC version of a PS3/XBOX version of a game called Birds of Prey, which seems to be the same thing with only voice overs different (go figure). If any PS3ers out there are familiar with the title, post your thoughts!!
Cheers all

Thanks for the nice review, JRD  :-X

Made me think back of AoE which I really liked. Shame it's download only, really.

The beta version was releasd just before the downlodable version and I saw some recent posts on forums complaining about this DL-only option.

Thanks for the detailed write-up, JRD. Sounds like a cool game, but the DL-only factor may make me balk. Hell, what am I saying, it will make me balk. Hopefully they'll retail it, because if they do, I'll be in it.

Nicely detailed, JRD  :-X

I just read a nice recommendation in my favourite PC mag about this game. They say it's retail and Steam, and that there is a DLC available for the Steam version only (doesn't w@&k with the retail version). They say the planes are great, detailed cockpits etc, and best play on Easy for a quick shoot, while higher difficulty levels make flying more difficult (lol, simply put). They say it is time to dig out your flight sticks  :)

I'll take a look next time when I visit my local games shop. Mmmmmh :)

Hmm, the 2nd vid (see link below) is 9 months old.. PC version.. well, the mag I was referring to isn't a gaming mag, they do recommend good games even if they are not that new. Strange I never noticed the game when I was in the games shop.. probably didn't remember the title ;)

Here a short version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHkDdTJvK8

and a longer one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19hYotdEb3s

The quote is from the guy who submitted the 2nd vid which looks like he just played for the first time. Like we would :) (I watched and liked a couple of his playthroughs already)

QuoteWings of Prey PC Gameplay 1920X1080 Maxed Out Settings Win 7 HD
Wings of Prey, a new World War II flight combat simulator for the PC by Gaijin Entertainment.

Minimum System Requirements For Wings of Prey

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP3
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3200MHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Hard Drive: 10 GB of free space
Video Card (graphics): NVIDIA GeForce 7600 256 Mb or ATI Radeon X1650 256 Mb
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Sound card: DirectX compatible
Internet connection: 56 kb/s
Keyboard, mouse


The Recommended Requirements For Wings of Prey

Operating System:Microsoft Windows XP SP3 / Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 / Microsoft Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2400 MHz
Memory: 2 GB RAM or more
Hard Drive: 10 GB of free space
Video Card (graphics): NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 512 Mb or ATI Radeon 4850 512 Mb.
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
Sound card: DirectX compatible with support 5.1
Internet connection: 512 Kb/s
Keyboard, mouse, joystick

Thanks for that Art, it might be worth a look. I haven't played a good WW2 flight sim for a while, that is, a proper sim where you're in the cockpit and not flying along behind your plane.

I'll have to dust off the old stick of joy, if I can find the flipping thing. It's hiding in a closet somewhere in the house.

I'll check out those clips too when my net isn't going up and down like a yoyo :D

hehe :)

The vids basically show that the landscape is detailed enough to believe that you're actually flying over landscape rather than a digitised oil painting and landscape with houses down there doesn't look like a feta cheese-strewn salad. Yes, I'm referring to Heroes over Europe. Also, you actually get a proper cockpit and can look around (smoothly, I hope the game recognises a coolie hat on a flight stick). The planes looked good in the vids, but that I knew from the mag's recommendation already. I'm definitely considering to get that game, I loved dogfights back in the day of games like Aces over the Pacific or Aces over Europe (while I still shudder when thinking back about HoE).

I still have the demo installed on my lap top and even though I can't run it maxed out, the graphics look very nice. Gameplay is very cool also and you can choose views from inside cockpit or outside and use the mouse to look around.

Anyone know if the map is actually Europe or is it a make-believe world?  Can you play open world style, or do you need to follow missions?

good questions. I don't know if I can get this game (not going to buy from Steam) but if I can, I'd very much like to write about it here. I don't know if the demo offers enough detail, but anyone who's already got experience with the game, particularly the full version, is very welcome to tell us something about the game :)

The demo plays a battle over Dover, UK. For what I've seen it resembles the place very well. The harbor, the white chalck cliffs and the terrain are great. Don't know if it was made out of real terrain models though.

As for openworldness, you can play as you want as long as you don't get too far from the fight (if you do I don't know what happens, maybe a mission fail sort of thing). Every time I play I fool around a lot to see the visuals, flying low to check the terrain or getting close to enemies to see the models etc... I only completed the demo a couple of times. The battle seems to go on regardless of your actions and nobody bothered me for not doing my job. I even flew away towards the ocean and back to have a panoramic view
from the scenario!  8)

Thanks for the info - sure looks like a great game graphics-wise.

Quote from: JRD on July 30, 2010, 11:44:22 AM
The battle seems to go on regardless of your actions and nobody bothered me for not doing my job.

Sometimes I get concerned that games like this can be a bit too realistic in that regard. I'm reminded of Jane's WW 2 Fighters, which was a great sim (although ground textures were very plain), but the trouble was that because of the speeds you were doing, you could very easily find yourself miles from the battle very quickly and all the other aircraft would end up being too far away to see, so you'd end up flying by yourself and not knowing where the battle had gone. This was a phenomenon that used to happen to WW2 fighter pilots in reality, btw - one minute they'd in a twisting, turning dogfight, the next minute they'd wouldn't be able to find anybody. Since fighters had no sophisticated radar or guidance systems in those days to establish where they were in relation to their comrades, even thought they may be in radio contact, often they wouldn't have any way of finding the battle again so they'd just go home alone. A relief maybe in reality, but a bit of an anticlimax in a computer game.

There was a tracking-type option in the Jane's game that you could use to determine where everybody had gotten to (a red arrow would appear on the screen to tell you where to go), but being a bit of a purist when it comes to WW2 sims, I'm not crazy about that sort of thing. Real pilots of the period certainly didn't have anything like that kind of assistance.

So for games of this nature, I like ones where the action is relatively brief and localized, such as with the old  Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator. From what you guys have reported, it sounds like Wings of Prey might be a similar game, in which case I'm all for it.

And cheers for the info thus far, all :-X

Thanks for your post, very interesting :)

Just one thing about Wings of Prey: You get to fly either British or Russian planes (it's a Russian game alright).

For the Steam download game version (exclusively for it) you get a DLC which I believe also gives you something else to fly.. German planes? Not sure though which ones, but there is an additional option.

Re: other WWII flight games.

I used to play AoP/AoE (Aces over the Pacific/over Europe) back in the days of 386/486 PCs, hehe, and those games were great with regards to dogfights. Man, I love dogfights. It  sometimes happened that some enemy and I kept chasing each other in turns, which was caused by clouds in which we got lost and found in turns. I remember one time, when I finally managed to shoot down the enemy plane, I was alone. That chase had taken me places the war probably hadn't extended to until I showed up. Needless to say it was a stupid situation to keep flying around for hours to get the mission complete signal, so that usually meant "do it again." :)

I didn`t get lost in the demo because I knew where Dover was and the geography was quite good to get your bearings (shoreline, cliffs, etc). You also can have tags at the planes flying, so even if you are really far from the action, you`ll see a bunch of red and blue letters (enemy and friendly) gathered somewhere in the sky. There is also a minimap, so you don`t get lost - in the demo.

@Art... WoP has already 8 patches released, two addons (Kittyhawk and Luftwaffe historical decals -  adds authentic historical decals -swastika instead of crosses- for Luftwaffe planes.)

DLC (US$15,00) available is a Luftwaffe package containing:

- Take to the skies as a German pilot;
- Embark on 10 new missions;
- Cooperative mode for up to four players;
- New planes: the Ju 88 A-4 and the P-39N-0;
- 44 new skins for the various planes.

Also, prices came down a bit - from a nasty US$49,99 to a salty US$39,99

Thanks for the info, JRD :)

Because I don't buy from Steam, I bought it today from my favourite local dealer. Along with other games ;) I'll keep you posted, but it might take a little, not going to install them right away.

Looking forward to screen captures and impressions  ;)

No German DLC for the German guy then?  :-D

Looking forward to a review!  ;)

cheers guys.. after all I read, this here got the most responses.. I'll install it first.  :-X

Cool!

Screencaps - we want screencaps!  :-D

Yes, I'd love to post screenies :) Can't stand games that neither have a function for that of their own nor allow progs like IrfanView to capture the screen, like JC2. Bloody annoyance, that.

Indeed - rather stupid of the developers, I'd say.  Allowing people to post screen captures/video would only expand interest in their game.  Making screen/video captures part of the program would only encourage such passive marketing.

Boys and girls, the moment has come..

Found and dusted off my Thrustmaster HOTAS and it's connected. Disc1 (two DVDs) in the drive.

Starting to install the game  :-X

QuoteVisit airwargame.com for more information about the future updates!



1. Installing and launching the game
1.1 System requirements
Minimum
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3200 MHz (or analogous)
RAM: 1024 MB
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 256 MB or ATI Radeon X1650 256 MB
Hard disk space: 10 GB free disk space for game files
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP SP3, DirectX 9.0c
Sound card: DirectX compatible (AC'97 or analogous)
Internet connection: 56 kbits/sec
Keyboard, mouse

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2400 MHz (or analogous)
RAM: 2048 MB
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 512 MB or ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB
Hard disk space: 10 GB free disk space for game files
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP SP3 with DirectX 9.0c
Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 / Microsoft Windows 7
Sound card: DirectX compatible (AC'97 or analogous) with 5.1 channel support
Internet connection: 512 kbits/sec
Keyboard, mouse, joystick

The game is not guaranteed to run on integrated graphics adapters and laptop computers.

ATTENTION! ATI Radeon X2100 and older graphic cards are not supported by the producer when used with Windows 7. More detailed information can be found on the producer's website.



1.2 Additional software
You need to install additional programs on your computer for the game to run properly. You can install additional programs and drivers from the game disk or check for and download updates from the following websites:

Microsoft DirectX - http://www.microsoft.com/directx (http://www.microsoft.com/directx)

1.3. Installation
If you bought the electronic version at yuPlay:
Open the catalogue, where the game was unpacked. Then open "redist" catalogue and run setup.exe. Follow the instructions on the screen.

If you bought the electronic version at another portal:
Run setup.exe. Follow the instructions on the screen.

If you bought the game on disc:
Insert the disc in the DVD-ROM. If autorun is on, installation should start automatically. If autorun is off, run setup.exe file from the disc. Follow the instructions on the screen.

1.4. Game activation

The game is protected with online activation. Online activation of the game is registering the game version you purchased by entering a serial number.
After the game is registered, it will not require the DVD disk to run.

When launching the game for the first time, you will need to activate it. Please enter the serial number into the white box. The serial number is inside the game box or (if the game was purchased in an online store) sent to you by e-mail. ( or Serial number can be find in your "profile page" in "my purchases" on yuPlay.com.)
You can activate the serial number in one of the following ways:

With access to the Internet on your (home) computer.
The application is activated automatically after a Serial Number is entered. Such activation process is invisible to user and is considered the most convenient and preferable.
Enter your Serial Number and press 'Next'. The activation is performed automatically.
With access to the Internet on another computer.
Activation by email
Switch to the 'E-mail' tab in the activation selection window. Send the Serial Number and the Hardware Code to the indicated email. The reply message will contain an Activation Key that should be entered to the corresponding field of the application window, and then the "Next" button should be pressed (just as with the activation on the website).

Activation of Multiplayer
If you bought the electronic version at yuPlay.com, your game is already active in the Online mode, and all you have to do is to log in to the program by clicking "Log in" and enter your username and password for your yuPlay account.

If you bought the game in another place, follow these instructions:

To play online with other pilots, you need an account on yuPlay. Setting it up is very easy.

1. Run the game (default shortcut is in the «Wings of Prey» program folder).

2. Click on "Log in", then choose "New User".

3. Enter your e-mail address that you want to use for yuPlay registration, and click "OK".

4. Congratulations. You have just created an account at yuPlay, the password will be sent to the e-mail address you provided.

5. Now click on the "Game Activation" button and enter the Serial Number. This is the same code you entered when you activated your game in the system.
You can find the code in the disc case or it should have been given to you when you bought the digital version of the game.

6. When you enter the code, click "OK". You should have received access to the "Online" mode in the game menu.

So far, finished installing. Now going to run the game...  :o :)

Cool, I LOVE language selection. And it automatically checked for (and downloaded) updates, 1.78MB.

[smg id=2469 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP setup screen"]

Activation was as easy as described. It told me I had two activations left.

The game then starts with some nice WWII b/w footage and changes seamlessly to game gfx that picks up where the footage ends. Nice idea  :-X

Next thing is I clicked the options to see if there was anything for my Thrustmaster T Flight-X Hotas. Man, it has a list with truckloads of controllers to select from, and yay, mine was amongst them.

OMG. There are SO many things you can have to set up before actually daring to start playing.. very nice though. Better too many than too few options :-X

Argh, there is an option somewhere you can check, "historical decals," that seems to freeze the game.. but it doesn't. I had to bail out starting the task manager and there I saw a little pop-up asking me for my email and password for yuPlay, and there was an option "anonymous" which doesn't w@&k if you don't fill in the blanks (to either register or log in). But.. a simple hit on ESC made it vanish, and I could return to WoP. There it stated that I needed to verify on the game's homepage that this option is available (erm, perhaps some translation problem, it's a Russian game alright). The site for you to check is about to follow, there it is.. a DLC or mod for historical decals. And patches etc.

http://yuplay.com/story.php?title=Wings-Prey--Luftwaffe-historical-decals (http://yuplay.com/story.php?title=Wings-Prey--Luftwaffe-historical-decals)

Excellent report, mate! :-X

Feels like I'm looking over your shoulder as you install the game!  :-D

I read somewhere that Historical decals were forbidden in Gemany. Something to do with a regulation preventing suastikas (spelling?) to be shown anywhere. You think it has some sort of conflict? As if the game "knows" you are in Germany due to your IP!  ???? (I know... unlikely)

Thanks :) No, swastikas are not completely forbidden. They are allowed as long as they are part of what is considered art (no capital A) such as films, paintings, books etc. Vidgames however are not considered art, hence no swastikas are allowed. But I didn't really try to download that mod because it isn't really that important right now and if you check the link, it didn't convince me right away (comments about d/l problems from different countries, only 4/5 stars etc.. might kind of cripple the game). And the biggest of all cons, I'd have to bloody register with yet another site  >:(  ;D

Now.. my first screenshot that actually registered with the game. I couldn't capture the intro, some setup screens, played a training mission (kind of sandbox) and no screenie.. IrfanView didn't get it from the clipboard either.

Only when I chose to watch the replay (YES, A REPLAY!  :-X) could I manage to create my first screenshot :)

[smg id=2470 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP first screenie"]

That was just a test, haven't read the loser manual yet (not sure if I will) and I randomly clicked stuff on the menu. Some led to register with yuPlay again for MP experience (NO for frack's sake, I'm not going to play MP) and the Training option is sandbox style. You are allowed to determine almost everything to the smallest detail before you train yourself to.. yes, to what? In my case, it was to prove that I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, and I'm training hard so I'll be getting better at it. 

;)

One of the things you do in that Training setup is pick a plane to fly. A massive list of types which I don't know what they are, so I took off in a bloody bomber to start dogfights with it if only I had known were everybody was. (Well, there is an option under profiles for stats and "hangar" where you can check specs of all planes and you can rotate them to get to see what they look like and later go to training remembering one of those plane types to pick. I didn't expect to go to training already so I forgot to remember). So I bombed (unlimited bombs) the living daylights out of grassy plains to demonstrate utter dominance and how mean I was and on top shot trees and clouds that looked dangerous or suspicious.

After 10 minutes training was over, I had actually shot down one fighter (or it was my gunner.. I saw how my turrets fired without me touching anything). The stats for that free play were amusing. For accuracy I didn't get a percentage.. all it read was "incredible" LOL ^+-+

Very impressive graphics of the environment  :-X

Yes.. looks good  :-X I took a low-fly over houses and stuff, almost could count the bricks of 'em. They cast shadows and all, looks really convincing, not like molten cheese cubes in a three-days-old salad. Bombing something looks quite nice, you see a flash and smoke and debris shoot up, the debris I saw looked like it came from blowing up a massive wooden barn. The planes look good, the one fighter or whatever it was (it had wings) that I shot down actually lost part of its wing, as I was able to watch in that replay.

You can save your replays! Man, like back in the good old days. They are responsive if you hit some keys you can toggle views and supposedly flip from plane to plane and to your own plane, cockpit view seems only to be available when you chose that view during the actual game. The camera resets to TPS view at times, most probably when you did in the actual game. There seems to be either an "action" cam that follows your plane independently (not like nailed to an invisible pole sticking out of your plane following your moves accordingly) so you watch your plane move around while you keep the same camera angle. Or you "follow" your plane as if playing a TPS.

During the actual game you get a cockpit view (as long as the plane you're flying has got one.. apparently not all planes feature a detailed cockpit) or a "virtual cockpit" which resembles the bumper cam of car games, like you don't see anything of your own plane, more like a flying eye with a HUD. Else, a TPS view and a closer TPS view. There is a zoom that allows you to guess what, zoom in on what you're looking at. Not bad, that feature. Actually, the game supports head tracking devices that would connect with that zoom function.

As you have seen in my setup screen I have everything maxed out except, as usual, no AA and no AF. Running the game on my monitor's native res of 1920*1200 it is surprisingly smooth. It feels like cutting butter with a white-glowing axe. Great  :-X

I haven't seen birds so far, real birds, erm, I mean our virtual feathered friends. I'd really  like to talk one into a headbutt contest.. like one lusty seagull vs 10,000 lbs British steel heading at each other at around 400 mph.. man, I'd love to watch that replay in slo-mo.  >:D

Quote from: Art Blade on August 06, 2010, 03:06:48 PM
... not like molten cheese cubes in a three-days-old salad.

lol!  :-X

hehe :)

I have no clue what I'm doing, and I'm getting better at it! I just passed some flight school kind of tutorial. Well, at least the first part. The controls (my joystick) still feel not balanced enough, a little too sensitive. Like, If your toe itches it moves through your body and ends in a tiny tremble in your index finger which causes the plane to do summersaults. Can't be right I guess, or can it? :) You don't want to know what a coughing fit might do to your plane, then, while trying to unobtrusively follow your instructor's commands. In my case I heard the radio go, "well done, you seem to know what you're doing!"  ;D

Actually there is more than just the joystick to adjust. The sound is important, too. Can't be good if all you hear is your engine and music while what your instructor is telling you just sounds like a faint murmur. Then you're lucky you didn't waive subtitles.. but keep trying to decipher what's on the screen while you're missing that you're passing your destination area already.. Well done!

I might try again and find out what that nice chap tried to teach me. Actually I am lucky I already know the basics about flying WWII planes ;)

[smg id=2471 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP flight training 01"]

Here an example of how the landscape appears to be really detailed.

[smg id=2472 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP flight training 02"]

just found out that during playback of a replay you can freely turn your camera around the plane using your mouse. Good if you want to see stuff you didn't while actually flying that thing.  :-X

Here you can see a successful dogfight, plane shot alight, and the pilot bails out (parachute diagonally up and left of his plane, second pic). Oh, the scenario is Berlin, and in the second pic is a landmark (that headland in the river Spree is called Museum Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Island)) that does exist, so it's accurate.

[smg id=2473 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP dogfight 01"]
[smg id=2474 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP dogfight 02"]

I keep practicing (training) dogfights to get maneouvres right and stuff, and this is a pic taken from my latest replay, camera view is "target cam" so I'm the one who's shooting down that pane :)

[smg id=2475 type=link align=center width=400]

So far, the game is good. No hiccups, no issues, very smooth graphics, nice sound effects, voices sound good (British flight instructor), occasional radio messages sound good.. a lot of details in every aspect, including an encyclopaedia and a "hangar" and tactical tips (flight maneouvres à la Barrel Roll or Max Immelmann's Turn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immelmann_turn)) -- all very nice indeed :-X And I love to save and watch replays  ;D We can even up/download them, if any of you wants to share/check them :)

The tutorial is what I'm doing now, aiming for the debriefing's "Perfect" stats, and sometimes the tutorial is not keeping up with me, or in other words, I'm already doing stuff I'm asked to do later and that might cause a little confusion. No big deal, for example I prefer to fly using cockpit view (FPS). So when my instructor told me to switch to cockpit view, I actually had to switch to external view first and then back to cockpit view, things like that.

The tutorial is good if you have a massive joystick (mine has 12 buttons and two sticks (2 axis and 3 axis) plus a coolie hat) and have yet to get used to which button does what. Since there are more than 12 options, you might need the keyboard and mouse as well, so I do recommend the tutorial.

For a quick game, you can either go to training where you can set all kinds of parameters to your liking or do single missions that may be escort, recon, defend and whatnot. The actual game is as usual a campaign based game. I'll keep that for later.

In general, so far, I'd say what our old member retiredgord used to say: "Lotsa fun"  ;D :-X

I've completed the three main tutorial missions that basically teach you how to lock on a target and making use of your target cam (in game it means your head tilts towards the enemy and locks your view on it as long as that button is pressed). During replay (if you choose to save and/or watch them) you can try to figure out how to do better next time, you'll soon understand if and whenever you did something stupid.. the vid reveals it all ;) ).

Here a nice view of a combat situation.
[smg id=2476 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP flight training 03"]

Terrific reviews so far, Art :-X :-X :-X Man, the graphics look fantastic! Now that's a landscape I could be happy to raise hell over ;D Excellent cockpit details too, appears to be very authentic. I actually got to sit in a Spitfire cockpit a few years ago at an air museum, and the game one looks very accurate, as far as I remember. I notice the recommended specs aren't too steep either, which is nice - for me at this point in time, anyway ;)

Did you choose the Spitfire for your training kite, old boy? If so, very good choice :-X The Spitfires would have to be among the best-looking planes of all time. You have style and taste, my friend ;D

Terrific screenpics, too :-X

Forgot to mention:

Quote from: Art Blade on August 06, 2010, 01:01:56 PM...haven't read the loser manual yet...

^+-+

haha, thanks, fragger  :-() The tutorial puts you in a Spitfire, whether you like it or not, but I agree it's a good-looking plane -- and I voluntarily chose it for training :)

It reminded me a joke Fiach posted long ago in our Jokes topic

Quote from: Fiach on August 02, 2009, 06:31:58 AM

Quote from: DKM2 on August 01, 2009, 12:01:18 PM

Ground  round (with quite arrogant impatience):  'Speedbird 206, have you  not been to Frankfurt before?' 
Speedbird  206 (coolly): 'Yes,  twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land.' 

Beautiful!  :-X

It reminds me of a story told by Spike Miligan, he was telling it on a programme here called The Late Late Show about world war 2 :

Spike : There we were, Fockers in front of us, Fockers behind us and Fockers on each side!

Host : Just for the audience, Spike is actually referring to a Focke-Wulf 190, a type of German fighter plane.

Spike : No! These Fockers were all Messerschmits!

(...)

The first jokes are all about aviation... DKM2 posted some gems there!  8)

yeah, I particularly like the first one you quoted ^+-+

 ;D ;D ;D

Very nice review of the game play - it sounds like the controls can be somewhat complicated!  Great screen pics, and the landscape does look very nice.  :-X

What I like about WoP is the clean look of it... a cockpit view is a classic view with a great control panel and the outside (3rd person) view is as clean as it can be with your plane, a mini map (you can toggle it on and off if I remember correctly) and, maybe, tags on other planes (you can also swith those off).

In the end you have a clean view, great graphics and outstanding dogfights.. good thig they didn`t have missiles and rockets and whatnot during the WWII or we`d be seeing a nightmare game like HAWX (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTG_O1h2SFk#ws)  :-()

Quote from: PZ on August 08, 2010, 10:07:08 PM
Very nice review of the game play - it sounds like the controls can be somewhat complicated!  Great screen pics, and the landscape does look very nice.  :-X

Thanks :) They're not complicated (ARMA2 was complicated). It's only a matter of "getting used to" and which buttons or keys to remap to your liking :) and thanks, screenies is what I like to do a lot, now at least here I am allowed to, even without an external program. The landscapes are just great, but you'll only find out when watching replays. During flight and fight you won't have a spare eye for that  ;D

Quote from: JRD on August 09, 2010, 01:43:44 AMor we`d be seeing a nightmare game like HAWX

Oh gosh, horrid! Nah, WoP is a lot better :)

I visited my local gaming shop yesterday, and WoP won't be available in Oz until about mid-September. I'd really like to check this one out, being a lover of both WW2 fighters and realistic flight sims.

I'll continue to report about this game soon. Currently I'm too fascinated by AP.

WoP plays very smoothly if you have a good flight stick. I hope the missions will be good.. :)

I'm looking forward to more impressions and screen caps!  :-X

Quote from: Art Blade on August 17, 2010, 11:12:36 AM
I'll continue to report about this game soon. Currently I'm too fascinated by AP.

Perfectly understandable, mate :)

OK folks, I'm back for WoP ;D

First Campaign Mission: Baptism by Fire

After having played a different game for a while I now was eager to get it going so I didn't want to practice first. I noticed. I forgot which buttons and keys were bound to what and I struggled a little during the mission to get it sorted. On top, I decided to start the mission with a take off rather than starting airborne. I managed to get to my mates in time, they radioed me that they didn't have that much fuel to keep waiting for me all day.. hehe  :)

During the patrol we encountered Nazi bombers, two of which and myself went down. Fortunately I had chosen unlimited attempts so I got back into the game right where I got shot down, the next four bombers were a little easier to shoot down but hell, the controls are either too sensitive or the opposite. It's like: Damn, can't bring my plane in line because it feels like steering a boat through treacle, and when I was close enough to engage I was like damn, now my nose is flipping up and down like a kite on two strings. I need to balance that, but it's not that easy and I don't really know where to adjust that.. in game or hardware, joystick springs? Tried both but still not satisfactory.

During the mission I was shocked to see how my plane could take damage ("you're losing oil") and how my windshield got all messed up with black smear (cockpit view). Also, just like what we had been talking about before, I nearly lost contact to my mates or nearly missed my objectives.. no radar and such. Feels authentic, though  ;D

Edit: Played it again, better this time. Probably just a thing of how sensitive the player is, not the joystick  ;D "Handle with care"  ;)

Nice  :-X
After my disappointment in Heroes Over Europe, I'm a bit hesitant to get into flying games (I hate flying anyway  :-() ) but this game is something that I'll put on my list of to eventually get.

At least the graphics are really nice, the landscape is beautiful, and it feels good. If you liked HoE, then this will blow your mind  :)

Played the second mission: Convoy.

I had to defend ships and took out bombers. I assigned commands to my fellow pilots telling them to attack or watch my six. We took out all enemies. The controls are simple but steering with a joystick is both easy and complicated. The trick seems to be not to try drastic manoeuvres but slow and careful movements. At the end of the mission I was given the option to continue flying (to the airfield) and I hit enter to confirm. After that I realised that the mission would simply have ended without confirmation, so what I had done presented me with like 5 minutes of flying from Dover to some airfield miles away.. next time I'll just end the mission.  :)

[smg id=2517 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 001"]

I've got a lot of screenshots and it's not easy to determine what to upload and what not to. I think action is always good, and here this one is just.. hehehe  ;D
[smg id=2518 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 002"]

You know, while you're playing you don't have time to admire the true scope of what's going on and you won't see spectacular action depicted in the previous post. You're focussed on taking out enemies and to survive a war going on around you. But the replay function (I keep saving my missions) is both good for watching the action from different angles (various camera options plus you can freely move the camera around with your mouse) and for taking screenshots like the previous one. In-game shots are no different except they're probably not as cool so you can take your time and chose a different angle or camera view while watching a replay and then take screenshots. Cool gimmick of this game  :)

The replay function sounds a bit like a feature found in Gran Turismo 5.

The demo gave me also the option to end the mission right away or choose to go back and land myself... I chose land myself as I wanted to fool around and enjoy the demo as much as I could. I reckon that it is a feature for those playing simulation mode. Not only you have to fly the plane in tough controls but you also have to win a battle AND bring you bird back home for a safe landing. It sure does extend gameplay and add a lot to the difficulty level of the game!

Since you are playing just for dogfights with minimal difficulty in controls, the "end mission" click is great! You get to play the same battle in less boring conditions  8)

Many thanks for your input on this game thus far, Art :-X Nice screenshots - I like the one of the Stuka getting its wings clipped ;D At least, I think it's a Stuka. There's not really enough of it left to positively identify it ;D

With flightsims, I generally alternate my approach to missions if the game will let me, such as go and land myself or end the mission then and there, depending on my frame of mind or prevailing patience level. It's good to know this game will let you do either.

The old Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator offered a similar option, in that you had to take off with your wingmen, but once you had, you could elect to either fly all the way to the action or just jump ahead to it. Sometimes I'd decide to fly all the way there ("there" usually being somewhere in occupied Western Europe, having taken off in England) and try my hand at staying in formation with the other guys (quite tough to master). One could do this in real-time, which meant a flight of well over an hour or more before getting into combat. To do all that flying only to be shot down in seconds once battle was joined could be something of a bummer, to say the least. A bummer in a video game, that is, but it did have a way of making one empathise with the pilots of the period. They'd have to fly in formation for hours, which as I understand it was both extremely tedious and demanding, only to reach a point where their lives were subsequently measured in seconds. Quite sobering, really.

But I do love a WW2 flightsim, and I'm really looking forward to having a go at this one.

Nice comments, guys :)

This game indeed allows a couple of settings to be altered to your likings, be it the number of attempts to solve a mission (fewer equals more points) up to unlimited, then which game mode (arcade being simple fun, to simulation when you're required to control stuff like mixture of your gasoline and trimming of the propeller blades.. needless to say you'll be dead before even seeing an enemy) and finally if you want to get airborne or start from the airfield. That plus either end the mission or fly home and land your wreck, erm, plane is de facto a great improvement compared with other games and also a path to immersion.

After a mission you get to watch some kind of real time rendered movie showing your plane and the pilot (someone who has a CV to check up in the options, no idea if made up or real). The pilot keeps thinking aloud about what he just saw and his fears or other thoughts.. Then the mission is over. Nice touch :)

I remember you guys demanding screenies.. and you seem to like aerial combat pics.. so here two more that I like :) The first one shows a plane crashing into some houses (nice details, don't you think?) after I had shot it down. The second one is a bomber I had taken down, I'm in the background with a white smoke trail.

[smg id=2519 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 003"]
[smg id=2520 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 004"]

To improve my skills (controlling those bloody planes) I decided to do more trainings. Learn from the best is what I believe is good advice, so I pushed the enemy skill a few notches up to Veteran and tried to catch them. They perform some great dodging and evasive manoeuvres and in the end it's cool flying with/against those AI pilots. How good they are and what you did can be observed quite well during the mission replay. Sometimes I thought to myself, wow.. didn't know how close I was, or that looked cool, and of course, oh no.. why did I fly in the opposite direction again? :)

What I don't like is the crosshair which indicates where to fire at (pre-aim) because I can't see it (some semi-transparent white-ish cross against a white sky or sun is useless). So the only solution is to either face the enemy or tail them so the cockpit sights actually w@&k when lining up shots.

It's interesting that during training missions you can fly whatever plane you picked before starting the mission, and you can determine which plane the enemy will be flying. For fun I chose a German plane I previously had assigned to the enemy, and gave him my Spitfire in return.

Erm.. the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire is by far better and therefore I crashed my German plane twice trying to do the same manoeuvres I had effortlessly mastered in the Spitfire. I could almost hear the Gerry who was flying his Spitfire gracefully in circles above me laugh at my spitting image of a war hero hammering my plane into the ground with utmost virtuosity. And a hint of frustration.

I killed him for that during my third attempt.  ;D

Quote from: Art Blade on August 23, 2010, 02:12:24 PM
...my spitting image of a war hero hammering my plane into the ground with utmost virtuosity.

Lol :-() :-() :-()

Cool pics, Art! The environment in WoP looks terrific :-X Pity about the crosshair thing, they really should give you the option of changing the colour of it if you wish. A number of other games do.

yes.. by the way, it's not the crosshair that is "built in" into the cockpit, but a moving crosshair that preceeds a moving enemy plane so you know where to shoot to make the bullets arive at the same time that plane gets there. I know that as "pre-aim" (shoot ahead so the enemy runs into the bullet). That particular crosshair is only visible against some dark background = almost never.

I can still shoot though, that's what tracer rounds are good for, and in this game every bullet leaves some sort of a smoke trail to watch out for, which helps to time your shots right. However, if you keep doing that, you'll be both wasting ammo and spoiling your stats.

I pefer to fly around and chase my target until I am quite sure the enemy will "meet" with my bullets  ;)

I flew a few more training missions and tried to catch veteran pilots. It occurred to me that using the target camera would have been a good idea so I started using it: Once you've marked a target you can press and keep pressed a button that makes your virtual head tilt and move so your eyes stay on the target. The result is that you don't see your cockpit's controls any more once the target isn't in front of your plane. You'll have to imagine that if you're looking to your right but keep flying ahead that you'll have to use your flight stick to turn your plane so it lines up with your eyes/view. Pretty simple as long as you start out with an enemy who's straight ahead and fleeing, when he turns to the right, your eyes will follow him and you just move the stick to the right so you're back in line.

But.. if you lock onto your target and it's down left and behind, you get to see parts of the cockpit and plane you won't know what you're looking at exactly because, unfortunately, your virtual head snaps back so fast, in an instant, that you won't realise you're looking down left and behind. When you release that target cam button, you'd pop back to view ahead. What I'm trying to say is that I miss a slow movement from looking ahead to back down left so you can follow your own head's movement and realise where you're looking. Those are the moments you lose track of your enemy and start to guess where the heck he is, which in combat means he's in your blind spot and probably about to shoot you down or escape. So it takes a bit of getting used to that feature.. That's why I keep training so I can better adjust to those situations. If you do it right, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to follow your target or to think of manoeuvres that bring you in a position to attack! That's when the fun kicks in, like Yeah! :) If only the controls (joystick) were a bit smoother..

I realised that some of the unpredictable movements of my plane are quite obviously depending on air and breezes and friction.. so even in arcade mode it's not just simply "move" but feel turbulences and wind speeds etc, that's why your plane may feel a bit hard to get its nose down against the wind coming from below or why a sudden manoeuvre makes your plane kind of jump. Simple games would just smoothly move your plane as if controlling a big cannon mounted on a tank or ship. This game apparently is a fair bit more sophisticated and requires training indeed. Not bad though, but it costs time. I'm a bit impatient with that flying thing, I know what I want to do but I can't control the plane yet just as if it was part of my body. I need more training.  :)

I like the idea of being able to keep your "eyes" on the target.

it is a good feature, yes :) Following your eyes with your plane actually makes your flying look more graceful and clearly more effective. :)

Indeed - one of the reasons I've never been a huge fan of air combat games is that I frequently lost sight of the target and then didn't know which way to turn to acquire it again.  Of course, 9 times out of 10 I'd choose the wrong direction  :-()

Well, what can I say.. during my last training I tried to convince my opponent I was flying a sub and sunk my plane before the eyes of him without having been shot down. :-[ 8-X ;D

 :-()

That eyeball-tracking feature sounds useful Art, as long as, as you say, you start tracking when the enemy is more or less ahead of you. I can see how a sudden close-up view of the floor under your seat or something like that could cause disorientation :o

Sounds like a challenging game.

Quote from: Art Blade on August 24, 2010, 05:36:13 PM
Well, what can I say.. during my last training I tried to convince my opponent I was flying a sub and sunk my plane before the eyes of him without having been shot down. :-[ 8-X ;D

LOL :-D :-D :-D

 ;D (by the way, I learned that tactic from a German veteran who was doing some fancy manoeuvres when I heard him go "AAAAaaargh" -- and saw a huge white spot on the water where he had sunk his plane without me ever hitting him.)

You got it spot on, fragger, that eye-tracking indeed makes you see the dusty floor of your cockpit or bits of your plane you don't know where those are and so on.. really disorientating. As you said, best to start tracking while the enemy is in sight.

Played and finished one more mission which was about taking out ships with bombs.

While in cockpit view, you can't see a thing. Guessing where the target is, drop one or two bombs and hope you won't hit a friendly plane that's flying beneath you (did that once, lol) and hope you'd hit anything at all. Stupid.  :-\

External view: You see a circle which looks elliptical due to that flight perspective, in it two dots resembling your two bombs and where they'd hit. I got my plane (viewed from behind) between me (eyes) and the target/aiming circle, rendering it useless. Well, you could still fly around and use the mouse to change the perspective while trying to manoeuvre, silly. ::)

Virtual cockpit: That's when you see everything but your own plane, so that seems to be the only reasonable way to get to see that aiming circle on the ground. Makes you lose any immersive feeling of flying a plane, it's just juggling an egg-shaped thing with dots until those dots are on top of your target. You need perfect timing: the moment one or two of those dots are on target you need to press the bomb trigger, split seconds later and the bomb will miss. Wouldn't be so bad on solid ground, but on water you just won't do any damage. ????

Some of the ships had a FLAK (FLugAbwehrKanone = flight/plane defense cannon) which kept shooting at me even after hitting the ship with a bomb. The ships don't necessarily sink.. they burn and keep firing.. I dropped truckloads of bombs onto them until they ceased fire and sunk. Stupid. Some radio messages were like: Bulls eye. Direct hit. Good hit. But I never knew when or if I had achived anything (like, hit it and fly away? or sink it?) Once I managed to assign a wingman to bomb a ship, but mostly they were useless. Stupid. I can't assign a target to wingman 1, another target to wingman 2 and so on, only my own target. Cool, what's that good for?  :-\\

Then the next mission goal: Hit more ships. How the hell am I supposed to do that with two bombs and like 8 ships? Only with help of my wingmen?  >:( I had unlimited bombs due to Arcade Mode, but still..

Then I saw a new secondary goal: Fight enemy fighters. Countdown.. I hit enter, but never saw enemies. Instead, I had to fly all the way home to that fricking air field. The next time I replayed the mission I skipped that part and my stats read 0/1 secondary goals. Bah.  :-(

Next mission: Intercept bombers over Dover (they were accompanied by fighters). I didn't count how many bombers there were, but I made out at least four groups, perhaps five or six, with like four or more bombers. I'd say a total of 20+ bombers. And three wingmen I can't do anything with but "clear my six" and "someone take care of that (my) target" - they've got to be joking.  >:(

Then, again, I had massive problems controlling my plane. Just on an aside, I have always liked WWII flight sims/games, but even HoE was easier to control. What happens is: You see LOADS of planes, red inscriptions hovering above them basically telling you "enemy" (well, you get the picture.. I never actually read what the red stuff read). Then you try to mark one, randomly, and start to craze out because you can't spot that one ant in an ant hill. All enemy planes cause red arrows on the sides of your screen, telling you "there are lots of them." One of which is your target. Try get him! The problem being less to get him but to find out who to get. So I started shooting at everything with a red text above it, but the pre-aim crosshair vanished (white on white) so I had to keep guessing whom to shoot and how to line up my shots. By the way, there were some green dots (my wingmen) and blue dots (friendly planes) too.. so better not shoot like a maniac not to take out more friendlies than enemies. Hehe, didn't matter anyway, I guess, I didn't much care any more.

And on top of all that, the plane controls. Imagine you know how to use a joystick. Pull it towards you = nose up, push it away = nose down. Left/right, rudder, ailerons etc, you know how to handle that. But the plane just doesn't do what you think you're doing. Like, carefully pulling the stick and your plane rips up into the air, aaaaarhg, the enemy is now too far below. No problem, a hearty push on the stick... I said, a hearty push on the stick.. f@#k's sake, PUSH!!! But your nose just won't get down much. When it does, all of a sudden and too much. Perhaps simulating friction and air speeds from below, simulating physical barriers going down while no barriers going up. I call that stupid imbalance.  >:(( Unnecessary fights with your own plane. It's definitely not my joystick, that's a good one and it works perfectly well.

25 minutes later: Mission failed, it took me too long.  :D

I'm not really looking forward to playing on much. That's why I was so reluctant to resume playing.

The only thing that's halfways fun is training missions when you can pick a plane of your choice and give another plane of your choice to one or more enemies and start.. Then you'll have time enough to fiddle with the joystick and slowly getting used to it, doesn't matter anyway, but during mission?

Hell, they can't be serious.

The mission I was referring to is apparently the one featured in the second vid (http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=1320.msg29196#msg29196) there. Note how he struggles to fly/aim smoothly, I think I'm not alone out there ;)

Might be an issue of how to set up the controls for the game, but still.. why does it have to be a science to get it right?

Sounds like you're not having much fun any more - similar to what I experienced with HoE. 

I think that I'll stick with being on solid ground for now  :-D

Sad but true. I mean, the joystick can be set up in game, with a lot of adjustment range for every axis there is. The problem is, you can't really find out what is best because it seems to be either not keeping the settings when playing or the settings are being overridden by some laws of physics. I can't adjust the stick to my likings. What I don't understand is why the game treats an analog joystick almost as if it were digital. You have a lot of room until it kicks in, and it kicks in hard. Like, throttle. I move the lever and nothing happens until I'm almost at the end of the stick's range, like touching the physical limit of the joystick, and then you'd go full throttle. Adjusting speed is like a very small range at the lower and upper end and the big gap in between (dead zone). Same with the joystick: It seems only to register when it physically hits the limit, and a little before that.

I'll try to find out if I can adjust that dead zone of the stick. I believe the game would be really cool if the joystick was simpler to set up.

Indeed - I really like the landscape and the appearance of the aircraft.  Sounds like flying a plane is like driving a car in FC2 - all or nothing steering.  :-()

Yeah, maybe a simple console controller is better than a fancy joystick  ???? ;)

good news

I finally found the settings responsible for that poor performance. There is indeed a setting called "dead zone" which was set to the max.. now I reduced it to minimum and ta-dah.. the plane reacts just the way I had hoped for :-X :-X :-X

that bomber mission (take them out) was tough nevertheless. I shot down like 30 enemies but needed 2 attempts (got shot down myself once). Took about 20 minutes. Now it feels a lot better :)

I took a quick glance at what else there is to do in that game. Training missions (your choice who when where etc), Single Missions (out of like 10 chapters, perhaps another 10 missions each), Campaign (maybe 5 campaigns with like 5 missions each. You need to proceed sequentially, unlocking the next mission by successfully completing the previous one). So there are a lot of missions to be flown.

That is good now - now you can enjoy the game!  :-X

I don't know that yet.  >:D But at least I don't have to worry about controls before I even start to play  :)

The reason behind the maxed-out dead zone still is explainable with a very erm, nervous and sensitive reaction of the planes you're flying. I tried various settings that have slide bars (sort of) and chose three steps: left, middle, right, which equals min, average, max. I did that because the default setup wasn't to my taste and small adjustments were too small to really notice a difference, so I did drastic changes. I must have done that last one before I started with the game ALPHA Protocol and then forgot I did that particularly with dead zones. Now that I realised what it was I was able to fix that one. NOW is the time to do small adjustments  :)

Put your ground crew on report ;D >:D

I hope you can enjoy the game better now that you have some semblance of control. Still sounds frigging tough, though...

hehe, it's a lot better now, still fine-tuning controls here to get a balance to my likings.

I'm flying missions again that hadn't played out well before. Those campaign missions may be quite big, last time that bomber mission, I shot down 36 enemies without getting shot myself. It is not easy if the sky is packed with both allied and nazi planes. Chasing a pack might take you away from battle, so after chasing and taking down a few, you need to return to the main area where the other planes are.. silly to put a time limit there (25 minutes).

However, I realised I don't always need to mark a target or use that tracking cam when I'm close to any enemy, I just shoot them down :)

[smg id=2525 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 005"]

Quote from: Art Blade on August 28, 2010, 05:21:33 AM
However, I realised I don't always need to mark a target or use that tracking cam when I'm close to any enemy, I just shoot them down :)

;D Shoot first - whys and wherefores can come later :)

There's a time limit there? I agree, that's pretty dumb:

"I say, Smythe old boy, you've only got 25 minutes to shoot down that Hun chappie as your cup of char is getting cold, so do go in and knock Jerry for six, then hurry back - there's a good chap" ;D

Nice piccie there, mate. Spits in flight are such graceful looking birds :-X

Nice - I'm looking forward to further impressions - still on the fence regarding this one

fragger: hehehe, nice line there  ^+-+ Reminds me, kind of

"What! They're attacking? Good God, but it's tea time! I must say. They are so uncivilised. Gentlemen.. I'm afraid we do have a lesson to teach."  ;D

PZ: The game is kind of like adrenalin rush while in combat and movie time when watching the replay (you can save those). During the missions you're really busy and won't see much than kill and survive, and bloody let's not forget about the mission itself (don't fly away too far, don't waste too much time). So it is intense but after that, a chilling phase is in order and you, being a graphics enthusiast, will have time to enjoy all the shiny glamour there is :)

Ah, one note about voice acting. The young Englishman (you) has the deepest voice I've heard in a long time and sounds like America Incarnate, the broadest yank accent I've heard in a long time, too  ^+-+ Silly, when that chap muses "..my fellow countrymen" (Brits)  ^+-+

Joystick configuration:

Dead Zone
Make sure whatever axis you configure not to mess with that "dead zone" if you've got a precise stick. It's a range you can move the stick without the game registering it -- good if the stick is wobbly, make a small dead zone so the plane doesn't fly in circles just because the stick isn't 100% centred.

Non-linearity
If you want to make subtle movements (especially when training your sights on the enemy) it is a helpful feature: The more non-linearity, the lesser the responsiveness and therefore simpler to handle when making small or smooth movements. It creates a range the stick will increasingly pick up the direction you move it towards. In practical terms: 50% non-linearity allows you to move the stick half the way it physically can, causing a soft movement, before that movement really kicks in hard. Within the first half of the way it will only register a movement as if you moved the stick a lot less. So you can actually move it quite a bit but the result will be a fine-tuned move. When you press on towards the physical limit, the stick will pick up more and more until the actual limit is reached. By comparison: zero non-linearity will cause the plane to "jump" with the slightest joystick movement, whereas with some non-linearity it will only "jump" when you really hit the limit.

This is what it looks like when flying near Stalingrad, using a "virtual cockpit" (none at all). This is during replay, during gaming you'd see a few HUD elements (kind of a mini map top right, that's about all you can see then).

[smg id=2527 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 006"]

This is a Russian cockpit :)

[smg id=2528 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP impressions 007"]

Phew. This game is exhausting (a lot of concentration needed to survive at least and to achieve all goals at last) so I can't play through as I would with other games.

Let me tell you about a manoeuvre that I haven't read about anywhere before but I developed it long ago already, I has saved my life many times and cost that of enemies even more often.

Art's stalling manoeuvre

I'd call it a steep loop, the shape of an egg. You can do it both vertically and horizontally. By comparison, most pilots would go full speed to start something like an Immelmann or things like that which involve a loop or half a loop. What I do is: voluntarily stall and recover at the top of a loop or at the centre of a turn. That manoeuvre can be achieved either by suddenly going lowest speed possible or even shutting off the engine.

For a loop: at the time you're highest possible (or anywhere on your way up) you pull the stick as hard as possible towards you and stall the engine so you'd fall over backwards. On your way down restart the engine or go full throttle again.

For a turn: accordingly, once you've reached a point when you want to make a drastic change, switch off the engine or in this case better go lowest speed possible and turn as hard as possible until you're about to drop, then go full throttle or restart the engine.

Those manoeuvres are useful when you are facing an enemy with a faster and/or more agile plane. Your manoeuvre will create a surprising short cut and bring you in a line that allows to fire ahead of the enemy thus taking him by surprise and down.

Try it :)

This is a virtual cockpit and its nearly invisible HUD elements. The "circle" down in the middle is where the bombs will hit, the dots in it mark where each bomb will hit. The other orange lines mark HUD elements so you can try to find them.

[smg id=2529 type=link align=center width=400 caption="WoP virtual bomber cockpit"]

Just installed this game am finished the first two tutorial steps and a first mission!

This game is very cool  8) :-X

Graphics are pretty good, good balance between fun and difficulty - I'm playing arcade/easy at the moment - nice sound, models are very well made as well as damage models with enemy planes shattering in mid air leaving a trail of fire and smoke  >:D

Nice to be able to finish the mission and skip or land  the plane... I landed perfectly after the first mission (however smoking due to enemy lead  ::)

I'll have a great weekend with WoP plus Batman AA and AC:B  >:D

Just finished  the third mission where I had to sunk some enemy ships offshore UK! Cool... feels very  much real as airborne warfare should feel back in the day... no advanced technology calls for skilled pilots, which is something that really get my attention in this game. Not only WWII themed-games are nice but also puts the player in a challenging environment even for arcade players like me  ::)

The ammount of side missions other than the campaign plus all allied and german aircrafts makes WoP a massive game for flying fanatics... I'll have loads of fun for a loooong time with this game!  :-X

 :)

Any screenshots, JRD? Please?  :-()

Ok, here's a few snapshots of my experience with WoP...

Me and my wingman, Chuck...  ;D

[smg id=3512]

I was chasing this enemy plane over the cliffs of Dover under havy dogfights... excelent play!

[smg id=3516]

I got him after all...

[smg id=3517]

Taking lead from enemy bombers as I approached a convoy, still over Dover.

[smg id=3513]

Payback  >:D

[smg id=3514]

[smg id=3511]

Damage model... this one is a mission over Leningrad with heavy fighting... cool  :-X  The last one is not so good but take a look at the right wing.. swiss cheese  ::) ... I was shot from underneath by an ascending enemy coming from a completely blind spot at me... 8)

I had some great moments during those missions... even if a bit of the same over and over but that's what I expect from a WWII aerial warfare game  :-X

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Ok... a few more...

Approaching combat zone... blue guys are friendlies, everybody else are enemy bombers, bright spots are tracer bullets.

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A heavy combat scene with my squadron thinning out a nazi bomber squad en route to Leningrad

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One less...  >:D ... man, this game is fun... really enjoying it!!!  :-X

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Hmmm ... having problems... being shot too much during the second mission in Stalingrad... had to try some tutorials but still a bit tough...  :-X ... challenging even for arcade mode  :)

Music is annoying... Hero Theme  >:(( ... boring...

Details as you get close to the ground (and if not flying too fast) are a bit poor but that's the price you pay for smooth play during missions over hundreds of km of terrain.

Missions won't change nothing, maybe the scenario with and without snow, mostly inland, lakes or nearshore etc...everythung resume to shoot down target before it's too late or bomb something... but I'm fine with that... I read you can find the Gate of Brandenbourg and bomb a target near to it for a trophy or achievement... nice... there weren't many big cities as stage for aerial warfare during WWII so you can't expect to fight over Paris around the Eiffel Tower  :-X

The plains in UK are pretty much what southern England looks like with the chalk cliffs by the shore... Dover is a nice area with cool details such as the Radar transmitters / receivers giving England eyes over the Channel  8)

Now I feel I should've bought that Logitech twin axis controller long ago...  :D

oh yes, screenies  :-() :-X Nice, JRD :) Have fun  :)

Cool screenies, JRD :-X I've actually got WoP but never got around to installing it, was waiting to get myself a decent joystick, then got sidetracked with other games and stuff and actually forgot that I even owned this game until this topic was revived. I think I'll go looking for a joystick...

Funny you mention it... I just bought myself a new controller... a gamepad, dual stick analogic/digital  >:D

I was going for a Logitech but couldn't find it in the stores I checked on my way back from w@&k today. I got a cheap one instead  :-[

I tryed to play a bit with it just now but couldn't configure it on the Devices screen and this one's not on the list they have... see, cheap stuff  :D ;)

The key mapping wasn't really doing what I want it to do ... I'm not sure if what you get on the screen is something created by the game or depends on the gamepad you plug in  ????

(that's how much I'm familiar with periferals other than keyboard and mouse ::) )

Ahhh, a BoP thread - excellent!

Nice to read all of the excitement and discovery stories in this thread. I can also identify with some of the frustrations too - Gaijin are an odd developer alright, certainly regarding some of their coding decisions; they've been keen and productive as hell though.

I played this quite a lot just after release, also some of last year as there is quite a community on the 1c forums who played this out to every degree, with lots of online matches and meet-up missions.

Like Art and JDR I started on arcade, going straight through to the end of Berlin - there were some evil missions in there, some real beauties too. I did the training excercises in all three difficulty modes too and the sim practise bombing run in the Hurricane was immensely rewarding. Before that taking down the two/three Heinkels was a nightmare, not only did I keep running out of ammo at the most inconvenient time, but I couldn't find the enemy most of the time (no mini-map in sim mode, which is how it should be  :))

One mission in particular I just couldn't do on arcade, the one protecting the Russian bombers en route for Berlin during the last campaign. The forum I mentioned had a solution for that one, do it in Sim because the AI reacts accordingly and all you had to do is maintain an umbrella presence over the bombers, thereby scaring the enemy fighters off - seriously, the easiest and oddest mission of the lot.

Then I began it all again on realistic, which was tough for different reasons but again very rewarding once completed.

Did either of you get to do the night-time interceptor mission over Russia? That one is a nightmare on sim and is as far as I have gone in that mode.

Visually the game is beautiful, especially the early morning and evening missions over Russia and the Ardennes - there is something about all that snow and the light it gives off. I lost a few missions in both places, too busy taking in the scenery. I did find that Dover was the best represented with regard to the ground detail. Stalingrad Sicilly and Berlin were noticeably poorer by comparison and I though that was a shame.

I agree with you Art, the training section where you can set which planes to fight, plus their number and difficulty level are really great fun. These give a true idea of how big some of those maps are letting you explore to the extent you have set the time limit to - the Ardennes in particular is huge and I think it took me half-an-hour to fly from one side of it to the other in a Mustang. The time of day and weather conditions can also be selected for these and for online - but don't try stormy weather at night though, or you'll be doing very little more than ploughing into unexpected bits of ground. Stormy in daylight is fun though, especially if you gain enough altitude to break out of the clouds.

Additionally, if you enjoyed this game there is also Birds of Steel out now - set in the Pacific theatre, though there are training missions around Malta, Crimea, the Rhur and various pacific islands too. The FLAK is incredibly intense in BoS. I couldn't see a thread about it, so maybe I should start one and give more details there (just let me check the forums again first.)

Apparently I lost interest at some point. As far as I remember it, it was because of "too much." At that time I had several games going, one of which was ALPHA Protocol, that consumed a lot of time but were far more entertaining. WoP is intensive and has a learning curve. Loads of missions and whatnot. I think I am done with flight games  :-D

That is always the danger with flight sims - the far end of it you get people doing realtime flights around the world on Flight Sim and thinking nothing of it. The 1c forum guys played nothing other than BoP for more than two years, with a slight detour to GT5 where all they did was make cars jump and fly lots  :laugh: - I suspect they are still playing BoP now, even after BoS came out.

 :laugh: some people become stuck in their ways

This game has been sitting forgotten a nondescript box full of other stuff for about five years, but I finally got around to playing it :-()

As mentioned elsewhere I picked up a new joystick especially for getting into flight sims, and WoP was first on the list. I haven't done much with it so far, just wanted to see what it had to offer and to see how the new stick went.

Game impressions: There's quite a learning curve if one wants to get into full-on sim mode. Full sim mode covers such minutiae as fuel mixture and prop pitch settings, if you want to go into it that far. There are three modes of play: Arcade, Realistic and Simulator. Arcade mode has simplified flight modelling, good if you don't want to get into the full sim experience but just want to mix it up without pesky annoyances like stalls and G-force induced blackouts. Realistic is as it suggests, with wind and turbulence effects and the possibility of stalls and blackouts, but still with some HUD aids which will show you where the enemies are and tags them for you, and so forth. Simulator is much the same as Realistic but without the HUD, i.e. you have to rely on your own eyeballs and skill to find the baddies and grasp the situation, as real pilots did. The aircraft behave very realistically and the flight modelling appears to be quite accurate.

The graphics are terrific. Ground textures and detail can look near-photographic, and the smoke and particle effects are excellent. The bullet tracer effects are the best I've ever seen, you not only see the tracers but the smoke trails they leave behind. The cockpit detail looks very authentic and all instruments w@&k as they should. I'm not running with everything maxed, but I possibly can. I only have AA off and am running on 1600x900 res, everything else is enabled and it's silky-smooth, so I can possibly up the settings (mind you, this was with only a few planes in the air. Big battles with lots of planes and flak will probably be a different story, but I can probably trade off stuff like water reflections and aircraft self-shadowing). Sound is rich - well, as much as you can hear in a fighter cockpit :-()

Weather effects are impressive. The clouds look fantastic, and flying through them will cause condensation to appear on your canopy. You can find yourself flying in all kinds of conditions - clear, cloudy to various extents, overcast, stormy, night, day, windy, or various combos of these. It's a very dynamic system.

Damage modelling is impressive. I took a hit in the engine and oil started spraying all over my cockpit canopy. Instant blackout :-() I couldn't see jack so I bailed out. It was just a training mission, which you can restart immediately if you stuff things up.

There are loads of missions. There are lots of single missions of varying types from different theatres/periods of WW2, and a campaign mode. You can also put together quick-combat type "training" missions. These are customizable instant dogfights, where you can specify a location, time of day, weather, altitude, your aircraft, their aircraft (number of and types), a time limit, limited or unlimited ammo, and a bunch of other stuff. If you want to play a full-on campaign or just jump straight into a furball, you can. The game caters to a wide range of mission type preferences. I gave myself a relatively easy challenge for checking-out purposes: to shoot down a couple of Stukas in my MK.II Spitfire (see screenies below).

One thing that's sorely missing is a free-flight option. All other combat flight sims I've played have had this, where you can jump into an aircraft and fly around with no enemies to worry about, so you can get a feel for the plane, practice take-offs and landings, etc. Big omission IMO. There are tutorial missions, but these are pre-set affairs, no substitute for free-flight.

Stick impressions: Very happy with it, although I can't seem to get WoP to recognise my hat as a POV control, which is exasperating - it's the whole reason I bought a stick with a hat :D There may be an option somewhere to enable it, I haven't had a complete poke around in the game's settings menu yet, just a quick look. At present I can only look around using the numpad keys, which is awkward. As I thought, I don't like the throttle slider on the stick, so I remapped a couple of keys for throttle control, which works just fine. The stick-twist rudder control works really well, which is very handy in the absence of actual rudder pedals, and avoids having to map yet more keyboard keys to w@&k the rudder.

Anyway, here's a few screenies - and for once, there is a screencap key: PrtScrn takes a screenshot and saves it in <user>/My Documents/My Games/Wings Of Prey/Screenshots, so they're nice and easy to find. You can snap a shot during a mish, or during the "Replay" clip which is automatically made of each mission (you can save or discard these at the end of the mish, if space on your hard drive is an issue):

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Well, I got the hat sorted. Turns out it has to be set up in the keyboard mapping section. Who knew?

You can sort of do free flight, I found, in the training missions. Just a matter of staying away from the enemy planes for the time limit (which you can set), though sometimes they'll come after you. Best to just choose one enemy and try to give him the slip.

Tried a single Battle of Britain mission to defend Manston airfield from a pack of Bf-109s. That was fun, pics below.

So far I'm finding Arcade mode to be the most fun. In Realistic and Simulator mode, my plane seems to stall and spin out if I do so much as cock my head... It's probably the way I'm flying, but it really ain't easy. Probably just more practice required.

So here's a few more pics:

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Fragger, this looks awesome!

From the pics you show us it seems you're flying in 3rd person mode? Or is it just a cinematic shot 'after-action'?

The landscape and clouds look great indeed. I could imagine having a lot of fun with such a game. So; Joystick required? :-\\

Cheers Binn :)

I was playing in first-person (cockpit) mode, but it's easier to grab screenies from the replay that you can watch after a mission. I'm usually too excited during an actual mission to remember to hit the screenie button :-()

Each mission is automatically recorded, and when the mish is over you get the choice of watching the replay, saving it, or ignoring it (by just exiting to the last menu). The replay is always in 3rd person, or external, view, and you have no control over the view angles while it's running, but you can grab screenies from it, which is how I got these.

The game can be played without a joystick, but I think it might be a handful with mouse and keyboard. Maybe, maybe not - I guess it depends on what you're used to. But I think a joystick will give you way finer control than m&k. I've always preferred a stick for a flight sim as it's a more authentic form of flight control and it gives me a greater sense of immersion.

nice posts fragger +1 :-X :)

Very nice report fragger, +1 from me as well

The last WWII game I played (that is memorable) was Band of Brothers, Hells Highway - anyone know of anything else like that?

I really like that theme, and although I understand that the youth of today have no interest in WWII, a few old guys like playing in that arena.

I have EA Jane's Combat Flight Sim WWII Fighters for Win 95/98 and MS Combat Flight Sim 2 for Win 2000/XP
I don't think the EA game will run on Win 7 but I must see if the MS game will, maybe both will run on Vista
I tried Wings Of Prey on Vista, seems to be ok, the joystick settings were messing me around and couldn't adjust the
sensitivity of the Ailerons and Elevators which made me crash all the time.
Never had a problem with any of the other games, other than the two mentioned I also have MS Flight Sim 95,98 and X, Flight Sim X is mean bugger, you need to be just short of being a real pilot when attempting this game, I haven't played any of the others for some time and was totally lost on FS X

Thanks for the thumbs, guys :)

nex, I also had (actually, still have) Jane's WWII Fighters and MS Combat Flight Sim. I can't remember whether I tried Jane's on Win7 but I did try MS CFS and it installed, but when I ran it all I got was a cockpit view with nothing outside. I tried all kinds of compatibility modes and graphics settings, but nothing worked. AND I seem to recall that it soon spat the dummy and crashed to desktop. But you may have better luck with Vista, I've found that there are some older titles that W7 won't have anything to do with but will still run under Vista (although you may have to run in a compatibility mode).

They were both good games. Janes's was my fave of the two. I loved the 40s-era swing music that would play in the menus. Sometimes I would fire up the game just to listen to the music :-()

Speaking of which, here is the original intro, with the cute Jane's title animation at the beginning: Ah, the memories...

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFg-EZ19_Z8&list=PLW7LJ0sXFCR3buRFQcymRut7DGJt3kyjq&index=1#)

That's the one, think I'm going to try it on Vista   :-D

After I did the posting I scratched through all my old games and came up with two more.
The one is Electronic Battlefield Series Falcon 3.0 for DOS
https://www.google.co.za/url?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_(video_game_series)&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjhkIn2i8rMAhWDBsAKHXXvBO4QFggTMAA&usg=AFQjCNFagyUC9U5Awee2n9siVca8qCZihg (https://www.google.co.za/url?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_(video_game_series)&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjhkIn2i8rMAhWDBsAKHXXvBO4QFggTMAA&usg=AFQjCNFagyUC9U5Awee2n9siVca8qCZihg)
and the other one is an OEM version that Mecer Computers included in their brand name pc's and laptops, it is a EAFighter Pilot for Win 95 and 98
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHJ5o2nBVN0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHJ5o2nBVN0)

Those are a couple of golden oldies 8)

Here's some more screenies, but there might not be too many more (see further below):

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As much as I am impressed with Wings of Prey, all in all it isn't quite doing it for me. It's so close to being a top-notch flight-sim, but it just misses out on the cigar. As pretty and as beautifully presented as it is, and as accurately modelled and researched as it is, it has a few serious shortcomings that mar the experience for a bit-of-a-hardcore simmer like me.

Major personal gripe number one, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is the lack of a free-flight mode. It would be really, really nice to be able to just fly around in the aircraft of my choice without any combat to be concerned about in order to get familiar with the handling and the cockpit layouts. Even real pilots got training time! There are only combat missions of various types and you pretty much get dropped into the action with each one, so you either don't get a chance to get a feel for the plane's character or study the instrumentation layout, or you get shot down while you're trying to. So you don't get to develop a real rapport with the aircraft. It also means there's little opportunity to hone your navigation skills - it's a case of fly to the next waypoint or follow the other guy(s) to it (the waypoints are marked by yellow flags hanging in the sky - not very sim-like) and engage the target until you've done your duty, at which point the mission ends. Maybe the magic yellow waypoint flags don't appear in full-on sim mode, I haven't really looked.

Gripe number two is the lack of take-offs and landings. The Single and Campaign missions allow you the option of a take-off, but you never get to land. As soon as you've achieved your objectives, the mission just ends in mid-air. I want to be able to navigate home and land, dammit! I want to be able to use my flaps and undercarriage and prop pitch and do side-slips with the rudder. Half the challenge of a good flight sim is the landing, and half the satisfaction is successfully pulling it off. MS Combat Flight Simulator not only let you do those things and land, but let you then taxi and park your plane in the hanger. That's what I want to be able to do with this.

Gripe number three is with the quick-flight missions (called "Training" missions in this title). The only quick-flight missions are dogfight ones. Some other types of quick-flight mission would be nice, e.g. ground support, bomber escort, strafing runs, and so on. There are quite a few single missions in addition to the Training and Campaign ones which encompass those types of missions, but being of a preset nature in terms of aircraft, locations and targets, I think they might get old fairly quickly.

There are things I love about the game - the look and sound of it, the environments, the quality of the flight modelling, and the beautiful, highly-detailed reproductions of aircraft that have always held an allure for me. In some respects it's WW2 flight-sim heaven. But the oversights and omissions bring it down a few points for me - my own, very subjective, rating would be about a 7 out of 10.

Maybe I'll look at IL-2 Sturmovik. Everybody in simdom seems to rave about that one, even if it is an older title. I'll happily trade superficial beauty for fullness of character.

what you said reminded me of an old game called Aces Over the Pacific from 1992. There I was allowed to take off and to land which was particularly cool when done on an aircraft carrier. And I was to choose a plane of my liking which usually was a Zero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rndsUKy2Cs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rndsUKy2Cs)

Weird, Fragger, that the game is so limited. Even no landing, I can imagine it's a bummer. And the lack of freeroaming abilities is also disappointing, taking in count the beautiful landscape I saw in your earlier pics. Hope you find the right flight sim on that next tittle then ;)

I was excited when I got this game back then but at the time I also got the game Alpha Protocol. The latter one, I really played the living daylights out of. And forgot about WoP as it was.. disappointing and getting on my nerves. I read the topic from start and remembered.

Yes, it's a shame. So much time and effort has obviously gone into the game's creation. But there's not much point in having controls for undercarriage, flaps, propeller pitch and fuel mixture when you never get to use them, unless you choose to take-off for a mission ???? Dunno why they bothered. There's all sorts of other controls for various aircraft functions, such as separate controls for aileron, elevator and rudder trim, and controls for various aspects of engine management, but the nature of the game is such that you never really get a chance to explore these controls. You're too busy twisting and turning and trying not to get shot down.

I don't really know how to define it, but the game just doesn't quite engage. It seems kind of unfocused. It's almost like two different developers were working on it with each being unaware of what the other was going for. The result is a game doesn't quite know what it wants to be: hard-core sim or arcade dogfighter, and it fails to please in either category - too much of a sim in its complexity to be an arcade shooter and too truncated in its design to be a full-on sim.

I may play some more of the campaign and see if it makes me feel differently about it, but at this stage I don't think it will.

Heheh, maybe Wings of Pray would've been a better name :-D

 :-X  :-()

Hehehe :laugh:

My prayers weren't quite answered with this title :-D I mean it's good, don't get me wrong, it's really good, it's just not the kind of sim I can lose myself in. Apart from the sims already mentioned I remember another one, Mircoprose's F15 Strike Eagle III (1992), that I flew the dickens out of and I played through the campaign mode at least a dozen times. For quite a while I couldn't get enough of it. Lucasfilm's Their Finest Hour (1989) was another one, and EA's F16 Combat Pilot, from the same year... Them were the days young Harry, the Golden Age of Flight Sims :-()

WoP is good for when I feel like ducking in for a quick mish or two, but then I'll move on to something else.

I'd love it if somebody would do a really good WWI fighter sim. There are a couple out there these days but they don't get very good ratings. The old Red Baron game from Sierra/Dynamix way back in 1990 was excellent for its day, and a Win7-compatible version is actually available from GOG.com, but I couldn't bear to look at it now - a tad too primitive graphically for this day and age.

Have you ever heard of a helicopter 'sim' called Comanche?

I played the living daylight out of that tittle. It was one of my first 3D game environment experiences. Somewhere in '95 I think. Just checked; '92 PC game:

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc3zGZnI6ak#)

I played that one, and a lot, too. I think it was called Comanche versus Werewolf. At least I remember the back then revolutionary voxel graphics the devs were proud of.

It was called Comanche Maximum Overkill. There are sequels, but I don't know any of these.

It's so funny if you see the size of these pixels from back then. It's almost like minecraft :)

 :-D

 :-D

Same with early shooters like Doom. If an enemy got right up in your face it was like a confetti blizzard :-()

 :-D

Turns out you can fly home and land in some missions. When you've achieved the objectives, a message appears at the top of the screen saying "Mission Completed". It stays there for about 10 seconds, and if you do nothing, the mission will end. But another message appears along the bottom saying "Press ENTER to continue mission". If you do that before the time runs out, you can go home and land. But you only seem to get this option during the Campaign missions, that message doesn't appear in the Training or Single missions.

I must say that the way flak is depicted is very impressive. The shells burst, you can see the fragments flying, and if you're close to a burst your plane gets buffeted in a most unsettlingly realistic manner (and tends to get big holes knocked in it...) You can almost feel the shaking. I actually found myself ducking my head a few times :-()

Since WoP didn't quite slake my thirst for a good flight sim, I've been looking around to see what else is out there, and I've been getting more and more interested in one called Falcon 4 (F16).

Microprose originally released Falcon 4 way back in 1998, but it's been kept alive and progressively enhanced ever since by legions of dedicated aficionados and modders, culminating in the definitive v. 4.32 by a community team called BenchMark Sims in 2012.

Now THIS is what I call a flight simulator!

You probably won't want to watch this whole clip as it goes for over an hour - but check it out from 10:00 to 17:00 to see what you have to do just to get the plane powered up and started! The 3D cockpit is superb - if you have head-tracking software like the fanatic who made this clip does... Otherwise you use the "ordinary" cockpit views that the game comes with.

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3pmXvnc0k#)

Note that the guy is playing in full-on sim mode, you don't have to go through all that every time you want to play - you can start with the plane in the hanger like the guy does here ("ramp" start) or you can start already on the taxiway, or on the runway and ready for takeoff. There are tons of missions, and a huge array of training missions if you want to be the real deal. And if you want, it can be as hardcore as you can get - master it all and you could be just about as qualified to fly an F16 as you possibly could without actually getting into one. The game world may not be as pretty as it is in some other sims (even so, it's not half bad) but the game makes up for it in sheer depth of simulation.

that vid, at 44:44 (https://youtu.be/uU3pmXvnc0k?t=44m42s) "and.. unfortunately, my foe has just wrecked into the ground. [chuckles]"

:laugh:

Man, quite a handful. I once had a sim like that and gave up on the runway. Never touched hard core flight sims again, since  :-()

 :) Yeah, it looks like a commitment. I think it's something about the atmosphere of a sim that makes it interesting to me or not. Microprose's F15 Strike Eagle III was pretty full on, and Jane's F15 Strike Eagle some years later was even more so (every little switch and button in the cockpit could be operated), and I loved both of those. But there was another one, Digital Integration's F16 Fighting Falcon, which was no less ambitious and graphically attractive, yet it left me stone cold. There's some kind of indefinable quality to some sims that gets me in. Whether it's in the presentation, the design, the gameplay, or just the overall character of the thing, I don't know. Call it the "X Factor" :-()

 :-D

Just had to post some more screenies from WoP, it produces such awesome aerial combat scenes 8) It's such a shame this game falls short in a few critical areas as previously discussed, because it's got to be one of the best-looking combat flight games ever. I've played through a bit of the campaign and I don't like it much - it's kind of lackluster and the missions don't feel terribly authentic somehow. Sometimes you get the option to take off, sometimes you get the option to play on and land after completing the mission objectives, but you don't always get either or both of those options in every mission. I was able to play on after one mission so I flew all the way home to land, only to have the mission end when I got near the airbase, so still no landing :D Dunno what the point of that was. There was another mission in the campaign where all I had to do was fly from one waypoint to the next, with about half a dozen waypoints in all, with nothing else to do. And it wasn't like I had to do any instrument navigating, or anything remotely challenging - just fly towards the next silly yellow flag hanging in the sky. Reach the last one and the mish just ends. Dullsville...

Anyway, here's some pics:

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By the way, although most of the images I've posted are from Spitfire flights, there are lots of other plane types. I just haven't gotten around to them yet - apart from the Spit, so far I've only flown a Hawker Hurricane Mk. II, a ME 262 and a P51D Mustang. I've gone for the most famous classics first :-()

 :-D

 :-X