The good, the bad, and the ugly…
I flew 1.995 on-line over the weekend for a couple of hours. Overall impression is that I like what I see so far. Terrain and sky effects are much more realistic, and the “in-flight” flight model is an improvement. Edge-of-flight-envelop handling was very immersive. Tracers are cool, and the new terrain offers great air-land battle potential. It requires more realistic tactics and opportunities for ambush. For instance, I was hunting an enemy tank, and was forced to stop in-cover and turn off the engine in order to get a sound fix on the enemy.
Problems noted:
1) Sound Source – When in a GV and trying to locate a sound source, I can tell the radial but not the bearing. In other words, the sound level is the same if I’m looking directly towards or directly away from the sound source. A minor issue at best.
2) Zoom – Lack of zoom makes GV-GV battles up-close and personal affairs. The only way I killed a guy was to dash right for his GV and hit him point blank as I passed him broadside. I experienced the same problem with zoom, in that hitting “Z” then zoom-in/zoom-out caused white block to appear/disappear in terrain at the horizon and periphery of my view, but no change in magnification.
3) Are there hit-sprites? Because I can't see them when shooting air-to-air.
4) Flicking Terrain – When in a GV, moving my view or my GV resulting in the terrain flickering. I tried selecting/deselecting all video options and resolutions (btw, 16-bit color causes screen to go completely white), but nothing seemed to help.
5) Ground handling – Yes, I know people are divided on this. I have flown real airplanes, though nothing with this much horsepower, and there is a problem here. While the Spit-IX is certainly the worst, all the a/c I tried showed a marked tendency – nay, a downright eagerness – to begin oscillating left and right with the most gentle rudder input until the plane crashes. No, I’m not trying to do it with throttle fire-walled. Once the oscillation begins, there is no stopping it. The only way I’ve managed to take off consistently is through the judicious use of toe-brakes until the tail wheel lifts. This works well for everything but the 109G-10, which has sooooo much pull to the left that full right braking is not sufficient alone to keep it tracking down the runway. With the 109, I have to risk a bit of right rudder to assist the brakes. It should be the other way around, with a bit of braking to assist rudder steering. Landings are equally difficult, again requiring that I use constant taps of the rudders to keep from fatally ground-looping the plane the moment it touches down (with throttle chopped, I might add). In fairness, I don’t think this is a flight model issue per se, but rather a control input issue. The delay between rudder input and visual feedback may be causing this oscillation problem.
For all those who say, “Learn to fly!” in response to complaints about this, please consider this. Many pilots who sat in these a/c for the first time and took off had a hundred hours or less of total flight time in training a/c. By contrast, I have several thousand virtual flight hours, as well as some real stick time. They were given an orientation by the instructor, usually with him sitting on the wing, then told to “taker her around a couple times.” If the real a/c were truly this squirrelly on take off and landing as the AHII model suggests, only 1 out of 10 would survive their first flight.
That's it for now. Over all, I'm enjoying the beta. I've had some real white-knuckle, sweat-drenched fights.
