Yes .. big <> to the Birds of Prey and Octavious for participating in our little party.
Got multiple screen freezes for about the first 10 minutes or so. If feels like we are getting some sort of update from the server for planes that are within a certain distance from you.
Most planes that participated were 109s, Spits, P51s (D and B), 110s, and Hurricanes. It seemed like once all the updates were received, the freezes stopped. I would presume that if another plane outside of the batch that we came up against, came into the area, another freeze would be in order.
The real ***** about the freezes it that it might happen on the merge, so for 2 seconds, you have no clue as to where the target went. Then, after the un-freeze, if you were in a good dogfight, and another/different plane came into the area, another freeze took place. Not much fun when entangled in a viscious dogfight and you are on the downside of a loop.
One thing I learned, dogfighting as we know it will have to change in a BIG way with this new Flight Model.
I was fighting Spit v Spit and at about 2K the Spit went vertical, with very little E, and tried to roll over on the top and immediated was snapped into a stall that he could not recover from ... I have never seen a Spit not recover from a stall at that altitude.
I had another fight, Spit v Hurricane. We got down low and slow, and I managed to get around on his 5 oclock. As he pulls right, I begin to follow and I can see him drop a notch of flaps in the turn ... immediate snap roll stall ... into the ground. Probably not a problem in AH I, but detrimental to you health in AH II.
You know how you can come slow and lazily flying on final, not directly lined up with the runway, and turn into the runway at the last second and drop in smoothly. Not anymore ... the handling at low speeds in this type of situation gives you the feel of sloppiness (or inertia) that is not so easy to recover from.
I landed my Spit and wasn't paying attention with my rudder ... it started to tail loop like an F4U ... I recovered, but during the recovery, one of my wing tips hit the concrete tarmac ... I heard the sound of screeching metal against concrete ... was cool.
All in all ... we had a great time and once we spent some time in the Arena, we wished that there were more people in there to continue the experience.
Great job HT and HTC !!!
