On the strength of this thread, I decided it was time to DL AH2 and try it out. I'm not usually into beta testing. Morpheus, I think the answer to your original question about why there are fewer people in AH2 beta than you might expect is that folks will always go where the crowd is - the MA.
When I started AH2, I found that the colours looked a lot better on my (iiyama VM Pro 454/Radeon 9600 series) monitor. The instruments looked much clearer. I quickly realised that I need to set up all my stick/view/keyboard settings, so I am going to copy across my settings folder from AH1 and also my Mitsu sound set from there. If there are problems I can always change back.
I upped a 109F4. It flew just fine. I didn't really notice a huge amount of flight model difference, but I wasn't stretching it and just wanted to see if things worked. I don't fly the gamey moves anyway. Gunnery? I would never fire much less than 200 yards anyway, in any 109. Hehe, even after I'd knocked off the horizontal stabs of the drone it still flew. So then I did a rolling scissors with it (all seemed fine) and shot a wing off - still it flew on!
Not enough time for a full evaluation of the flight model, but if our friend Toad says it's all right, and he's flown lots of aerobatics in small types, then that's a good testimonial.
Been thinking about the development of AH1 through AH2. It's always been my hunch that with flat rate subscription, the game might need to be dumbed down so that noobs could get results from Day1. When I started WB, for the first week I was
convinced I was firing blanks, and had to work at it. Took about a week to get my first kill. But a lot of people want instant results and don't want to have to work at anything, and might go to another game if they couldn't get instant results. So the planes came with training wheels and had the "helicopter mode" option. The 800 yard shots always seemed like a noob concession, especially as they seem to be used on planes which would attract noobs - planes like N1K and Spit V. Think of it - you bounce a Spit V, and he makes a 6G yank&bank turn to the left. You can't turn with it, so you abort and zoom up, whereupon the Spit makes a second yank&bank turn to the right to line up a shot, pulls the nose up 45° to semi-helciopter mode, and sprays from there to get the kill at 600-800 yards. The other one is the N1K S&P helicopter. Enters helicopter mode when cornered and sprays upwards! 30mm on a N1K? Dunno - never ever flew one.
So now the subscribership is established with well over 4000 active subscriptions. No need to attract more noobs with the 800yd shot and flight model dumb-down. The training wheels are coming off! And the day cannot come a moment too soon.
It's going to be interesting to see how plane usage changes. Perhaps the SpitV and N1K will be much less popular. The LA7 too. There are only two things I look forward to more than AH2 itself: Seeing how the rankings change and reading all the whines!
