Well, it's probably not fair to actually "critique" the sim at this early stage, without knowing what HTC thinks is "good" and what they think is just filling in space until the REAL feature is in place, but here's my impressions of the various elements...
--Flight Model: Good to very good; "Feels" like a plane--unfortunately the plane it feels like is a Cessna
Look at adding some "substance" to the planes. Roll rates "seem" right, pitch and yaw too "twitchy" IMO for 8-12000 pound aircraft. Stalls and spins are OK, but spins are too easy to escape, and too hard to enter (of course that may just be that the particular planes they're modeling were docile in spins, but I thought the Spit was somewhat dangerous to spin?)
--View System: They hit a home run with this. State-of-the-art. My only comment would be that I can "contort" my view into some positions that don't quite seem possible in RL, i.e. I can move my "head" way to the RIGHT of the headrest in the Stang and then look over my LEFT shoulder and see the whole vertical stab and left/back view. Seems like my head would have to poke through the canopy to really do that. The head adjustment might be too "liberal."
--Gunnery/Damage: Too "laser-like" so far. If you put your gunsight near the target, you get strikes. Seems like it only takes about 2 hits with the cannon for terminal damage. That might be realistic tho--I'm used to the number of hits required to down WB planes.
--Graphics: Pretty nice. The planes look good, the cockpits are decent for this stage of development. The terrain I assume is in its very early stages yet. My only complaint is the size of the planes. They seem too small, and I haven't taught myself to use the zoom feature yet. Conversely, the "dots" for the distant planes are too large and dark, without having any shape to them. Presumably they consist of a single pixel, but I'd suggest lightening the color if that's what they're stuck with.
--Icons: Don't like the chesspieces I'm afraid
Maybe some other symbols? Little flag-like things, I dunno? I REALLY don't like the 3-digit range counter that unreels so quickly you can't follow it. I'd suggest 2 digits with decimal, i.e. 3.5 for 350 yards or meters or whatever they are. Or even just a "3" with a "+" or "-" i.e. 3+ is 300-350, 3- is 250-300, and so on. You REALLY can't estimate distance that well in flight.
--Blackouts: Nice effect. Seems to come on just a bit early tho. I remember being able to pull 5-6 Gs for a loop or two without "tunneling" much (without G-suit). Overall good, but needs refining.
Overall--Good progress, I'd say, but the size of the planes and the gunnery issues are kind of limiting my ability to get into the sim much so far. I expect to have to work a bit more for the kill, and that's not the case yet. If I can get my gunsight on the guy, I can kill him.
--jedi
