Aces High Flight School on a LAN?

[eskimo2]

Hello, My name is eskimo and I used to be an AH junkie.  You may not know me but I flew Warbirds for years and then Aces High from day one until maybe three years ago.  I’ve switched boards to FW a year or two ago along with many of the other offensive people. 

Anyway, here’s my question - situation:
I teach computers at a K-8 Catholic school.  I’ve run many clubs over the years: newspaper, yearbook, photo, film, animation, and this year I’m co-coaching a rocket club and want to start a flight sim club.  When I surveyed my upper grade students of potential clubs, flight sim club got the most votes.  The PCs in my lab are Vista HPs with 1 GB of ram; I know that sucks but it will run AH reasonably well.  At default settings the frame rate runs in the teens.  My CH joystick, throttle and rudders worked fine without any set-up other than calibration; I’m hoping other brands and models will also work fine since students will be bringing in whatever they have or buy.  I’ve asked some to bring theirs in to test out compatibility.

I think I can do plenty offline; I want to teach the basic principles of flight and get the kids flying, taking off, landing, carriers, etc.  If they do well we could move onto gunnery and possibly formation flying and ACM.  If we would do formation flying and ACM could we run it directly on our server or are there other options?  Again, I think we can do plenty offline, but it would be nice to have a way to connect. 

Also, I haven’t played AH in years.  I see in the forum there is now an Offline Missions forum.  Does that mean that offline drone can now do more than fly around in circles until they have been completely destroyed?  What could offline missions do for us should we get to that point/ability?

Finally, do you have any other random advice?  Does anyone have a “flight sim flight school” set/order of training or???

(I’m sure this is in the wrong forum.  I spent 5-10 minutes reading all of the forum descriptions and couldn’t figure out where it best belongs.  Sorry, go ahead and move it - I hope I can find it?)

Thanks,
eskimo

[WMLute]

Somebody dig up the thread of the boy scouts that was in Help/Training @ a month or two ago.

Guy did a LAN with a bunch o' scouts and had a blast doing it.

Sounds similar to what you are wanting to do.

[Golfer]

Good to see you poking your head back in here eskimo!


Good luck with the project!

[Traveler]

Finally, do you have any other random advice?  Does anyone have a “flight sim flight school” set/order of training or???

I am an FAA Certified Flight Instructor  and I know as a teacher you  understand the importance of following a Teaching Plan.  Which is an important document used in today’s flight training environment. 

Teaching plans that I follow and use start out with an interdiction to the  aircraft, and an interdiction to Preflight Planning, Preflight inspection, Cabin/cockpit entry check, Normal procedures for  Pre-start Check, After Start Check, Pre taxi and taxi check.  There are additional detailed teaching plans for each of these areas of operation.

Each flight lesson also has a ground lesson portion.  Actual flight training in the aircraft also follow a detailed teaching plans and are detailed for each hour of flight .

[ColTomb]

bbosen is training Boy Scouts in the art of AH. Check out his link http://www.techvideoreview.com/FlightSimMovies/AcesHigh/Training/AcesHighTrainingByPeabodyPage01Full.htm..Some great info there.

[ColTomb]

Oh ya .. Check out Skuzzys tips for a lean mean Vista machine in Technical support..

[Warspawn]

Teaching plans that I follow and use start out with an interdiction to the  aircraft, and an interdiction to Preflight Planning,

Hehe...you've been playing too many combat flight sims.  In my CFI class, especially the FOI part, we started out with introductions, not interdictions, lol!

Good luck with the class, it's going to be a blast if you get folks interested and playing it.  Teaching history, some aerodynamics, teamwork...good stuff!

[EskimoJoe]

Good luck with the class, and don't screw up this Eskimo's good-ish rep, okay?  



(Palmer)

[thndregg]

Good luck with the class, and don't screw up this Eskimo's good-ish rep, okay?  



(Palmer)

Off topic a bit. Whereabouts in Palmer are you? I used to live just east of the high school, about a 10 minute walk from it.

[Anaxogoras]

So far as I know, you cannot network AH over a LAN.  The older versions of the game only allowed for H2H.  Maybe give Il-2 1946 a try?

[captain1ma]

if you're interested in networking machines, try microsoft combat flight simulator 1, 2 or 3. if your teaching flight, i hear MS flight simulator is also pretty close.

[dkff49]

So far as I know, you cannot network AH over a LAN.  The older versions of the game only allowed for H2H.  Maybe give Il-2 1946 a try?

The older versions allowed for LAN as well. I used to let my daughter blow me up with tanks all the time on LAN.

Also, I haven’t played AH in years.  I see in the forum there is now an Offline Missions forum.  Does that mean that offline drone can now do more than fly around in circles until they have been completely destroyed?  What could offline missions do for us should we get to that point/ability?

To answer you r question above, yes there are several offline missions out there and they do fight back (not very well but yes). There is still the ones that fly circles over the airfields but once in the offline you can choose a mission and fly against AI.

[eskimo2]

Thanks everyone, all of this should help.

We have no money so we can't buy any boxed sims.  Also, even though it's been years since I've flown, I still know AH better than any other sim and don't have the time to learn a new one.  AH has accurate flight performance, works well on a marginal machine, doesn't take up much space, is free, etc.  We will be fine offline; there's plenty to learn.  

BTW EskimoJoe, I was born and raised in AK and lived there for 29 years.  My parents and one brother live in Wasilla; we visited them this summer.  I founded Gorilla Fireworks; you may have heard of it?
Here's my photoblog from this summer:
http://hallbuzz.com/blog/jul_09b.htm

http://hallbuzz.com/blog/jul_09a.htm