I probably played last back in 2006, but I started with Warbirds and 2D. I was at Oshkosh and saw the new Thrustmaster toys and thought about how far things had come. We used to hack joysticks for Hall sensors, I had this one guy cnc parts for me... now its all built in, even the toe brakes. So I dropped the money on a HOTAS Warthog set and waited for the pendulum rudder pedals to release, then ordered those. The idea was to run Lockheed's Prepare3D for some training and finally get my PPL.
My rig is a water cooled Broadwell 6 core, 32g ram, with the water cooled 1080 graphics card. I built it specifically for the Oculus about a year ago, but didn't get much use out of it. So I pulled it upstairs into my office and made it the main rig, with these new Thrustmaster toys. In the arenas I am getting about 90 fps. Its real enough to make you vomit.
I sort of just took it for granted that the game wouldn't progress. It was such a niche thing, I figured the only way it would advance was if it was bought by somebody. I checked a few times over the years but never noticed much having changed and I was then a Warcraft fiend. I can only game one thing at a time.
All I can say is just holy cow. I realize this is a combination of how VR is having an effect on gaming as a whole, but Aces High is just stunning. Crazy stunning. I would never have believed it was possible. We did this thing in WB 2D way back that was a recreation of these daylight Allied raids, and there were so many planes in the air the thing crashed half the time, the frame rate was probably 20 fps but it was so much adrenaline. I had to go the bar and drink to calm down. Having this version would have cooked the two functioning brain cells I had at the time.
Makes you wonder what happens in another 20 years.