Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Paxil on October 07, 1999, 11:32:00 AM
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This thing is a beta? Wow... very solid so far. Terrain is cool, love the canyons, I can see many furballs slashing though (and into) those walls. I think the flight model is already more realistic than um... some other online flight sims. Seems a bit slugish at times until you get some energy built up, but that is how it should be. When taking off and seeing an enemy swoop in I feel like I'm stuck with my pants down. I personally don't like the stall sound. Views are nice. Love being able to adjust head position, and then save them. This simulation when finished, will be the best thing out there. I already cancelled my account with another online sim.
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It has potential. The vieweing system is plain phenomenal, but i would like a 'quick panel view button'. The question is wether it will anything *more* than a "different" WB.
I am a bit surprised that the FM is not better than it is (bouncing in yaw and pitch, porked inverse stall characteristics etc). I know it is a beta, but they got several years of experience, and punching in the correct values should not be that difficult if the FM is based on physics. I understand it is just a matter of tuning, but nevertheless.
Bod
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Yeah, its very rough around the edges and even in the middle its got some weak spots. Truth is AH is on a very strong and powerful foundation. Thats its greatest asset. I look for this thing to really mature over the next three to five months. Within a year it should be outstanding by any comparrison
(and a year passes by pretty quick Ive noticed).
Now about that P51 headrest ;^)
Yeager
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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 (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/wink.gif) 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 (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/wink.gif) 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