My take on latest WB3 Build.

[jihad]

It's come along way from the first build.

The 3D cockpits are pretty good, the external view of the planes are just...ugly and *odd* in appearance, HTC wins hands down in 3D models and skins.

Theres no longer a 180 Linda Blair view and I like the way the head rotates naturally shoulder to shoulder when switching views <IMO just a bit slower would be perfect> and G forces affect rotation speed during hard manuevers.

 I would love to see this in Aces High as it makes a big difference in fights and immersion. <steal it HT>  

The FM feels ......lethargic - and sense of speed in flight is poor compared to AH.

Control lag *sucks*, this really screws up the game, I don't recall the last version I played being so porked in this regard.

Framerates are good and the engine is very nice although they could use some better ground textures.

I had a crash to desktop that porked my D3D drivers and forced a reboot to use any 3D application - not acceptable.

Weapon lethality is terrible, you have to really put it to someone to ensure a kill and the hit sprites are a bit overdone and funky looking to me.

Online play: *&$%#@! awful warping, planes hop all over the sky and it becomes frustrating real quick.

We're spoiled in AH, <S> HTC and Skuzzy.

iEN will never be a serious contender until they can compare to AH in good connections.

[715]

I'd agree with your comments except I wouldn't say the 3D plane models and skins are quite that bad.  The skins do have something about them that doesn't look quite right- the planes look a bit like the paintings in Squadron Books, i.e. an illustration rather than a photo.  However, I like the fact that the models have more polygons (and that WBIII uses hardware accelerated transform and lighting to maintain high FPS despite higher polygon count).

The control lag is a major, major pain however and leads to overshoot and pilot induced oscillations.

BTW: if you use snap to view mode the Linda Blair direct 6 view is still there.  It's only gone when you use pan to view mode.

715

[Kieran]

It crashed the second I loaded up. I used to play the earlier build, but the latest will not run on my system at all.