Looks like IL2 WWI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbMl6Fh23Kw
Yeah, it also kind of feels like flying in IL2 as well. The graphics are amazing and run great on my machine with graphic settings set to high. The flight model at least to me, is very easy and feels 'arcade' like. I thought I was going to spend some time getting used to the flight model but my first flight, I was flying that thing like I fly the P-38. Flying in Rise of Flight is far easier than flying in AH.
The only real issue I have with the game is the view system, it just plain sucks if you don't have TrackIR. Those with TrackIR will be at a significant advantage over others without it. The snap view system is worthless and padlock is almost just as worthless. It really does make it difficult to keep an eye on the bogie and your surroundings, caused me to crash into a barn because the forward snap view wouldn't center properly.
One of the coolest things I've seen so far was when I hit a barn and crashed. With my Spad just lying in pieces at the foot of the barn, I stepped away from the computer for a smoke. About a few minutes afterwards, I heard a loud crack and a thump coming from the game. So I checked it out and when I was away from the computer, the tail section of my wrecked Spad had broken off. I kept watching and after a few more minutes, I started to see smoke from the wreckage and the smoke got thicker and then finally flames started to emerge and within a few minutes after that, my wreckage was totally engulfed in flames. Thought that was a really cool eye candy feature.
One other thing that some may find hard at first is the gunnery. You think nose bounce is bad in AH, it's twenty times worse in RoF. I can only manage to fire very short bursts (no more than a single 1 second press) before the nose will start to bounce up. Makes it difficult to keep the nose tracked on the bogie for substained bursts. Unless you score a pilot kill, small bursts is just not enough to take a plane down, you really do need to put some lead into it to bring it down.
The DRM the game uses is a little draconian in the sense that you have to be online to play, even the single player missions/campaign. My only gripe with it is if the servers go down for any reason or worst case scenario, the developers go under. The developers do have a plan in place if they do go under (they'll release a final patch to remove the DRM) but sadly, no plan for temporary server outages.
The game also features a rather robust mission editor that I was playing around with and I expect a lot of good missions being created by the RoF community. Don't know if planes can be skinned but I expect if they aren't currently, there will be an upcoming update that will allow it.
A couple of more things. Controllers. They are a kind of a pain in the bellybutton to set up properly. The throttle is inverted (up close throttle, down full throttle) by default and have to go into the input map config file to change it. I found that the rudders were also inverted and had to change them in the config file as well. It's really easy to change them, just open the input map file and look for the line that shows the bindings for the joystick throttle control and change the "P" to "N", save file and play. Another issue was setting the screen resolution. In the settings section, (at least for me) I didn't see any options to select my screen resolution, the drop down menu was blank. I had to go into the startup config file and manually set my resolution to 1440x900. In the settings, you'll see an option for Full Screen. Make sure that is unchecked, otherwise the game will crash every time you start it up.
Despite some technical issues, somewhat easy flight model and crappy view system, the game is fun. If you've been looking to scratch that WW1 itch and loved games like Red Baron and Flying Corps, get this game. The issues are minor and can be worked around and hopefully most will be resolved through a patch.
ack-ack
