Article Type: Review
Article Date: October 26, 2009
Written by: Aaron "Spectre" Watson

Product Info

Rise of Flight Review

Well, it's been a long time since I rock and rolled!

I do hope that a certain Led Zeppelin song is roiling round your internal MP3 player, as was the intent, but it's true. I took a bit of a hiatus from writing on this fine site for a couple of year stint with Flight Journal magazine doing a column called "Virtual Pilot."

Alas, the dearth of combat simulations that turned this once happening site into a more sedate one has also dried up the material needed to keep the bi-monthly column afloat.

Luckily, there are some folks out there with programming skills, and the vision of a re-awakening the flight sim genre. At least, in this instance, the canvas covered, light machinegun festooned aircraft of the First World War. A bunch called neoqb from over in Russia, formerly known as Gennadich/d-Strict, have been plugging away for some years on a title they have named Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War.

It was released back in May for folks in the Russian marketplace, then in June for North America, and July in Europe. They have been working on enhancements in the last few months, and recently offered me a download version, 1.007 for review. Having not flown any wood and wires sims since Thirdwire's First Eagles back in `06, and excluding an abortive attempt at an add-on for MS Combat Flight Sim 3 called Over Flanders Fields. Abortive only due to the base sim, as it was a 2002 release, and had issues of its own.

But this is not a review on either of these simulations; it is for a brand-new 2009 item with an impressive list of features. Though I had heard words on the title, some unkind, I looked forward to downloading, installing, and firing it up!

Install and Docs

I let the 2.7 GB download cook overnight, and had the DVD image ready to go in the morning. Setup allowed changing of location, icon location, and start menu customization, which I always take as a good sign. Follow-up installations included DirectX and DotNet 3.5 SP1, if required. All the ducks in a row, I fired it up, and was greeted with an online registration form. It seems that a connection to the internet is required, even for off-line play, at the start of every session. Intrusive, yes. Understandable? Also a yes, due to the proliferation of piracy anymore. As long as the servers are always available. I have heard of instances where they have not been.

After I installed to a directory on a drive of my choosing, it was time to fire it up!

A cursory glance through the 36 page manual in PDF format yields some very fine historical information, and how to get registered on line, but little in the way of simulation mechanics, keystrokes and the like. What the hey, it's stick and rudder, let's take it up for a spin!

Museum/Menu showing your training ride, the Spad 13.

Register on-line, create a persona, and check out the interior of a museum with canvas covered crates of the era being rotated to your view. Cool. Menu at the bottom, and the first one I glommed onto was training.

Training

Yeah, buddy! I love it when combat sims have training areas, for the first time flights to learn the system, and later, if or when I return to it as a refresher flight or few.

Submerged hoops in river training.

Basic stuff to start out with, done in a similar fashion to Microsoft's Flight Simulator X (10), as there are green rings in the sky to center punch and "gates" as instructed. Starting with flight handling (with an air start), takeoff/landing, advanced maneuvers, and balloon busting, one must pass each to advance to the next. Just checking out the beautiful scenery, low and slow, as that is how these crates go. Finally, on flight 5, I get to implement the weapons at some opposition that is armed as well. First up, mud-moving, my specialty.

The plan is to pop a car and truck spotted headed to the rear from the front with guns, then lob a pair of 20 pound bombs onto some advancing tanks.

Take off, get a bit of altitude, as suggested by Eddie Rickenbacher in the pre-flight brief, then take a run on them, twin .30's blazing. Whoa, the front end yaws 3-5 degrees but the smoke trails mark the descent into the 2 vehicle column, pulling out perilously low to find the pair tooling along without a care in the world. What? It takes 3 passes to get even one.

Post flight explanation my Eddie Rickenbacher.

Did the armorer inadvertently load me up with .177 caliber BB's? 2 passes later, gets the other vehicle blazing. Ouch. Off to do in the tanks with bigger "guns." Get a good, steep angle, and let loose of a single, you can do pairs, and see a fine detonation within 0 feet or so. With no aiming device, I thought that was quite good, and I can't put a laser guided package on the front end. 2nd pass was worse, and I'm in for a fail. I re-flew the mission time and time again, no soap.

On the third re-fly, I adjusted the loadout to unlimited. I finally popped the puppy via multiple really near misses, and started to head home. Cutscene, fail again, not inside the 30 minutes allotted. Unlimited, pairs, and little learning I got from so much practice, and finally, completed.

Air to air was actually worse. After Eddie explains Boelke's Dicta, sure enough your first opponent comes out of the sun from behind, with plenty of smash from the altitude and speed advantage, but I quickly found out he also had a sniper rifle. OK, maybe not, but it seemed that way, as my vision went to this odd red hued tunnel-vision looking thing. I paused, looked at my airframe, not a scratch. He go a hit, right to my pilot's body, from a 30-40 degree angle off. Great. A few more attempts had more amazing PK's, with angles that seemed to defy physics. Maybe the mere sound of those German made guns cause internal eye hemorrhaging?

As seen on inset, round collapses my kite as enemy plane faces away.

I tried another built in "cheat," invulnerable to weapons, now I'll get the 3 needed to pass! No sir. Impervious is for ALL aircraft. No help there.

Well, maybe I'll go practice up in the missions area.

Missions area

There are many included for each aircraft type. Patrols, historical, free flight, the gamut. As I had already gotten a feel for the Spad 13.C1, I tried a couple of its combat related missions, waited through the exceedingly lengthy load time, and met up with the guys with the lasers I tangled with in training. Lasers and rocket assisted turn maneuvers, as they were able to come from a right wing down attitude, swing around to their left, and turn inside me for the head shot.

Frustration set in after a mission or 3 of this abuse. I contemplated giving it up and whining to the publisher of this fine site that I was not good enough. But I found a little extra time one morning, and decided to give it one last go in the;

Campaign

I have seen other sims where the campaign system had some different parameters, and, to be honest, this has always been my favorite mode of combat simming since WAY back. Crank through the setup screens, decide on an SA-5, as I created a cool Patriots skin for it, and off I go. Contact, ignition, spin, flop, flop, nothing. Switch off, back on, same thing. Rummage through the handy HTML page produced from the settings screen, and see a mixture key combo. Why wasn't this in training? Plus up the mix, Va-room! The inline engine lights off, and I rumble across the bumpy ground in pursuit of my wingies, some mile or 3 ahead. As a noob, I am number 5 in a flight of the same number.

We drone along at 500 meters, and I have autopilot on to stay with the formation. Cheating? Maybe, but Manfred Von Richtofen didn't have to answer a ringing phone while flying to the front, now did he? Once over the front, we spot the convoy, and make a run. On ingress, I spy a few spots on the horizon, fighters! Better get rid of the extra 80 pounds of weight.

Perfectly lined up, I do about a release about 1 per second. Nice line up on impact, about 10 feet to the left of the road. Total misses. Great, but no time to sweat it, as the baddies are inbound. I find one in my sights, and loose a 3-second burst. What is this? I see flame, he's going down! I get my first kill, but no time to celebrate, there are more around.

Dipping, diving, turning, with a brief shot here and there. Getting lower, but near the friendly side, luckily, as a few rounds catch me in the six. No red screen, but a quick look shows wing damage, and the engine is sputtering. Sweaty landing on the friendly side, and I'm out of it. The debrief confirms, I actually got a shoot-down.

The first kill is the sweetest!

The giddiness I had upon seeing the beauty of this sim in the familiarization flights, starts to rally back, especially when I go a second time and bag a pair, and brought it home!

Then I hit a wall. The next three attempts resulted in red tunnel vision, folder wings, and divots in the dirt. It is hard to tell if there are awards, or anything, when pushing up daisies, no?

I did do a little research, and it seems that this oddity was re-introduced with the 1.007 patch, as it had been seen earlier, and there is no way to rollback to an earlier version, as things are always checked online every time, even if you are flying off-line. I got an error during one of the debriefings that it could not find the server, which it could in the beginning, else it would not have let me in, so gave me gibberish for a debrief. With another attempt or two, I skulked in behind a pair of Fokkers trying to sneak up on a three-shipper of Neiuport-28s, and bagged them both with what felt like a half a ton of lead. Yee-haw! that should make me an ace! Time to scamper home to the fanfare and hoopla!

Landing was uneventful, even with my three remaining wingmen, and a pair of N-28's all coming in. Champagne, recognition at all? Nope, just the number 5 next to the number of shoot-downs. Harrumph!

Let's move along to some things that are really done well, as opposed to the issues above.

Graphics

You have got to figure that in a sim dedicated to low and slow pioneering combat aircraft, the low level views would have to be good to help with that old simulation bug-a-boo, suspension of disbelief. This one has it knocked, in spades, with acceptable frame-rates with a minimum spec system. Just peering around at your wingmen while in formation is a treat. When over the front, which was historically pock-marked, it looks like that, and even has ruins of villages caught in the artillery fire. Trenches, actively firing arty detonating and kicking up dust clouds, even dust suspended in the air from the shelling! Yeah, the environment looks awfully darned close to an imagined "real." Those old, grainy black and white photos have come to life, and it is exhilarating.

The trenches, pockmarked front, with dust suspended above.

Environmental Effects

As mentioned previously, the dust hanging over the battlefield looks good, as do the puffy clouds on lightly overcast days. The water has a believable reflection and translucency. I have yet to get a mission on a stormy day, nor night operations, as these old wired-up wonders had low tolerance to weather, I believe. Night missions would also be rare, except on full mooned, cloudless nights. No night vision goggles or radars present in this timeline.

Overall, it is in keeping with the overall graphics, which are just short of masterful.

Sound

Another addition to the simulated environment, the sounds found are also in keeping. Different aircraft have different engine sounds, and don't have any annoying clicks, buzz, or differing sound levels. Low cyclic-rate guns of the day sound convincing, and AAA fire has that scare you silly, hollow booming with airborne smudges to complement. Someone spent some time on getting the sounds tight and consistent. Excellent job here as well.

Now that some well deserved kudos have been passed, let us look at another touchy subject with the user base—multiplayer.

Multiplayer

I took a look around here for some variety, as I've never been really big on multiplayer, but it can be fun to take a romp with some friends and talk a little smack. But this is a problem area. In a word or two, no dogfights. You can fly coops with folks, from a saved mission, and carry on together. That can be OK, but if you lag and get bumped, you can't re-spawn and carry on. If you mess up your take-off, and crash, same. You can tag along and watch the others, but playing online is an interactive sport, isn't it? I tried to join a few MP games, that still showed the lobby was open, though there were 0 of 20 or so slots available, and got a "10017, file transfer error."

Just jumping onto a buddy's server and firing streaks of death at them in a free for all environment is just right out.

I am told they are working on it, so we shall see.

AI

We've touched on this, and it is a serious fail in its current condition. In any other game, it would be as simple as backing out the last patch, or, in a worst case scenario, nuking the install, starting anew, and only patch up to the last version you feel good with. In this one, you cannot. It is their way or the highway. You can't even start it unless the server says it is OK.

This causes me to drag out my soap-box.

Early on in this article, I took the premise that being nanny-stated to the server was understandable, as some may opine that piracy was a main contributor to the demise of flight simming in general, and combat related ones in particular. I, personally, rather doubt it. I think it just got easier for software houses to punch out another first-person shooter, with just the slightest differences, and call it good. That way there is less dealing with folks who are into history, and who just plain like to nitpick on occasion.

We have seen three points of fail for this particular method. 1. It won't start if Big Brother the server doesn't say it is OK. 2. Debriefs are utter gibberish if the server fails on the back end of the mission. 3. You cannot fly the version you are most comfortable with, as it has to be what is currently dictated by BBtS.

Let me just punt this soap-box into a corner now and we'll press on with discussing comms.

Comms

Another cool innovation was introduced here. Not with the multiplayer aspect, but with how the flight lead communicates with others in the flight. There are six pilot gestures, and ten flight lead commands that are dealt with via hand signals. Even as a mere wingman, you can make the signals, it is just that no one will follow them in your flight. Unless, of course, you're lead due to everyone else of higher rank getting shot down. This hasn't happened for me yet in campaign, but I have seen the gyrations, and in single missions, they do seem to obey.

As to the built-in comms, there are none that I could find. But I was unable to create a connection, so cannot tell, though I saw nothing under settings.

But let us step away for the basics of early fighter comms, and look at something with modern computer complexities, the mission builder.

Mission Builder

If you wander through the install directory, you will find a folder called bin_editor. There is an executable file therein called ROFEditor.exe, which takes almost as long to load up as the game does, once committed. This is, more than likely, as the two are reading the same files. I won't even say that I got very far with it, as I need a game that grabs me before I attempt to decipher the myriad of options available. It does look very thorough, with its triggers and all, but definitely not a quick mission builder, by any stretch.

There are quite a few areas to tweak with in the editor.

As it takes what looks like a programming degree to create something of your own here, let us take a peek at what others have to offer to build on the base.

Expandability

This is one for personal tastes. The original has 4 flyable aircraft. Since then, more aircraft have been offered for sale via download, at what is, to most, a nominal fee. I have not followed the history of this sim, but am aware that some patches have added flyable aircraft as well—for free. They were, if I've read it right, already in the games, they just needed cockpits and code to be made flyable. If you were to buy the 10 proffered aircraft, it would cost you $76.20 US, on top of the original $40 laid down, for over $100.00 for the ability to fly all the aircraft. Again, a personal taste thing.

Small items have come out from the community, like paint jobs, known as skins, a quick mission program, and the start of a new campaign.

Custom skin customized further with Patriots logos.

If I were to put on my prognosticator hat, I think there is going to be some good stuff going on for this simulation, it just may be a while. I'd love to see some jets in this environment, but I'm a jet junkie!

Conclusion

So, we seem to have a mixed bag here. On the one hand, some things are done brilliantly. RoF is graphically gorgeous, has cool new comms, with excellent sound and the environment to really suspend the disbelief.

However, the drawbacks are big ones. Asking permission to use a program you purchased, having the bad guys with a seriously superior set of synthetic skills, and no way to duke it out with non-AI's in an all-out brawl, just is a bunch of real detriments.

It is an excellent flight simulation, but much less than that in the combat aspects of the program. With the basis being so great, with a little more labor, this could truly be brilliant.

Rating

3 of 5 stars, with the potential to leap to 5, but only time will tell.

Review System Specs

You know that it is time to upgrade when your system specs exactly match, with nVidia and AMD flavorings, the minimum specs, which are…

• Operating System: Windows® XP / Vista
• CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz
• RAM: 2 Gb
• Free Hard Drive space: 6 Gb
• Joystick: Direct X 9.0 compatible joystick
• Internet Connection: 256 Kb/s (required)
• Graphics Card: 512 Mb GeForce 8800GT/Radeon HD3500
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible