aces-high

Page 2

Spitfire Mk IX demonstrating the movement of the control surfaces

Each aircraft has a 3D virtual cockpit, and multiple panning options are player selectable with either snap, pan, or instant view switching is available. Each cockpit has the gauges you would expect - altitude, airspeed, vertical speed indicator, trim settings, fuel gauges, various engine gauges, ect. From our observations, these gauges are all functioning correctly in each of the aircraft.

The flight modeling is very aircraft specific, with each planes strengths and weaknesses being evident. Example: The Fw-190 has an incredible roll rate, but suffers from a high stall speed and poor turning performance. These specific strengths/weaknesses are done sufficiently well enough that if you don't adhere to each aircraft's rules, you probably will be going down in flames. Aircraft such as the P-51 and FW-190 are best suited to zoom and boom tactics, while the N1K2 and Spitfire are at their best in a turning fight. The two bombers presently available are probably the best flyable bomber models available in any simulation to date. Each position and turret is modeled in the B-17 and B-26, and flying these bombers with a friend acting as gunner is a real kick. The Norden bombsite is also included in both bombers, and level bombing using this site is quite a bit of fun, particularly when bombing with a large group of friendly bombers.

An excellent example of the lengths that HTC was gone to in order to ensure the accuracy of the flight modeling is an answer to a question we observed while flying on-line. A player asked one of the HTC guys who was flying if adding 20mm gondola's under the Bf-109's wing affected the roll rate. The HTC pilot quickly answered back that the roll rate itself was not affected, but the acceleration of the roll was, and then went on to explain this in layman's terms. You can still roll as fast, but it takes longer to reach maximum roll rate. This attention to detail is obvious not just in the flight modeling, but in the rest of the sim as well.

Graphics

As we mentioned before, AH boasts some pretty high resolutions options, and the terrain and aircraft models look very nice on both our celeron 500 with TNT2 Ultra and p3 800 with GeForce DDR test systems. We are running the game in 1280 x 1024 x 32 bit on both machines, and the framerates are more than acceptable. In the internal cockpit view, the c500 system runs at 25-30 fps typically, while the p3 800 averages 50 or higher. At no time have we felt our systems being taxed, and considering how good this game looks, this is most impressive. One poor soul in our office is forced to play AH on his p200 w/Voodoo2 card. At 1024x768x16 he gets 20 FPS with the detail level set in the medium range.

Click "Next Page" button below banner to proceed . . .