🚀 go-pugleaf

Regarding the best flight simulator,

In my opinion the mostplayable/addictive has to be Chuck Yeagers Air Combat.
It seems to be done with more attention to playability related detail rather
than technical detail, and features such as the shudder when hit by bullets
and bits falling off enemies and flying through their smoke trails, when they
are hit really add to the playability. It also makes it the most similar to
those gun-camera films you see from WWII or Vietnam.  Also ground resolution 
increases when nearer the ground and makes it easier to determine
height ground visually, which is an area where Falcon3 even at high
resolution fails to do. Add to this good sounds through PC speaker ( better 
than through a SB ), good handling of missile trials and clouds and fairly
intelligent enemies ( try shaking off an ace Mig 17 or two in a Phantom ),
and scrollable views ( which beat Padlock in F3 ) and it beats F3 or F15 etc 
for playability, but could do with a better scenario editor.
Most flight sims I have seen have a number of faults which really spoil 
gameplay, these are :-
	a ) Enemies die at set number of hits, ie 4 in F29 (demo at least) and
	    1 in F15 or F19 ( in these you just need to be in the same country
	    when you fire your guns and you will hit )
        b ) Easy acquisition of targets, ie F15/19 targets more or less wave
	    their arms around, your camera spots them, they are dead.
        c ) Poor ground resolution, in most sims it is very difficult to 
	    figure how high you are from looking at the ground, as detail
	    does not increase as it should the nearer you get.
        d ) Poor enemy logic, individual enemies floating around and waiting
	    to be picked off one-by-one.
        e ) Unrealistic aero-dynamics, in one flight sim your ceiling was
	    65000ft, when you got there you could still fly up but it didn't
	    increase your altitude, but when you came down it registered 
	    immediately.

Having played F3 for a number of weeks now, I conclude that it is better than
most, but poor/slow screen updates ( even on 25MHz 386 ), bad ground
resolution, a number of obvious bugs ( would someone care to post a canonical
list ) even in 3.0D, and only limited implementation of what would be otherwise
revolutionary features ( ie wingman comms, tho the wingman are so brain dead
anyway they wouldn't understand polysyllables ) has spoiled it. 

Oops, I seem to have overrun a little, just my opinions.

Phil,

ps. Did I mention ground resolution ? :)

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