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From: com259h@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Best Flight Simulator
Message-ID: <1991Jan26.105125.86224@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 25 Jan 91 23:51:25 GMT
References: <11803@ur-cc.UUCP>
Lines: 73

In article <11803@ur-cc.UUCP>, jea@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Joanne Albano) writes:
> I would like the learned opinion of net nacks--
> What is the best flight simulator? Which one is
> most realistic? Do any reside on a hard disk and
> cooperate (multitask) with AMIGA DOS? Do any have
> minimal copyprotection???

        The British magazine Amiga Format did a mini comparison of several
flight sims in their November '90 issue. The reviewer was Adrian Streeter,
Squadron  Leader, Number One Squadron, Royal Air Force (Britain).

Here's a brief summary of his comments.

Flight Simulator II: realistic flight. "Well done!". Needs analogue yoke for
                     best control.

Falcon:              "excellant mix of realism and playability". Best manual
                     of all combat sims.

F-16 Combat Pilot:   "Best combination of realism and playability and no
                     flight sim enthusiast should be without it".

F-18 Interceptor:    "still one of the best","great fun to fly","bags of
                     'feel' and handles like a dream".

Bomber:              "If this had been my first taste of a flight sim I
                     would have reformatted the disks"  Wide variety of
                     aircraft to try out.

F-29  Retaliator:    "Nice graphics", suffers from bugs and a poor manual.

        In the same issue they had larger reviews of the  following.

F-19 Stealth Fighter: "state of the art sim." given a 91% rating judged on
                       graphics, sound,  intellect and addiction.

Wings:                WW1 combat. more of an arcade game than a sim. rating
                      of 79%

Operation Harrier:    "has it's moments but they're generally well spaced"
                      rating of 64%

        Now for some comments of my own.

The origional Falcon had  a reputation of being difficult to handle. The
release of followup mission disks ( 3 of them I beleive ) has fixed this
sore point. You need the origional to use  the followup disks.

While F-16 Combat Pilot has everything on the one disk and is felt by some
to be a bit better than Falcon, the extra mission disks give Falcon the
potential for greater variety.

F-18 Interceptor was an earlyer flight sim, but continues to entertain, if
for no other reason than to see what absurd stunts can be  achieved (like
landing on a submarine).

F-16 Combat Pilot is the only sim mentioned  here which I have. I'm quite
pleased with it.

The format of Bomber, where you have a variety of different aircraft to
choose from appeals to me the most, but has the reputation of suffering
from bugs.

        I'm almost tempted to suggest a net-project to develop a flight
sim ourselves which has different aircraft and missions on extra disks,
distributed through the Fred Fish collection, but my prorgamming
abilities aren't up to it, and we'd be arguing for 3 years on the format
of the data of  the extra  disks. ;)


           Bull@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au  OR  com259h@monu1.cc.monash.oz
                      Alias: Gareth Bull, The Opal Dragon
          All opinions expressed are the result of paranoid delusions!