The best fighter pilot game out to date?

C

CleanSlate

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 28, 2003
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I went up to grapevine mills a few months ago and there was this sweet ass fighter pilot game that got me back interested in flying games.

What is the best game out for these types of games for pc. And I suppose you can talk about other game systems as well but I am most interested in PC gaming.
 
I don't know if anyone can suggest anything better, but Jane's Combat Simulations have been my favorite for forever. I used to have F/A 18 which was awesome. Great blend of simulation and action I think.

My major beef with Jet "simulators," is that there isn't that awesome sense of speed like there is in real life.

As far as arcade fighters go, Ace Combat 4 by far struck all the right cords.
 
Lock-On Modern Air Combat if you have the time to devote to learning it. It's like a flight simulator version of WoW in regards to how much of your life you're willing to give up.
 
The IL-2 series seems to be quite popular. I don't know that it has the best realism, however.
 
Lock on Modern Air Combat is pretty and nice but I have one major beef. The American aircraft are severely handicapped in every capacity. IL-2: 1946 is another great one by UBI but same as before, the American aircraft are crippled so badly that they are not at all worth flying. Some of the best aircraft of the time are complete junk compared to the Soviet-bloc contemporaries.


Ubi makes a great looking and realistic flightsim but that recurring, not accidental problem of crippling the non-eastern bloc aircraft is making me reconsider buying anything they might put out in the future.
 
I really enjoy IL2. You can pick up IL2: 1946, which has all the expansion packs and everything all bundled into one for pretty cheap, now.
 
Foxcow said:
Lock on Modern Air Combat is pretty and nice but I have one major beef. The American aircraft are severely handicapped in every capacity. IL-2: 1946 is another great one by UBI but same as before, the American aircraft are crippled so badly that they are not at all worth flying. Some of the best aircraft of the time are complete junk compared to the Soviet-bloc contemporaries.

.
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I wouldn't say that they're crippled, they're just not suited to low level TnB dogfighting that is featured in the sim.
 
wrangler said:
Without a shadow of a doubt Falcon 4.0.
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QFMFT

Go for Falcon 4 Allied Force.

Get ready to get your butt kicked tho. IT is a steep learning curve (if you want it to be) I fly full realism and I'm still a n00b after all these years.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
I wouldn't say that they're crippled, they're just not suited to low level TnB dogfighting that is featured in the sim.
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I'd say that they are. The best fighters of the war are not even worth flying. The P-51, P-47, A6M, Hurricane, the BF-109, FW-190-D9, the Tempest, TA-152, etc are all second and third tier aircraft in the game. I play online a lot and hardly anyone flies any of the said aircraft because you can't compete in them.
 
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat obviously.

I haven't played any flight sims in a while, but wanted to sub to this thread so I could try out some good ones :)
 
The most fun I've ever had with a flying game ( OP did say "game", so that's why I won't mention any sims since I haven't really played any that long ) was with Comanche4. I love the helicopter style of attack, where you're in close quarters and can hover around and mutilate most everything on the ground. With airplanes, if you miss you have to turn around and try again, and considering my aim isn't that good on games I haven't played too long, I miss alot and do a lot of circling - not fun.

I also had a pretty enjoyable experience with Crimson Skies for the hour or two I played it before I really got into UT.

I'll have to load up both of those again and hook up the X52.
 
jmackay said:
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat obviously.

I haven't played any flight sims in a while, but wanted to sub to this thread so I could try out some good ones :)
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haha yes!!! I used to love that game, and I still have the floppy! I remember I got a code for unlimited ammo and I'd fire sparrows from my F4 like a minigun :p
 
Foxcow said:
I'd say that they are. The best fighters of the war are not even worth flying. The P-51, P-47, A6M, Hurricane, the BF-109, FW-190-D9, the Tempest, TA-152, etc are all second and third tier aircraft in the game. I play online a lot and hardly anyone flies any of the said aircraft because you can't compete in them.
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Yeah, but they weren't built to compete in the kind of combat that they are used in DF servers. I hear that they come in mighty handy in those virtual war servers where people with insane amounts of patience actually fly the long rang range high altitude missions that the air craft were used in.

I have to admit that a lot of the Russian dms seem overly simplistic to say the least. Some Yaks can hardly even be downed by anything less than cannon fire.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
Yeah, but they weren't built to compete in the kind of combat that they are used in DF servers. I hear that they come in mighty handy in those virtual war servers where people with insane amounts of patience actually fly the long rang range high altitude missions that the air craft were used in.

I have to admit that a lot of the Russian dms seem overly simplistic to say the least. Some Yaks can hardly even be downed by anything less than cannon fire.
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Well, thats where Ubi fails because they oversimplified the game. The best fighters of the war were the best because yes they had their fortes but they were strong in all aspects. The P-51's fortes were range, speed, high altitude combat but they were also used in many other capacities that they excelled at during the war. It seems that Ubi allowed some of their planes one of their strengths and scrubbed the rest. Had these aircraft been properly characterized in the game, they would be the ones used most.
 
On a side note I also picked up star trek legacy which is turning out to be a pretty cool game, has a bit of a learning curve but what good game doesn't?

For $40 at game stop, I'd say it's worth it but only if you enjoyed star trek enough that you gnarled your teeth at how badly you think they did one of the series but still watched it cause it still reminded you of your favorite series. Haha... Deep space 9 was pretty much ass but I watched it any way.

Adam
 
I have both and feel that Falcon 4 is more technical and real world, but Lock On has nicer graphics.

There is definately room for a new Combat Flight Sim for the 8800GTX generation.
I think that the flight components of Battlefield has woken up a new combat flight sim generation.

MS Flight Sim is a joke as usual - Programmed on Retarded Developer Kit - the slowest and ugliest of flight sims.
 
The problem with LOMAC is that it is about as scripted as 'Super Mario Brothers'. There is no variety or randomness at all in missions. Once you learn where each unit starts, and where it is moving, in a given mission, it's cake, as everything is always in the same place, every time.

(Okay, okay, it's not QUITE 'SMB', as the AI does react to you when you start fighting it - maybe more like 'Doom 3' or 'Half-Life 2' for levels of scripting, though)

It sure is pretty, but it just pales in comparison to a full, living/breathing war like F4:AF has. 'Falcon 4' has a theater-wide war of complexity greater than any RTS so far released, and more like a turn-based-strategy-game (although happening in realtime). The AI theater commander's handle it for you, which is good, as a single human could never manage the entire campaign. You just play a single fighter pilot amidst all of that - which, like a single fighter in most RTS games - means you have very little impact on the overall war...unless you basically botch your missions badly, where you can certainly have a NEGATIVE impact. There are certainly complaints about that - LOMAC is a lot like 'Doom 3' or 'Half-Life 2' in that the campaign revolves around YOU, and your success or failure determines how it advances. In F4:AF, you just feel like a cog in a machine - it's more immersive and realistic, but can feel less rewarding to win mission after mission and still see your side losing the war.

IL2:1946 is an interesting compromise. There is no 'full war' going on in the background - each mission you fly is specifically generated for you (or your squad), and there isn't a full war with thousands of other aircraft running around in the theater - it's pretty much just your mission, and the friendly and hostile aircraft and units that would interact with you (along with a few random things thrown about). Given the relative lack of emphasis on air power during that period vs modern warfare, and limited range and power of aircraft, that may well be basically realistic, though. And, that the missions are generated dynamically based on previous mission results (IE., in completing some other objective, if you manage destroy a bridge in one mission not related to your goals, it will still be destroyed in subsequent missions - and you won't get a mission to attack it. In LOMAC, if you destroy a bridge that isn't a mission objective, it is magically repaired in the next mission, which you may be tasked with destroying it in. In F4:AF, of course, it's all dynamic, so destroying a bridge will cause the enemy AI to react, send repair teams there - which could be intercepted and attacked - route armor around the area, etc.)
 
I wish they'd make a new WW1 sim something along the lines of Red Baron. Only add The Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian theatres as well. I doubt there's enough interest for a company to do it though. I personally dont care for the more modern aviation sims. After WW2 the planes/fighters just dont interest me. :(
 
What, no love for Desert Combat from anyone yet? An awesome mod for BF1942 and the jets are a blast to fly, once you've gotten used to them. I have three words just in case somebody hasn't tried it.....NO FLY ZONE.....discuss.
 
Skott said:
I wish they'd make a new WW1 sim something along the lines of Red Baron. Only add The Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian theatres as well. I doubt there's enough interest for a company to do it though. I personally dont care for the more modern aviation sims. After WW2 the planes/fighters just dont interest me. :(
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Knights of the sky ;)

Website is being redone at the moment I believe:

http://www.gennadich.com/

There are a few promo and work in progree vids available at youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXZ-N5HNJDE
 
One of my favorites was F/A-18 Interceptor on the Amiga and Birds of Prey on the Amiga as well.
Another favorite was Warbirds on the Lynx hand held system. I actually found a glitch in the game that would allow you to keep killing the same plane over and over and just rack up kills.
 
dano said:
Knights of the sky ;)

Website is being redone at the moment I believe:

http://www.gennadich.com/

There are a few promo and work in progree vids available at youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXZ-N5HNJDE
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Many thanks for those links, Dano. I'll keep my eye on its progression. Hopefully they'll get their website back in order soon too.

In return I'll pass on this link of a new WW1 movie a German film company is working on. The Red Baron. I think its slated for release this year but I'm not sure. The aerial dogfight scenes look really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJghJNAjc1k
 
[H]Opterown;1031464813 said:
Discuss what? It's an arcade game. It's a far cry from a real fighter plane game such as IL:2 or F4.0.
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Meh...true, it is, but it's still a blast. Didn't see what the OP considered a real fighter game.
 
Man talk about a trip down memory lane. I used to love flight sims, they were my first computer games. The first game installed on a computer I could call my own was TORNADO back in the early nineties. I loved that game, looked nice for the time and was felt very realistic. Looking back at the graphics now (http://www.migman.com/ref/1990_combat/Tornado/Tornado.htm) I am in amazement at what the imagination can do. They may look sucky by today's standards but back then I could have sworn I was in the cockpit of the real thing ;-)

Haven't played a flight sim since 1997 or 98 but would love to see something that takes advantage of today's systems.
 
Off topic but did any of you guys have an old Mac and play Hellcats: Over the Pacific? Or, F/A F-18 Hornet?
 
Now wait is Falcon 4 a flight sim or a normal fighter pilot game.. Or does it double as both?
 
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