mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) (05/30/91)
Well, finally got my hands on Chuck Yeager's AFT 2.0 for Amiga.... It seems to run well on my A3000... but it must be slllooowww on stock 500's - 2000's. And there is no hard drive support (of course) even though hard drives are supported for the IBM version (as usual). I have used the original AFT on the IBM that had smoke trails flowing from the wingman's planes (making it easier to follow them through manuvers), this is sadly missing from AFT 2.0. Also, there is this HUGE FLASHING CURSOR that shows the position of your 'stick' that is drawn right on the window making it difficult to see the terrain and other planes and is a MAJOR distraction at times... I'd like to see an HFC on/off option. There are large warning placards that appear with warnings/messages/ stats etc. that are WAY oversized and are again, drawn on top of the window blocking your view during flight.... this is especially troublesome during formation flying... The scenery and ground objects are just so-so. ditto the sound. The selection of aircraft is pretty good (about a dozen++) and you can fly from keyboard, joystick, or mouse (yea!). And the handling through the mouse is darned good (ala' FSII). It's about time someone made another sim that can be 'flown' pretty much like the aircraft being simulated (remember Falcon 1.0? yeech!) There are no weapons on any aircraft... ok by me. There are no provisions for the user designing/flying custom aircraft. The only aircraft available are in the menu... The rudder is controled with the left/right mouse buttons... and works well. This is a nice change to standard sims that usually coordinate the rudder with the alierons, preventing slips, slow rolls, hammerhead stalls, spins, etc... There are a number of external views (that are not nearly as good as the ones in Interceptor) that I don't see as being too usefull. There is also a 'Replay' feature that allows replaying the flight similar to the ones found in FSII, Battle of Brittan, F-16... Overall, AFT 2.0 is about a 6.5 out of 10 in my estimation. It's nice to have a sim that is designed to simulate *Flight* as opposed to all the ones that simulate air attacks. And as a result, you will probably find that the planes in AFT can do a lot more and do it more realistically than the ones in the combat simulators. -Mike-