Any World War I Flight Sims on the way?

The Game Room
1

I’ve been in the mood for a flight sim lately, and frankly I’ve bombed Berlin and shot down Luftwaffe fighters over Normandy so often that I can almost navigate from London to Berlin in my sleep and if I ever fall through a wormhole in the Time-Space Continuum I could probably end up as the highest scoring Flying Ace of all time.

Anyway, years ago I used to have Red Baron on my computer, and it was one of my favourite flight sims; simple, addictive, surprisingly realistic flight models, and it covered one of my favourite historical periods: World War I.

I found a copy a year or so ago and managed to get it running on my PC, but it was just too polygonal to enjoy anymore; I half expected to find Ignignokt and Err flying past in a blocky German biplane whilst giving me the finger as hard as they could before attempting to shoot my plane down with the Quad Laser. :stuck_out_tongue:

Apparently Red Baron II was pretty good (especially after being updated to Red Baron 3D) but I haven’t seen any copies available around here for quite some time, and the only other World War I flight sims that I recall as being any good were Knights Of The Sky (Kicking it Old, Old School way back in 1990!) and Wings Of Glory, which was Wing Commander set during World War I and was quite a fun game, IIRC.

Anyway, I was thinking, what with the 100th anniversary of World War I’s kick-off approaching, if there were any World War I flight sims in the works?

I’m not talking about two Russian guys in a basement in Vladivostok working on a mod for IL-2 Sturmovik; but rather an actual, properly developed and released, realistic World War I flight sim, preferably with a coherent campaign and not just a bunch of random missions strung together. (I mean, that would be fine, but at least make it feel like part of a cohesive campaign, as European Air War managed so well.)

Anyone heard anything or got any suggestions?

2

I would love it if someone was involved in creating said sim, but it’s probably yet another dead PC game genre by now. IIRC the online sims Aces High! & Warbirds both have WWI arenas, FWIW.

3

You might like Wings of War, although it is to “realistic flight physics” what Rocky IV is to “realistic hand-to-hand combat”.

Very arcadey, but also a lot of fun.

4

Here’s a link to one that’s scheduled for release in April 2009 (Rise of Flight):

Screenies and videos look good.

5

They do, but it’s been in development for a while and the release date outside Russia is “TBA”.

Also, it’s set in 1917-1918, thus missing out on the entire early years of flight in WWI, which included a lot of interesting stuff such as the Fokker Scourge. Still, the demo videos look good and I’m hopeful it will get a release in this part of the world!

6

Man, I miss playing RB2. The dynamic campaign really ruined me for most other sims, flight or otherwise.

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I spent many, many hour playing Red Baron back in 1994, as well as Red Baron 3D back in 1999. What I liked most was the immersion they provided; both got me into reading all I could on WWI.

Anyway, I’m keeping my eye on this thread in hopes of an answer.

8

First Eagles?

It will run under Vista (despite what that page says), it needs to be installed to a directory other than the default.

As released its not as hard-core as some but there are a ton of add-ons available at CombatAce. The forum is a good place to start.

Shameless plug I’ve built a few things for it :slight_smile: - that page needs an update - all the Fokker Eindekkers are done. :slight_smile: