SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone: A First Look Preview: Rise of Flight

Sitting in the beautifully detailed cockpits you can really appreciate the variance in the planes. The Nieuport reminded me of an Austin-Healey I had back in the 1970s. The Spad looks more like the interior of a classic Duesenberg and the Albatross looks like a backyard project. Watching the Fokker mechanicals work, especially the guns, fit well with the "all business" German approach. As you look around in the cockpit you'll find all the levers work as do the instrument dial needles. While MFDs were a long way into the future, there is a surprising multitude of items to set, click, and fiddle-around with in the cockpits. Using the mouse and wheel you can pan around, look up and down, move forward and back. That works fine during "flat-and-level" flying but in a dogfight you just don't have enough hands or time! Because these planes fly so much slower (110-120 mph maximum speed) than WWII fighters, they can move in a smaller space when turning and the dogfights can be difficult in ways many prop pilots haven't dealt with before. The sim fully supports NaturalPoint's TrackIR 6DoF technology. If you don't have a TrackIR yet, you'll want to get one before your first dogfight in RoF, or grow an additional arm and hand for the mousing mobility.

Nieuport Cockpit

Albatross Cockpit

Spad Cockpit

Fokker Cockpit

Go To Page 3

Click here to go to top of this page.