Anyone here familiar with flight sims?

[Red]

I'm in the mood for a superfast combat-oriented game where I pilot some kind of plane or starfighter, but I don't know what series to look for. Any recommendations my dudes?

 

 

[42PercentHealth]

Well, I know of some really old ones that I used to play. Red Baron is an addicting little game that runs well on DosBox. The physics are really good for the time... I don't even know how they did the 3D engine -- this was a year or two before Doom! It's not very fast-paced, though, and the 16 color graphics might break the deal for some.

 

Terminal Velocity has better graphics and a better 3D engine. It's also a bit faster-paced. However, it doesn't run on DosBox. :-( I heard of a fan-made source port written, but I haven't tried it myself. (It's written in Java, so I might take a guess that it was written by a high-school kid who only knew one programming language.)

 

Descent is kinda slow as well -- you are flying a hovercraft. However, it's 6 degrees of freedom, plus lots of enemies and projectiles to dodge. It has a well-tested and maintained source port.

[CARRiON]

23 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

Terminal Velocity has better graphics and a better 3D engine. It's also a bit faster-paced. However, it doesn't run on DosBox. :-(

Uh... yes it does? It's a DOS game.

[42PercentHealth]

2 minutes ago, CARRiON said:

Uh... yes it does? It's a DOS game.

My bad -- should have been more specific. It runs WAAAY too fast on DosBox, and by the time I turn the virtual CPU down to "normal" speed, the game runs so choppy it's unplayable. But yes, it does technically run on DosBox.

[CARRiON]

1 minute ago, 42PercentHealth said:

My bad -- should have been more specific. It runs WAAAY too fast on DosBox, and by the time I turn the virtual CPU down to "normal" speed, the game runs so choppy it's unplayable. But yes, it does technically run on DosBox.

That is probably due to your specific settings for the game. I bought and played Terminal Velocity on GOG and it played fine.

 

Try these settings in the DOSBox config file or the config file you create for the game specifically.

Change cycles=auto to cycles=max

Change memsize=16 to memsize=24

Change timed=true to timed=false

Change rate and oplrate to match the frequencies set in Sound Options in-game.

Leave all other settings at their defaults.

[42PercentHealth]

Awesome, will do! Thanks a bunch! :-)

[Swine & Roses]

Personally, I like stuff like IL-2 Sturmovik or Rise of Flight.

But, considering you're looking for "superfast combat-oriented" games, something like the Tom Clancy's HawX series might be up your alley.

[Voros]

Blazing Angels.

[Vorpal]

For modern, I can't imagine anything beats Elite Dangerous for quality, feel, configurability, and support for wacky hardware like analog sticks and head-tracking and so on.

 

For pseudo-retro gaming, there's Freespace and Freespace 2

 

Speaking of, the Freespace 2 community made an elaborate Battlestar Galactica total conversion:

 

[Mr. Freeze]

Falcon 4.0