For the many years that flight worlds have been available in VRChat, it is clear that the community has acquired a very distinct and palatable taste for combat-oriented worlds. Communities like the Black Aces have built entire spaces dedicated to dogfighting and air combat, with a focus on PvP tournaments and events. You even have other groups that have arisen from these tournaments, such as the VRC Dogfight Central, but they are not the focus of today's article. Today, we focus on a specific world: Vol de Nuit by 5Sori.
This world brings a lot of new and interesting mechanics that are refreshing. Especially now that people have tried out almost everything that could be done with SaccFlight. The main focus of the experience are the aircraft themselves, which are some of the most fun I have had flying in VR. For all the wrong reasons.
These biplanes are extremely underpowered, to the point that you need the entire runway to take off at full power, and even then you might be short by a bit. Many of our friends struggled greatly to get it off the ground, which led to some hilarious situations. That being said, once you are up in the air, it is very stable and maneuverable despite its anemic thrust.
It genuinely flies an early 20th century design, with all of its pros and cons. It is a wonderful stick and rudder aircraft where you are in complete control over all aspects of flight, without any stability systems or anything. Other than this, it also has a very strong torque effect, causing you to always rely on your rudder to keep the aircraft flying straight and steady.
Personally, I found the aircraft itself to be the core part of the world and my experience with it. This world was the first experience I had with went there with friends who I hadn't talked to or seen in more than two months, due to some medical issues I have been having lately.
Instead of going to a combat-oriented world, we decided to go to Vol de Nuit to enjoy a more relaxed time; and that it was. When we first joined in, some of us took in the ambiance, but most of us went straight to the aircraft to give them a go.
Some of us crashed, some of us flew straight right away. After a while, most of us actually figured it out, so we decided to go storm hunting. This world has a roaming storm with dynamic winds that throw you around like a rag doll in the wind, which is one of the coolest features I have seen in VRC Aviation.
As we approached the storm, we closed our formation and flew closer and closer, to the point that we even had VTail, one of our friends, attempting to walk from the wings of Kosmos' aircraft onto mine. As this happened, the wall of wind hit us and sent us flying in different directions. This was an absolute disaster. We rolled over, crashed into each other and dove hard into an irrecoverable death spiral.
To say that wasn't fun would be a lie, it was hilarious for everyone involved. It felt refreshing to be able to hang out with my friends for the first time in ages in a unique VRC aviation world with just a touch of simulation to it. On top of that, it is even better that we got to do it here in this world that I personally find comfy and relaxing. I will certainly be coming back here to fly with my friends.
Special thanks to Andy and REaSoN2DiE4 for helping with media production!
About the writer
Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and writer ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy
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