The first purpose-built bomber added to the game The core of the Battle of Britain revolved around the successes and failures of bombers. The efficiency in which they could be intercepted and the damage they would dole out when they were successful was the crux of the sustained aerial campaign of Nazi Germany in their endeavor to solidify their conquest of main land Europe. A s episode 3 of the editorial video series 'A Lens On: Battle of Britain' continues to explain the complexities of this air war and the realities of living through it, players can now experience bomber raids as Scramble: Battle of Britain by Slitherine rolls out its newest updated. On June 6th, 2025, the Dornier Do 17 and some key game mechanics related to bomber raids was released: Dornier Do 17 While Scramble has had the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka in the game for some time now, this star of The Blitzkrieg was a dive bomber or by today's terminology an Attacker. The newly introduced Dornier Do 17 is a twin engine light bomber known for its high speed. When seen in Scramble, this Schnellbomber or "fast bomber" is genuinely fast for its size. When taking on this bomber in the randomized Dogfight Generator game mode, getting an unfavorable spawn with the Do 17s at distance already flying away from the players makes them nearly impossible to intercept. This especially true when they are already at top speed, flying at wave top level. This aircraft was known for this style of attack during the Battle of Britain, evading the Royal Air Force Chain Home early warning radar system, attacking costal airfields with little warning. Formation of Do 17 bombers ingressing at low altitude. Interceptors in the background. When the player's Hurricanes or Spitfires are in range, the multiple gunner stations on the Do 17 can put out a stiff amount of firepower. Even a two-ship of these bombers can bring between four to six machine guns to bear onto incoming aircraft. The volume of fire is so high, even the sturdy Hurricane would be hard pressed to engage these bombers without a strategy. In emergency situations the bombers are decently maneuverable for their size. Nothing on the level of a ME-109 or ME-110, but they are capable of one or two hard turns before losing all airspeed. Just enough to foil an incoming attack, but in turn doom the bomber to a close range engagement. Bomber Deterrence Even since the closed beta demo, Scramble: Battle of Britain has given the player points for damaging bomb carrying aircraft like the Ju 87, forcing them to drop their bombs into the English Channel and abandon their mission in hopes of returning back to their bases. While that system is still in place this update further expands on the initial concept. Example of Raid Target arrow. Bombers now have a timer that counts down how many turns are left before they leave the airspace. Their attack vector is shown as a green arrow called Raid Target (primary objective). In the mid-game user interface, players are told how many turns are left until these targets escape the combat airspace. During this time, players will need to maneuver their fighters to intercept these bombers and either shoot them down or damage them enough to force them to abort their mission. Otherwise their escape will effect the post-mission score. Deterring the Dornier Do 17 can be achieved by damaging its engines and/or causing radiator leaks or fuel leaks. Unlike the smaller Ju 87, these bombers area able to absorb more hits as they continue to try and escape. Long-ranged bursts of machine gun fire from aircraft trying to intercept these bombers can be effective. The Hawker Hurricane with its Stable Guns aircraft trait is especially effective in this role. Example of Raid Retreat arrow. When deterred, the bombers reverse course with their general flight direction indicated by the yellow Raid Retreat arrow. While these bombers are retreating they can still be completely destroyed for high points, but as with the real Battle of Britain, forcing a bomber to abandon its mission and ditch its bombs is equally as effective as shooting it down. Players can then make the decision to pursue those aircraft or shift their focus elsewhere to other still combat effective aircraft. A damaged Do 17 jettisoning bombs, abandoning its mission. Fighter Reinforcements A second game-changing feature added with this update is the inclusion of timed arrival of fighter reinforcements. Previously the aircraft present in the start of the mission were the only aircraft that would appear. Now, hostile reinforcements can arrive after a certain amount of turns have passed, further complicating the air battle. Example of red Reinforcements arrow. Both in Tactical Mode and in combat, red Reinforcements arrows on the map indicate the direction of incoming fighters. These arrows show numbers for how many turns it will take for those reinforcements to arrive, the type of incoming aircraft and the number of incoming aircraft. Extra messages in the aircraft and pilot message display in the top left of the screen also give a simple text countdown to these same actions. Upon arrival the enemy fighters appear with a message in the center screen UI and a directional bearing reference. While something like 6 turns may seem like a lot of time, do remember that each turn is only about two seconds of flight time. Luftwaffe ME 109s arrive to combat RAF aircraft. A Step Towards Channel Defense The game mechanics surrounding the introduction of the Dornier Do 17 seem to be another step towards the still in development Channel Defense Campaign; a game mode that seems to be poised to be the signature mode of this game. I continue to appreciate that Scramble: Battle of Britain is expanding on the role of bombers. The combination of deterring them being just as effective as shooting them down and players not being penalized for not shooting down every aircraft they see, Scramble provides a uniquely realistic portrayal of strategic bomber interception missions. Hit and run tactics that force bombers to abort their mission give players a new dynamic few other flight games and simulators portray. Connect with 'Scramble: Battle of Britain' Discord Steam   Website X.com YouTube About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

Before the rise of the first-person shooter and the JRPG, flight games were king in the realm of combat games. The 90’s in particular were a golden era for the flight sim, and many names became synonymous with flight and combat simulation games, to name a few: Jane’s Combat Simulations, Microprose - and Novalogic. Perhaps best known for their foray into first-person shooters with the Delta Force series, the company was also responsible for such franchises as the Comanche (Recently revived by THQ Nordic) and the F-22 series, as well as two very similar games which, despite not technically being part of a series, can’t really be discussed separately from each other: Novalogic’s F-16 Multirole Fighter and Novalogic’s MiG-29 Fulcrum. Now, I’ll be the first to admit it’s hard for me to be impartial when talking about these two games, as I have a certain level of attachment to them. Apart from the nostalgia factor, Novalogic’s F-16 was not only my introduction to flight games, but also one of the first games I’ve ever had any contact with. One of my earliest memories is being a little kid and seeing one of my older cousins flying the blue-tinted F-16 on a computer screen, and at that moment I knew I had to try it out. I was already fascinated with aviation back then, so it would be untrue to say this game was what gave me that interest - a credit probably best given to the Ipanema cropdusters flying over the rural outskirts of Brazil - but it certainly helped fuel this interest in aviation and turn it into a lifelong passion which would ultimately guide the path I chose to take in life. It also introduced me to the F-16 and MiG-29, two aircraft which to this day rank among my very favorites and which I personally consider to be some of the most beautiful machines to ever take to the skies. As such, this article is not a game review - rather, take it for what it is, an opinion article on a retro game. OVERVIEW Before we go deeper into this pair of games and why would someone write an article about them, let’s have a brief general overview for context. As far as flight simulators go, Novalogic’s F-16 and MiG-29 sit in a bit of a weird spot. Launched concurrently in 1998, it’s hard to call them groundbreaking even for their time, considering Falcon 3.0 launched in 1991 and Microprose’s Falcon 4.0 , a game which maintains a devout following to this day, launched just two months after the duo. They are definitely not study simulators like Falcon - even game reviews of the time recommended harcdore sim fans to look elsewhere - but they are also very distinct from arcade flight games such as Ace Combat. Despite being referred to as “flight simulators” back in their day, Novalogic’s games fill an in-between spot which today we’d call a sim-lite - sacrificing realism for simplicity and ease of learning but still complex enough to give the player a taste of the aircraft’s capabilities and a good grasp of the basics. Aircraft systems such as radar and targeting pods are there, but their functionality is very simplified - for instance, the radar can always detect all targets in its field of view, and shows them all on the HUD even if the targets aren’t locked. A “shootlist” lets you cycle through all targets visible either by your radar or AWACS datalink without ever having to worry about accidentally locking a friendly. The flight model, too, is highly simplified - this is a game that is perfectly playable on keyboard alone, though dogfighting with only a keyboard is not something I would recommend. Nevertheless, the game does attempt to deliver an authentic-feeling flying experience and the player is still bound by limitations not present in arcade titles, such as blackouts and redouts, as well as weapon characteristics (even if not necessarily represented accurately) and quantity. You can select an option which allows you to fire twice as many munitions as your plane is actually carrying, but that’s the most leeway you will get in that regard. Ground targets are shown as boxes on the HUD when an air-to-ground weapon is selected - not a realistic implementation, but it makes finding targets much easier The games feature quick missions (including training missions) and several campaigns - though strangely, it is not possible to select which campaign to play. Instead, one must play through them in order, which can be very annoying if you’re yearning to play one specific campaign again. The quick missions can become repetitive after a while, but both games come with a mission editor software which players can use to create their own mission files. It is surprisingly complete in terms of functionalities, though not exactly intuitive or easy to use. The mission editor’s interface Also featured is a multiplayer mode, where players could fight each other through LAN, modem connection by telephone number, or Novalogic’s proprietary online matchmaking system, Novaworld. In fact, F-16 players could fight MiG-29 players in the same servers - because really, they’re two versions of a single game. RED AND BLUE F-16 Multirole Fighter and MiG-29 Fulcrum are, at their core, essentially the same game. Both games use the same engine, have identical gameplay mechanics and nearly identical control setups (with differences in some specific aspects of each aircraft, such as the MiG-29’s IRST, the F-16’s LANTIRN pod controls, and the F-16 having a pickle button while the MiG-29 uses the trigger both for guns and weapon release), and share the same assets. The differences go beyond which aircraft you’re flying - in that sense, they somewhat resemble the early Pokémon games somewhat, where there will be two versions with a few minor changes and a different color palette. Apart from obviously having to work with the different capabilities of each aircraft, the player is hit with a completely different ambience from the very moment they start the game up. The F-16 and the MiG-29 are not just fighter aircraft, they’re icons of the Cold War. They are similar in many ways - two lightweight fighters designed to supplement larger, more expensive types over the battlefields of Europe. They are both ubiquitous, serving with dozens of air forces across the globe - if the FN FAL was the “right arm of the free world”, F-16s are its wings; And even though the MiG-29 is not as widespread as the MiG-21, it nevertheless equipped the air forces of virtually every Warsaw Pact country. They codify the alliances they were designed to fight for. In short, they’re opposite sides of the same coin - and Novalogic lets you feel it whenever you flip that coin around. Apart from the obvious color coding, the main menu’s layout is mirrored between the two games - while in F-16 Multirole Fighter the player must look left - to the “west” - for the menu items, in MiG-29 Fulcrum one must look right - to the “east”. It’s a subtle detail, but it helps set the ambience, the feeling of being in a different environment. Going further into the menus, things like the mission briefings and loadout menu have different design languages, reminiscent of the instrument panels of the two aircraft. While the F-16’s menus are made to look more digital and computer-like, the MiG-29’s menus are touched up to have some analog elements to them, and metal panels and screws adorn the screen. Briefing and loadout selection screens. Note how the F-16 can somehow carry a double rail for AMRAAMs on stations 3 and 7 While hopping into the F-16’s training missions will land you in a semi-arid environment not unlike what you’d find somewhere like Nevada, the MiG-29’s training missions send you straight to a cold, snowy and mountainous environment based on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Novalogic’s MiG-29 has another neat trick up its sleeve - the tower, GCI, your wingman and other aircraft all have voice lines in Russian. The player may choose to switch them to English in the options, but it certainly adds that little bit of extra immersion. The first thing the player sees upon firing up the training missions. The ambience is noticeably different - note the contrast between the warm and cool color palettes I remember firing up MiG-29 Fulcrum for the first time and being almost shocked by the vivid red background of the menu. I was already used to F-16 Multirole Fighter at that point, and as a kid, you’re taught that blue means good guys and red means bad guys, so it was a surprise at first - but after flying the first mission, I fell in love with the plane. I still preferred flying the F-16, with its two multifunctional displays and much greater weapons load - but being red wasn’t so bad after all. I came to appreciate both aircraft and their different design philosophies. FEATURES AND GAMEPLAY One of the strong points of the games were their graphics - though obviously unflattering by today’s standards, in 1998 they received praise for their good looks, especially if the user had a 3D accelerator card. While I’m not sure whether the AI aircraft looked that good even for the time, the player’s aircraft certainly look beautiful in both games. The visual effects arena is less impressive, particularly the explosions, but contrail effects on the wingtips and LERX fit in well with the models. Some of the enemy AI aircraft - F-7 Airguard, F-4 Phantom, F-5E Tiger II, JAS-39 Gripen The stars of the show. The textures are quite detailed for the time. The cockpits look a bit flat, but they are three-dimensional and the player can look around, though the controls for that are a bit slow. The player will look around mostly through hat snap views and using padlock to keep visual on a close-range enemy. The cockpits are a bit simplified, but the main instruments work - most notably, the F-16’s two MFDs have clickable buttons which can be used to cycle through their pages. Standard cockpit views. One part where the game lets down is the HUD - while in the F-16 it looks like a simplified F-16 HUD, which is all well and good, in the MiG-29 it looks like they took the HUD they had made for the F-16 and “made it Russian” - that is, the aircraft symbol rolls to indicate bank instead of the pitch ladder. But the biggest issue in both games is that the HUD is not aligned with the external world in the default cockpit view. This makes it necessary to switch to HUD view for any sort of weapons employment, which can be troublesome in dogfights. Attempting to gun a Flanker. Notice how the target box is displaced from the target in this view. When zoomed into the HUD view, symbology is properly aligned. The F-16’s HUD has another trick up its sleeve - the ability to project the LANTIRN FLIR image for night navigation and attack. Though the flight models aren’t the most accurate out there, the aircraft do perform in general terms how you’d expect them to - the Viper likes being high and fast, and there’s no enemy unit out there which will out-rate you in a turn (though it feels like it retains energy too well); and the Fulcrum prefers being at medium altitude, using its high AoA authority to get missile solutions on targets at close range. The MiG-29’s flight model is capable of performing hammerheads and even Pugachev’s Cobra - a maneuver which the game’s manual acknowledges has little to no combat value, but encourages the player to try practicing anyways simply for fun. MiG-29 performing the Cobra maneuver. Enemy AI is not smart - there frankly isn’t much of a challenge if you are carrying similar weapons in a 1v1 fight. However, missiles are scary, much scarier than in DCS, for instance: though their guidance algorithm is very poor (seems to be pure pursuit), they seem to behave as if the rocket motor never runs out of fuel. Furthermore, enemy planes almost always launch within the no-escape zone - so while it’s easy to plink them with AMRAAMs or R-77s from afar before they launch, if you do get launched on, you better hope there’s some terrain to mask behind, as your countermeasures are mere suggestions. The usual outcome of having more than one missile launched against you. Of course, the best defense is to not get launched on at all, or even better, avoid detection entirely. The game does encourage the player to control their own radar emissions. Keeping your radar off will allow you to sneak behind enemy aircraft undetected and close in for a Sidewinder or R-73 shot. The MiG-29’s IRST comes in very handy here. Damage modelling is nearly non-existent for enemy aircraft, which instantly explode when hit by any missile and smoke if hit by a few gun rounds - but it is surprisingly complex for the player’s aircraft, which may suffer damage to individual subsystems, which affect the aircraft’s behavior accordingly. You might lose an engine, have a punctured fuel tank, lose radar or fire control systems, the list goes on. Close range combat usually ends with the enemy aircraft being vaporized in a large pixelated explosion. After a mission is completed, a summary displaying how many aircraft were lost on both sides, how many aircraft were shot down by the player, and weapon accuracy statistics. It’s not the best debriefing out there, but it is very concise. Mission summary. The player can also edit waypoints before a mission, through a map which displays the current programmed route and known threats. It’s a pretty neat feature which allows for a certain degree of extra planning. The player can change the location of waypoints and look at known threats before flying the mission. CAMPAIGNS The campaigns aren’t much to write home about, following loose storylines told only on the briefings. The enemy is usually (but not always) some fictional organization which is attempting to stage a coup somewhere, or has succeeded in staging a coup and is invading its neighbors. There isn’t really a plot to speak of, and the story serves merely as a conduit to the gameplay. That being said, the campaigns do have some interesting features: the most important one being that the player actually has to keep logistics in mind. During each campaign, the player’s squadron will start with a certain quantity of weapons, from drop tanks to missiles. These supplies are depleted as you use these weapons, and this is where the challenge comes in. Because frankly, nearly all of the missions are quite easy if you fully load up your jet with AMRAAMs and use them to obliterate everything in your path. But if you do that, there will be a point in later missions where you’ll run out of them and will have to resort to Sidewinders only, and if you’re not careful with those, eventually you’ll find yourself in a situation where you have to defend an airbase against a massive air attack using only your guns (ask me how I know). So the challenge of the campaign is asking yourself: Do you really need those AMRAAMS for this particular mission? Is it really worth it to try and face enemy aircraft head-on or is it better to try and figure out a way around them to the mission objective, saving precious air-to-air missiles? When air-to-air missiles are at a premium, a Q-5 Fantam isn’t a target worth spending an Archer on. Go for guns! Campaign missions are usually pretty standard - fly CAP, provide CAS, intercept bombers, attack a supply convoy, bomb a high-value target. However, every now and then something different pops up. One of the missions in the F-16’s second campaign has the player escort NASA’s Shuttle Carrier, carrying the Discovery Space Shuttle, through contested airspace. In what other game can you escort the Space Shuttle? And, because this game is a window into the 90’s, you can see the hope for a future where the “blue” forces and “red” forces are not necessarily opposed to each other. In several campaigns, US and Russian forces work together, and sometimes you’ll even see the other game’s “protagonists” helping you out - in some missions of the F-16 campaigns, you’ll be helped by MiG-29s from “300 Squadron”, the unit you play as in MiG-29 Fulcrum ; and in the MiG-29 campaign, you’ll sometimes be helped by F-16s from “Viper Squadron”, the unit you play as in F-16 Multirole Fighter. The developers’ hopes for a bright future of international cooperation do not seem to extend to France however, seeing as in both games the player will constantly fight modern French-designed aircraft such as the Mirage 2000 and Rafale, in the hands of everything from African paramilitary organizations to Russian ultranationalist groups attempting to stage a coup. In one of the MiG-29 campaign missions, the player’s unit escorts American B-1B bombers to their targets. CONCLUSION MiG-29 Fulcrum and F-16 Multirole Fighter definitely aren’t hardcore simulators, but they do give the player a taste for the unique character of the respective aircraft they feature, and an appreciation for their capabilities. The F-16 with its advanced avionics, multi-function displays and low-bleed, high-rate turns, and the MiG-29 with its mostly analog systems but great maneuvering at high angles of attack. The simplified systems and fast learning curve means that these games probably got many other newcomers such as myself hooked into the world of flight simulation. Playing them once again after all these years made me acutely aware of their flaws, but gave me an even greater appreciation for what they managed to achieve - a flight sim which could be easily picked up by non-flight simmers, even if they happened to be a child playing their first flight game. They are two games I have fond memories of, and will always remember it as what taught me to appreciate all kinds of aircraft, no matter whether they’re red or blue. About the Writer Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto An incurable aviation fanatic since childhood, fascinated by the design and history of practically anything that flies. A long-time fan of flight games, he currently studies aeronautical engineering and pursues his hobbies of drawing, writing and flight simulation on his spare time. See Staff Profile .

It has been over four years since screaming fighter jets, roaring turboprops and booming behemoths have taken to the skies of VRChat . During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, people across the planet took the plunge into virtual reality experiences to offset the restrictive lockdown procedures put in place for safety. VRChat, a community driven social virtual reality platform, saw an explosion of activity during those years. Some of the staff members of Skyward Flight Media also purchased hardware and made VRChat accounts to find connection while the world was in isolation. Instead of hanging out in pubs and castles, we were lucky enough to be involved with the beginning of SaccFlight - the next generation of VRChat aviation experiences on the platform. Between the testing, battles, airshows and original aircraft development, Santiago “Cubeboy” Cuberos found a shared interest in aviation with Tupper; the head of community for VRChat. Hello! Thanks so much for agreeing to an interview. After seeing each other off and on for so long during the virtual airshows, it is great to have a formal interview together. Hi Cube! Thanks for having me on. What is your background with aviation in general? Was it a childhood passion, or was it something else? It was indeed partially a childhood passion, but that passion was fueled by a few things. My dad is a retired United States Air Force Colonel. He has always followed aviation in a lot of ways. He’s told me about watching Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969. Through him, I learned about his time in the Air Force in Vietnam on tankers, and his journey into medivac (medical evacuation) and logistics. His drive and passion isn’t just for the amazing machines that we create and what they do, but what we use them for. Both of my parents were in the medical field, and they taught me critical and subtle lessons in how important it is to help others, to support others, no matter what you’re doing. That’s had lasting effects on me in a lot of different ways. I am beyond lucky and fortunate to have my folks be people like that, and support me no matter what I wanted to do. I don’t think I tell them that enough. That being said, that meant my childhood libraries were full of books about aviation. I read non-fiction series like the Time-Life series The Epic of Flight. All 23 books, cover to cover, over and over. Fictional books like Dale Brown’s Flight of the Old Dog. I went to airshows regularly, watched space launches whenever we could. In the early 90s, we picked up flight simulators pretty quickly. Both dad and I burned hours in Microsoft Flight Simulator, Space Simulator, Aces Over Europe, Aces of the Pacific, all those early Dynamix games. Falcon 3.0 and Jane’s Fighter Anthology came later. Later in life, after I got my degree in Physics, I ended up working as a US Navy subcontractor, where I contributed to the F/A-18 and F-35 programs. Although my work was, practically, a ton of Excel spreadsheets, I still got to spend a ton of time with aviators. I worked alongside aviators that flew the F-14, F/A-18, the EA-6B, and tons of other aircraft. Of course, that job came with occasional fun perks like going to Norfolk and Virginia Beach to hang out on carriers, walk the flightline at Oceana, that kind of stuff. Have you played any flight games or simulators? Do you still play any today? Tons! Aside from the ones I mentioned above, I’ve played DCS, War Thunder, the Ace Combat series, Project Wingman, as many as I can get my hands on. I’m not very good at DCS, though. I don’t have enough spare neurons left to memorize the startup sequence for a Hornet. I’ve spent the most time recently playing Nuclear Option, which is a wonderful fictional “soft” flight simulator. It’s somewhere between Ace Combat and War Thunder’s realism mode, with a focus on near-future aircraft. I play a lot of “Escalation” style multiplayer modes, where the idea is that you start out in little prop-driven CAS aircraft, gaining points and “escalating” the conflict. Eventually, you fly jets, interceptors, even heavy bombers as you unlock weapons. First you get access to small, 5kt nuclear weapons, then eventually 250kt monsters. It’s a lot of fun and gets regular updates. I enjoy the small community it has. Oh, and of course, I fly a lot in VRChat. How did you first become involved with VRChat? I found VRChat in July 2017 when I was scrolling through Steam. I had a Vive CV1 that was sitting, collecting dust, and I wanted to find something to do with it. I filtered by VR, then filtered by Free to Play. I found VRChat pretty quickly. A short download later, I hopped into VR, and joined a Presentation Room with a few folks in it. There was a green-haired anime girl, a game rip of a Neptunia model recolored for someone. She started berating me for no reason -- but without speaking! She used the pens, writing words and waving her arms at me frantically telling me… something. I never figured it out. Anyhow, that interaction was just the start. Eventually, someone mentioned that you could upload custom avatars to VRChat, and I started learning how to make them every day for hours after I’d come home from work, then log in and show off my work. What lead to you becoming the Head of Community for the entire platform? I applied to VRChat on a whim in October or November of 2017. It was a general application. My data science skills weren’t quite in line with what VRChat needed then, so I focused more on “hey, I can do support for you, answer emails, etc” with my ~15 years of IT experience. Also, in the meantime, I’d been publishing video tutorials on how to work on avatars for VRChat. I’d figured out a process to turn MMD avatars into VRChat avatars, and published a long video showing the process. That got pretty popular with a few hundred thousand views, and even today still gets more. In November 2017, VRChat was growing pretty quick. November 1st had a max user count of maybe 100 to 150 on a busy night. End of November, it’d doubled to 200 to 300. By the middle of the December? Thousands. January, that number started climbing into the TENS of thousands. I’d met quite a few members of the VRChat team by this time, including several members of leadership and both of the founders. They reached out during the holidays, looking for someone to handle the deluge of support emails they’d been getting. In January I signed a contract to work for VRChat, and for a time, worked two jobs -- my normal 9-5 at my Navy contractor job, then I’d come home and work another 8 hours. After two weeks, I decided that VRChat was the way to go, and handed in my two weeks at my previous job. While it was interesting, VRChat was far more interesting to me. I still miss it (and the people) sometimes. Later, I got hired as a full-time employee, as the sole Community Manager at VRChat. I handled all kinds of stuff, handed off support tasks to other folks, and instead took up the reins of managing communication, interactions with the community, feedback, and helping the team understand the wide and broad community of VRChat. A few years later, as we started to organize into a sane shape, I was promoted to Head of Community. Now, I lead the Community team and provide input and feedback to basically all of the VRChat team, helping them connect with our community to get a better understanding of the desires, needs, wants, and thoughts of our community at large. Head of Community for a platform of tens of thousands of people seems like it would be a rather complicated job. Can you describe what your official duties like? I mean, depending on how you count it, it’s millions of people! But yes, it is complicated, to put it lightly. I spend a ton of my time in meetings and calls, consulting with the product teams at VRChat that actually build the application. A lot of this time is spent providing context and receiving understanding about what we’re making so I can tell all of you what’s going on. While we have a lot of user research going on for both qualitative and quantitative inputs, I also act as a “signal attenuator”, where I can provide translations of what the “community zeitgeist” currently is about. This means a LOT of reading social feeds, Twitter, our subreddit, Discord, and tons of listening to folks in VRChat. This isn’t exactly “part of the job” but I feel it’s vital at our scale. I’ve picked up a ton of active listening skills, as well as being able to listen to multiple conversations at once just within earshot, lol. I also do a lot of writing. A lot. Most of our external communications are handled by Strasz, FlareRune, and Fax, our Community Managers at VRChat. However, I still provide input, direction, and review for all three of them (although honestly all three are amazing writers and rarely need correction or help). Most of my writing nowadays is on internal product docs, proposals, reviews, reports, and the like. What was your first exposure with aircraft in VRChat, and what was your initial impression of these flyable aircraft? My first exposure? Huh.. probably the jetpacks in Treehouse in the Shade. They’re TERRIBLE! I mean, they were great for the time in SDK2, but they immediately make me sick every time I use them, even today. However, when I saw Udon release and people started to play with it, there were a few standouts that were really interesting. There was one world where you stood on the back of an airplane and flew it, and everyone around would stand on the top of the aircraft. The gimmick was that the world moved, rather than the aircraft -- a clever way of dealing with floating point issues and putting people on moving platforms. Those were fun, but I never would’ve imagined what we have today. Did you ever try some of the pre-SaccFlight aviation worlds that were developed before April 2020? Not really! I had a few run-ins with them but none were really memorable until I ran into Saccchan’s systems. After four years of VRChat Aviation (VRCA), now there are flight worlds across every type of real and sci-fi flight experiences. From Gliders to modern 4th generation fighters, from strategic bombers to space fighters. What type of flying do you enjoy in VRChat? There’s four worlds I really love for flying: First, there’s Zweikaku and 7-Eleven’s world Carrier Flight: F-14 . I have this habit formed where I load into the world, put on the Fairy Air Force soundtrack, hop in a Harrier, and fly around until someone shoots at me. Then I defend, pop them with a missile, and resume flying in orbits. Of course, if there’s no Harrier available, I get into whatever plane I see first, find the first Harrier I see, shoot it down, immediately respawn, and try to get into the Harrier. Like clockwork. lol Second is Uni Power’s Yalu Conflict . I love the aircraft available -- there’s a ton of choices. Initially I favored the La-9, but quickly moved over to the F8F Bearcat -- almost entirely because of the ridiculous R-2800 engine. Turns out that I’ve got good taste, because my favorite WWII aircraft, the P-47 Thunderbolt, shares that engine with the Bearcat. Third is another Uni Power world: Mid Palau . I pretty much exclusively use the P-47 here, occasionally hopping in the Enola Gay to jumpscare folks with the nuke. It’s really nice to fly around just above the water, chilling out. I really like the sound design Uni’s done in the world. Even while typing this out, I can hear the engine sound in my mind. Finally, I really enjoy Project Helo by CodyHayzett. There’s no combat here, the weapons deal no damage. It’s all helicopters and weird structures to fly through. I love the little community I run into when I join this world -- they’re all amazing pilots, flying helicopters through ridiculous stunt routines. It reminds me of old Battlefield 1942 stunt maps -- maps where the focus wasn’t on combat, but instead doing weird stunts with the physics engine and flight system. VRChat, being a community-based and community-built platform, relies on users to create new and better experiences. Do you have any particular flight world creators that you personally like? If so, which ones and which worlds of theirs do you enjoy? I kinda jumped the gun on this question! I really enjoy Zweikaku and 7-Eleven’s work, as well as Uni Power’s work. We’ve got similar taste in favorite aircraft. VTail’s work on pushing the realism barrier to “acceptably arcadey” is really cool, although I still can’t stop ripping my wings off. What are your thoughts on the competitive side of VRCA, with one example being the dogfighting tournaments ran by the VRC Black Aces? Honestly, I’ve never been a competitive person. I prefer to observe! My ROE when flying is “I don’t shoot first, but I do shoot last.” There’s a few exceptions to that rule, though… if I randomly shoot you down, it’s probably because you were micspamming music, said something dumb and edgy in an attempt to get attention, or asked “how do I do a cobra?” in the F-14 world. I do really like watching tournaments, though. I can pick up on the technicalities of BFM, although I think I prefer the strategy and technology behind BVR insofar as “entertainment value” if I were playing a game. Speaking of which, when’s Sea Power in the Missile Age coming out? I haven’t gone to many tournaments but I want to go to more. There’s a few members of the VRChat team interested too, so uh, DM me? Also, no, I won’t dogfight you. I’ll probably lose. Did you ever expect to see a competitive PvP flight community to arise in VRChat? These pilots sometimes train daily to be on top of their game I did not. Absolutely did not. I had expectations when Udon released, but they were things like “someone’s gonna make Trouble in Terrorist Town” and other GMod-style game modes like that. I think “pretty damn good flight simulator with good enough networking to hold tournaments” was not on my top 100 guess list, at all. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have airshows and showcases. The most popular ones, usually hosted by the VRC Black Aces or several of the Japanese communities, can fill an entire instance in mere minutes. How many airshows or ‘showcases’ have you attended so far? Have any of these left a mark on you? Not only have I gone to a few, but I’ve commentated on two of them alongside Andy! I love airshows and air displays so being able to see them in VR is incredible. You get to see aircraft that don’t exist anymore, or even NEVER existed. I think the most striking show so far was the one that featured ridiculously huge aircraft. I forget the name of it, but there was that huge one that was a concept, some kind of nuclear-powered giga-aircraft designed to carry other aircraft. That one was a good one. If you could summarize it, what has been your experience been with VRCA so far? Do you have any fond memories with the community or any special moments that have stuck with you? It’s been wonderful. The VRChat aviation community is incredibly kind, welcoming, and open. Not only that, but they’re INCREDIBLY creative and collaborative. Every project takes the work of multiple people to produce a really cool output. The few times that people have popped up that don’t represent those kinds of values, I’ve seen the community knock them down, because the last thing they want to do is make someone feel unwelcome. That’s a good sign -- never tolerate intolerance. I’ve got a lot of great memories, but honestly the ones I remember best are simply joining friends in the community while they’re working on a new project. There’s always some funny bug or weirdness that they didn’t intend that everyone’s goofing around with. I recently joined on Zweikaku and 7-Eleven to find them testing out a rather overpowered AI CIWS system, and everyone in the instance was trying their hardest to blow them up. The only way someone managed it was by landing an aircraft out of the range of fire and “driving” it up next to the emplacement, and blasting it point-blank with the cannon. That was hilarious. I love emergent, weird, funny stuff like that. If you were to ever make a flight world for VRC, what would it look like? Are there any aircraft that or mechanics you would put on it? It’d be REALLY HARD, but I’d love a proper BVR experience. A few people have tried, like the F-15 world from a year or two back. I forget who made it. It was OK, and they did they absolute best they could, but there were foundational issues with it. The problem they struggled with is the same issue everyone does out at ranges past 10km -- floating point error makes it impossible to use! You get those crazy “wiggles” where polygons start flying off your HUD. 10km is well within the traditional definition of BVR (~37km), so you’ve got to solve that first. If I could do anything, I’d find a way to implement a networkable floating origin system into VRChat natively, then use that to make a BVR world. I’d make it so you could flip a switch to either spawn 4th or 5th gen aircraft. I’d also want to have AEW&C aircraft that you could fly (or assign an AI to) that you could data link to. Then, I’d make the terrain a bunch of mountains, valleys, and some open ocean, and have fun with that. Put in some game modes -- Protect the President, CAS, CAP, Intercept, that kind of thing. That’d be so fun! Thanks a lot for this opportunity, Tupper. It was a privilege to be able to host this interview with you. Do you have any closing comments or anything you would like to tell our audience? Thanks for having me! VRChat has been and always will be about you. In any other game, you have objectives, win conditions, and goals. Here? There’s one goal: work together to make each other better. Whether you do that by being creative, making friends, or by running and participating in communities like the ones in VRCA, you’re helping. VRChat’s a wildly important space for me personally, and for many others. I hope people understand that, for me and many others on the team, VRChat isn’t just a job. It isn’t just a product or a game or an app. It’s an incredibly important place, unlike anywhere else on the internet. Nobody else has what we have. Our team is talented. We could work anywhere else, but we work here because we love seeing what it’s done for you, your friends, and our friends. We want it to be here forever so it can help as many people as possible, and we’ll fight hell or high water to see it go otherwise. About the writer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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

If you grew up in the early 2000s while playing as many flight games on your dad's old PC like I did, then you will remember the amount of small titles that tried to compete with each other. Two that got stuck in my mind were IL-2 1946 and Strike Fighters, both of which are sim-lite titles. They have aspects of a proper flight simulation without being full-on study simulators, or even regular flight sims. Games like these two seem to just be gone from the market, except for the IL-2 franchise, which is doing quite well. That being said, all the other smaller, less niche titles have mostly disappeared or have moved to the mobile market, which is the case for Strike Fighters. I think there is only one game to blame: War Thunder. With its mix of approachable gameplay, vehicle variety and quick connection matchmaking, War Thunder has made it basically impossible for any other games to compete with it. In its aviation tech tree, you can get almost any popular plane either by grinding or buying them as premiums, which incentivizes people to go through the tech tree themselves and grind them until they get to their favorite aircraft. Hundreds upon hundreds of aircraft, all with pretty detailed 3D models and adequate flight physics, are available to any player that puts in the time or money. If an indie game developer, or even an AA game studio, would want to compete with the Snail in this genre, they would have to match them either in quality, quantity or both! That is quite the ask. People seem to also have a preference for that pick-up and play flow that War Thunder has. They can get home from work, do a couple of matches, die to some random with a couple of thousand hours in the game at least four separate times, get frustrated and quit the game with absolutely no consequences. I for sure know a couple of my friends have that approach to War Thunder, and that being able to just get on and off the game so easily is a core aspect of why they like this game so much. With games like DCS, there is much more of a time commitment so WT players tend to stray away from it; and games like Strike Fighters 2 are now over a decade old, and no longer even accessible through popular game distribution sites! If you wanted to do a sim-lite nowadays, as a developer, you would have to tailor to aspects of nostalgia from old players or to a very polished a unique experience, which is the case of Tiny Combat Arena and IL-2 Korea respectively. If you want to do a big and fun sim-lite how Strike Fighter 2 was, you will be sharing a playerbase with War Thunder, good luck with that. There are games out there that have succeeded in a sim-lite genre in spite of War Thunder's existence, such as Gunner Heat PC. They have tailored to a more accurate and unique single player experience in the armored vehicle scene and have sold quite well, while also being critically acclaimed even inside WT player circles. I miss the times when I would see these unique, single-player sim-lite flight games would come out. While War Thunder can be extremely fun sometimes, I do prefer to be able to be able to play the game in its fullest in a single-player scenario, with a campaign or mission creator, or even pre-prepared missions. Pictures by Wyvern and Cubeboy. About the writer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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

I usually tend to stick to fixed wing aircraft, we also love tacking the challenging world that is rotary wing. I've spent countless hours in the DCS UH-60L, Mi-24P and Ka-50 modules, and they have proven to be extremely entertaining experiences. One of the main issues that I've noticed is that there are not that many dedicated simulators for helicopters, at least there have not been many in quite a while. This changes with Helicopter Gunship DEX! This game is worth it just it is a dedicated helicopter simulator in the 2020s, a member of a dying breed. At the same time, it strives to drive that blurry line between simulator and arcade, making it much accessible and fun for a wider audience. That being said, let's take a close look at this title to see what it has in store in its early access form. PRESENTATION AND GRAPHICS The best way to describe this game, at least when it comes down to graphics, effects and sounds, is that it is they are extremely functional yet nothing special. The 3D models are precise, yet textures are low res and some of the helicopters are not as detailed as others. The same applies for ground vehicles and other assets. None of them stand out as ugly, but there isn't any remarkable either. Sound design is good, with some minor exceptions, such as some gun sounds and missile launch effects being a bit "off". The main issue lies in the UI and control configuration for users with more complicated layouts. Some crucial controls such as the night vision toggle, MFD buttons and several mappings are missing and not set by default, not even on the keyboard. This, to me, is the most glaring flaw in the project. It took me around 45 mins to have everything set up and ready to go, specially considering that I was using three different USB devices to control the game. Since there is no way of directly interacting with the cockpit and its systems, these mappings are essential to allow the player to utilize the sim-lite controls of their aircraft. This also includes some of the UI, both in-game and in the menus. The UI is functional but basic in design, which does seem to be a side-product of this game's smaller budget. They focused their attention elsewhere for the moment, but I would strongly recommend spending more development time and resources on improving the intuitiveness of the UI as well as finding a solid design for it. GAMEPLAY: WHAT MAKES THIS GAME GREAT Until now, I have only criticized the game and its structure, style and graphics. Now, let's leave that behind so that we can focus on what makes this game worth playing: its gameplay. This title is so good to play that I can only compare its gameplay loop to that of the great simulators of the late 90s, such as Falcon BMS and even other simulators that got inspired by the great, which would be the case for Tiny combat Arena. It is a perfect mix of realism and arcade that is extremely entertaining and, somehow, finds a way to get me immersed like no other title has done in a quite a while. Its flight dynamics might not be what some would consider to be "realistic" or "study-level" but the developer has treated each helicopter to a unique-feeling model that surprisingly fitting when compared to the performance they would get in other simulators. The amount of weapons available for use is pretty extensive and the systems you need to use do not have sim-like fidelity, meaning that they are simple to use yet challenging and engaging. I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself using some of these systems (IHADSS, TGP, Radar, etc.) with relative ease thanks to them being built to resemble the systems on helicopters that I had previously flown in other simulators, specially the Apache. Night missions were extremely fun to go through, the recon missions in particular. Using the IHADSS as well as the native TrackIR support made everything much easier and, honestly, kind of refreshing! Despite the lack of proper realism, it felt great to pilot the helos while wrecking havoc from above with my entire arsenal. I will keep playing this title throughout its early access period, and I cannot wait to see what it has in store in the future. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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 a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord : Cubeboy #9034

For what feels an eternity now, I have trusted my flight sim experience to a Thrustmaster T1.6000 flight stick. It has served me well for over 5 years and, in my opinion, is still the budget king in the category. But after years of use, as anything, it started showing some very noticeable signs of wear. At the beginning, it was the potentiometers on the base slider and twist stick giving away, which wasn't mission-critical for me. Then, I started losing sensitivity in the front buttons and, finally, the trigger. I opened up my stick several times to do repairs, so it wasn't due to a lack of trying that my trusty T1.6K from Thrustmaster finally decided to become unplayable. This is when I decided to give Winwing a try with the generous help from Aaron, since I wasn't able to acquire it at the time. It took months to get to my country, but I finally got a knock on the door earlier this week. Let's take a quick look at this marvelous stick! DISCLAIMER: This article was NOT sponsored by WINWING in any way, shape or form. As well, we acquired this item with our own means, this was not a free sample provided by WINWING. We have full editorial control of this content URSA MINOR: PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT Even though this stick is considered an "entry level" piece of hardware, along with other competitors like the VKB Gladiator, the Ursa Minor seems to be packed with features that, in practicality, position it on a higher tier. Personally, when looking for a quality flight stick to replace my T1.6000, I looked for certain features that were a must: Hall-effect sensors for the main axis movement, more than one hat switch and a plenty of face buttons. Hat switches were my priority, as I struggled to map everything I needed in DCS for more complex aircraft. Thankfully, the Ursa minor offered all of that and more. I went from one to four hat switches, plus a mini-stick. It also has hall effect sensors on all of its axis, including the twist (Z) axis, with the only potentiometer being the base slider. It has over 40 inputs available, with more possible if you decide to turn the mini-stick into another hat switch. These are usually features you see on higher-tier sticks, putting the Ursa Minor firmly ahead of other sticks in its price range (~USD $110) such as the X.52, X.56, the venerable T1.6000. The only stick that would be in direct competition is VKB's Gladiator. In terms of comfort, it is alright. It does feel a bit thin and the small non-adjustable palm rest can leave you wanting for more. That being said, for an average sized hand (adult male), all buttons are easily accessible and tactile. The monochrome ambient lighting is quite pleasing and adjustable through software. It was made in such a way that it is impossible to distinguish between the individual LEDs, leaving you with a very eye-catching base lit up with white diffusers. Even during daytime, these lights are visible and add to the overall premium aesthetic this stick offers. SOFTWARE AND IN-GAME USE To configure the stick properly, you will need to download Winwing's proprietary software: SimApp Pro. This program is... quite primitive. While it does let you connect your stick directly to games such as DCS and allows you to configure certain aspects of the Ursa Minor, it does require an accountb to be created to even access some of those features. To create an account, it will require you to give them your phone number on sign-up. Some connectivity features include interactions between the game that will affect the lighting, or even the until now unmentioned vibration motor that comes included within the stick. Once in-game, whether you have activated the additional features through SimApp or not, you will be welcomed by a flight simmer's favorite activity: control mapping. This stick does not have default mappings for DCS World, not even axis controls, so you will have to do all of that by hand and with a lot of patience. Now that we are actually able to use the flight stick as God intended, you will most likely find the experience to be quite a breath of fresh air, especially if you came from a stick such as the T1.6000. The more interesting aspect to me, and the one that jumped at me immediately upon trying to take off on my Phantom, was the feel the solid gimbals had on the movement. You can clearly feel when you are on one axis or another, unlike with the gimbal on the T1.6000. When I am rolling, I feel as if I was gliding through a narrow channel and, as soon as I input some pitch, you feel the merge of both axis working in unison. It is extremely responsive and sensitive, that goes for pitch, roll and yaw. I have found the experience to be extremely appealing and quite a step up from my trusty T1.6K. All the buttons are tactile, and the two stage trigger demands some force for you to activate its second stage. I have absolutely zero complaints in regard to the buttons and the built of this stick, Winwing really did an amazing job here. WOULD I RECOMMEND IT? Yes. I am one happy customer. If you have a T.Flight Hotas 4 or even a TWCS set-up from Thrustmaster, getting an Ursa Minor is quite the step in the right direction for your flight simming experience. Its only downside is the software package and its absurd limitations, but the stick does not need it to function in the slightest. I am glad this stick is now in my hands, let's see how long this one lasts me. I will take care of it like I did my 5-year-old T1.6K, so expect a long-term report in the future. Stay safe and happy flights! About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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 a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter  | Discord : Cubeboy

Tactical Airlifter You Did Not Know You Needed In a landscape that is frequently riddled with the overwhelming power of nuclear weapons, you would think the addition of an aircraft that is capable of delivering those weapons would be a given. If it cannot deploy a weapon of mass destruction, what place does it have in such a battlefield? I believe few people were expecting the arrival of a logistics capable aircraft with an unusually powerful conventional weapon selection. In my opinion, the VL-49 Tarantula occupies a rather unusual place in the setting of Nuclear Option by Shockfront Studios . The amazing trailer introducing the aircraft. AIRCRAFT DESCRIPTION The Tarantula is a quad proprotor, tiltwing, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) heavy lift platform capable of launching from any of the game's pre-built or user made airbases, highway air strips and helipads. Though it cannot quite fit on the back of a Dynamo-class Destroyer or a Shard-class Corvette like its SAH-46 Chicane attack helicopter counterpart. While quite large, its ability to land vertically anywhere it can fit itself into maintains its versatility. Internal view (Nuclear Option official Discord server). As with all aircraft in Nuclear Option, the VL-49 Tarantula is exquisitely modeled externally and internally. The in-game encyclopedia description of this aircraft mentions its survivability in combat thanks to its four proprotors with internally linked driveshafts. I can certainly say this is the case, as I have intentionally taken this tiltwing mammoth into situations it should never be in and have landed with engines shot out and large sections of the aircraft missing. Its size and weight does make it hard to evade consistent anti-aircraft threats, so playing flying defensively is a must. TACTICAL AIRLIFTER The VL-49 Tarantula should be viewed not as a transport helicopter, but more of a tactical airlifter like the C-130. In its cargo bay the Tarantula can carry Munitions Containers to resupply land forces and aircraft at forward arming and refueling points and Naval Supply Containers that float in the sea to resupply naval units. Each container can explode if deployed incorrectly, so stable landings and low speed control is paramount, but in a pinch these crates can intentionally be ejected from the aircraft as medium yield makeshift bombs. Vehicle wise it can deploy a variety of vehicles. From two LCV25 technical style pickup trucks with anti-aircraft and anti-armor weapon packages, a single mobile radar vehicle capable of detecting and directing surface to air missile fire at targets at up to 40km or a single AFV6 multipurpose armored vehicle available in configurations like anti-air, anti-tank, armored personnel carrier and infantry fighting vehicle. Tarantula deploying a light armored vehicle at a remote location. After these vehicles are dropped off by the VL-49, they can be controlled by players on the same coalition with Nuclear Options built in real time strategy-esque control system. This makes the Tarantula capable of solo capturing neutral or hostile facilities by providing its own ground forces. DIRECT ACTION PENETRATOR Similar to the real world Sikorsky MH-60L DAP, the VL-49 Tarantula can mount a surprising variety of offensive and defensive weapons you would only expect on purpose built attack helicopters. Depending on configuration, it is able to fight its way in and out of contested areas. While carrying cargo, the Tarantula can carry a chin mounted 12.7 mm rotary cannon and on its sponson mounts either 25mm cannon pods or short-ranged infrared air-to-air missiles. When equipped with the 12.7mm and 25mm weapons, as long as players are not in direct control of them, the AI crew members of the Tarantula will automatically slew the weapons onto targets within their firing arcs and engage without the player's input. Aircraft loadout screen. Forgoing transport duties completely, the VL-49 can deploy up to twenty AGM-48 missiles deployed in a F-86D Saber Dog inspired rectractable ventral rocket tray. When fired in large volleys, a single Tarantula can saturate an area with while it remains near top speed to quickly leave the area while hostile forces deal with the wall of missiles it left behind. Ventral rocket tray. Due to its size, attempting to operate for a prolonged period in contested airspace like an attack helicopter is impractical. Evading anti-aircraft fire is difficult because the Tarantula is unable to quickly terrain mask like an attack helicopter or fixed-wing combat aircraft can, then unmask seconds later to continue the engagement. GUNSHIP Aside from transport abilities, the Tarantula's signature combat capability is as a gunship with a side mounted 76mm cannon with a relatively high rate of fire. This heavy hitting cannon has a surprisingly long reach with reliable accuracy thanks to it firing guided cannon shells. The side mounted cannon is hard hitting, capable of destroying a main battle tank in two to four hits while it is driving. Couple its base range with additional altitude provided by an aircraft and the cannon is capable of out ranging short range air defenses (SHORAD). Side mounted 76mm cannon. In Nuclear Option, SHORAD is highly effective against air-to-ground weapons like missiles, bombs and rockets. Most units are able to track these weapons in flight and attempt to intercept them with high rate of fire autocannons or interceptor missiles. Because of this saturation attacks against groups of defended targets are a must. While the guided cannon shells from the Tarantula can be intercepted by some SHORAD units, sustaining fire directly on an air defense unit will gradually overwhelm it. For example, a self propelled anti-aircraft gun may be able to intercept a handful of missiles in just a few seconds, but even it will eventually run out of ammunition when faced with a steady stream of 76mm cannon shells focused on it and only it. Much like the anti-tank missiles mentioned in the previous section of this article, with the cannon mounted, the Tarantula can dispatch a convoy of enemy vehicles in just a few minutes if the conditions in the airspace are permissive. Heavily damaged VL-49 heading back to base. OPERATIONAL REALITIES The strengths and weaknesses of the Tarantula show themselves rapidly depending on the mission type. Nuclear Option is best known for its large scale, force on force missions that are a part of the base game. In these missions about 100 units on each side with dozens more produced in real time fight one another over hundreds of kilometers. Within the mix of the chaos are multiple high performance fifth generation fighters like the KR-67 Ifrit or FS-12 Revoker, which frequently penetrate the perceived frontlines and easily target aircraft like the Tarantula. Being unable to press towards the frontlines easily, the Tarantula can struggle at times. VL-49 Tarantula cockpit. In permissive environments the VL-49 can loiter in an area of the map, locking down roads from enemy troop movements and offering assistance with saturation attacks. In small and medium size scenarios, the Tarantula has more flexibility and the vehicles it deploys have more of an impact in a ground war that does not involve a near endless firehouse of land units. The Tarantula has potential to be the catalyst for an entire set of logistics focused and dispersed forces missions. I find myself flying the VL-49 Tarantula more than half of the aircraft roster in the game, but this is mainly because of the possibilities it presents for multiple mission types. Expect to see more of the VL-49 Tarantula's capabilities on full display as Skyward Flight Media moves forward in making missions for Nuclear Option in the near future. View from a VL-49 cockpit moments before starting an air assault. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

TaskForce 23 , an individual that immediately had an impact upon the international Ace Combat community and our own organization upon arrival. Through the accuracy of his translations, various materials have been made available for the first time in languages besides Japanese, allowing fans around the world to translate them into other languages. Thus far his efforts have not only assisted Project Lighthouse and Skyward Flight Media, but also made the PAX South 2019 interview with Kazutoki Kono possible, brought game developer knowledge to another language and much more. Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos, interviewed TaskForce 23 to introduce him to those that have thoroughly enjoyed his efforts. To start, please tell us a bit about yourself. I’m just a guy who likes airplanes so much that I decided to get my college degree in aeronautical engineering (actually trying to graduate in December). I was actually born in Japan on SkyEye’s birthday (September 19th) but moved to the US when I was like 2-3 and have been living here since. I can read, write, and speak both English and Japanese, but I’m better at English overall. Have you studied translation in any way or have you learned from experience? I haven’t taken any formal training/education on translation, but since my English is better than my parents’, I’ve helped them with reading, writing, and serving as a dictionary for them. Doing that over the years and learning both languages basically at the same time really allowed me to switch between them relatively easily. How did you get into translations? Did you study any of the minutiae that comes with translating a literary piece? Like I mentioned before, I translated some things to explain English words and concepts to my parents, but those were mainly household things that wouldn’t have been shared with many other people. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve done these “formal” translations before I joined Project Lighthouse. With regards to studying, I haven’t really studied the explicit details and methodology of translation, but I do my best to maintain the original tone and style of the piece I’m working on. Japanese is a very context based language, it must be difficult or outright impossible to translate anything word for word. How do you approach it? You really have to know and understand Japanese in order to translate between the two vastly different languages. Since I basically learned both languages at the same time when I was growing up, my mind kind of works things out instinctively. I read the sentence, understand the content, and phrase it so that it sounds natural in the language I’m translating to. Since Japanese ranges from ancient words to modern cognates and abbreviations, you can’t really translate things word for word, but find “equivalent” words that will provide the same or similar meaning. Just as any language, Japanese has its own pros and cons when it comes to usability, ease of understanding and most importantly to us, ease of translation. What do you think is the most frustrating part of translating from Japanese to English and vice versa? I think one of the hardest things about Japanese to English translations are compound kanji. An entire concept could be written with just 4 kanji characters in Japanese, but might require a long sentence in English. Trying to make my translations concise without losing any meaning from the original is one of my toughest jobs. I often have to split one Japanese sentence into two or more English ones so that they don’t feel like a run-on sentence. A challenge in translating for both JP to ENG and ENG to JP, at least for me, is sentence structure. Like with many languages, you cannot simply translate each word in the order that they are given and call it a day. The meaning might be understood, but having an incorrect or slightly off syntax will give you something Google Translate might spit out. I can sort of subconsciously move the words around when I’m translating, but there are times where I have to really think to make the sentence flow better. When approached by idioms or by a play of words that are typical to the Japanese language and culture. How do you translate them? Do you find an equivalent in English or do you omit them? Most of the time, there are similar ones or corresponding equivalents in English that work, but there are definitely times where I get stuck trying to find an analogous idiom. In those cases, I kind of translate it verbatim in quotation marks and then add a translation note with a better explanation. That way the sentence still flows somewhat ok, but it’s still clear what the meaning is. What has been the hardest piece that you have translated as of now? I think the hardest “piece” I translated was the string of tweets sent by Kazutoki Kono regarding his journey in developing Ace Combat 7. He had a distinct tone and diction that was incredibly emotional and inspiring, and I had to replicate that in another language. There was also quite a lot of slang that I was not familiar with, so I had to look those up, and choosing the right words was really difficult. But I think I was able to convey the intent Kono-san wanted in the end. Do you have an interest in any other languages? If so, which ones? I actually took German for a bit in high school since I thought it would be a unique language to learn. I remember doing pretty well in the class, but I haven’t used it since so it’s kind of garbage now lol. I would love to get back into it and maybe learn a romance or slavic language so that I can connect with more people. Since your arrival you have made many projects possible, such as the complete translation of Ikaros in the Sky and more recently A Blue Dove for the Princess. Which of those two was more challenging for you in terms of translation? Or have any of the many interviews proved to be a bit difficult to translate? Both of these were difficult in their own ways. For example, Ikaros talked about some exotic technologies and had some very advanced kanji I had not seen before, so I had to consult some dictionaries and other references to first learn what they were. Ikaros was also a very long project so there’s that too. For the Blue Dove , it was written in a fashion similar to old fairy tales with a “narrator” telling the story in a third-person omniscient point of view, so that was a little challenging for me since I’m not used to writing in this style. But overall, Ikaros was the harder project. ​Thus far, do you have a favorite piece that you've translated? Which one and why?  I think my favorite is still the  Ikaros in the Sky  book to be honest. Though it was a very long project, I was surprised at how well it was written and how the suspense was built for each arc, and I had tons of fun reading and translating at the same time. There were some pretty funny moments too, including the reference to  Ace Combat  games in the break room and use of over-the-top technologies befitting of the  Ace Combat  franchise. One of your most recent translations is of CEDEC 2019 (Computer Entertainment Developers Conference) lecture material. What was your interest in translating this? In past interviews and other material, the devs at Project Aces only really mentioned  what  they did and not necessarily  how  they achieved things, especially the technical details. I had some interest in what these details were and thought that those trying to create their own games could use some of the techniques as hints in their endeavors, so I wanted to share that. These sort of lectures also usually include interesting anecdotes that offer a deeper glimpse into the inner workings of Project Aces, which is also very cool and is something you don’t get to see a lot. In the future, what other types of material are you interested in translating?  You know, I’ve covered a lot of different media in the one year I’ve been doing this. Books, manuals, interviews, audio from games, etc. Personally, I like translating written material compared to audio, especially if they don’t have subtitles, since they already have all the words written and you don’t have to decipher things. But I like challenges, so I would like to translate more audio materials as well as other forms of media.  In terms of subject matter, I know there are still a lot of things that have yet to be translated and shared in just the  Ace Combat  franchise, including things like the Shinden Master File, so I would like to continue working on those. I would also like to help translate things from other franchises too, since I had some fun discovering and learning about other unique works and want to help spread the word on these that the non-Japanese speaking world may not be aware of. ​ Have you ever considered translating as a profession?  I haven’t really considered translating things at a professional level. Though I found it to be fun, my passion is in aircraft manufacture/support and is the career path I’m pursuing at the moment. I also don’t think I would be a very good translator with my current skill level, since I have to solicit the help of a dictionary quite often for some words/slang. I would need to study a lot more to be at a more proficient level, to be honest. Maybe if I land a stable job after graduation and find the time, I might further my training. Any final thoughts? When I joined Project Lighthouse in July of last year, I didn’t expect my translations to garner that much attention, but now, I’ve been able to connect with a lot of amazing people and work on some really cool projects. I’m just really grateful for the opportunities I had. Though real life stuff will keep me busier than ever in the future, I hope to continue working on more translations so that more people would be able to appreciate and enjoy content that otherwise would not be available. Thank you so much for answering these. I look forward to see what else you manage to bring us in the future! About the interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos  Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's 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 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord : Cubeboy #9034

Completely out of nowhere, a new mod dropped on Steam for VTOL VR. This happens a couple of times a week, so I didn't think much of it, until I saw that it was an AH-6 Littlebird. I was actually planning on writing about the DCS Germany map, but I just dropped anything I was doing and got in VTOL VR for a couple of sessions with the Killer Egg. We did a couple of initial runs with the AH-6, some single-player and some multiplayer, which landed us with around 10hrs of flight time with it. This was plenty enough to ensure we could give you guys the fairest look we could of this wonderful mod. THE COCKPIT The creators did a great job with the cockpit, not only modeling-wise, but also design-wise. The cockpit flow is intuitive enough that there was no need for me to relearn any new systems. I instinctively knew how to start it, since it follows the exact same cockpit flow as every other VTOL VR aircraft, with many systems being shared with the AH-94 DLC helicopter, a required install to even run this mod. As it is a multicrew aircraft, you will be sitting right next to your co-pilot. They can operate the same systems you do, allowing you to offload targeting and threat assessment, while you or whoever is flying can focus solely on keeping the two of you alive. Operation is simple and to the point, just what I would expect from a VTOL VR aircraft. Additionally, you can actually use two SCAR rifles and a flare gun, which is quite the feature and a first within VTOL VR aircraft. THE MODEL, CAPABILITIES AND FLIGHT MODEL The external and internal models are up to par with everything that is currently in-game, or even better, depending on who you ask. The animations that were made for the blades whenever you deflect the controls are excellent, and the rotor blur is great. I found myself loving the external model, as this aircraft is such a photogenic bird. In terms of capabilities, expect to have to rely on either having two or three of these Little bird working together, or heavier air support if you want to tackle anything bigger than your average uprising. Pylons are limited by design, and you can take a maximum of four air to ground guided missiles, or two rocket pods, along with two M164 miniguns. The most interesting capability was the crew carrying one. SPECOPS at night You can choose to sacrifice your weapon pylons to carry several soldiers that will automatically deploy on the next landing, mission depending. Now, unto the weakest part of this mod: its flight model. Just like the real bird, the AH-6 is quite sensitive at the controls, she demands a lot of attention, and you will have to get used to this if you want to fly it properly. You cannot manhandle her, she will fight back. While this is all fine and well, there is something quite bothersome about its flight model. Under certain circumstances, usually at high speed, the entire helicopter will enter a harsh, uncommanded pitch maneuver which is similar to RBS (Retreating Blade Stall). This implementation, however, seems to be overly exaggerated and weird in nature. Were this behavior to be less abrupt and better communicated to the player, then I would have little to no complaints about the flight model. At the end of the day, this is a minor complaint I had to communicate to you for the benefit of transparency, but in gameplay, I rarely even found myself looping the helicopter once I understood its limits. CONCLUSION: IT'S FREE, GO FLY IT The folks that made this mod poured quite a lot of effort into it, and it shows. It is up to par with any other content I have seen made for the game, including official aircraft DLC. There is no reason why you shouldn't try it out, you would be missing out on quite the experience. If you want to try it out, then click the button below! It will redirect you to the Steam Workshop page made for this mod. Credits for the developers are on it as well. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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 content manager ever since. Twitter  | Discord : Cubeboy

Eyes on an Aerobatic Rising Star? There are fewer things more beautiful than watching aircraft fly exactly how we imagine them in our mind's eye. Soaring faster than any bird, looping energetically though the air, seemingly flying at maximum performance everywhere they go. Throughout the world airshows are the easiest way enthusiasts can enjoy aircraft flying like this. Yet there are so few dedicated experiences to this type of aviation in flight simulation. Dancing Wings - The Aerobatic Simulator by CloveTek is one such aerobatic flight game. Honestly, an aerobatics focused title under development in 2025 is a rarity. I can think of less than 10 similar efforts in the last decade or so. I find myself watching its development with interest. What is Known Dancing Wings is still in development with a general release date of April 2026, subject to change as of the time of this writing. The landscape in the game uses height map data from around Higashi-matsushima in northern Japan. For reference this region includes Matsushima Air Base and Kinkasan Island. The flight model in game is said to have realistic simulation of drag, gravity, lift and thrust. Notably it advertises itself as 'accessible' with aircraft able to be flown with a gamepad of desired. With social media accounts showing screenshots of multiple Kawasaki T-4s in Japan Air Self Defense Force Blue Impulse aerobatic demonstration team liveries, it is hard not to take notice. Even in 2025 the T-4 appears in so few flight games, any chance to fly a representation of it is eye catching. Most importantly, this is built from the ground up as a non-combat flight game. That may seem like an obvious requirement, but this design choice has a lot behind it. There is a reason it is somewhat difficult to just shoehorn an entire aerobatic system into any flight game out there. Built Different I find myself watching this project with great interest because this is what I consider a "purpose built" aerobatic game. This is important to point out because more often than not this type of flight is included as an add-on to a larger simulator or is a community driven effort that requires significant effort from dozens of people to maintain. Rarely is it a standalone experience. Dancing Wings is being designed as a single player experience. It will train players from first take off to first airshow. While this may sound tedious, I have some experience with similar aerobatic games from the past, so I can understand the mindset. For inexperienced players that do not have a lot of time flying aircraft, they get to learn the basics of flight and gradually lean into more advanced maneuvers. That is a better experience than being new to a certain type of flying then being forced to maintain a perfect Diamond Loop on your second flight. Setting the bar too high, too early is a guaranteed way to have players bounce off of this title before learning it. That is especially important for a non-combat flight game like this. For experienced players, while they may easily complete the initial training, this process also familiarizes them with the nuances of the game's flight model. As any flight enthusiast knows, there is no such thing as a universal flight model made standard across every game and simulator. This is a good way to prepare for those upcoming tight formations with three or more aircraft where every minor input counts. While there is currently no information on what a potential single player campaign looks like, it has been confirmed that there is replay save file system. Performances can be uploaded for others to watch or join in as members of the flight to try flying the routine themselves. For now, this is the nearest mention of something multiplayer adjacent. Spiritual Predecessor It seems that CloveTek may have been inspired by a long-past flight game series in terms of aesthetics. The Aero Dancing series (1999-2002) developed by CRI / Crave was a staple for flight games on the Sega Dreamcast, then eventually one of many contenders on the Sony PlayStation 2. The first game released in 1999 was a pure airshow experience that officially featured the Blue Impulse demo team. After the first entry all sequels in the series gradually included combat aviation to match the market being set by contemporaries of the series. Though two decades have passed, Dancing Wings - The Aerobatic Simulator will most likely have similar hurdles to consider being a non-combat title. While I hope the developer does not choose to lean into combat missions, they will need to lean heavily into aerobatic specific gameplay mechanics and scoring related to that. Thoughts on a Campaign Mode In my opinion, I do think that something like a campaign mode will be a make-or-break factor for this game long term. That is something even its spiritual predecessors could not figure out. Air demonstration teams perform dozens of airshows in their home countries and around the world during their tours. If there were a game mode where the player and their team could accumulate score over the course of a tower, they could perhaps move up in leadership positions in their demo team over the course of many seasons or during off season evaluations. The end goal being to become the flight leader of the team or even change the team's routine to match the player's preference in an effort to improve crowd reception. I feel as though something like that could be a major factor in replay ability. The pursuit of organizing the best air demo routine and working your way up the team's inner ranks. It is still somewhat early in the development process for Dancing Wings and CloveTek, but thus far reception for an aerobatic flight game seems to be rather positive with media outlets like 4Gamer even writing about it. I am constantly rooting for flight games that dare to operate outside of the well-defined trends set by the Ace Combats and Microsoft Flight Simulators of this genre. I look forward to seeing this project continue. Connect with 'Dancing Wings - The Aerobatic Simulator' Bluesky Steam X.com YouTube About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. [Read Staff Profile ]

I can’t believe they’re letting me write about this. This is still one of the best mods ever made for any game and the developer’s 26-year grind on it is legendary. It has earned its place as a mandatory add-on for the base X-Wing Alliance game and should be the first thing you download when you reinstall this game for the modern day. Source: https://www.xwaupgrade.com X-Wing Alliance itself is arguably still the pinnacle of the LucasArts X-Wing series. Though perhaps not as strong in the storytelling and atmosphere department as TIE Fighter, it takes X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and bolts on everything that makes an epic Star Wars space battle complete. With the ability to fly dozens of fully modeled ships from the Star Wars universe during the OT era (The best era. Fight me.), it truly shines in its customization and the ability to effectively pit you and a bunch of your friends in the middle of a fleet battle or a huge multi dozen fighter dog fight through its Flight Simulator feature. Anyone that grew up during the golden age of these LucasArts masterpieces probably lament the loss of their gameplay style as the years went on. To make matters worse, as PC gaming evolved and copyrights were shifted around, it became harder and harder to play these old games. There were no legal alternatives to downloading the game unless you had one of the old CD sets the game originally released on. And God help you if you tried to install it on anything after Windows XP. But as unofficial patches and workarounds were developed, the game was able to be played again, and with the release of the game, patched and functional on GOG and later Steam, we were no longer shackled by an outdated optical storage medium. A little extra background is probably in order. It would behoove anyone that has PC to attempt playing any one of the X-Wing series games. They’re a lesson in non-Newtonian, energy management flight game design that stands as a benchmark to space sim development to this day. It is actually quite easy to pick up and it is one of the few series I think can be played without throttle control successfully and in some cases ideally with easy throttle and weapons selection hotkeys. Mission design is varied, but straightforward and feels faithful to the elegant simplicity of the Star Wars universe. This control scheme carries over from game to game. I actually sort of lament the fact that Star Wars Squadrons didn’t bring forward the default rudder-to-roll/bank-to-yaw control set since it would have been a contemporary translation to the X-Wing Series for the modern day. But if you play the game today, you quickly realize how much it’s graphics have aged. X-Wing Alliance came off of a legacy of DOS-rendered low polygon counts and Gourad shading, and there was clearly a desire to keep the game as accessible as possible for lower powered computers. With today’s 4K HDR, CUDA-cored, Ryzen fueled desktops, the graphics are perhaps not as engaging as they once were. But pop XWA Upgrade on, and… WOW. Look, it’s not Squadrons, but it’s solid . The rough angles and simple textures are gone. Replaced by beveling and real shading. I can only let the game speak for itself: https://www.xwaupgrade.com/renders/videos/TieAvenger_DTM_1_1.mp4 https://www.xwaupgrade.com/renders/videos/TieDefender_DTM_1_1.mp4 https://www.xwaupgrade.com/renders/videos/x-wing_5_01.mp4 This upgrade’s goals were FAR reaching. This was not just an in-engine upgrade. The team went so far as to upgrade every tiny part of the game. Just about every in-game menu, navigation map, and animation has been upscaled and reanimated to fit a modern aspect ratio and resolution. Praise also needs to be laid on the installation process; just about every little thing is accounted for with a set of quality-of-life tools like the Craft Manager that lets you customize the paint schemes and models used for ships in the game. Or Babu Frik’s configurator, which can apply a series of hacks to customize the game’s rendering and effects to better tune for a modern computer. Wait… What’s that? Track-IR? ****ing VR?! Yep. We’ve already brought this into the 21 st  century. But it’s not exactly a default option, and you may need to get hooks installed to make it work. I wish I could review this part of the game, but I was unable to get my VR headset to work for this review, though it does state it works with SteamVR so it should have wide compatibility, regardless of my own PSVR2 hackyness. But wait, there’s more! It’s not compatible with the 2024 version, but the XWA Upgrade acts as the building blocks of just about any modern XWA modification, including the outstanding TIE Fighter Total Conversion mod, which brings the entirety of the TIE Fighter Campaign into the game near flawlessly. And they’re STILL going at it. This mod is still in development. With their well-outlined goal of updating every model the game presents. They’ve even given a bonus of adding a new ship here or there, including the U-Wing and the VCX-100 freighter. It’s so refreshing to be able to gush about something that’s still this great and accessible. With X-Wing Alliance fully available on GOG and Steam, I insist that anyone with even a passing interest in the Star Wars universe treat themselves to this gem. About the Writer T.J. "Millie" Archer A Life-long realist and aviation enthusiast. Once the co-founding Administrator of the Electrosphere.info English Ace Combat Database. In the present day, he is freelance, roving the internet in search of the latest aviation news and entertainment.  Read Staff Profile .

It has been a long time since I was so pleased to be catching a red eye flight. Leaving at 3:00 AM on a Thursday with nothing but a splash of coffee the TSA would not let me keep anyway. Knowing I would be airborne before the sun was fully up. It was a rare time to feel as determined as I was. As excited as I still am even after coming home. That is how you know it was Flight Sim Expo (FSE) weekend. I do not want to sound overly dramatic and call it life changing but life certainly feels different after I attend each expo. For those that do not know, Flight Sim Expo is one of the world’s largest flight simulation conventions. Produced by the Flight Simulation Association (FSA), the expo is a community-driven organization of developers, simmers, and real-world pilots working to make it easier to get started in home flight simulation. Skyward Flight Media has covered Flight Sim Expo since 2021 as an official Media Partner. This year FSE happened between June 27th to 29th, 2025. Traveling to Rhode Island As FSE changes cities annually, traveling to the event naturally means traveling to new parts of the United States of America. Speaking for myself, this is a rare time for me to go to parts of the country I would normally not even consider going to. The wanderlust is very real during and after FSE travel. In my opinion you have to fly to the expo to get the "full experience". My traveling started on June 26th from Denver International Airport. While waiting for a connecting flight at Chicago Midway International Airport, I had to make not of its SBD-4 Dauntless which was recovered from Lake Michigan after it was lost during aircraft carrier qualifications during World War II. Read an article about that here .  Landing in Providence, Rhode Island, the adventure to the expo immediately began with a helpful heads up from the official Flight Sim Association Discord . Throughout each expo there are many channels related to the event for official announcements and for attendees and exhibitors to coordinate. My early arrival worked out unexpectedly well with FSA staff on site at Rhode Island Convention Center letting pre-registered attendees and media partners pick up their badges early. With the wait in line on Friday effectively skipped, Thursday could not have gone any better. I strongly recommend arriving at least a day early for ease of travel. This convention center was quite a choice for the expo this year. It is located in the middle of an area densely populated with a wide range of shops and restaurants. The convention center was connected directly to Omni Hotel - the primary hotel for FSE - and in turn the hotel was connected to the multi-floor Providence Place mall. Attendees were able to walk from convention to hotel to mall without ever leaving the comfort of indoors. Everything else in the area was also easy to access with a maximum of a 20-minute walk through a somewhat busy but accessible urban area. As far as venue selection goes, this may have been one of the most accessible and versatile locations this event has been hosted at yet.  FS Friday June 27th. The all-important Friday session of Flight Sim Expo 2025. So important this day alone has its own hashtag on social media, #FSExpoFriday . This is the primary day for product reveals and announcements. Friday is arguably the most important day of the expo for those that did not attend in person and the flight simulation community writ large. This day earns the title of “the biggest stage in flight sim”. Though the presentation did not start until 1:00 PM, in person registration was open by 9:00 AM. I observed attendees gathering as early as 8:00 AM regardless. The initial meetings of flight simulation enthusiasts started while the companies in the exhibition hall on the second level assembled their booths in private. Throughout the day they casually filled the cavernous ballroom in the third level. Within just 15 minutes this ballroom would be flooded by people eager for the first event of the expo to begin. It was impressive to watch the steady stream of people enter the ballroom. These presentations came from Parallel 42, Altimeter Motives, Contrail, FeelThere, FliteSim.com, Fly With AI, FlyShirley, FSS, Grinnelli Designs, Honeycomb Aeronautical, iniBuilds, Meridian GMT, Navigraph, SayIntentions.AI, SoFly, VA Systems, WINWING, and X-Plane.  The Flight Sim Association broadcasted all of Friday's presentation free for all to see. For the full experience I do recommend watching it in its entirety. However, if you are looking for bullet points and screenshots, I would suggest checking out the write up by our buddy Shamrock over at Stormbirds blog. Immediately after the announcements all attendees exited the exhibition hall to find four bars serving complimentary alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Each convention goer had tickets attached to their expo badges for this from the start. After a few hours of product reveals with quick breaks, being able to fully discuss everything that was seen and get to know the fellow attendees with no need to run off to another presentation. It was a nice way to end the first day of the expo. It is also the start of a common practice anyone can do throughout the entire weekend. If you find yourself uncomfortable in starting up conversations, simply ask someone what they fly or where they fly and you'll be given more answers than you were expecting! Haha! Be Willing to Try This is a part of the experience that I strongly encourage others to participate in when they are at Flight Sim Expo. Each exhibitor and sponsor put forward their very best with the hopes that visitors will not only pick up their product and look at it closely or jump into a sim pit and fly an aircraft they may have never touched before. The entire point is to be as hands on and immersed as possible. The exhibitors do not expect every person that tries their products to be professional simmers able to land a Learjet on a postage stamp. They are approachable, patient and are more than willing to walk people through new experiences. I certainly have been guilty of harshly slamming down a wide body airliner, being guided through avionics I may not always interact with in my own sim flying and gingerly feeling my way around flight models of civilian helicopters. Trying something new with varying degrees of success with no tangible "punishment" are some of the best moments of the expo for me personally. Exhibition Hall June 28th and 29th. Despite the formal request of Flight Sim Association staff to not create too much of a large crowd before the doors opened on Saturday and Sunday, excited attendees gathered as early as 8:30 AM regardless. Frankly, it is hard to fault them for that. There were no incidents of anyone being hurt by overcrowding or trampling, but the presence of a constant audible buzz throughout the hall put the number of people in the hall into perspective. This was not a gathering of quiet consumers formally observing display pieces. This was hundreds of eager, actively engaged flight simulation enthusiasts among their peers, manufacturers and developers with access to the latest hardware, new simulated aircraft and other industry leading products. The excitement and interaction were consistent and palpable. Exhibitor Experiences There were dozens of hardware manufacturers, software developers, online communities, aviation training companies, media outlets and real-world aviation companies in attendance. See the full list along with their floorplan and web links here . While I visited many of them and had all sorts of conversations, being there as a one-man crew means I was not able to cover them all in heavy detail. That being said, I recommend checking out the many creators that also covered the event live from the show floor. You'll be able to see many of the booths with media about them in varying details. For Skyward Flight Media, here are some of our notable experiences from the floor: Aerovector Jet Team A very cool part of the Thrustmaster booth this year - aside from it being so large they even had their own workshops and AMA sessions - was the presence of the Aerovector Jet Team . This Thrustmaster sponsored air demonstration team is known for their close formations during flight with their exclusive T-7 Red Hawk mod for Digital Combat Simulator. Besides providing material for the FSE opening video, their members Hornet, Logic, Scheldon and Skittle were attending in person at the Thrustmaster booth. Throughout the weekend they assisted expo attendees checking out the simulators and even offered a very rare chance to fly their T-7 without being a member of the team on Sunday, June 29th. I had a great time being able to meet them in person, talk with them about the team and getting my own flight stick time with the T-7 with their assistance. It was great having a virtual demo team represented in person at an event like this. It gave a chance for everyday people to ask questions both about aerobatics and doing them in a flight simulator. Paralell 42 x Patriot Aircraft Parallel 42 (stylized as //42) teamed up with Patriot Aircraft USA to provide one heck-of-a-booth. //42 is well known for its detailed scenery and bush flight aircraft. Their amazing booth this year featured the real Patriot Aircraft Super Patriot Mark II alongside the still in development version of that aircraft to be released in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The aircraft was disassembled then reassembled in the exhibition hall with fake grass and a camp ground with hammock around it. //42 staff members guided people in and around the aircraft, while offering them the chance to also view the aircraft in a MSFS build as it sat on the ground. In my eyes, this booth forever cemented Parallel 42 as a die-hard house for bush flying. Seems like I'll be joining Club 42 soon. Combat Pilot Speaking for myself on this one, this project has had my passive interest since interviews and developer diaries about it started appearing in 2023. Though my own experience with any of the IL-2 series titles is quite limited, others in the Skyward staff are well versed. Combat Pilot represents an effort that could be a massive shift in the World War II flight simulation genre. When you put it in perspective that the IL-2 series has largely dominated the space for nearly 20 years, hearing that Jason Williams, who is well known to be a part of that legacy, has struck out on his own with a new team and a new direction. Entropy.Aero , the developer of Combat Pilot, focusing on the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II is quite a first step. With this not being a frequent setting in these types of simulators, that alone is an immediate draw. At FSE 2024, Combat Pilot presented its Carrier Qualification scenario. It had an F4F-4 Wildcat and A6M2 Model 21 Zero with incomplete cockpits and early representations of the IJN Akagi and USS Enterprise aircraft carriers. At FSE 2025 these aircraft had more refined cockpits, the aircraft carriers had arresting cables, Midway Island is represented in more detail. With no prior experience with this title, Jason guided me through taking off from Midway, performing aerobatics, feeling out the still work in progress flight model, land on an aircraft carrier and taking off again. I have an even deeper interest in Combat Pilot now with a few questions I hope to have answered in the near future. MOZA This well-established racing sim company made a massive move at FSE 2025. During their presentation on FS Friday, MOZA introduced the AB6 Force Feed Back Flight Base & MHG Flightstick, MTQ Throttle Quadrant, MRP Rudder Pedals and FMP18 Front Panel. With this their in-house flight sim ecosystem was both ready to ordered and ready to be tested in-person, live at the expo. On Saturday and Sunday MOZA had tables of all flight related hardware with sim pits full of their hardware ready to try on major flight simulators. Skyward Flight Media has been watching MOZA's development somewhat closely, this was our first time getting hands on with their products. While it is easy to put a company "in a box" because of its main series of products (i.e. what is a racing company doing making flight gear?) the modularity and build quality of the MOZA equipment has improved greatly since a few of the initial reviews of hardware seen on YouTube quite some time ago. The diversity of manufacturers for flight simulation equipment these days has been beneficial overall to the entire industry in my eyes. MOZA is firmly a part of this. Geo FS A simulator that I remember in passing but somehow have not given a serious try myself. I recall them being a near constant presence at past Flight Sim Expos. Geo FS describes itself as a "free-to-play flight simulator on web and mobile with global satellite images. Accessible and affordable, Geo FS caters for beginners, aces or VFR practice." The flight model is described as "complete enough to deliver a realistic flight simulation experience. More than just a game, Geo FS is a real flight simulator." Each year I have seen the Geo FS booth, it is one of the most lightweight, least complex booth setups while providing access to a rather robust free to play flight simulator. Each time I was at the booth it had a wide age range of people trying out more than 30 types of aircraft. From younger people who are throwing around aircraft to feel out the flight model to some clear flight simulation veterans looking into the finer details of what this platform can provide. I have had the pleasure of meeting Xavier Tassin - the founder and solo developer of the platform - at least twice at Flight Sim Expo through casually socializing. With Skyward staff members looking at July 2025 as a month of increased glider / sail plane activity, it seems that our first detailed experience with this simulator will be with the Alisport Silent 2 Electro motor glider. More on that soon. Grinnelli Designs I am going to open by saying this should have won the Best Booth Award for the expo. Grinnelli Designs (GD) let everyone fly their crown jewel: the F-100D Super Sabre. The heart of their booth was a full sim rig with virtual reality headset running the development build of the module. The Project High Wire version of the Super Sabre features many system upgrades for this airframe at the time it was in service, though its Radar Homing and Warning equipment is the most prominent feature DCS World players will notice. I had quite the time with the team and the F-100D. So much so I have a separate article planned to get into finer details. While gushing about the Super Sabre alone is possible, it is hard to ignore the time period appropriate inspired design of the booth. Even from across the exhibition hall their booth commanded attention. A camouflaged tent with IR missiles, black couches, museum pieces, an electric guitar with southeast asia livery, themed T-shirts, matching staff uniforms, etc. The passion of the GD team was forefront. It is great to hear that they are interested in attending Flight Sim Expo 2026. Exosky Exosky by Elevons was the only indie flight game developer at FSE 2025 with a booth. We have discussed this game on Skyward before, but this was my first time meeting the developer in person. Jordan from Elevons had a few setups showing various ways Exosky could be played with a flight challenge for people to compete and win a copy of the game. The booth had some pretty great visual materials with it including a human-sized banner and an amazingly large 3D printed Crucian drone - an original aircraft from the game. I hope he paints it someday. Notably, Exosky was presented on the FS Elite stage with its developer talking about how the game was made and some tips to make game development a bit easier with the assistance of AI, but not reliance on AI. It was great to have more small team projects and smaller games/simulators represented at such a massive event. I hope next year a few more will show up to continue spreading awareness and showing variety to this type of audience. As a side note, Exosky recently published a post-FSE update based on direct feedback provided by attendees. This feedback helped the developer pin down a flight model issue that has now resulted in a physics update. I can feel my heart beating with joy over this. Yawman Something occurred to me while visiting the Yawman team for the first time in two years. Despite how much I use the Yawman Arrow flight controller for various things, I hardly mention it in articles. As mentioned in our launch review , the Arrow is in fact versatile enough to be used in flight games far beyond Microsoft Flight Simulator. A brief catch up with their team turned into an interesting conversation about feedback from their customers, how they have handled new or known problems, running the Arrow controller on the Steam Deck with XPlane 12 and a few other things. In fact we spoke so much I am fairly certain I forgot to take pictures. In 2025 I am hoping to follow up with the team for a "one year later interview" on the Arrow, how the company is doing and a few rather interesting moves from Honeycomb and Meridian GMT that seem to have only been made possible after Yawman's endeavor. Pilot Power Now this was an eye catcher and a head scratcher. Pilot Power is an in-development hardware system that aims to incorporate exercise into flight games. For everyone attending Flight Sim Expo, the sight of a television bending forwards and backwards in an upright work out station was certainly head turning. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown was used as an example to have players control aircraft pitch and roll by manually pushing, pulling and tilting the device as a part of physical exercise. It was interesting to see a product so early in development at FSE 2025, though the team behind Pilot Power received quite a bit of design feedback and ideas for improvements. I feel like normally a product like this might immediately be pigeonholed into a certain sub-set of flight games or it may be price compromised because it would rely on hardware from third parties. Fortunately, their team has an electrical engineer on board, meaning that their design can be refined in house. Pilot Power staff took in a lot of feedback. While I did not ask how there expo experience was, the semi-steady flow of onlookers arriving to get hands on with this aviation exercise equipment show that they caught the imagination of a decent chunk of the demographic. Altimeter Motives Building a full home cockpit is always something I feel like I draw a hard red line at. I love flight simulation, but when I think about dedicating an entire room in my home to this it becomes harder to explain. This is why while I prefer using more advanced flight gear, I do require them to attach to things like desk mounts. So they can be attached and detached when needed. Altimeter Motives somewhat falls into my orbit of interest because while it definitely is a manufacturer of physical panels of flight instruments, these panels clip onto flatscreens which then project the information for the physical panels via a specific software manager. The panels are built to match the cockpits of various types of aircraft. This is probably one of the most accessible ways for people to delve into home cockpit building while still maintaining some type of flexibility. Winwing It is hard to not call Winwing one of the superstars of this expo. Founded in 2013, Winwing has made a ton of progress over a decade. In recent years their new lines of combat flight simulation and now General Aviation flight simulation equipment receive high praise. And I do mean this literally - if Winwing has an on-stage presentation on FS Friday there will be literal cheering. The Winwing booth at FSE 2025 provided a wide array of their flight simulation hardware openly available for attendees to interact with. Attendees could pick up all the hardware, press every button and even be guided through various devices by Winwing staff. Of special note is their force feedback lines of products for both combat flight sticks and now their somewhat immaculate force feedback systems for GA. The recent affordability and accessibility of force feedback technology is something Winwing is leading for sure. A big highlight of their booth was three full size flight simulators. An airliner simulator featuring almost all of their GA equipment and two combat focused flight simulators. The flight simulators were running Digital Combat Simulator all weekend. DCS content creator Bogey Dope was managing the F-16C 'Viper' focused simulator with Eagle Dynamics Community Manager NineLine managing the a simulator with the developer build of the full fidelity MiG-29A Fulcrum . At first it was surprising to me to find the Fulcrum seemingly so far along in development at FSE 2025, but in hindsight the full fidelity module was announced back in March 22nd, 2024. Being able to fly a third unreleased aircraft for DCS World was an unexpected, but amazing feeling. Traveling Home Even the end of Flight Sim Expo 2025 continued to be dotted by aviation. While traveling home from the expo on June 30th, I met other attendees leaving the expo in the airport. One of them being Lt. Col. Lindsey Jackson of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) who is a part of coordinating organizations like CAP to have members attend FSE events to get their members to experience the expo while increasing public awareness of the CAP. During a connecting flight halfway home, Baltimore Washington International Airport gave me one last taste of interesting aviation in the form of a Nieuport 11 placed outside the aviation themed "The Firkin and The Flyer" restaurant. After landing back at Denver International Airport my journey was over, my mind was racing and the amount of content I had to aggregate was... overwhelming. It took quite a bit of time to produce this piece. Partially because of the volume of content, partially because of following up on the many contacts we made. Once again Flight Sim Expo proved itself to be a bit of a must attend event for those interested in any type of flight simulation. My heartbreak over missing 2024 has been healed by attending 2025, I suppose. With Flight Sim Expo 2026 now confirmed to be in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 12th through June 14th, 2026 , I find myself already looking at travel routes and landmarks in the city.   About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

There’s still time to attend one of the world’s biggest gatherings of flight simmers! Find great travel deals and register to attend at flightsimexpo.com . Flight Simulation Association recently shared the final list of 2025 partners, which includes more than 90 flight simulation and aviation organizations. From high-profile hardware developers to the biggest aircraft and scenery designers in the flight sim world, FlightSimExpo brings together flight simulation and aviation training organizations of all sizes. See the full list of 2025 partners or explore the event’s interactive virtual floorplan . The floorplan features three stages, workshop areas, and more! Alongside 70+ exhibitors, the 2025 floorplan features three stages with content from developers, content creators, pilots, aeronautical engineers, and more. Attendees can relax with their favorite Twitch and YouTube streamers in the 2025 Media Partner Lounge, sponsored by FSElite, MrSquirrelLee, and Slant Alpha Adventures. FlightSimExpo participants also get access to hands-on workshops and interactive demos of cockpit building, aircraft and scenery design, interaction with online ATC, and much more. New for 2025, Exhibitors and Sponsors are invited to The Exhibitors Lounge, sponsored by Parallel 42. Exhibitor and Sponsor delegates enjoy refreshments and snacks throughout the weekend, along with a quiet place to relax and network with fellow developers. Exhibitors and Sponsors also have exclusive access to the FlightSimExpo Developer Conference, happening on Thursday, June 26. “FSElite is proud to support the third annual FlightSimExpo Developer Conference,” said Calum Martin, Content Director at FSElite. “FlightSimExpo is the world’s biggest gathering of flight sim developers, and we’ve made Thursday a safe space for developers, publishers, and hardware makers to share ideas and network around ideas and how their businesses can work together to support flight simmers.” The biggest stage in flight sim returns on Friday, June 27, 2025. #FSExpoFriday will feature announcements from more than 25 developers! The full lineup includes names like Parallel 42, Contrail, FeelThere, FSS, Grinnelli Designs, Honeycomb Aeronautical, iniBuilds, Navigraph, SayIntentions.AI, SoFly, VA Systems, WINWING, X-Plane, and more. Available for in-person attendees and simulcast globally on YouTube, announcements begin at 1:00pm ET (1700 UTC) on Friday, June 27. “Being in the room when some of the biggest names in flight sim are dropping new products on stage is a totally unique experience,” said Sean Doyle, a FlightSimExpo attendee and volunteer who will be at the show for the 6th time this year. “We’ve worked hard to make FSExpo into a place where the biggest news of the year comes out, and I’m looking forward to seeing what developers have in store for us this year.” Example of partners and sponsors. Enhance the event with Addon Experiences. FlightSimExpo 2025 is a three-day, action-packed show featuring developer announcements, hands-on workshops, exhibits, panel discussions, and community-inspired seminars. Alongside the event itself, attendees can book Addon Experiences happening before, during, and after FlightSimExpo to enhance their trip to Providence. These options include planespotting trips, a laugh-filled bus tour of the city, aircraft, scenery, and home cockpit building workshops, and X-Rave, a unique celebration where aviation meets electrifying beats on Friday night. Space is limited, and several Addons have deadlines coming up this week. Find details about these free and paid options at flightsimexpo.com/addons . Join FlightSimExpo in Providence FlightSimExpo takes place on June 27-29, 2025 at the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown Providence, easily accessible by plane, train, and car from around the world. Registration for in-person tickets or livestream access is available at flightsimexpo.com. Attendees are encouraged to book hotel rooms while discounts are still available, and learn about airfare discounts with Delta, Southwest, and United . ### About FlightSimExpo. FlightSimExpo is one of the world’s largest flight simulation conventions. The event has welcomed more than 7,500 attendees to events in Las Vegas, Orlando, San Diego, and Houston since 2018. FlightSimExpo is produced by Flight Simulation Association, a community-driven organization of developers, simmers, and real-world pilots working to make it easier to get started in home flight simulation. Join the community today—free—at flightsimassociation.com for resources, learning content, webinars, and discounts on top add-ons and simulation hardware.

A couple of days ago, I was reminiscing about some of my childhood memories. Many of them are me with my cousins playing in the yard, or going to the beach, but there is one that stands out from the rest. I can vividly recall it, it was me with my PS2 in front of an old CRT staring at an F-4E Phantom taking off from a carrier deck, a scene that belongs to the opening moments of Ace Combat 4. This scene is so burned in my memory that I can recall the small breeze I felt coming from the window and the smell of the food my grandma was cooking at the time. Aside from the oddness of seeing an Air Force model Phantom taking off from a carrier, the profile of the Phantom and its silhouette got engrained in my brain. This wouldn't have happened if the Phantom wasn't the starter aircraft of that game. To me, this memory has shaped a life-long appreciation for the F-4 line and, to a certain degree, other childhood memories shaped the way I perceive other aircraft, such as the F-5E from Ace Combat 5 or even the starter trio (J35J Draken, F-5E and F-1) from Ace Combat Zero, with preference towards the Draken's absolutely gorgeous silhouette. None of these aircraft are the most powerful, quite the opposite. They are some of the weakest, if not the weakest planes in the games. Despite that, it's them whom I look forward to flying every time I start a new playthrough for nostalgia's sake. They all left such a good first impression and impact on me that I just think about them whenever I think of the games, and not the rest of their expansive rosters of aircraft. All of these starter planes have, surprisingly, altered my perception of different aircraft in real life as I have grown up, and that's when I wondered: Am I alone in this? How has this phenomenon affected others that grew up with the newer games? The starter aircraft has changed quite a bit ever since the days of the PS2, with the new mainstay being the F-16C ever since Ace Combat 6. That's for mainline games, that is. Source: Acepedia Back in the PS2 days, the Viper used to be an early to mid-game unlock, an upgrade from your starter. Now that it serves the role of a starter aircraft, many of the older aircraft that used to be on that spot have been sort of relegated to secondary roles, sometimes in the form of DLC like the F-4E was to AC7, or even omitted completely from the games like the F-5E has been for the past two mainline entries. This brings me to a very weird question: do the kids that are growing with Ace Combat 7 as their childhood game now see the F-16C like I see the F-4E? This, surprisingly, mirrors some aspects of real life aviation and the inevitability of aircraft being retired, which leads to them being somewhat removed from the public eye and public culture. Source: Acepedia They get relegated to museums where people see them as pieces of history, even though for most "modern" aircraft in the museums there are still those out there that remember them flying over their houses during parades or even those that worked with them and flew them, which is the case for many Phantom pilots out there that served with the aircraft. Nowadays, kids out there imagine F-16s when they think of the USAF or even other air forces that primarily operate the type. But if you ask people from other generations, they might say that they remember the USAF Phantoms, be it because they lived near a base or even because they remember them back from the Vietnam-war footage they saw on their TVs as kids or teens. These generational changes in perception are natural, but I still find it interesting how well they parallel my feelings on the Ace Combat starter aircraft and their impact on my aviation journey. Source: Acepedia Always remember those starters and trainers fondly, because sometimes those early wings are the ones that lift you up the most into brighter skies. About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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

The Developers Look Back on the Series’ Early Days Original : 29-06-2020 Update : 07-02-2025 Preface Preface by Taskforce 23 Skyward Flight Media On April 14, 2019, GameSpark published an interview with Jun Omura and Hisaharu Tago who developed Air Combat 22, which is considered to be one of the predecessors to the Ace Combat series. The two also were involved in the development of Ace Combat 7, with Omura as the Development Producer and Tago as the VR Director and a Creative Director for the DLC missions as well. In the interview, the two talked about the Air Combat and Air Combat 22 arcade cabinet games as well as the connections to the rest of the Ace Combat series, so i thought it would be neat if I translated and published this for Ace Combat's 25th anniversary as a way of reflecting back on the roots of the series. It's a pretty lengthy article but it's a very good read. Up until now, detailed accounts regarding the genesis of ideas for the early Ace Combat games (including the arcade titles) have been nonexistent at times, and when players tried to look back on the origins, they couldn’t figure out the starting point. With this interview, there was the huge discovery that the current Ace Combat’s “Hero Experience” had been incorporated [into these games] since the first “Air Combat.”   Additionally, there were discussions about “Ace Combat” and “Air Combat 22,” the connection to “7,” as well as the arcade scene in the 90s, and resulted in an important interview that offers a glimpse of how things were like back in the day. Link to original article: https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2019/04/14/88931_3.html Note: The "Air Combat" that is talked about in the article refers to the Namco arcade cabinet game released in 1992, and not the first Ace Combat game (because the first AC title was actually called "Ace Combat" in Japan). Note 2: Because this was published in April 2019, some of the talking points related to Ace Combat 7 are dated. For example, it talks about upcoming DLC, but this refers to downloadable content that has already been released for Ace Combat 7. GameSpark Article Original Article by Suzuki G. Translation by Taskforce 23 In order to understand the origin of Ace Combat, I listened to Jun Omura and Hisaharu Tago, who were involved in the development of Air Combat 22, a predecessor to the series. The two were also involved in the development of the newest title, Ace Combat 7. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, a flight shooter that was released on January 17, 2019 for consoles. It’s well known that the Ace Combat series was developed based on the Namco arcade game “Air Combat,” but concepts regarding its predecessor have not been made clear until now.   For this interview, I asked questions to the development staff of Air Combat 22 (“22” from here after), a game that began operations in March of 1995 and one of the predecessors to Ace Combat, in order to have an even deeper understanding of the series (including the latest title). They are Jun Omura, Director of “22” (Development Producer for Ace Combat 7), and Hisaharu Tago (Ace Combat 7’s VR Mode Director and currently DLC Director for 7).   This has become a precious interview that not only covers the accounts of “Air Combat” and “Air Combat 22”s birth, but other topics such as the arcade game situation of the mid-90s as seen through the eyes of these developers and connections to the latest title, Ace Combat 7. The content spans multiple pages as a result, but please by all means, read all the way through it. The beginnings of “Air Combat 22” and “Virtual Reality” of the 90s   --Thank you for providing this valuable opportunity today. I look forward to working with you [on this interview]. Could you first introduce yourselves?   Omura:  I am Jun Omura, and joined Namco in 1993 after graduating from school. I worked on development of several medium/large cabinet arcade games, and “Air Combat 22” was the first one I was given the lead on.   I always liked airplanes, and just when I was appealing, “I want to make a game for plane lovers!” there was talk of making a sequel to the first “Air Combat” (the first “Air”) arcade game, and that led me to participating in the development of “22.”   After that, I transferred to making household games such as MotoGP, Death by Degrees, Soul Calibur III, and The Idolmaster series.   I mostly did support work for projects after those titles, but for the Ace Combat series, I was involved in Infinity and 7, the latest title. For 7, I was the development producer Jun Omura Tago:  I joined the company a year after Omura in 1994. Unlike Omura I told my supervisor “I’m a military fan!” rather than “I like planes.” Then he told me “I have the perfect spot for you!” and the place he led me to was “22” where Omura was at…  At the time it was called “Air Combat II” and I was kind of asked to be involved, so I joined. However, arcade game development was really fast back then, and the scope was small enough that we were able to complete the game with a small number of people within a year. Hisaharu Tago Omura:  Yes, the team was small and there was less content compared to games today (regarding scope of development).   Tago:  (When I was participating in its development) we were bustling about changing circuit boards, and we were upgrading from SYSTEM 22 to the newest SYSTEM SUPER 22 at the time. We didn’t have a lot of resources for making [assets] so we used the text editor Emacs to look at internal data, played the game and made adjustments, and learned the contents in the specification document.   At the time we had other product lines (development stages), but this “P2” written in the specification document for “22” represents the final step before mass production, and it is where we put in final touches.   It was unusual for people to come up with thick specification documents at that stage. Usually people would write as much as they could in a “Final Specification Document” as the last reference document before they got put into the company archives.   *SYSTEM 22: Namco’s arcade system board that made texture mapping possible. Used for Ridge Racer and Cyber Command. *SYSTEM SUPER 22: An arcade system board that added 2D scaling. Used for Air Combat 22 and Time Crisis.   Omura:  We had a senior member within the “22” development team that was also a programmer, and I remember him saying “Development is based on the specification document, so let’s write the best we can!” I remember learning about a lot of things while writing [the specification document].   Tago:  [That senior member] was a person with large ambitions and made lots of things, and was even kind enough to create the “rapid-fire missile mode” which was sort of a secret feature for the game (laughs).   Also we had Hiroyuki Kawada as part of the sound staff for “22.” He’s known for writing music for the space shooting game Star Luster in the past.   Omura: Though we called it a project back then, it was a really small-scale development effort compared to today.   Tago:  In Namco’s arcade development [process], you would first go to the “Development Design Group” that was in Yokohama’s Kohoku ward at the time and develop the hardware design and mechanical aspects, then go to the YCC (Yokohama Creative Center) that was in the Kanagawa ward at the time to develop the software.   Regarding software, we had 9 people in a single room develop it. We entrusted the visual assets to an outside group, which was around 3 people. Compared to the development of the latest title Ace Combat 7, we were like ants and very small in number. It’s pretty amazing now when you think about it.   --I see, so it was called “Air Combat II” at the time. Also I noticed that on the cover of this proposal document there is a section for a “VR General Manager,” but what was the meaning behind this?   Tago:  Medium/large arcade cabinets are games that are based on hands-on experience/sensation, so in order to connect that to virtual reality, Namco at the time named it the “Main VR Development Group” rather ambitiously. At least that’s what I was told by my supervisor (laughs). I don’t know if that’s true or not though (laughs).   Omura:  Back then the word “Virtual Reality” was praised extravagantly, so that group was named like that to show they were proactively developing a VR game.   Tago:  In those days, other game studios had several game titles with the word “virtual” incorporated into them. Remember, 3-4 years before we joined, Namco released “Galaxian 3.”   “A preface to VR” was written on the cover for the pamphlet at the time. In general, any game that was a hands-on experience/sensation type was listed as VR, and the company seemed to be aware of that enterprise. However, we as developers weren’t able to reach  that [level of immersion] and thought “that name is really stretching it.” If anything, we used the name “Development and Planning Group” since we were a subordinate organization and were still affiliated as such. Omura:  I had times where I submitted a proposal and was told “You can’t do that because this isn’t virtual reality!”   Tago:  In today’s “virtual reality” with the HMD goggles, it mainly relies on the experience/sensation of the player’s visual perception, but back then we were trying to present that in a different manner.   Omura:  For 3DCG, we initially only had polygons, but we were then able to add textures to those polygons during the mid-90s, increasing the realism and sense of immersion. It really was a time when "virtual reality" was of great interest to the public.   Tago:  Additionally for “22,” we upgraded the circuit board from SYSTEM 22 to SYSTEM SUPER 22, so although there wasn’t too much of a change in the polygon count, we were able to expand on how things were presented.   Specifically, when we went to SUPER 22, the 2D aspects were enhanced. Since we could paste sprites instead of making polygons for the various gauges, we were able to better allocate things represented with polygons in the game.   --In February 2019, I actually headed to Kurihashi Round1 Stadium in Saitama where it has the only confirmed working “Air Combat” cabinet in the Kanto region and played both titles. I was then able to play it, but why was a SD cabinet version for “22” never developed?   Tago:  Actually, SYSTEM SUPER 22 wouldn’t fit in the SD cabinet. That’s why it was only on the DX cabinet.   Omura:  From a legal perspective (electronic safety law), we weren’t allowed to put it in the [SD cabinet] without passing tests.   Tago:  The board for SYSTEM SUPER 22 was split into 4 pieces, but the noise from the flat cables connecting the circuit boards were bad… So “22” wasn’t able to fit in the SD cabinet. Also the DX cabinet cost a lot, so we weren’t able to push out that many copies of “22”...    --How much did the DX cabinet cost?   Omura:  This DX cabinet was from the first “Air” so I wasn’t involved in the design of the cabinet, but it was a sophisticated design that felt authentic and was great.   Tago:  It never got boring no matter how many times we debugged it. I remember exclaiming “Why can’t we press this button (on the panel) !?” (laughs)   According to stories told by those who designed the hardware, the DX cabinet for the first “Air” used expensive molded parts everywhere, especially the front panel, so it had quite the high cost. Due to the problem of this high cost, we planned on modifying existing DX cabinets with stickers and other things for “22.”   *Author’s note: The skiing game Alpine Racer was known for its expensive cabinet in its day, and Air Combat’s DX cabinets supposedly came close in terms of cost   Omura:  There are stickers on the large displays of these DX cabinets to change them cosmetically for “22,” but the triple tube rear projection monitor was a generic product so these were cheaper due to economies of scale.   Tago:  In general, from the highest cost it was: Cabinet -> Cabinet cosmetics (exterior molded parts) -> Light-up sign -> Display. Additionally if it was one of the motion cabinets, the base that the cabinet sat on had to be strengthened so that increased the cost even more. Pretty nostalgic topic.   --I’m surprised that the display was cheaper! Have you also heard any details of the birth of “Air Combat,” the predecessor to the Ace Combat series?   Omura:  If you’re a regular middle school or high school boy, you naturally admire fighter pilots, and if you see something like “Top Gun,” you get passionate even if you don’t think about fighter jets on a regular basis right?   In that sense, it seems the people who proposed the first “Air” at the time thought, “if we release a game with a fighter jet theme, they’ll definitely love it and play it!” Tago:  Things become clear if you read the proposal plan for the first “Air,” but it says “The game will be presented in a way to make the player feel like a hero,” and is just basically the concept of the current Ace Combat. Portion of the proposal document. Omura:  Additionally, the proposal for the cabinet at the time prioritized the sensation of “sitting in a real fighter jet,” so it imitated the shape of a cockpit and look of a fighter, but that concept was polished and what resulted was the DX cabinet.   Tago:  A senior member told me this back then, but the first concept that resembled the nose of a fighter jet would be too expensive if molded parts and cosmetics were incorporated, so they ended up removing those. Personally, I think a DX cabinet that only had the cockpit area would be cooler than the first proposal.    I also heard that they were looking at including motion of the cabinet itself. However this would again lead to high costs so the result of them cutting down various parts resulted in the final DX cabinet. Also I remember them doing checks for a connected “Air Combat” versus mode.   Omura:  It wasn’t “22” but we used 2 cabinets of the first “Air” and tested a connected versus mode, but due to various reasons it wasn’t able to make it in development.   Tago:  I remember Omura talking about this back in the day, but those connected versus modes were 1v1s so “it resulted in the two chasing after each other’s tails, and it becomes a chore rather than a game.” When I heard this, I had just joined the company and my heart felt it was going to shatter (laughs). I had thoughts like: “I think it would be fun if people could face each other! Games like Final Lap exist!” (laughs).   Omura:  Realistically there were circumstances like, “If we have multiple people vs multiple people there is the possibility that it would be a good game, but if we do that then there’s the circuit board capabilities and selling price...”  Tago:  This is another story I heard, but there were proposals to have rudder pedals in the first “Air” as well. However, the game would become really hard if they did that so they removed it.   Omura:  I think that was the right decision. We didn’t make it as a flight simulator; we developed it as just a shooting game. Plus I don’t think people would know how to use rudder pedals unless they really liked airplanes and were knowledgeable about them.   --I just witnessed the “beginning of history” for the series...I’m really moved! But it does seem like adding rudders to the “Air” game system would have made it even more complicated and difficult.   Tago:  Compared to the first one, “22” definitely is more entertaining. Even when we were playing it, I remember thoroughly investigating fun, entertaining elements [to include].   Omura:  “22” used SYSTEM SUPER 22 so its performance increased to the point 1 frame could have 4000 polygons and we were able to display lots of enemies.   The first “Air” SYSTEM 21 could only render 1000 polygons per frame (both ran at 60 fps) and could barely render you and an enemy plane. There’s a scene where 2 wingmen join in, but we could only do it in limited scenarios, and it ended up into a 1v1 game.   Since we could introduce multiple enemies in “22,” you can introduce strategy in choosing which enemies to shoot down first, and we were able to build that into the game.   Tago:  There were limits on launching missiles though! (laughs)   Omura:  It was the same for the first game too, but I built “22” as a game “where you shoot down planes with your guns.” The enemies release flares to disrupt your missiles, but since missiles automatically chase enemies and shoot them down after locking on and launching, it feels less engaging as a game. So I adjusted it so that people could use their techniques to enjoy the aerial battles and be able to clear the game with just guns. A single specification document connects "Air Combat" to "Ace Combat"   --I see, so it revolves around gun gameplay if you’re skilled! I like it. On another topic, for the end credits for the first Ace Combat game, it lists you guys in the special thanks section, but did you help with its development in some way?   Omura:  For Ace Combat, the CS (console) Development Group reached out saying “We’re making a household game for the PS with a dogfighting theme, so let’s work together!” right when development of “22” was starting.   Additionally, development of “22” was further ahead, so we offered any resources that we could, and helped the development of the first Ace Combat in that manner.   Tago:  [Content-wise] it was a really simple production, on the “what is a flight shooter?” level. We were also at the climax of “22”s development so we weren’t able to oversee too many things, but we passed down some of the know-how through “22”s specification document.   From there, things like “behavior where enemies automatically get within firing range” were naturally incorporated into the first ACE as features. In the end, the director for the first Ace Combat “wanted to include our names” so we checked to see if our names were correct in the end credits.   The CS side was in a different room, so the “22” staff never went into the room and created things directly. This Development Code V150 “Air Combat 22” P2 Specification Document connected “Air Combat” to “Ace Combat,” and is historically important. --The fact that this one specification document connected “Air” and “Ace” makes it very valuable. I can’t believe that I’m laying my eyes upon it right now. By the way, the first “Air Combat” was exhibited at the 1992 AM Show, and then the company’s first “Ridge Racer” (“Ridge” hereafter) began showing up in arcades a year later. At the time, which was more popular?   Omura:  Ridge Racer of course. “Ridge” was a racing game and a large part of that popularity probably had to do with the fact that it had no prerequisite conditions and appealed to a wider customer base (laughs)   Tago:  After that in 1995, we released “Alpine Racer” along with “22” and medium/large cabinets became more geared towards casual players.   Then after that, the direction that games like the horse racing game “Final Furlong” took would finally lead us to games like “Race On!” Taking all those into account, titles like “Air” that are suited to a smaller core demographic are games that “chooses their customers.”   ---In that case, was the income from “22” in those days just average?   Tago:  We had good numbers at our location test. But sorry, I don’t remember the exact numbers since it was so long ago.   Omura:  But it was a game that chose its customers, so it didn’t get played as much as “Ridge.” You have a car in “Ridge” so it's intuitive and easy to drive, but with “Air Combat” people get separated into those who can fly planes and those who cannot. We made it relatively easy to control for “Air,” but in the end those who couldn’t get the controls weren’t able to play it to its full potential.   Tago:  Back then I just joined the company I wasn’t very familiar with game creation, and thought “maybe you just fly the plane normally.” But what surprised me when reading the specification document was that it had detailed measures for the enemies to come closer to the player aircraft, and I was able to learn that “ you can’t fly if you don’t do that.”   My fondness didn’t change, but I was shocked after seeing what goes on in the background and thought “I guess you really have to think through all these things in order to make a game” while reading.   Omura:  It was filled with know-how. I made things myself too and learned a lot of things for the first time.   Tago:  We were pretty astonished. Since the “hero experience/exhilaration of shooting down enemies” that is a staple of the Ace Combat series already existed from the beginning, we thought “What the player wants (now and in the past) aren’t that much different.”   - -Regarding the music, in Ace Combat 3D Cross Rumble, there were arrangements of “22”s “If the Sky is Burnin’ Out!” and “Surrender Me,” but was there a time when the developers asked for your opinion when putting these songs in?   Tago:  That made us really happy. We didn’t directly ask them to put it in, but I was told by someone that joined the company around the same time and was in charge of consoles, “We put it in!” and “We were able to put it in!”   Omura:  Kazuhiro Nakamura composed them for us, who was in charge of sound at the time. Personally, they’re my favorite compositions. It just sounds so cool and makes you burn up whenever you hear it, and I love it!   Tago:  Rock fits well with “Air Combat” doesn’t it? (laughs)   Omura:  There were movies like “Top Gun,” so I requested the sound lead to give it a rock feel. I liked how the movie Street of Fire ended so I asked them “Please have rock music for the ending song!” for “22,” but that was rejected (laughs).   Tago:  And then he kept on saying “Rock! I want rock!” I wanted a more mellow way of ending so I fully supported the sound lead’s decision (laughs).   Omura:  My thinking was that I wanted [the player] to still feel like they were on fire as they left the cabinet and I didn't want to suppress that feeling by ending in a mellow way, but I listened to the views of other people and finally chose to end it so that it left a lingering memory (laughs).   --I see, ”22”s music had those kinds of implications behind them! Also, if there were any reactions or reviews by users back then that left an impression on you, I would like to hear them.   Tago:  One thing that I will say is that reviews back then wouldn’t be sent directly to us. Correspondence from customers were screened before coming to us, and it wasn’t like today where you can search for the customers’ raw and unfiltered voices on the internet.   Of course those with the energy to write reviews generally praised it, so we gratefully read them. With Twitter, I felt like we finally noticed what people really thought when we saw things like “22” nostalgia posts that say “that advanced mode where you went for gun kills was hard.”   Omura:  I’m the same as well. Unlike today, the customer’s voice had a hard time reaching us back then. When we exhibited it at a business-oriented game show, we had people from game magazines go “This is amazing!” and praised it, so that made us happy.   From what I remember from watching customers at game centers, those who knew the mechanism of planes like how you climb by pulling the stick back and dive by pushing the stick down didn’t feel out of place controlling it. However, it’s alien to those who don’t, so I realized we should have put in a feature where you could invert the stick controls from the beginning.   Tago:  I remember you talking about it! It was just like you described.   Omura:  Regarding that bit, I think there were a lot of people that got stuck by that gameplay-wise. It’s a bit late, but it definitely was a point of contrition.   --I can definitely understand that. When I first played Ace Combat, it took me a while to understand that pushing the up arrow would make you dive and pushing the down arrow would make you climb. It was an element that was hard to understand until I realized the mechanism of airplanes.   Omura:  Kind of like “If I press the up key, it should move up on the screen!” (laughs)   Tago:  I just remembered, but we talked about this in the development room too. There were lots of reactions from players that said “Why does it face the opposite way!”... Oh right, there was an announcement made at Namco back then, that President Nakamura will play the games that were completed.   And the conditions were that if you didn’t get President Nakamura’s OK, it was no good, and the President back then vigorously played all the games made by the company. I remember being very anxious when watching him play (laughs). When the president came, the tension was strained to the max. If he said “It’s not very fun,” it was pretty harsh and we would have to remake the game if it was bad enough (laughs).   Omura:  But he wasn’t too strict when checking, and he probably wanted to see the completed game with his own eyes before it was released to the world, carrying the name of his company on its back. ​ Tago:  Really!? I was really nervous since I thought “The president will be playing [our game].”   Omura:  Of course you get nervous, but he never said harsh things like “This isn’t good, fix this” for “22.”   -- I guess the president really just wanted to play the games.   Tago:  That being said, for the first and second year after I joined the company, the president’s checks were so sublime. It was the president after all, with a new employee.   The president would play the game dressed up in his suit, and I was nervous just from trying not to be impolite. Plus the secretary would offer juice and towelettes, and I was overwhelmed by that unique atmosphere.   --I didn’t know there were stories like that concerning President Nakamura! Also from what I’ve heard, Namco in the 90s had a development studio in Kanagawa’s Yokohama right?   Tago:  At the time there was the Yokohama Creative Center (YCC). I joined in 1994 but development groups for business purposes were split between the YCC and the “Yokohama Future Research Center” in Kohoku.   In 1994, large projects like Galaxian3 for the Theater 6 system were at the Yokohama Future Research Center, relatively small projects were at the YCC, and projects that were almost completed were done at the Yokohama Future Research Center. We left behind full scale cabinets for Ridge Racer and Ridge Racer 2 at the Future Research Center.   Omura:  After that, the Yokohama Future Research Center led hardware development, designed cabinets, and planned electrical/mechanical layouts while software development was done at the YCC.   Tago:  VR Zone’s Junichiro Koyama was originally from the Yokohama Future Research Center’s design group, and whenever we needed to ask for a layout or cabinet design, we would drive a company car to the Yokohama Future Research Center via the Daisan Keihin Road. ​ --I see, that’s how it was like. By the way, for “22” and other games, what are some important things to look at in these proposal documents?   Tago:  Everything is worth looking at and filled with information, and other than the early title of “Air Combat II,” the specification document points out to have the enemy maneuver so that they constantly end up in front of the player’s plane when they are being chased.   Other points are the terrain, field of vision, and use of waypoints to move AI aircraft. This waypoint method of movement is used in today’s Ace Combat as well.   Omura:  Regarding waypoints, I remember the programmers having a hard time with it. It wasn’t working as intended.   If it was a simple path, the AI would follow it but didn’t look like they were flying, so making it look like they were actually airplanes flying through the air and still getting them to hit the waypoints was difficult.   Tago:  If we forced them to hit a waypoint they didn’t move like airplanes, and if we tried to make them look like they were flying they had a hard time hitting the waypoint, so it was very analog and hard to manage. Air Combat 22 development notes. Omura:  For that reason, we set up a 3D object for the passage determination instead of a point, and if the plane passed through the object, it would register as it had hit the waypoint. After that, the programmers struggled quite a lot with controlling the enemy formation behaviors.   What I mean is that when you try to make the entire formation turn, the movements of the inner and outer planes aren’t the same. If we don’t bridge the gap between the movement distance well, the formation won’t look clean when turning. I remember having a discussion like: “Is it alright if the formation shape falls apart a little?” “Sure.”   Tago:  Also at the end of the proposal document, we provided resources for selecting aircraft that should appear in the game. Personally I like small carrier-launched attack planes that seem old or small aircraft that look like they are working hard, but they weren’t able to be used in “22.”   Omura:  And those aircraft were too small. They’re cool, but as enemies in an operational 3D shooting game… not so much, so we decided not to use them.   --I see. So what were the criteria for selecting the 3 playable aircraft for “22”?   Omura:  We saw that “these are pretty popular” back in the day, and choosing them was pretty straightforward. Aspects such as having popularity from “Top Gun,” looking cool due to the canards, and being state-of-the-art back then with that futuristic sense were some reasons.   However, I thought stealth aircraft didn’t look very cool when looking at them from the rear at the time. Variable geometry wings or three surface aircraft just have that look of a fighter jet, but nothing really sticks out for stealth aircraft compared to existing ones, so even back then I remember people would see this unconventional plane and say “it looks like a UFO.”   *Three surface aircraft  = aircraft comprised of canards, wings, and horizontal tail for 3 wing sections   Tago:  Wait, really!? I personally think the vectored nozzles on stealth aircraft are science fiction-esque and really cool! ​ --At the time, stealth planes were still in their infancy, even in the real world... I feel a sense of history. ​ Tago:  (Pointing at the modeling for the stealth aircraft) If you look at the shape of the nose or wings, it does look distinct and a little different. ​ Omura:  A little off topic, but the development speed of manned fighter jets has slowed down since the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, efforts have skewed towards development of unmanned aircraft, so as a fan of manned jets I’m a little sad. The relationship between “Air Combat 22” and “Ace Combat 7”: Speaking about the 24 years of progress   --Mr. Omura has been involved in the Ace Combat series since “Infinity,” and Mr. Tago from “7,” but what would you say has changed when comparing “22” to “7” while it was in development? ​ Tago:  I was in charge of Ace Combat 7’s VR mode, but I thought “the final product isn’t too different from ‘22’.” What changed was the knowledge that was born while I had been away from VR development, and I learned a lot of things.   Things like the stimulation from sensation, excitement from immersion, and creation of pacing that I had created out of habit from my experience were actually explained back to me by VR Producer Jun Tamaoki who said, “We actually explain it in this way now.” I thought “Wow, logical explanations have been created for these things that I had been creating out of habit.” Ace Combat puts a story on top of that and made it easier to lead players to a stronger sense of excitement. That’s why my feeling that “the games themselves don’t change all that much” was the first impression I got when I came back to develop Ace Combat.   Omura:  The base hasn’t changed, but the workload has increased. Over 20 years has passed between “22” and “7” and there is a huge difference in the advances in hardware itself.   Like how Tago said before, we would write text files in Emacs for things like enemy placement, but now we can set and edit them in a GUI editor. However even if things had become more convenient, the workload has increased beyond that.   Since “work is efficient but variation increases,” creating the game has become really difficult. The 20-person scale of “22” doesn’t even compare to the large scale seen in “7” Tago:  At the very least, I see the way we go through development now as a good change. Especially in “7” I made lots of things with the GUI editor, and the nice thing is that you can immediately see the completed item right there in the tool.   We call it “iteration” but in UE4, the cycle of Plan -> Do -> See is established while being visualized right on our PCs, so I thought “This is way easier to make than putting in data directly through Emacs back then!”   I’ve been told by Tamaoki: “I thought you would end up fiddling around even as a director!” (laughs). My impression is that “the development environment has changed, but it’s fun.”   --Mr. Omura, you were the Development Producer for Ace Combat 7, but what did you feel about the story which would have a principal theme about unmanned aircraft in “7”?   Omura:  Times have changed and unmanned aircraft are being operated in the real world too, so I think the approach fits the current age.   Tago:  It is a trend after all. Maybe we’ll see manned aircraft become mainstream again in the future.   --We don’t know what the skies of the future will be like, indeed a “Skies Unknown.” By the way, there was a drawing of a fox with a revolver in its mouth in “22”s dogfight mode with the words “ACES” written on it, but it looks similar to Trigger’s emblem, the protagonist for “7.” Is there any relation to “7”? Omura:  Kosuke Itomi, the narrative director for “7” would know more about Trigger, but the mark that shows up in “22”s dogfight mode is actually a wolf.   For the background setting for “22,” there were separate squadrons like the “150th Tactical Fighter Squadron” or “119th Tactical Fighter Squadron” for each mode and they had team names like “ACES,” “AERIES,” and “TOP GUNNERS,” and would show up on the screen. Omura:  The beginner mode had “AERIES” with an eagle carrying missiles, the advanced modes had “TOP GUNNERS” with an eagle carrying a pistol, and the dogfight mode had a wolf carrying a pistol in its mouth. We weren’t able to set up an intermediate mode. I want to ask about the similarity between Trigger’s mark from “7” and the wolf from “22”s dogfight mode, but I haven’t yet (laughs). Tago:  That pistol carrying wolf is exactly like Trigger’s mark. I’m really curious about that (laughs). Omura:  At first I thought about using “Rookie’ for the beginner mode, but I changed it after hearing that “it’s not good since it feels like you’re being looked down upon” by native speakers. Additionally, “AERIES” was a word I happened to find in an English dictionary when thinking up a title name, and means “chick of a bird of prey.”   However, “AERIES” isn’t a word used commonly so maybe it’s not such a good idea to use in a product…that was what I thought after release (laughs). As a game creator, I think the most fun part of the job is when you’re writing proposals or specification documents while thinking “It would be so fun if we could make something like this.” That’s also because you only run into problems after writing (laughs). But that’s because we’re working to make something complete, so it’s still fun.   --I see, there were specific reasons for certain designs and names. (Looking at the proposal document) Other than “Air Combat II,” I see that it was called “Aerial Force” too.   Tago:  “22” was a name that we settled on towards the end of development, and really came out of nowhere.   Omura:  Internally, I was pushing for the title to be “AERIAL FORCE,” but with the authoritative decision by the then-president, we settled on “Air Combat 22” at the very end to better appeal the SYSTEM SUPER 22 hardware. In the intro demo for “22,” there is an “AF” written on the carrier where planes are taking off from, which was a relic of the “AERIAL FORCE” name. The fighting game boom as seen through the eyes of developers of medium/large cabinets: the changing trends in the arcade scene at the turn of the 21st century   --I see, there was a possibility that the name “Air Combat 22” and “Ace Combat” might not have existed. When I saw the number “22” I wondered what it signified. ​ Tago:  If we went with “AERIAL FORCE,” there was the possibility that it might have not connected to Ace Combat. However it was conceived under the name “Air Combat II” at the beginning of the project.   The people most affected by the last minute change were the designers who had to make the title logo. I remember them working furiously to make the change.    Omura:  Within the company, it was tentatively called “Air Combat II” to make it easier to understand.   Tago:  It was the president’s word, so I don’t think there was too much thought put into it. Except those who heard about it were like “what!?” at first and thought “there’s an extra 2 in there.” ​ Omura: Looking back at it now, the name “22” took people by surprise and I’m alright with that. ​ Tago:  The moment someone says “What’s ‘22’?” you’ve “won” (laughs). It has to stand out in a game center where everything is showy, so it’s no good if it blends in with the background. The instant someone has questions about the title, you have won, sort of. Maybe this was President Nakamura’s shining sensibility in action (laughs). ​ --Indeed, if you glance at “22,” you start to wonder about its meaning. Also were there any plans for a sequel to “Air Combat 22” once the first “Ace Combat” was released for consoles? ​ Omura:  Unfortunately, no. “22” didn’t have that much sales success for the company. Oh, but there was this story. After the creation of the first “Air” and “22,” there was discussion of “what should we make next,” and someone proposed “how about helicopters?” and I thought “what!?” while they began researching technologies for it (laughs). ​ Then, when the first stage of tech research finished up, there was a request for an attraction-type game for the Namjatown theme park that Namco was planning at the time. ​ In the end, they naturally decided to use the results from the tech research to build something with an attack helicopter. This was the “Fire Bull” attraction in Namjatown. It was once part of Namjatown but it has been removed a while ago.   About “Fire Bull,” the player would get in the cockpit enclosure and put on a HMD with a small camera attached to it. The window area of the cockpit was painted green, and we used green screen technology to combine the game footage so it looked like you were flying through the air when looking out the window.   With this method, you can still show the person riding inside and display the sky or enemy helicopters in the background, and it was a unique VR experience where you didn’t have to replace the person with an avatar character. The development team combined the real and virtual and called it “R&VR.” ​ Tago:  It was an attraction that combined the HMD and green screen, and we showed the blended footage using the camera on the HMD. It’s close to what you see on weather forecasting channels. ​ People often say that it would be more fun if they could pair their VR goggles with some kind of movable ride enclosure. And this attraction not only implemented this, but combined green screen technology with it, and I thought it was amazing. I also wondered how sophisticated the system was. If I recall correctly, it used a special circuit board tailored for it. ​ Omura:  However, that was a rail shooter so you couldn’t control it. And that’s right, “Fire Bull” used something called SYSTEM SS22 DS. ​ Tago:  The part that stored the circuit board was made from a very large frame, and was way bigger than your regular arcade cabinet. It was so big it was called a big wooden box. Along with its rendering capabilities and scale, I thought “what is this monster..!” ​ Omura:  SYSTEM SS22 DS was big since it had to display two things with one board. ​ --Listening to stories about “Fire Bull,” it’s kind of like today’s MR (Mixed Reality). I’m astonished that they had the expertise for that kind of implementation back then. It sounds like it might connect to “Ace Combat Assault Horizon”s helicopter sections or “7”s VR mode. ​ Omura:  The technology for the HMD itself has existed for a long time. Also with VR/MR, there are periodic booms along with advancements in technology, and can be shown with an upward spiral (laughs).   Tago:  There is one boom just under every 10 years, right? (laughs) “7”s VR mode is just one part of that loop, so if you came into the game industry between VR booms, they might think “VR is amazing,” but we think “technology is evolving, and history will be written again” (laughs). ​ --”22” started operating in arcades in March 1995, and was in the same period where “Tekken,” born from the PS compatible arcade board SYSTEM 11, was first ported to the PlayStation. As developers of medium/large arcade games, how did you view the fighting game boom in those days?   Omura:  At the time I was able to see the making of Tekken since it was close to our group, and I honestly thought “they’re making something amazing.” Tago:  I joined the company because I admired medium/large cabinet games like Star Blade, so I was a bit conceited thinking “medium/large cabinets are the best!” When I saw Tekken, I thought “Alright! Medium/large cabinets will still be going strong!” (laughs).   I really was arrogant at the time, and thought there would be a SYSTEM 23 after SYSTEM 22 and the numbers would keep going higher and there would be a great future…! (laughs)   An employee who joined around the same time as me was involved in Tekken’s development, so he would try to appeal to me: “We’re able to use polygons with this board too, the fighters move like this now,” stuff like that. Omura:  You get more and more fruits if you win a battle in Tekken right? I thought it was good taste by having those icons be the cherry, strawberry, and apple from Pac-Man.   Tago:  Omura, the way you view things is different!   Omura:  I like easter eggs like that. But it might not make sense to those who don’t know (laughs). Back then there were more people that could keep up with those small details. ​ --Back then It was the heyday of the fighting game boom. There was a game magazine with rankings of popular arcade games back then, and though “Air Combat 22” was in the top 10, “Virtua Fighter 2” had 3 times as popular, so I was surprised. ​ Omura:  Virtua Fighter was very popular. When Tekken came out, it used SYSTEM 11 which was PlayStation compatible so it was available in the household, and there was a cycle where customers would come back to the game center after practicing at home, and that was neat. Tago:  It’s a nostalgic story. After 1995, competitive fighting games expanded further and further, and there was a shift from medium/large arcade games that focused on core players to household games and games suited to the general customer. Of course at the time I was still arrogant about games that focused on core audiences (laughs).   I admired Star Blade and also experienced the rise of medium/large machines so I was a little hesitant about the expansion of household games at the time. Despite my arrogance, there were times that I thought “one day, I’ll be making a household game.” In the end, I would experience developing games for the PC though (laughs).   --Namco’s progression on the PC… Now that you mention it, around 2005 they had Counter-Strike NEO for the Linux-compatible SYSTEM N2 arcade board. I was just getting into PC games with Valve’s Half-Life 2 at the time, and I was surprised at the “merging of arcade and PC gaming contexts.”   Tago:  Counter-Strike NEO was an experimental game that brought in the established genre of PC and FPS games to the arcade. I was working on a follow-up title, a RTS in the UGSF world called NEW SPACE ORDER. Gradually, with the advent of PCs and compatible boards that were easy to mass-produce and had improved performance over the years, it was getting to the point where if you made a single arcade-exclusive board…[it wouldn’t have been successful].   --Speaking of UGSF, I was surprised that a new Star Blade title that used the O.R.B.S cabinet was in development at one point.   Tago:  While they were working on developing VR on HMDs like how Omura was talking about earlier, the half-spherical O.R.B.S cabinet was born with the goal of experiencing the same amount of immersion without goggles. It was first developed by volunteers and the idea was “for this kind of game, it has to be Star Blade.”   Also there were some sad memories where I begged to be able to participate in this project before I went to work on NEW SPACE ORDER, and when I finally got in, I had to leave in  a week because work on NEW SPACE ORDER was starting up (laughs).   In the end, the O.R.B.S cabinet never took shape and I was really frustrated. We didn’t want to kill off the efforts of Star Blade, so we worked full force on the P.O.D. cabinet for “Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna,” and was somehow able to put something together. But it’s still sad that Star Blade never made it on there… --I see, so that’s what happened. Someday, I would like to play a new Star Blade game. Also I feel like starting from the second half of the 90s, games like “Ridge” that were an extension of reality became more popular in arcades than Sci-Fi games like UGSF.   Tago:  Yes, after the 90s games took a more realistic direction. After “22,” I felt a shift to “make real-life experiences into games” when working on development of Alpine Racer. It felt like games that were focused on core audiences like “22” or Sci-Fi types wouldn’t do so well at the arcade market at the time.   After that, the name “game center” changed to “amusement center,” and after the company worked hard to figure out how to appeal to mainstream customers, there was an air of working to make medium/large machines answer to the needs of the mainstream users. It felt like we took a direct hit from the trends of the time.   --Finally, how did you view the sight of the hardware that was developed independently for arcades swallowed by console compatible machines at the turn of the century?   Tago:  I felt my arrogance being shattered… I knew the cost of circuit boards were expensive, but I felt desolation at the fact that no one understood that “high cost boards/cabinets = a sense of specialty.”   It was mentioned in other media outlets, but at the time there was internal research into the SYSTEM 30 series as well as improvements to the SYSTEM 20 series, so I thought “we’ll move to the 30 series later on.”   However, development of the 30 series was cancelled and the PS compatible 10 series family continued to be updated. Eventually, it led to the PS2 compatible SYSTEM 256. And while medium/large machine development became even more difficult than before, PS compatible boards were becoming mainstream, and I thought “I guess times really do change.”   Like the 10 series, the Dreamcast-compatible NAOMI boards also went through this as it was also a time when a lot of home gaming equipment was being re-used.   Omura:  It was just the trend of the times. In the first half of the 90s, arcade boards had higher specs, but technological advances in computer hardware had spilled over into mass-produced home video game consoles.   Technology advanced to the point where the PS-compatible SYSTEM 10 could be mass produced, so I remember thinking it was becoming harder to show the superiority of these higher quality boards that were produced in low numbers. I felt the same when the PS2 was released, and thought “I guess this is the trend of the times.”   --It’s easy to be influenced by the trends of the times… However, looking at the situation of arcades recently, I saw that companies like Bandai Namco announced “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures: Last Survivor” in December 2018, so I felt that arcades are still putting out games that can hold their own.   Tago:  Arcades have the advantage that customers would accept any game, even if we released something a bit more experimental. For consoles, it’s hard to release lots of experimental titles due to the large investment involved, but arcades are a place where customers can directly evaluate new endeavors and challenges, so I think there are still some untouched areas. That being said, Namco likes making hardware with strong quirks, so I can’t help but think their usage was a little too particular (laughs).   Omura:  How do I say it, they’re peaky! In a good way. It’s kind of pointy in a way.   Tago:  Yes, they’re peaky! The board and cabinets reveal these peaky elements to the point that we ask “do we really need this fancy sign?” or “isn’t this too costly?” I remember thinking it would be really bad if we made one mistake on how we used the decorations or hardware. But I’m sure the customers were attracted to those things as well and played our games, so I think they will continue to play them.   --Thank you so much for these precious stories. About the Translator Task Force23 Japanese Translator with Skyward Flight Media and fan of all things aviation. #PurdueEngineering  alum. Shares birthday with AWACS SkyEye. 日本人ですが英語の方が楽です。無言フォロー失礼します。| Twitter  |

What do you imagine when you think about helicopters in DCS World? I would bet that most people immediately imagine deadly attack helicopters like the AH-64D Apache or Mi-24P Hind, maybe even gunships like the Mi-8 Hip or the UH-1H Huey. Yesterday we all got a surprise gift from Tobsen and Eightball, who have been developing this mod for well over a year now: The OH-6A Cayuse, the latest addition to DCS' scout helicopter roster! While not as popular as the big boy helos, scout helicopters like the SA-342 Gazelle and the upcoming OH-58 Kiowa serve a crucial role in DCS and are some of the most fun you can have with helicopters. The OH-6A is no exception, with its light build and excellent visibility. Today, we will take a look at this amazing new free mod. I will divide this article in several areas, as per usual, to make it easier for you to go to the parts that interest you the most. This is so you can judge this module for yourself and decide if it is a fit for your own flying style. External and internal 3D models Flight modeling Mission capability Armament Vietnam Asset Pack! Is this aircraft for you? EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 3D MODELS To say that the quality that these modders have put into this project is high would be an understatement. The 3D model for the OH-6A is absolutely gorgeous, and extremely accurate to the real aircraft. Rivets, panels, even the visual stress in the metal from the rivets and the weathering between the seams. This model is absolutely amazing. The pilot and gunner models are pretty good, too! They are some of the best I have seen in any mod, let alone helicopter mods, that truly benefit from these additions. Weapon pylons are removable, as well as the doors and even the cable cutters! The level of detail this team put into the project has nothing to envy from official modules. The internal model is as excellent as the exterior one. While it might not be the dirtiest and grimiest cockpit, every gauge and dial has been modeled and textured as accurately as possible, all of them with accurate textures for the instruments that allow proper use of them in the cockpit during flight. Night lightning is present in the cockpit, as well as a plethora of effects such as cockpit shake under demanding flight regimes or heavy maneuvers. It is excellent work, and I am so glad that the developers spent as much time as they did polishing it. FLIGHT MODELING DISCLAIMER:  This is always a tough category, as like with any other aircraft, there is a lot to take into consideration other than just the feel of the flight model. This category is the most subjective one in this article, as I do not have any real world experience with this craft. I will only base my opinion on practical experience and knowledge of practical aerodynamics and the theoretical behavior that a OH-6A should have under certain scenarios. With that out of the way, I want to say that this has got to be the most analog experience I have gotten out of any helicopter in DCS so far. It has no hydraulic augmentation for its controls, no stability controls or anything similar. It is a raw experience and I have loved every single second of it. Likewise, it is a challenging experience. The controls are very sensitive, and it will be a bit harder for those that might have problems with smaller inputs, but once you have mastered the initial phase then it is a delightful experience. The transition from ground effect to forward flight is very much noticeable, and one that all pilots will need to get used to. This helicopter is the lightest player-controlled helicopter in the game at the moment, but its engine is still enough to sustain it through every maneuver. You will have to keep an eye on your torque, as it is pretty easy to over-torque it if you are not careful. Mind your collective and trim your governor properly. As stated before, It behaves exactly all the other OH-6A/MD-500 I've flown in other simulators like XP11, which should serve as a compliment for the hard work Tobsen put into this spectacular flight model. MISSION CAPABILITY In terms of capabilities, the OH-6A can only perform a very specific set of tasks due to its weight, payload limitations and speed. While it might not be able to hoist cargo like a Huey, or maintain suppression through sheer amount of firepower like a Hind or an Apache; the Cayuse functions great as a traditional, Vietnam-era scout helicopter. It lacks any sort of sensors for long range reconnaissance, but due to its small size and agility, it is capable of infiltrating behind enemy lines to mark enemy positions with smoke for other aircraft to engage. It can also perform duties similar to light attack aircraft, with an emphasis on "light". Its main role will be scouting targets for other assets while maintaining itself out of harms way through sheer piloting skills and agility. You could also transport a small group of special operations forces behind enemy lines in missions with CTLD enabled, and protect them from infantry or light vehicles for a short while with your limited armament and AI gunner, but your time on station will be limited if you want to come home in one piece. ARMAMENT M134 7.62mm MINIGUN Your classic side-mounted minigun, but this time on a gimbal! It is zeroed with your XM70E1 sighting system. You might not be able to penetrate armored vehicles, but anything without armor will feel your wrath. XM158 2.75in ROCKETS Simple, effective. Your classic 2.75in rockets mounted on 7 tube pods for a total of 14 rockets. You will have to choose between carrying both rocket pods or one rocket pod and the M134. SMOKE AND HIGH EXPLOSIVE GRENADES What happens when you don't have doors and a co-pilot that wants to make themselves useful? That is what these are for. You have four different colors of smoke grenades plus 10 HE frags to choose from. This is how you perform your scout duties. AI GUNNER w/M60 A unique feature within the modding scene as of the time of release, the AI gunner will take care of the enemies for you as long as you point him in the right direction. It tracks very well and is as effective as anyone would be with a gun from a moving helicopter. VIETNAM ASSET PACK The OH-6A comes packaged with a set of Vietnam War assets that are extremely well-made. These range all the way from combat AI units to static barrels and FARP assets for base building. As an extra for this mod, these are the most delightful addition I have ever seen from a mod creator. It is absolutely astonishing that the developers not only put time on the Cayuse, but also gave its community a set of assets to make this helicopter feel at home. IS THIS AIRCRAFT FOR YOU? If what you want in a module is: A lovely first helicopter to train your friends in. A light attacker that could prove useful in low-threat environments. Unique features that have yet to be implemented in other mods. A fantastic scout helicopter with a superb flight model. If you don't mind: Not having any guided weapons. The limited operational capabilities of the aircraft. Getting one of the best helicopters in the game for free with no strings attached. If all or some of the above is what you want, then Tobsen and Eightball's OH-6A is for you! About the writer: Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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

A Known Simulator on an Unexpected Platform Recently I had a real world example of the value of portable flight simulators. Between one of the worst hotel room weekend stays I have ever had and taking a break at 2:00 AM while fixing a draft beer system at a Space Force Base, I was still able to get some quality 'stick time' in. These days when you hear "flight game" and "Nintendo Switch" your mind probably goes to rather well done 2024 port of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown to this game console. In this case, I am actually talking about Aerofly FS by IPACS. About Aerofly As with every other console created by Nintendo, flight games and simulators are semi-rare titles on their platforms. They are always small in number and limited in what you would consider 'flight simulation' qualities. This is why seeing a Nintendo Switch port of Aerofly FS somewhat surprised me. When I think of this flight simulator, the words "reliable", "consistent", "accessible" and "quality" come to mind. These are things I cannot always say about more high profile flight simulators like Microsoft Flight Simulator by Asobo and Digital Combat Simulator by Eagle Dynamics. Aerofly is very much designed to prioritize efficiency on multiple devices while not compromising on its simulation of aircraft. It maintains a smaller, but diverse roster of 30 aircraft including Widebody airliners, single isle airliners, business aviation, fourth generation fixed-wing fighters, historical aircraft, rotary-wing aircraft, gliders, aerobatic aircraft and more. All major types of aviation are presented. Its flight simulation is detailed enough to include fully simulated wing flex, independent simulation of all flight control actuators and flight control surfaces, instrument navigation aides (ILS, NDB, TCN, VOR) and Thermals. This article is not a full review of the game yet , but in the mean time I would suggest checking out the Nintendo eShop page for more details on this port of the simulator. Appreciating Ingenuity A few weeks ago I purchased Aerofly FS on the Nintendo Switch and only lightly played out of curiosity. My recent long-term stint with the simulator opened my eyes to some intuitive use of the game console's capabilities. With the personal computer version of the sim compatible with flight sticks, computer tablets, multi-function panels, head trackers and similar devices, I wondered how the Nintendo Switch's detachable controllers or gyroscope/motion controls could be used to enhance the flight experience. I thought maybe the controllers would be used similarly to how Sky Rogue used them as a throttle and stick. Aerofly does nothing with motion controls, but relies on smoothly zooming the camera in and out using the right thumbstick, then letting players interact with the flight instruments, knobs and levers in the cockpit using the game console's touch screen. There are certain important functions like throttle control, flap lever, cycling landing gear and activating the co-pilot (modified auto pilot) quickly accessible on the face buttons, shoulder buttons and analog stuck buttons. The bulk of the controls that need to be utilized to fly advanced aircraft can be accessed via the touch screen. There are various flight assists in the quick settings that can be enabled or disabled for dampening flight controls, which is actually needed depending on how carefully players manipulate the Joy-Con thumbstick. As it is not an accessory designed specifically for flight simulation, it is possible to frequently perform accidental maximum control inputs at in opportune times. Unless intentionally flying aerobatics, it is advisable to be slow and deliberate with pitch and roll axis movements. The Quick Flight Test There is not better way to test a simulator than to do a complete flight that is not just a quick lap around the airfield or a willy nilly wandering session. A genuine "$100 Hamburger Flight", if you will. A highlight of my recent serious flight focused on flying the Aermacchi MB-339 from Lamezia Terme (LICA) on mainland Italy to Palermo Punta Raisi (LICJ) in Sicily. In the Navigation screen, players can select known airways, set departure and arrival airports, set other waypoints along the way for their flight plan and even select specific NDB to navigate with. The state of an aircraft at launch can also be selected as a mid-air start, a ready on the ramp state or cold and dark state. Players can even zoom the camera in to see an overhead of their departure airport to select the specific ramp position they prefer. For mid-air starts players can also select their position anywhere on the globe, assign their starting altitude and direction and immediately fly. All of this also can be done with the touch screen. It is a rather good experience. Thanks to my experience with accidentally purchasing the MB-339 in DCS World, then becoming rather proficient with it, selecting this aircraft in Aerofly FS was an easy way for me fully test what this port of the simulator offered. I was able to cold start the aircraft, depart according to procedure, follow the flight plan as required to enter the arrival airport landing pattern only from the rear seat of the aircraft using cockpit instruments and Navigational Aids, then landing and parking with a full aircraft shutdown. Doing all of this while occasionally needing to adjust course mid-flight due to course deviation caused by wind, I can firmly say Aerofly FS maintains its genuine flight simulation traits without compromising the experience. I plan on delving deeper into this Nintendo Switch port as it seems my real world work may be taking me on a few more short-term travels in the mean time. Expect to hear a bit more about Aerofly from me in the future. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

Star Wars: Squadrons (2020) is without a doubt the best tailor-made Star Wars flight simulator that has come out in at least a decade. One of its top features which consistently garners praise is its virtual reality headset support. VR unlocks the full potential of that game, but back in 2016, there was a glimpse of what Star Wars virtual reality flight could be with an ambitious control scheme idea that was left out of Star Wars: Squadrons. Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) was the first multi-platform Star Wars game to hit the shelves after the intellectual property was purchased by Disney on October 30th, 2012. Like its predecessors from 2004 and 2005, Battlefront 2015 is a combined arms first and third-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe. Players are able to engage in infantry combat while playing as their favorite heroes and villains, fighting armored all-terrain walkers and flying iconic starfighters. As part of Battlefront's downloadable content, a movie tie-in mission was released on December 6th, 2016. With the somewhat clunky official title "Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: VR Mission," the player flies an X-Wing as a member of the Rebel Alliance's Red Flight (not to be confused with Red Squadron). An everyday fleet escort turns into a rescue mission to save the main characters from the movie Star Wars: Rogue One. Unlike all other downloadable content for Battlefront, this free mission could only be played with the PlayStation virtual reality headset. Writing about this in 2021, it's easy to see certain parallels between this one-off VR mission and Star Wars: Squadrons' own VR presentation. But a game function I'm both relieved was not implemented and disappointed that it was not reconsidered: a clickable cockpit . I think this was the last place anyone would have expected an interactive cockpit. Players can press every button visible using a specified button on the PlayStation 4 gamepad and the on-screen headset cursor (white dot). Every button seen does not have a use, but some have essential combat and support functions. The most pressing functions are listed below: A : Fire All Blaster Cannons / B : Launch Proton Torpedoes / C : Engine Boost (Afterburner) / D : S-Foil Position Control / E : Energy Shield Control / F : Initiate Lightspeed Jump / G : Cycle Blaster Cannon Firing Pattern / H : Clear Windscreen / I : Targeting Computer As someone that thoroughly enjoys virtual reality gameplay, being able to look around the cockpit and click buttons is terrific, but in this form it is somewhat impractical. If not for around 90% of the essential controls being redundantly mapped to the gamepad, flying while relying primarily on the in-cockpit controls is somewhat dangerous. The button placement and the importance of their functions are an immediate concern. Glancing downward in the cockpit to activate engine boost (afterburner) while flying through an asteroid field is less than appealing. Even worse, taking your eyes off target to launch Proton Torpedoes is a good way to lose lock on the target. Though, specialized functions like bringing up the targeting computer and being able to change laser cannon firing patterns were wonderful to have access to and were placed in reasonable positions. A rethinking of button position alone would have made this clickable cockpit concept perfect for further pushing Star Wars: Squadrons deeper into the flight simulation genre. But a significant part of that also means addressing how these buttons are interacted with. This is where hindsight, wishful thinking, and game development collide. While it's easy enough for me to say that refinement is all that was needed, when discussing interactive 3D cockpits in virtual reality, compatibility and implementation challenges related to physical controllers like gamepads and flight sticks into the virtual space become forefront. The Battlefront VR mission fell into the same balancing act other flight simulators continue to contend with today. Titles like Aerofly FS2 Flight Simulator, Digital Combat Simulator World, and VTOL VR and their implementation of virtual reality alongside physical controllers come to mind. But it's important to remember the scope of development for each game and project is different. The Battlefront VR Mission was built to be a standalone experience using a somewhat multipurpose game engine and a single controller method. It did not have the dedicated flight sim development path of Star Wars: Squadrons which prioritized implementing standard screen displays and physical controllers with virtual reality acting more as an optional enhancement. A fantastic addition but not required. Honestly, Star Wars: Squadrons was designed in a way that made it just about as accessible as a flight simulation style game can get, so the inclusion of an interactive cockpit that would require players to get familiar with their sensors and switches would mostly likely be a high-hurdle for many casual players or first time flight simmers to get over. All this being said, I truly do enjoy the Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: VR Mission for what it is. I have had a blast revisiting it after years to write this article. Perhaps in the future, now that an appetite for Star Wars flight simulation has been confirmed, a full-on 1:1 simulator using a Digital Combat Simulator World style touch controller method could exist. This may be yet another case of a product appearing before its time while shining a light in the direction of the future. I just hope that future has a bit better button placement. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

A New Simulator About a Historic Pivoting Point in Aerial Warfare Did you realize that the announcement of ‘ Korea. IL-2 Series ’ was made on the day the Korean War started? Almost 75 years ago. It is not common knowledge, is it? Yet many combat focused flight simmers know the exact date for the Battle of Midway or Operation Bolo. For decades, I have been perplexed at how a conflict that nearly turned into a third world war has continued to be so overlooked. Not only in popular media, but, surprisingly, in flight simulators.  To a certain degree I view flight simulation as an exercise in appreciating history via aircraft. Flight simmers eager to fly even the most obscure variant of a long-gone aircraft a majority of their peers may have never heard of. It is amazing how since the 1970s computers and game consoles have been able to run varying complexities of flight simulators, and the amount of titles that portray the Korean War is dismal. With literally thousands of flight focused titles produced over the decades, the continuous lack of purpose built interactive media about the Korean War is puzzling. This is why after reading the first dev log for the recently announced of 'Korea. IL-2 Series' has heartened me. Keeping the focus on flight simulation, the aircraft of the Korean War have always been available to fly in civilian aviation focused simulators and in combat flight simulators in varying degrees. In recent memory, titles like War Thunder, Digital Combat Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane 12 have the aircraft roster players would need. That is not to say that their flight characteristics are unbelievable, or their 3D modelling is subpar. These simulators lack that purpose built quality to represent the conflict these aircraft were defined by. Making historical accuracy a part of the core of a simulator adds a certain context. When the seasons are correct, terrain is accurate, aircraft markings are on point, known historic events are being reenacted, etc. The aircraft of that timeframe feel more 'alive' than in a sandbox scenario where anything is possible. After the start of open warfare in June, 25th, 1950, twenty-one nations sent soldiers into combat on the Korean peninsula until the end of armed combat on July 23rd, 1953. The air forces involved in combat were the propeller driven work horses of World War II, highly modified late-production versions of those aircraft and mass-produced jet-propelled combat aircraft. Though, even the jet fighters of this conflict were still more similar to their war bird counterparts than the stratospheric jets that would fly two decades later. The technology behind beyond visual range combat was unavailable during this time. Air-to-air and air-to-ground combat for propeller and jet powered aircraft still relied on within visual range engagements; close range combat with throttle, sick and rudder energy management being a deciding factor.  If there is any developer that is perfectly placed to handle a purpose built simulator specifically for the Korean War, it would be 1C Game Studios (1CGS) . The reason for this is two-part. With a history that has roots going as far back as 2001, this development team / publisher has specialized in World War II focused flight simulators. The IL-2 Sturmovik series  has produced something like 16 standalone games and multiple add-ons, with some of these titles still actively supported with vibrant online communities of players. With such a longstanding focus on the aircraft of the iconic war birds of the 1930s and 1940s, they have become experts in the arena of close range aerial combat - “dogfighting”.  The portrayal of World War II aircraft in particular is something 1CGS has done well with when you look at their series as a whole. Even if people have leveled complaints about mundane mission design from time to time about its past installments, what is undeniable is their digital aircraft are well representative of their real world counterparts. With researched flight models, good damage models and overall consistency between each game, 1CGS would theoretically be able to maintain this quality even with jet aircraft of the era as their performance would not be a complete departure from what IL-2 and its development team is known for. A quote from the official website for ‘Korea. IL-2 Series’, supports this:“...with all major systems modeled and more detailed damage: internal parts visible through the holes, aircraft skin sheets that can become loose, etc.” The IL-2 Sturmovik series is a good example of how a series can be respected as a genre defining flight simulator without falling deep into the pursuit of study level fidelity. Depending on your point of view, some simulators are bogged down by the quest for dozens of interactive buttons, knobs and Whitepaper accuracy. Rather than spending years prioritizing one or two aircraft to get them eye bleedingly accurate, the purchase of an IL-2 title immediately gives access to a set of solid, believable aircraft that do not go through years of additions and refinements to be considered ‘feature complete’.  In fact, again according to the official website, there will be eight complete, player controlled aircraft at the time of its release. Including aircraft like the F-4U Corsair, F-51D Mustang, F-86A Saber, IL-10 ‘Beast’ and MiG-15 ‘Fagot’. Larger aircraft like the B-29 Superfortress and Tu-2 Bat are also in the simulator, but it is unclear if they are flyable by players at this time. Looking at the historical record of aircraft in the conflict, there is quite an assortment. This list  for quick reference of aircraft from Military Factory.com shows that a simulator focused on this war could have great diversity of airframes added to it in the future.  I sincerely hope that the announcement of ‘ Korea. IL-2 Series ’ renews the interest of many flight simmers and content creators to keep up with this upcoming game and inspire them to look back at other titles that have included content about the Korean War.  About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile

Pirate Hunting, Scrap Hoarding, Free Roaming Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition is here! As always this celebration of upcoming games is a wonderful place for even the most casual player to poke around and see what is currently in development. While browsing the Flight sub-genre , it just so happens that a game I had been watching for a time is now featured in the festival. ScrapWings by AmadeusCraft describes itself as "a classic arcade airplane game. Craft equipment for your ship by recycling scrap metal and take on the space pirate fleet." According to the ongoing video devlog series from the solo developer, the visuals of the game are inspired by the Borderlands series with gameplay inspired by the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series. While an exact date that development started is not clear, the first devlog on YouTube was posted on January 31st, 2025 with a link to the original Itch.io demo for the game. The Steam version of the demo was uploaded on April 15th, 2025, making it the most up to date build as of the time of this writing. Besides its visuals, the two-things that caught my attention about ScrapWings a few weeks ago was the system to gather materials and craft items and what are described as 'exploration zones' between missions. The demo available during Steam Next Fest June 2025 edition is in an alpha demo with the tutorial and first mission in the game available, along with a portion of the first planet open for exploration. There is plenty to be improved upon at this stage in development, which is fair for this type of build. Flight Model 100% arcade. While the flight model is very accessible and the controls are straightforward, there are some minor intricacies to learn. Default game controls. While it is possible to stall the aircraft by trying to climb vertically at full throttle, generally the flight model is pretty forgiving. Only hard collisions with terrain cause massive damage while letting the player's aircraft bounce off of whatever obstacle it hit. When in combat against enemies, the player's aircraft will recoil heavily while in flight, if hit by high caliber weapons like cannons. At times spinning the aircraft like a top, but recovery is still possible. The landing gear automatically deploys once the aircraft drops below a certain speed. While landing just about anywhere on flat land is possible, the aircraft is rather unstable while it is on the ground. Not all controls are dampened or restricted. Players can input yaw to rotate the aircraft while it is on the ground, but they are also able to apply full roll, flipping the aircraft upside down and potentially destroying themselves. It would be nice to both restrict the unnecessary controls, but also find ways to lessen then intensity of inputs while on land. Using the default controls, throttle control is not a continuous setting. Thrust will only stay increased with the player moving the right thumbstick forward or backward and holding it constantly at the desired position. Setting the throttle to zero then quickly performing a loop is a maneuver that can easily be repeated, but it does take some time to recover from a stall. It is possible to attempt to pull out of a high energy maneuver with too much pitch, not letting the aircraft be able to gain enough speed to recover, causing a crash. Home Base menu. Home Base This is the center of player operations both in free roam and for mission selection. The Home Base is made up of: Runway : players can select a story mission to take on or enter the free roam "Explore Outside" function. Training Station : provides interactive in-game tutorials with a diorama like flight simulator. Players learn how to use their aircraft here. Crafting Station : Scrap that is collected during free roam can be used to craft equipment like weapons and fuel tanks. New aircraft cannot be constructed in the demo at this time. Equipment Station : Items that are crafted by players are equipped to their aircraft here. When going into the Exploration Zones players takeoff from inside of the base using its mountain cavern runway. While cool in concept, players must be careful while taking off and landing in the constricted quarters that naturally come with a mountain base. Outside of the Home Base is the large scrapping machine with three churning metal scrappers awaiting the payloads players find. Home Base seen from the outside. Scrap recycling facility on the right side. Scrap Metal This is a rather unusual concept for a flight game. According to this alpha demo, rather than relying on in-game credits to have players purchase parts from a shop, packages of scrap metal can be found across the land. Occasionally players will see what seem to be small comets entering the atmosphere, but they are actually containers of scrap falling from orbit. Currently there is no story related explanation as to where they are coming from, but you cannot help but assume there must be some type of intergalactic travel route high above with massive ships dumping their unneeded materials as they pass by. In the player's user interface, these scrap packages appear as cog wheel icons at a distance, but are large box containers when seen up close. Players use their onboard hook system to grab these containers. When activated the camera shifts to a view beneath the fuselage with a bracket showing degrees beneath the aircraft at which the hook can be fired. When launched the hook fire forward like a spear, attempting to attach to the object it was fired at. User interface for deploying the hook. Ironically, once the hook attaches to the scrap container, how rapidly it is attached to the aircraft with no measure to restrict the object's movement makes collecting scrap one of the most dangerous tasks in the game. At both high speeds and low speeds. I genuinely had my aircraft destroyed more by containers aggressively whipping upward into my aircraft while transporting them than I did by enemy action. While sometimes frustrating, this also seems easy enough to resolve by finding a way to restrict the range of motion of these containers when being towed in flight or possibly making the process of hooking these objects a type of set animation where the box is retracted to the bottom of the aircraft and held securely without it on a rope freely swinging. Freely, violently swinging box of scrap being towed by aircraft. To recycle scrap, players fly them over to the recycle facility built into the side of the mountain base. The towed scrap containers must manually be dropped into one of the three very large rolling shredder receptacles to be added to the player inventory for crafting items in the Home Base. And yes, for those curious, I did fly into the shredder to see what would happen. It was not a great outcome for the aircraft! Currently there is no limit as to how much scrap can be recovered. Exploration These free roam type areas are the primary means to both find scrap, but also partake in side events like timed air races. These races give players medals for competing the courses at certain speeds. Otherwise players are free to wander the map to take in the sights. There are already a few interesting structures that seem like they could be used for potential side quests. There is a decent amount of territory available even in the demo. I am curious as to how this large space will be utilized. The only game that comes to mind that had similar intent in this regard is Macross 30: Singing Voice Connecting the Galaxy (2013). This game had semi-open world maps with many towns, caves and other areas for side quests. Players gather items, credits, new main story missions and more. A similar setup could work for ScrapWings depending on how the story will be developed. Missions Selected from the Main Base, missions have set objectives and - thus far - focus on direct combat with Pirates. Who they are and what they are up to has not been explained yet, but it is clear that they are well established. In mission one the player is tasked with attacking a rather large base complete with multiple turret defenses and flights of fighters patrolling the airspace. With only three lives per mission attempt, players are tasked with intercepting waves of Pirate transports attempting to deliver cargo to their base. A Pirate Base with interceptors airborne. Multiple transports being intercepted. While the smaller fighters fall from the sky on fire when shot down, the transports can be destroyed section by section. Often shattering into pieces when defeated. Accidentally running into these pieces can potentially damage the player. Being destroyed three times causes a mission failure. Completing the mission gives points during the mission result screen. At this time those points are yet to be utilized for anything. Looking Forward I believe that the core concept of ScrapWings could be pretty interesting if AmadeusCraft corrects the potential issue with how unavoidably hazardous towing scrap metal can be, while expanding on what is possible in the Exploration Zones. While there is sure to be an overarching story that the missions could focus on and give solid rewards for completing, there are few flight games that have effectively used the open world concept. That could be a cornerstone for this game long-term. Connect with 'ScrapWings' Steam   YouTube About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. [Read Staff Profile ]

Since its introduction in the arcades of 1993, the Ace Combat franchise did not give players a level of control over their aircraft needed to perform certain maneuvers only flight simulators would allow. Maneuvers like Cobra, Kubilts, Viffing, or the Falling Leaf. If players wanted to do a barrel roll to get behind the enemy or deploy speed brakes to force an overshoot on an attacking aircraft, they had to do so manually. Project Aces, developers of the Ace Combat series, began experimenting with automatic maneuver systems that would move aircraft behind their enemies with the click of a few buttons. Since 2008, they have developed four titles with some form of these systems included. Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces Released on October 16th 2008, though not an Ace Combat game, it was developed by Project Aces. This Nintendo Wii game is based on the world of the Sky Crawlers novels authored by Hiroshi Mori. ​Project Aces could have just carbon copied the tried and true controls of the Ace Combat series while adapting them to the Wii motion controllers. Instead, they developed a new automatic maneuvering system to compliment the game's controls and try to match the air combat seen in the Sky Crawlers movie. This would be their first automatic maneuvering system. ​ Tactical Maneuver Commands (TMC) and Manual Maneuvers gave players of all experience levels to perform expert flight maneuvers at the push of a button or two. At the time, some of these aerial maneuvers were impossible or very hard to execute, even with the use of Hands on Throttle and Stick peripherals compatible with game consoles. Tactical Maneuver Commands are used for offensive and defensive purposes. As long as the player remains within 350 meters of an airborne target, the TMC gauge gradually increases by level. The higher the level is before activation, the better the position the player will have behind the enemy aircraft once it is complete. During a TMC maneuver, the aircraft is not the player's control. The aircraft automatically performs a series of aerobatic maneuvers shown through a cinematic third-person camera. Manual Maneuvers are activated without needing to fill any gauges. By selecting the desired maneuver with the Wii Nunchuck, maneuvers like the Immelman Turn, Chandelle, and Barrel Roll are executed automatically. Against higher difficulty enemies, a TMC performed by a player can be countered by a Manual Maneuver or TMC done by the enemy. This system allows for cinematic dogfights to occur in-game. Similar to the thrilling combat sequences seen in the Sky Crawlers movie.​ Ace Combat 3D: Cross Rumble Three years later, Project Aces would develop two games released in 2011. The first Ace Combat title on the Nintendo 3DS, Ace Combat 3D: Cross Rumble (a.k.a. Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy; November 15th, 2011) used what seemed to be refined elements from the Sky Crawlers games. ​ Ace Combat: Cross Rumble uses the Action Maneuver system to enhance game play and provide more control options on the Nintendo 3DS, which lacked a second analog thumb stick until add-on hardware and later console revisions added them. The Action Maneuver system is separated into two parts: Attack Maneuvers and Evasive Maneuvers. Attack Maneuvers work almost exactly like TMC did in Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces. Differences included new camera angles, new maneuvers, and an increased range requirement for filling the Attack Maneuver gauge. Besides that, it is still a system that automatically maneuvers the player's aircraft behind opposing aircraft at the press of a single button. Evasive Maneuvers are only available when an enemy missile is in pursuit of the player's aircraft. Once the missile enters a specific range before hitting the aircraft, an Evasive Maneuver can be used. Once the missile enters this range, an evasion guide appears on the screen. The guide shows three directions the player can select to perform a maneuver to evade the missile with a quick maneuver. By pressing the Y Button while inputting one of the directions suggested at the same time, a barrel roll or jink is done. Dogfights against certain enemies can result in a string of attack and evasion maneuvers between the computer and player to create a cinematic dogfight experience. An official game trailer shows off the systems well and provides a good example of what could be done: The impact of the Action Maneuver system on this title and the franchise as a whole was somewhat lost during the time of its release. Partially because the game could be played and completed without having to use them, but primarily because of the reaction Ace Combat: Assault Horizon was receiving during the same release window. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Ace Combat Assault Horizon was advertised as the rebirth of the Ace Combat franchise. Among many things, the promised to "make metal bleed" by revamping how it approached combat. Emphasis was placed on close-range, visceral combat. Aircraft models would now show considerable amounts of damage, blow into pieces and spew oil and fuel, which would stain the cockpit. As a part of this move, the principal combat system of the game is the Close Range Assault (CRA) system. It is split into two parts: The lesser of the two is Air Strike Mode (ASM). This air-to-ground mode directs player-controlled aircraft along a specified corridor to attack land, sea ,and low flying fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. While in the ASM corridor, the weapons of the aircraft are enhanced with greater damage, faster reloading, and higher accuracy. ASM is also available in multiplayer game modes. Its parameters could be augmented with Pilot Skills, a type of in-game perk system to customize aircraft and gameplay abilities. The higher profile half of CRA is Dogfight Mode (DFM). Dogfight Mode is activated against enemy aircraft within a specified range, depending on the angle and direction the targeted aircraft is traveling. The distance and width of this range could also be augmented with Pilot Skills. Like ASM, there are damage enhancing subsystems like the Assault Circle and Direct Shot. Also included is a support system that allows players to join their allies that have activated CRA. Once the player is in a position, an on-screen cue is displayed with specific symbology on the HUD. When activated, DFM automatically moves the player-controlled aircraft into position behind the opposing aircraft with no follow on inputs from the player. While in DFM there are systems for counter-attacks in the form of Counter Maneuvers and Counter-Counter Maneuvers. ​A full demonstration of the DFM system using Cipher and Pixy F-15Cs with custom music. ​The video is created by two members of Aurora Squadron, an Ace Combat fan squadron. It is not an exaggeration to say that the most significant influence concerning the reception and memory of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is Dog Fight Mode. Since 2011, DFM remains a polarizing subject amongst the Ace Combat community. While it gave the game a Hollywood movie-style flair, its addition and execution were jarring to the long-standing player base of the Ace Combat series. For players, it seemed as though they were forced into a rail shooter that only allowed them to travel in a limited direction. In both online and offline game modes, the use of DFM was so frequent it seemed to be a requirement. In single-player, there are set pieces of action where aircraft fly through falling buildings and narrow canyons; some objectives cannot be completed without the use of CRA in some way. In online multiplayer, the use of DFM seemed to remove any semblance of player based skill and learning how to best maneuver aircraft against other human opponents. No matter the skill level, the press of a button or two could immediately have even the newest of players expertly behind anyone that was in the match . While Close Range Assault was only a part of Ace Combat Assault Horizon, the game itself received a high volume of mixed and negative reviews about the game as a whole. Any game mechanic related to the Close Range Assault or past semi-automatic maneuver systems was removed from the next game, Ace Combat Infinity (2014). Forgoing any new development attempts, DFM became the last iteration of an automatic maneuvering system created by Project Aces, as of the date this article was published. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown As Project Aces developed Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019), the decision was made to reintroduce a system similar to those seen in the previously mentioned games. Called Post-Stall Maneuvers (PSM), Project Aces made it clear that the player would maintain full control from start to finish. Starting, maintaining, and completing aerobatic maneuvers that only particular aircraft could handle would happen only with manual input from players. While PSM can be used in offline and online game modes, its implementation makes it feel more natural within the gameplay. There are no cinematic camera views or jarring camera transitions to disrupt gameplay. The only prerequisites for activation are airspeed and the aircraft being flown. The offline campaign and online multiplayer can be played without ever activating PSM. Within a year after the game's release, players have pushed PSM well beyond the limits Project Aces expected. Videos of intense close-range dogfights with airshow like maneuvers, side slips between buildings and flying backwards in traffic tunnels more than prove that. It was a long path to reach this point with a harsh hurdle to overcome in 2011, but the Project Aces team finally found the answer to its decade long venture. About the Author Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. A lifelong aviation enthusiast with a special interest in flight simulators and games. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating aviation related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He continues to explore past and present flight games and sims with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. | Twitter | Discord: RibbonBlue#8870 |

Your favorite (only?) flight game with an AI cat assisting humanity's stellar aviation endeavors is back with one-hell of an update. As I mentioned in a previous article, Exosky   by Elevons LLC is a flight experience I had a bit of a hard time trying to describe to others. I am still fascinated by the concept of this game and its non-combat, aerobatic focused gameplay. As Exosky moves towards a March 2025 release date, I jumped back into the demo to see the deep changes made to the experience. Diagram of the human made Robosphere that enables humanity to travel the stars. Story Revamp It is best to speak about the considerable story update first as the opening cinematic of the game is unexpectedly complex and detailed. The story of Exosky comes after The Great Migration, a long planned and prepared for movement of humanity from the ruined Earth into the stars across the galaxy. With human settlements on different planets in The Solar System and atmospheres of each planet varying greatly, drone ships that fly through the skies and operate underwater are a significant tool to support humanity's interstellar operations. A representation of the Bedrock Program. The beloved AI cat I keep bringing up, named Norton, was created before humanity left to the stars. Eventually Norton founded The Bedrock Project, a cooperation of bot pilots and human pilots to create a next generation flight simulation program for pilots operating drones in complex environments found on other planets before they are forced to learn in real time with a higher degree of danger. That is the skinny explanation of the story. I highly recommend watching the entire opening video. Extra Content A surprisingly large part of this demo update is the extra content section. When you think about full game releases it is things like concept art, development info and videos you expect to see. Finding them in the demo is welcome, but unexpected. There are four categories, "The Goodies and Mod Tools", "Concept Art", "Meta Game" and "Video". There is a quite a bit of content in each of these. For example, the Concept Art category has 50 images with explanations about projects the developer started with back in 2010 all the way through a much larger concept for a massive multiplayer experience that was well into development just up until plans changed for the current version of Exosky we know now. Concept art. Even with information communicated in pictures, a few sentences and prototype video, there is enough for players to understand that the original scope of this game's concept was rather ambitious for a time. It is interesting context to understand the Exosky of today and its new backstory. I am a huge fan of things like this in any game, so I am especially pleased to see it included in the free demo. Level Revamp The three levels available in the demo have undergone significant updates. Despite me being rather familiar with this demo, its new updates made it feel like a mostly new experience. It goes deeper than changing how the already eclectic terrain looks. Previously players would need to fly through a series of waypoints while deviating from the set path a bit to perform aerobatic maneuvers and high risk nap of the earth (I am using "Earth" lightly here) flying to increase score in in various scoring categories during flight. Flight regimes like flying low over or between solid objects, flying through thick cloud layers, high-G maneuvering, inverted flight, etc. Reaching a set score of points in one flight before reaching the final waypoint then unlocked the next level. As of the recent demo update this has changed quite a bit. Now players are required to meet specific point requirements per category per level. For example, the second level has extensive high winds in certain sections. Players are required to spend an extensive amount of time in those conditions to gain enough points while flying under high wind conditions to meet that requirement. But with limited energy (fuel) to power the drone engines, players would be smart to multi-task while gaining points in other categories. Let me tell you, flying inverted at close proximity through the chip set of a Voodoo 2 graphics card while applying near maximum counter-rudder for crosswind is one of the craziest ways I've ever progressed in a flight game. A somewhat standard view in Exosky. Players gain extra score by exploring each level, by finding points of interest like CPU cooling lakes, sci-fi battlecruiser sized aquatic life and other genuinely wild objects. Trails of coins that grant extra points act as non-invasive guides to encourage players to fly throughout all areas of a level, unlike the more forefront and mandatory waypoints players must fly through to complete the level and progress through the game. Amphibious drone over a motherboard. Flight Model Improvements Exosky   already had a rather solid, well documented flight model for a game that visually looks nothing like a traditional flight simulator. The modest Steam post about "improved aircraft handling" does not do the improvements to the flight model justice. It took me some time to adjust to the new changes. I failed my initial attempts of the first level solely because I was not taking stall speeds, throttle response, low energy states and engine power consumption at high throttle settings seriously. While using a gamepad, even rapid inputs of full rudder seemed detrimental to the level of precision flying I needed to be successful. After having a brief mental reset (i.e. locking in) I was able to progress nicely using a gamepad, but fortunately Exosky is compatible with USB flight controllers. I had a night and day experience using even an entry level hands on throttle and stick from the Thrustmaster T-Flight series. The awe factor is real in this game. The fact that more finite controls offered by a dedicated flight controller made such a considerable impact on my experience speaks volumes about the current state of the flight model. In the past year I feel like I've played plenty of titles that work perfectly fine with a gamepad or keyboard and mouse, so even using a T.Flight felt unnecessary. In Exosky right now, the flight stick coupled with the flight model gave me enough control to start identifying ideal turn rate speeds, efficient throttle settings for gaining altitude or maintaining airspeed without wasting engine energy, coordinated turns and smooth, controlled movements to fly though the tightest spaces in the weirdest atmospheres all while remaining in complete control of the drone. It was rather gratifying to have precision tangibly rewarded in this way. I am looking forward to seeing Exosky   release into early access in March 2025, as it seems positioned to be one of the more unique indie flight game with a detailed flight model to come out in quite some time. You will be hearing more from me about this game soon! Connect with Exosky Discord : https://discord.gg/nnM2cUPUW4 Steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2795160/Exosky/ Website : https://exosky.aero/ About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

The Long Range Strategic Sting It has been quite sometime since I last wrote about how I was "stung" by the F/A-18C Hornet in my article Confessions from a DCS Hornet Main . While I feel like I have successfully moved beyond being a dedicated Hornet pilot, my experiences flying the F-14B, M-2000C, MB-339 and OV-10A and flying with players using other aircraft, something about the Hornet's weapon capability has consistently been highlighted for me. The quantity and quality of stand-off munitions on the F/A-18C continue to be relatively unmatched, even by its long-time fourth generation peer, the F-16CM. AGM-154: Modern Day Stand Off Even in the arsenals of militaries in 2023, stand-off weaponry is the bread and butter for the opening phase of any possible large-scale conflict. With anti-aircraft systems becoming more and more potent, rolling in to deliver bombs directly onto well defended targets isn't the flak dodging thrill ride players are expecting. It only takes a few seconds for radar guided triple-A units or optically guided missiles to ruin the climax of a long flight into combat. The path of least resistance is also the path of highest survivability and mission success rate. The Hornet can carry up to eight units of two types of JSOW. The submunition AGM-154A JSOW and 500 pound penetrator AGM-154C JSOW. It is well known that the submunition variant is performance hampered in different ways, like the altitude the weapon was set to disperse at, the direction and strength of wind and the damage model DCS uses to potray damage to ground units as a singular health bar rather than a more realistic way which models component damage. Because of this, the JSOW-C has seen higher proliferation in the average DCS world server instance. With its large warhead that detonates on impact or a delay, a direct hit is enough to destroy or cause significant damage to most targets they impact. The ideal way to deploy these munitions is with pre-planned attacks using GPS coordinates of known hostiles. This way, the JSOWs can be launched from their maximum range as the Hornet flies fast and high, outside the range of counterattacks from surface-to-air missile systems. However, their flexibility in Target Of Opportunity (TOO) mode with a targeting pod like the ATFLIR or LITENING is what makes them popular. Unexpected targets can be identified from tens of nautical miles away, then be attacked from a safe distance. AGM-62 Walleye: Cold War Approved Stand Off The Cold War era is of much interest to Digital Combat Simulator in many aspects. From module making companies embracing access to aircraft from the early and mid-cold war to players looking for a more close range, risky experience that forgoes GPS weapons and long-range munitions. The AGM-62 Walleye is from an early generation of precision guided weapons, first developed and tested in 1963. This very large glide bomb used optical guidance via modified technology used in televisions at the time to let pilots acquire targets, lock the Walleye's seeker onto a structure, then release the bomb. The Walleye then guides itself to the target using massive guidance fins, letting pilots truly fire and forget it. The version used by the F/A-18C is the AGM-62 ER/DL which can use a datalink pod to let pilots manually fly the weapon into the target. The Walleye's range is determined by the altitude, speed and launch angle of the aircraft carrying it, but in testing it could reach 24 nautical miles. In Cold War scenarios, the groundbreaking Walleye continues to be one of the few non-GPS, non-laser guided long-range attack options. HARM/TALD: Enhanced Anti-Radar Operations While the F-16CM is undoubtedly the most capable suppression or destruction of enemy air defense (SEAD/DEAD) aircraft in the simulato r, the F/A-18C does have a capability the Viper cannot replicate. The Hornet can carry the ADM-141 Tactical Air Launched Decoy (TALD) alongside the AGM-88 Highspeed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). Using target of opportunity and pre-briefed engagement modes with the AGM-88, the Hornet can launch on emitting early warning, search and track radars from a safe distance, but if these radars are protected by point defense systems or surface-to-air missile systems capable of missile interception, the chances of success decrease. A working integrated air defense system (IADS) that is able to turn off radars, lure aircraft deeper into its ideal engagement range and catch them by surprise. Cycling radars on and off also greatly decrease the effectiveness of the HARM, sometimes making those missiles miss the target completely, depending on how soon the radars were shut off after a missile launch was detected. With TALDs, the Hornet can use the decoys to fool SAM radars into thinking the decoys are aircraft coming to destroy it. As radars power on and missiles begin to fly, the Hornet can now see the protected radars and attack them accordingly. AGM-84 SLAM: Deep Strike Capability The crown jewel of the Hornet's long-range strike capability are air launched cruise missiles. Very few aircraft in DCS World have these. Its two variants of AGM-84 Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) have some of the longest weapon ranges that players can take advantage of. The SLAM utilizes GPS accurate coordinates to hit static targets, including hardened bunkers and shelters. Its high accuracy can be augmented with pilot controls during the terminal guidance phase with television seeker and datalink technology derived from the AGM-62 Walleye. While the older AGM-84E SLAM can not avoid terrain and has to be launched at high altitude to reach its target, the improved AGM-84H SLAM-ER (Extended Range) is able to fly over terrain at low altitude and strike targets in excess of 150 nautical miles. Because SLAMs can fly such a long distance, it is possible for them to slip past air defenses on their own, but extensive mission planning must be done. These cruise missiles can be programmed to follow GPS waypoints with specific altitudes and steering points. Though more complex strikes take a considerable amount of time to plan, when deployed correctly, SLAMs can even fly behind terrain, masking them from interception by land based systems. And in a pinch, so long as the Hornet is carrying a targeting pod, SLAMs can be used on unexpected medium and close range targets of opportunity that absolutely must be removed from the battlefield. When you combine the aforementioned munitions with the fuel efficiency of the Hornet, its effective combat range is immense. Without needing to constantly exchange survivability to strike high value targets, even far off logistic points, command centers and airfields hundreds of miles away are within range. Just make sure to have a pen, paper and coffee on hand to type in all those coordinates... About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

Our interview is with Johan Persson of Muddy Pixel , the developer of Worlds at War . Released on March 9th, 2018, Worlds at War is a virtual reality flight sim-lite set in a world that has suffered an alien invasion. What remains of the multi-national forces of Earth band together to survive against the ongoing alien attack. If you think this is an Independence Day clone, you're sorely mistaken. If anything, this is the type of game we wish the Independence Day franchise could have produced. Worlds at War enables players to fly combat aircraft, attack helicopters, and armed boats to take to the skies or the seas to fight for survival. Players are able to pilot any aircraft or boat that is available on the aircraft carrier. The primary game mode is horde based with tutorial missions, but the game receives regular updates. New enemies, adjustments to game play mechanics, new vehicles to pilot and soon new, non-horde mode missions are to be introduced. To start this interview could you please introduce yourself? My name is Johan Persson, I was born "a long time ago in a country far far away" (Sweden). I currently live with my wife and daughter in Los Angeles. And next year I will move back to Sweden... which I have been saying for the last 10 years, so I guess we will see. Now that introductions are out of the way let's start with the questions proper. How did you start developing games? Was there something that inspired you or a certain game you played as a child that inspired you so much that you pursued a career inside of the game industry? I started developing games on the Commodore 128, then Amiga when I was around 12 years old. I made some feeble attempts at making various mainly side-scrolling type games, inspired by games like Blue Max, Zaxxon, Space Invaders, Defender, Elite and Asteroids. In the later teens and early 20s, I played a lot of games at LANs that me and my friends would setup in our homes. We would play mainly DOOM, StarCraft and Command and Conquer. I also played A-10 Cuba! on the Mac at University. These are some of the games that probably influenced me the most. After stuyding a few years for a degree in computer science, me and a friend figured "Hey, we should be able to make these games too!" ​ You say that you have had experience with franchises such as Battlefield, Resistance and Titanfall, so how long have you been in the game's industry and how have these titles influenced you as a developer? I have been in the game-industry for some 25 years now. I was the physics- and lead-engineer for Battelfield:1942, and I was in many other ways deeply involved in the formative years of the Battlefield franchise. I left EA/DICE some 14 years ago and worked at a couple of studios in the US for 10 years. A couple of years ago I started working on a flying VR-game. VR made everything look fresh again. It was a bit like when hardware accelerated 3D-graphics were introduced some 25 years ago. It reignited the spark for developing games. ​ I had lost the spark during some of the later years in the industry, I thought perhaps I had outgrown game-development. When I went indie, I realized that I simply had a very narrow preference for the type of games I enjoyed working on. Your most recent work, Worlds at War, is a game that you have been developing all on your own for the past 2 years with the Early Access releasing March of 2018. Could you tell us what being a solo developer is like and which challenges have you encountered while you develop this game? Being a solo developer has its pros and cons. One thing I loved about working on a team was the bouncing of ideas, and to work with people that could create wonderful things in days that I could not do in a million years. As an Indie, you buy assets online or contract them out instead. But being on 100-person+ teams also creates a lot of frustrations in terms of decision-making and coordinating. It can be tiresome. I most enjoyed development when we were around 20-30 people developing Battlefield 1942. I love being indie, I would probably work on the game 80 hours a week, if my wife would let me. smiley ​ It's a great sense of freedom, you wear many hats, can choose when to work and on what. Financially you only make a fraction of what the industry pays employees, so that can be a problem. I can only do this because I have another business I started 12 years ago that I can run absentee and that pays the bills. ​ Worlds at War features a world that has already suffered an encounter with an invading alien race, putting the player in the boots of a soldier that is part of a ragtag carrier-group formed by the surviving members of several militaries. What were your major influences for this set-up? The first influence was the Independence Day 1 movie. The setting is also inspired by Starship Galactica - the TV-series - where you have a human carrier (that one in space instead of on Earth) trying to keep out of harm from an overwhelmingly stronger foe. Last but certainly not least, it opens up the option to let the players play around with any cool vehicle from any nationality and opens up interesting enemy- and level-designs! Having said all this, the game doesn't have a story like say Ace Combat, this is merely a background-story. The main priority is to create interesting gameplay that is similar to flight-sims, simplified like Battlefield, and has some interesting fresh twists to gameplay borne out of the setting. ​ ​ The aliens that we are thrown against them seem to be seeking for total control of the planet. Is there a story reason behind their actions? Or is this something we will know about as the game finishes development? Yes, they are already everywhere and forces this small surviving carrier-group to live as scavengers. The story will probably not be fleshed out for this title. Perhaps in a sequel, if the community shows strong interest. This game, even while being desktop compatible, was designed with VR in mind; featuring detailed cockpits for the A-10 Warthog, the AH-64 Apache, the Attack-boat and with more vehicles coming soon. Why did you choose to go with VR in this title and how hard has it been to balance these vehicles? The game now supports monitors, but it started as a VR-only title, because VR was what brought me back into game-development in the first year or so. Lately I do enjoy both working on and playing the game on a monitor. Motion sickness is something that affects the large majority of VR games. How have you dealt with such an issue? Frankly I have not given that too much concern. You can set flight-assist on, which helps you fly, makes the plane fly gentler and more stable (at the cost of agility), and you can fly in 3rd-person, which also helps. But my player-base typically has decent VR-legs. As far as I have seen myself, VR motion-sickness is something that fades as you play VR-games a bit.  After some 20-50 hours I think most people are getting pretty comfortable if the frame-rate is good. This is perhaps not the first game you should play, but having said that, my 75 year old parents have both tried it and they were just fine!  What are your plans for this title going forward? Anything specific? The game is in Early Access. It has 8 training scenarios and 3 Horde-mode scenarios. I am currently working on adding more traditional missions to the game - something that the community for the game have been asking for. About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos  Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's 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 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord : Cubeboy #9034

This is part two of the interview we had with the Frecce Tricolori Virtuali (FTV) . This time the FTV will give us unprecedented insight into their history, the way the operate as a team and a glimpse on the challenges that they have had to face to get where they are now. Outside of their modules and mods that have been made throughout the years, the FTV are a group of passionate Italians that strives to represent their nation's acrobatic team in the virtual world to the best degree possible. Their most recent efforts involve their in-house creation of the MB-339 module that is available for free to everyone that has DCS: World installed. Their journey has not been an easy one as their history spans longer than a decade. Members coming and going but even through all that they have managed to prevail as one of the oldest virtual acrobatics teams out there. FTV-Duke, Frecce's EFM developer, was our main point of contact during these interviews, so I want to extend my gratitude towards him for his great disposition while coordinating the interview. What was the motivation for forming Frecce Tricolori Virtuali? The passion for aviation the founders had at the very beginning and for the real team combined with the love for flight simulation was the spark that ignited the birth of the team. The precision, discipline and synergy are fundamental characteristics of each display or aerobatic teams. Those features are very well represented by our national display team, Frecce Tricolori, which also has a long heritage making us proud in trying to transpose all of this into DCS. When was the team formed? What were the early years like? The Frecce Tricolori Virtuali were born in April 2003. The idea of ​​founding the FTV birth from a small number of passionate friends, all Italians, coming from different simulation experiences, gathering together and studying the possibility to make this simulated flight activity. Everything was born out of pure passion and also a bit of a challenge, as most of the FS users said that it was practically impossible to carry out a similar project because FS9 badly tolerated the flight in formation of more airplanes at close distances. So we got in contact with a software developer “Ibirdsoft” who compiled a very pioneer peer to peer connection system called iBnet that worked definitely well enough to allow the tight formation activity on flight simulator 2004. Today the team uses Digital Combat Simulator to do their flying. DCS was not released until 2008. Where did you fly before DCS was released? It is a long story, take a beer and sit down. Like I said, we started very early in the early flight simulator 2004 era and everything was simply, definitely DIFFICULT. Anyway, there was so much to do and so much effort has to be put in that each obstacle was a new test and a challenge that we had to solve “not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard”. We started to study the Frecce Tricolori basic maneuvers and gathered more and more friends into training and developed the first complex maneuvers of the real team, “small steps for a few passionate nerds... giant leaps still to come though”. Then we contacted the software team Cloud9, that was developing an advanced model for FS2004 of the MB339 (and the Rivolto airbase, home of the real frecce tricolori team), and we offered our collaboration in order to promote their products to the sim community, thru our first real fair events where we brought our computers and gears and flown together in one place. FTV during their FS2004 era. It was all very difficult though, FS2004 was very ahead in terms of requirements related to the available hardware of that time, and making tight formations in ten Cloud9 MB-339 was almost all the time a 15 to 18 fps nightmare during training, but we kept on training harder and harder through the years. Showing to the community that, after all, such activity was possible and with more than interesting results. This was 2004-2008 era, we started to use the early head tracking system TrackIR, computer hardware was becoming more powerful and we went on participating to a number of real and simulated events like the annual Modelexpo in Verona or the IVAO Malta aerobatic event, with full flight transfers to the Island and back to Rivolto airbase on IVAO. Then the group noticed that the international flight community was moving towards different platforms like Lock-on and we decided to try this new challenge. We migrated to Lock-on basically due to the better multiplayer code, it was a turning page but unfortunately we suffered a lot in terms of the aircraft we flew. As a matter of fact: Lock-on's code did not allow us to recreate the real performances of the MB-339, thus we were flying our aerobatic maneuvers with an aircraft exterior skin looking like a 339 but with the flight envelope of an A-10 Thunderbolt II, which is basically 4000 lbs heavier than the MB-339! FTV's recruitment image and old logo (2008) Every loop was a close call, and forget Lomcevak, it was pure madness. Simply imagine that in order to have white smoke during the show we were forced to dump fuel!! Very frustrating, the show must go on, but we were not new to getting used to incredible challenges after all. The year was 2009 and the few last original active members of the team gathered together with another Italian real-related Frecce Tricolori team which was training on Lock-on (Stormbringers) and a collaboration was inevitable; “bringing a storm” of fresh technical boost and new amazing skilled pilots. We decided to move to IL-2 1946, that was again a turning page, but for the best. 2 years in the making and we developed our own IL2 MB-339 PAN that finally performed all flight envelopes like the real aircraft. We made it and we offered the mod for free to the Lock-on community, it is the italian style, we’re proud of it. In 2011 It was the time for the big show and that year we decided to release our first official video excerpted from our VFAT exhibition: “Frecce Tricolori Virtuali EVOLUTION remastered” Then again, we turned page another time, and here we are on DCS. Almost 20 years after, wearing an Oculus and spawning on our brand new EFM MB-339 aircraft that we developed with blood and tears, makes me think that little things changed after all: we are still making small steps for few passionate nerds, but looking back... we definitely did Giant leaps during this time.☺ How many members does the flight team have today? The team today is made up of pilots (either “rated” and trainees), developers, directors (also known as “biga”), and streamers. Each official training evening sees at least from 8 to 10+ pilots who can fly the routine for the next show or focus on trainees. In additions, should it be required, the streamers or few developers could join to share information. Below our current roster: PONY1 - Lucone PONY2 – Randy PONY3 – Aracno (also 3d Developer) PONY4 – Zanco PONY5 – Paolo PONY6 – Giulio PONY7 – Fox PONY8 – Sabba PONY9 – Wolf (also C++/lua Developer) PONY10 – Yeager PONY6 – Michele (currently on a backup position as a second section leader) Biga/streamer – FTV.Depy Biga/Training mission voice over - Gianluigi Zanovello FTV.Extra - Trainee FM Developer/Streamer/PR – FTV.Duke Coding – FTV.Erik Engine Model Assistant – FTV.Robby Skinner/MOD Structure/lua coder - FTV.Automan Mission Editor – Beppe_goodoldrebel Current day FTV at VBLA 2020 Any trainees? Are any of the original members of the group active? Trainees represent the future for FTV, special care shall be brought to them, sometimes outside of the official training evenings. Few of the group are the founders of the original Frecce Tricolori Virtuali (former named “PANV”), in fact the leader “Pony 1” Lucone and current “Pony 6” Giulio are two of the founders. What type of training does it take to become a DCS aerobatic pilot? What does a month of team training look like? Becoming proficient in aerobatics takes years of training, mental strength and dedication. Pilots within Frecce Tricolori Virtuali have from 2 to 15+ years in aerobatics and/or combat simulator. The Team meet to fly at least 8 times each month when on normal training period, whereas even 12+ evenings when within 2-3 months from a live event. This is not taking into account the effort outside of the official training times to progress with trainees or adjusting as required. There is no magic trick, every person is completely different. Everyone has different backgrounds, learning curves and skills that makes it almost impossible to standardize a training, and after all, no one “becomes” an aerobatic pilot because a pilot is always in training... always. Also, doing simulated aerobatics is such a different environment compared to real live aerobatics with a lack of physics on your body, lack of real speed sensation, lack of field of view (just to mention a few) are such a handicap that the approach to the training becomes substantially different from the real aerobatic skills. You have to develop different senses in order to compensate real physics, so you have to use your eyes and your brain to “feel” and imagine tridimensional maneuvers. This is a philosophy that takes more than simple time, it takes steps, and every step is different from trainee to trainee to become a member, depending by the position in the formation, depending on the maneuver, sometimes it may be a matter of days, often a matter of months, but definitely, more often, years. It is exactly like a ballet where every single aircraft is an element of a mass choreography. Every aircraft is part of a movement together with the other ones and every pilot needs to gain the same skill level in order to look alike in the formation. We are talking about 10 different pilots, 10 different heads, each one with his life, his age, his personal problems, dedication and his different approach to the final goal. Some times it is more a matter of psychology than of simple training, a very advanced state of mind, a kind of mental sport that adds stress on top of your life, instead of being an activity that is supposed to be a “hobbie” ☺ How closely does the virtual demonstration team follow the routine of the real world Frecce Tricolori? Has the team talked to the real Frecce Tricolori to receive some feedback on your maneuvers? The Frecce Tricolori Virtuali strives to replicate the real routine by matching as close as possible the maneuvers, performances and best practices. The current real team does actually know and appreciate what FTV are making-up. In addition, one of our group members (Gianluigi Zanovello) actually is a former real Frecce Tricolori pilot and that became the commander of the group later on. This is a privileged channel for us in acquiring all the little features and the tricks of the trade, and for that the virtual group thanks him for this opportunity. What is the most complex maneuver to perform in the team's demonstration? Several actually. The “Doppio Tonneaux” (double tonneaux) is one of those. Presented before the “Bomba” (Low bomb burst) where the first section keep a close line abreast until the leader calls for the “Interni via” and “esterni via” where number 2 and 3 first, and 4 and 5 just after few seconds, perform an almost canopy to canopy barrel rolls one after the other. Precision in controlling the barrel roll is critical to keep the symmetry and not to run over your wingman. VBLA 2020 Many people have seen Frecce Tricolori Virtuali performing in the Virtual Festival of Aerobatic Teams (VFAT). What is it like coordinating for VFAT events and what kind of practice goes into preparing for one? First of all, the gratitude goes to those who actually coordinates between all the teams for the three-day show (the amazing team of “Virtual Aerobatics”). Each teams put its effort in sticking with the tight schedule and being prepared to show off at their best. Typically, an intensive training starts 3 months before the show, increasing the training evenings as the show closes in. Also, a great deal is put in developing an ad-hoc soundtrack, and setting up the streamer “routine” to keep the right pace while the demonstration progress. The team's official YouTube channel has videos of aerial displays at VFAT events. Which video best represents the team? The team is very well represented on every VFAT we have taken part of. Blood and tears were put on those events and, as I like to say, we express the quality we have put during the months of training in just the 40-ish minute live stream ! Was the flight demonstration team a part of testing the Aermacchi MB-339A as it was being developed? Yes, the large formations, and different ways of handling the aircraft between each pilots, constitutes one of the fundamental characteristics of our development process. Will we see the G.91 in future shows? Will it perform alongside the MB-339 or will it perform on a separate flight? Our group will likely be keeping the G91 in the development status for some more time, works needs to be done to reach the same level of our MB-339. Our group strive to keep the representation of our routines as real as it gets. We might want to re-create the Frecce Tricolori G.91-era routine (which is one of a hell of a ride…), but it is still too soon to say with certainty. Surprise appearance of the G.91 at the end of FTV's VBLA 2020 presentation. We would like to once again extend our thanks to the entire team of the FTV that treated me kindly and were really attentive and generous with this interview, specially FTV-Duke. Photos by Kirby, FTV-Duke and the FTV team. About the Interviewer Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos  A longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000's 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 2010's. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer, translator and content manager ever since. Twitte r | Discord : Cubeboy #9034

A Retro Flight Hidden Gem I never remember seeing Sky Odyssey advertised or for sale. As someone who grew up playing just about every flight game and flight sim lite on the Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2), seeing a video of it came as a surprise to me. It completely flew beneath my radar until I saw someone streaming it on Twitch in 2020. Since then, this game has been in my backlog for months, waiting for me to give it a try. Having just recently completed my first play through, I can't believe it took me over 20 years to play what is now one of my top five favorite PS2 flight titles. As the end credits rolled, I began to think about what I had just played and tried to analyze why it immediately hooked me. After a time, I realized how this happened and promptly grew a considerable appreciation for this title. Sky Odyssey • Remastered Opening • PS2 ( PlayscopeTimeline ) Developed by Cross and published by Activision, Sky Odyssey was released on November 14th, 2000, in North America, with PAL and JP versions to follow. In retrospect, it seems like Sky Odyssey was one of the many titles lost in the lackluster launch lineup of games for the PlayStation 2. The quality of PS2 games began to pick up in late 2001 and the years immediately after that. This held true for the flight games as well. It wasn't until games like the Sidewinder series, Ace Combat series, Energy Air Force, Air Force Delta, and other combat-oriented flight games brought a solid flight presence to the PS2. With Sky Odyssey not being a fighter jock title, I was unsure what to expect of a non-combat, non-civilian aviation transport flight game. It advertised itself as an adventure game in the style of Indiana Jones just as much as it called itself a flight simulator. A very curious mix of genres. Flying through caves and canyons is the aesthetic of this game. The Adventure mode of Sky Odyssey is the primary game mode, though there are four others. As advertised, you play as a daring pilot seeking adventure and the glory of being the first person to find the "Tower of Maximus." This rumored land is believed to exist somewhere in a mysterious archipelago that has minimal human exploration. While searching for ancient ruins and pieces of a lost map, players traverse the islands, taking up unusual secondary missions along the way. I found myself completely engaged with the story and laser-focused on flying in its movie-like situations by the third mission. Atmosphere is something this game has in spades. A narrator describes the mission objectives and explains the lore behind the islands and descriptions of the general areas players will fly into. An easily missable section of lore is available with each location as well in the Background Info menu. With minimal voice acting and very little interaction with in-game characters, the game's sound design is forefront. While the volumes for some events were a bit too high, overall the crumbling rocks, harsh winds, and eerily quiet calms were matched nicely with the soundtrack composed by Kow Otani, who would go on to compose the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack. The feeling of adventure peaks during all sorts of unexpected situations and side missions that appear. Examples of these are: flying above a train as it pumps fuel into the aircraft to counter a fuel tank leak. "Train to air refueling." Flying through a forest of mammoth thousand-foot tall trees rumored to be inhabited by witches. Slow, painstaking climb over a mountain range with only a well-timed fuel dump as the deciding factor for getting over the peak. Looking for traces of red clay to find ruins of an ancient civilization while navigating a series of massive waterfalls. Aerial refueling from a strategic bomber by using a parasite fighter-style cage and boom system while zigzagging through rocky islands. Using pontoons to ride water currents to regain speed after suffering an engine failure. Flying through the machinery of an underground aqueduct. Strategic bomber modified for parasite aircraft operations. The challenge of Sky Odyssey's adventure mode is a mixture of constricted flying conditions punctuated by weather, wind effects, fuel management, and geographic dangers like rock slides, geysers, volcanic eruptions, and similar hazards. While the flight model in this game is arcadey, aircraft have a semi-realistic weight, engine power management, fuel management, and flight attitude are deciding factors in navigating geographical obstacles. Adventure [M2: The Desert Express] ( Blaze Plays Games ) There were multiple instances where landslides hurled boulders towards my aircraft, and the safest ways to avoid them were coordinated turns, snap maneuvers, and patience. There are no progress checkpoints within this game, so crashing during a mission will result in the player starting over from the beginning. Calm and focused flying will win the day. Ancient ruins lead the way to your glory. It should be noted that while there are a handful of different camera angles to use; the default 3rd person camera is simultaneously the most helpful and most teeth-grinding camera option. Seeing the wind move the aircraft from side to side is valuable for making attitude and engine adjustments, but this also means the camera is hardly ever perfectly centered behind the aircraft's tail. Depth perception and predicting the aircraft's flight path become skills learned quickly in this game. Checkpoint rings guide players through the considerably sized levels towards their objectives. However, a bit of exploring off the mission path is rewarded by more than some interesting landmarks. There are hidden landing strips in some of the levels that unlock aircraft customization parts or unlock an entirely new aircraft once enough parts are gathered—further encouraging exploration. You must fly through this volcano. The last two missions and the ending of Sky Odyssey had so much happen in such a short amount of time, seeing the credits roll at the end filled me with a sense of considerable accomplishment. By the end of my first experience with Sky Odyssey, I found myself seriously thinking about how it hooked me so quickly. It is by no means one of the prettiest or technologically advanced PlayStation 2 games ever made. As I began to think of similar flight titles for comparison, the reason this game stands out to me became clear. Few flight games have tried to do what Sky Odyssey has done. Certainly none of what would be considered the "big name" or "mainstream" flight titles from the first "golden age" of flight sims. This remains true even in recent times. Living in the year 2021, during this age of easily accessible, experimental indie titles, Sky Odyssey seems more like an indie game than anything else. If this game were released this year, it would be right at home on Itch.io or Steam, being promoted through online game festivals or even produced through crowdfunding. In fact, there are games on Itch.io that now make me think of a similar creative vein Sky Odyssey was developed in. A project by a developer willing to pursue their creative vision rather than following the beaten path made by games and simulators from brand name developers and publishers. I can now truly appreciate Sky Odyssey for the forgotten gem that it is after experiencing it myself. In the grand scheme of things, it is a game that did not have much of an impact on the flight genre, but it represents a creative aviation experience that I wish more developers would take a chance on. Those curious about this game can buy it used for rather cheap or see a playthrough of it here . About the Author Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

A little bit of eye candy for your strike missions Picture this: You boot up DCS and set out for a strike mission. Your target is a large ammo depot. You weave through air defenses as you make your way to the target, masking behind terrain and dodging AAA left and right - and when you finally get there and attack, all you get is a small explosion and the target's 3D model switching to a destroyed one. Feels a little underwhelming, right? You expected something more spectacular - a chain of explosions from the ammunition cooking off and detonating everything around that depot you just hit. Maybe you wanted to re-enact Ace Combat 5's Powder Keg where a bunch of ammo bunkers start going off in a chain reaction. Well, don't worry - today we're going to show you how to get those effects on your DCS World missions, and hopefully give you some ideas along the way. While there are certainly more elegant ways to do this with Lua scripting, our goal is to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible, so we'll be showing you a basic method that works using only DCS Mission Editor triggers. Here are a few examples of how you can set it up: Basic Example: Ammunition Depot Let's start with the basics: A static object which will trigger secondary explosions once destroyed. The first step is to place an area over your target to define where the secondary explosions will take place. For this ammunition depot, I've set up two different zones - The smaller one will get fewer, larger explosions, and the larger one will get more but smaller explosions. You can set up more of these "layers" if you want - but beware of potential performance hits. With the zones set up, we go to the Triggers window on the Mission Editor and create a new trigger. Since ammunition bunkers in DCS are pretty tough, and I want this one to detonate as soon as it is hit by a single penetrating bomb, we can set the condition for the trigger as "Unit Damaged". For the actions, we set "Explode Unit" to ensure the bunker is destroyed after that one hit - and then comes the key behind the explosion effect we want, the "Shelling Zone" action. This trigger action generates explosions on the ground, simulating an artillery barrage - however the rate of these explosions is fast enough that it makes for a pretty versatile effect. We create one "Shelling Zone" action for each zone we have created. Under its options, we choose the zone we want, the number of explosions that will take place inside the zone, and the TNT equivalent of each explosion, measured in kilograms - keep in mind the maximum for this number is 500 kilograms, so unfortunately you cannot simulate the huge single explosions which usually result from ammunition depots cooking off. Video: Basic Ammunition Depot Example Setting Up Delayed Secondaries: Ammunition-Carrying Ship We can take this concept a step further and make it so some of the explosions only trigger a certain time after the target is hit. For this example, I've set up a docked cargo ship with two large zones and several smaller zones spread out through its deck. In order to help our players with target identification and really get the point across that this is the big bad ammunition-laden ship they need to destroy, we can set up a bunch of static military vehicles on its deck by selecting our ship in the "Link Unit" field. Keep in mind that this only works for static objects - unfortunately, as much as I'd like to place MANPADS and anti-aircraft guns on cargo ships as a welcoming gift to unsuspecting players, as it currently stands we cannot place active units on ship decks. (ED, please?) In order to achieve the delay effect, we'll set up multiple triggers - in this case I chose three - each one triggering its own set of explosions. For the first one, we set the conditions as either "Unit Destroyed" or "Unit Damaged" depending on the mission creator's preference - and for its actions, in addition to "Shelling Zone" , we set a "Flag On" command to set a flag of our choosing to "true" once the target is hit. You can choose an arbitrary number for your flag, as long as it does not conflict with any other flags in your mission - in this case I chose "101". Then, for our following triggers, we set the condition to "Time Since Flag", which will trigger once a specified time (in seconds) has passed since a certain flag has been set to true. Thus, we can effectively specify a delay in relation to the activation of flag "101", and therefore in relation to our first explosion. For this example, I've set two delayed triggers for different sets of explosions - one with a 1 second delay, and the other with a 2 second delay. Video: Delayed Secondaries Example Setting Up Map Objects: Airfield Ammunition Warehouse Setting up your own targets is all well and good, but what if you want to apply this effect to map objects, such as the fuel and ammunition storage facilities present at airfields? Fortunately, the 2.7 DCS update gave us a tool to do exactly that. After right-clicking on a valid map object, such as a building, an "Assign As..." window will pop up. Clicking this window will automatically generate a zone linked to the map object's ID, which allows it to be used to track the object's status. In the Triggers window, we will now set up a trigger with the condition "Map Object is Dead" . Under the options for this condition, select the zone which has been assigned to the map object in the previous step. This will trigger this event as soon as that map object is destroyed. In order to give this a little bit of extra kick, we can set an "Explosion" action in addition to the "Shelling Zone" action. This will generate a single explosion exactly at the center of the selected zone, at an altitude set by the mission creator. It isn't as visually impressive, but it helps by being one extra layer in our effects cake. Just like with the hardened ammunition depot, I've set two circular zones around the target, each one linked to a "Shelling Zone" action - fewer but larger explosions on the inner circle, more numerous but smaller explosions on the outer circle. Video: Map Object Secondaries Example Getting the visual effect you want with this method often requires quite a bit of tweaking and playing around with the values of "TNT Equivalent" and "Shells Count". If it's looking too mushy, reducing the size of explosions and increasing their number can help. However, when adjusting these values, keep in mind that the higher the number of explosions, the higher the impact on frame rate - if you have too many explosions going off, even if they're small ones, your players will definitely feel the performance hit. Get Creative! Now that you know what you can do with a few simple triggers on the Mission Editor, the possibilities are endless! Using this method alongside other mission features, it is possible to think up a variety of mission scenarios - For instance, in a mission involving rescuing civilians from an industrial zone under insurgent attack, you could force players to be careful about potential collateral damage by making the destruction of structures such as fuel tanks and warehouses trigger a devastating chain of secondary explosions. When I make missions to play with friends, I like giving my players reason and reward for going after certain static targets. They know they'll get to look at cool explosions, so that's already an incentive - but I also like making their destruction have tangible effects on the mission. For example, maybe destroying an ammunition depot reduces the amount of artillery enemy units can throw at friendly forces, and destroying fuel storage tanks could reduce enemy aircraft spawn rates. I hope this article has given you some ideas to give your missions that little extra bit of flavor - and good laughs when your friends realize that ammo bunker they just dropped a JDAM on... That one was special. About the Writer Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto An incurable aviation fanatic since childhood, fascinated by the design and history of practically anything that flies. A long-time fan of flight games, he currently studies aeronautical engineering and pursues his hobbies of drawing, writing and flight simulation on his spare time. See Staff Profile .

An important announcement for the future of our upcoming operations in VRChat aviation Starting May 26th, 2025, Skyward Flight Media and VRC Dogfight Central have entered a partnership to host more aviation tournaments and other aviation focused events in VRChat. VRC Dogfight Central (DFC) is an air-to-air combat focused VRChat aviation community. Their staff put on training courses in 'dogfighting', host tournaments and create content in support of those becoming more efficient in air combat. DFC holds weekly basic fighter maneuver instructional sessions on their Discord before transitioning to VRChat for one on one dogfight sessions in existing VRChat aviation worlds. Along with their YouTube channel , DFC offers a good environment for learning how to dogfight in VRChat with a group of likeminded individuals. May 2025 Colibri Tournament The start of this partnership is being kicked off with a tournament! The SW-210 Colibri - the second original aircraft from Skyward Flight Media brought to life with cooperation between aeronautical engineer Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto  and 3D modeler Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos .  For this tournament the aircraft will be equipped with a pair of M39A2 20mm Gunpods and a pair of MAA-1 infrared guided air-to-air missiles. The flight model of the SW-210 Colibri was rebuilt from the ground up by Santiago Cuberos for the newest iteration of SaccFlight with fine tuning done in cooperation with Dogfight Central and Skyward Flight Media staff to ensure it is flying as intended. The Black Aces VRChat aviation community - the first VRChat aviation partner of Skyward Flight Media - is also participating in this event providing the in-game winner's trophy, money towards the tournament prizes and some support staff members if needed. Tournament Schedule Monday May 26th, 2025 : Tournament Announced, Sign Ups Open. Practice World available . Thursday, May 29, 2025 9:00 PM CST : Sign up for the tournament closes. Saturday, May 31st, 2025 : Qualifiers at 9:00 PM CST. Saturday, June 7th, 2025 : Finals at 9:00 PM CST. Tournament Prizes 1st Place : $200 USD, Dogfight Central Challenge Coin (real, physical coin), Tournament Trophy (Digital, In-Game) 2nd Place : $100.00 USD, Dogfight Central Challenge Coin 3rd Place : $50.00 USD, Dogfight Central Challenge Coin Tournament Rules What the staff say is final. No cameras or personal mirrors are allowed while flying. If you crash during take-off you get one rematch before losing the match. Weapons hot AFTER merge, a merge is when you and your opponent cross each other's 3/9 line. After killing your enemy you must show you can survive your last maneuver, or that you have the means of returning to level flight. There is an audio que when you win a match, exit the plane immediately after recovering from your last maneuver. The first match you lose puts you in the loser's bracket. Losing again eliminates you from the tournament. If you are matched with a player you have blocked, you need to unblock them for the duration of the match. Failure to do so will result in being disqualified. If you collide with someone during your match and they survive, you may ask for a rematch, however they are not obligated to accept, and would be named the winner. The use of software that simulates key presses such as auto hot key are strictly prohibited, if you are found using any type of software that makes inputs to your aircraft’s flight controls without the need of your own effort, you will be disqualified and possibly banned from future competition! 試合の決定権はスタッフにあります。 試合中にカメラの使用は禁止されています。 離陸後すぐに墜落した場合は1回だけ再試合できます、そのあとは敗北判定になります。 武器の使用許可はマージの後になります。マージの判定は相手の3/9ラインを交差した後になります("merge"という音声が流れます)。 相手を撃墜した後は最後のマニューバまで生存しなければなりません。できなかった場合は再試合の判定になる可能性があります。 試合に勝利した瞬間と同時に勝利音声が流れます。最後ののマニューバまで生存した後はすぐ機体から離脱し、リスポーンしてください。 負けたあとは1回だけの復帰のチャンス(敗者復活戦)があります、通常ブロックの勝利者も同様です。 対戦相手がブロックしている対象の場合、試合中だけ相手をブロック解除しなければなりません。できなかった場合は失格判定になります。 戦闘中に対戦相手とFOX-4した場合、リマッチ(再試合)を要請することができます。ただし必ず再試合になる保証はしません。 ボタンの連打を設定できる第三者のソフトウェアもしくは有利になるソフトウェアの使用は禁止されています。発見された場合は失格となり、ドッグファイトセントラルの大会から出禁になります。 Tournament Sign Up Step 01 : To register for this tournament fill out this Google Form . Step 02 : Join the VRC Dogfight Central Discord  and watch the Announcements channel for updates. Similar updates can also be found on Skyward Flight Media social media channels on Bluesky and X.com . Step 03 : Join the Dogfight Central VRC Group to receive group invites to the instances for prelims and finals in real time while you are logged into VRChat. This can be done in a few different ways: While in game use the Group search function and search for Dogfight Central. Input Group Short code VRCDC.1267 into the Find a Group search bar. Join the group on the the VRChat website: https://vrc.group/VRCDC.1267  either via website or by searching for Dogfight Central while in game. Practice World Available Remember to practice! The world to practice with the very aircraft you will be participating with in the tournament is available now. Join a public instance to practice against others or create a permission restricted instance to practice alone or with friends. https://vrchat.com/home/world/wrld_e8be929d-90dc-49ac-b837-eb2bdca2cff9/info

After months of work and tweaking, and a lot of procrastination, we are proud to present Skyward's newest VRChat experience: The Skyward Hangar Hangout. This world is designed for those days when you just need a place to lay down and wind down in a cozy yet aviation-filled world, or those nights when you need a place to host a small/medium-sized event with your friends in a nice open space! It is divided in two main areas, the hangar and the outside. Go see it yourself, it is out NOW! Now, if you just want to browse, allow me to show you around my newest world. THE HANGAR The base model was made by our friend, Pilot, and decorated in its entirety by using available assets and in-house models, such as the inclusion of the SW-210 Colibri as the centerpiece of the hangar. It includes the typical amenities expected of a VRChat world, such as: A big mirror on the hangar door. A synced ProTV video player with Quest compatibility. An AudioLink controller. A ball to toss around with your friends. A small corner with memories from Skyward's/Cube's experiences in VRChat. Here is a small gallery of the interior of the hangar: THE EXTERIOR This part is the newest addition to the world, and the most spacious area available to players. Relax under the moonlight and the cloudy skies with your friends, or play games with them while you get tipsy, it is all up to you. The centerpiece of the exterior is the SW-201 Dragonfly, an in-house aircraft. This world also includes plenty of spaces for people to have conversations at, as well as comfy places to sleep on if that is what you want. It includes: Two pool/billiards tables using the VRCBilliards prefab. Two Buckshot Roulette tables using yaokisub's prefab. A fully modeled and walkable Dragonfly model, including a walkable interior. Atmospheric sounds coming from the lights and bonfire. A bonfire area with a hammock and cushions away from the rest of the world for those that want private time or just a very cozy place. Here are some pictures of it, too: About the Creator Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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

After many, many months of development; we can finally unveil our world to the public! We present you the Skyward Island Resort, a relaxing flight world that is available NOW in VRChat for both PC and Mobile! The link to go there and all the information that you will ever need can be found in the webpage we made for it. We'll see you in the Resort!

It has become a bit of a yearly tradition for the VRC Black Aces to showcase their newest aircraft during the month of September. This year is no exception, which is why we are proud to announce that tonight (9/9/2023), at 10PM EST, we will be hosting a showcase in VRChat as a part of this year's Black Aces September Showcase event! As a part of this airshow, we will be showing off Skyward's newest addition to its virtual roster: The SW-210 "Colibrí" , a two seat trainer aircraft designed by Caio "Hueman" Barreto and modeled/developed by Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos! This aircraft has been in development for the past 6 months, so we hope you enjoy it when you see it in VR! Alongside the Colibrí, we will also be showcasing two more aircraft : The SW-201 "Dragonfly", Skyward's pride and joy civilian amphibious aircraft, and the F/A-27G "So-UR", a futuristic supersonic heavy aircraft designed by REaSoN2DiE4 and Sournetic. This makes it one of the first shows within the Black Aces to have a complete roster of original aircraft modeled in-house by Black Aces members and Skyward Staff to be used in VRChat aviation! HOW TO ATTEND THE SHOW To attend tonight, you will need to have joined the Black Aces' discord server, which you can find HERE . Once you have joined, please pay close attention to the Announcements channel , which is where Riko, the main organizer and owner of the community, will be posting the link to the VRChat world instance as it opens to the public. See you there! If you cannot attend our show, fret not! There will be three more airshows as a part of September Showcase, one per week. Above you can see the dates and world creators. We'll see you in the virtual skies, fly safe!

An introduction to modding and initial concerns Did you know that to this day, Why485, the main developer of Tiny Combat Arena , still goes by the name "Only the Harrier is Flyable" in the MicroProse official Discord? It is a very direct reminder of how Tiny Combat Arena (TCA) maintains its player controlled aircraft focus on the AV-8B Harrier. While development of an official second aircraft has been referenced by the developer, screenshots of players flying many aircraft in this game that are definitely not the famous "Jump Jet" have been appearing in social media. What is going on? Introduction screenshot (Why485). Official Mod Support On November 1st, 2023, a side project from the developer was announced and released. Why485 stated that the game had always been built with the inclusion of mods in mind at some point, leading to the creation of Tiny Combat Tools . This software tool kit was designed to assist with the process of creating and uploading mods for Tiny Combat Arena. This is some of the clearest and well documented official mod support you can get from a game this size. It should be noted that a channel for TCA modding was opened in the official MicroProse Discord on February 22nd, 2022, where many hypothetical discussions for modding were had before this tool kit was released. Though, the primary destination for mods in this game is the TCA Modding Community , which was intentionally established outside the MicroProse Discord to clearly separate the mods from the base game. This way any mod related questions or troubleshooting stay within its designated server, away from any bug reporting the base game receives. Do keep in mind that creating mods for this game does mean designing them from scratch. A skill set with programs like Blender and Unity will be needed to bring your ideas into TCA. This example video from a user named Caboose gives players an idea of what fledgling modders are getting into: Caboose takes it a step further and offers a mod base for initial experimentation. Another user, Topfighter101, has also provided an hour long tutorial video focusing specifically on creating an aircraft model in the TCA style from scratch. This includes any weapon models that are being added for these aircraft to carry into combat. Further steps will need to be taken to make sure the aircraft, other vehicles or their weapons are also animated and coded to work correctly in game. It is a lot of effort to get content like this working and working consistently. You have to respect that. AI only Su-27 Flankers finishing off opposing aircraft. Installing Mods Installing and using mods is very easy thanks to the developer doing some thinking ahead and the modders themselves keep things as simple as possible. Simply go to the  TCA Modding Community , search the Mods forum, click on the thread for the specific mod you are interested in, make sure you are downloading the latest version of that mod, then drag and drop the files of those mods into the Mods folder of Tiny Combat Arena. It is that simple. Example of mod folder. From there, launch TCA then do the usual process of aircraft selection and loadout selection. Some mods are for AI units only, meaning they cannot be flown by players. A little reading will help differentiate things. Concerns About Mods I am writing this article as someone on the outside of the Tiny Combat Arena modding scene, only now starting to pay serious attention. As such, I do not have a lot of time with the various mods that are currently available. This may sound strange, but my initial reaction to seeing the mods being produced is one of concern. Coming into this, I have the opinion that many of these mods may not fit TCA as it is now. Of course, mods are completely voluntary. I am not going to pretend like they "destroy" what TCA is or anything. But I believe I can put my concerns in perspective. JA 37 Viggen deploying missile countermeasures. Via mods, players will have access to an entirely new selection of aircraft. Not just in game non player controlled models now being modified for player use. Some mods seem to fit well with the level of technology currently seen on both the friendly and opposing sides in game. Though, when we go beyond the perceived Cold War era Tiny Combat Arena represents, things begin to change. You can find aircraft like the Mitsubishi F-2A and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Even fictitious examples like the Ace Combat ADFX Morgan and the UD-4 "Cheyenne" Dropship from the Aliens series. While genuinely cool, do remember that the opposing computer forces do not even have the SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile yet. The most advanced air defenses are short-range infrared missile carrying SA-9 Gaskin and the ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft gun weapon system. The deadliest fighter in the skies hunting players is the MiG-23MLA Flogger that first flew in 1978. Some TCA modders have already added advanced modern weaponry like their own renditions of active radar homing missiles, long-range air to ground munitions and even nuclear weapons. At this point, the balance of power seems so uneven, I would think the overall gameplay experience would change. F-2A Viper Zero launching AAM-4 before the dogfight begins. Dipping into Mods After a few hours of testing a handful of these mods myself, I can say that the experience does change, but it depends on how players use the mods and which mods they use. For example, spawning within 5 nautical miles of enemy air defenses will negate any advantage even the most advanced fourth generation fighters have. If you are so close even the most basic anti-aircraft gun can hit you, an air launched cruise missile cannot help you. However, someone that knows they can stand-off at over 20 nautical miles away while casually raining down 'Fox Three' missiles and glide bombs like the AGM-154 JSOW will breeze through any mission put before them. Using a Strike Eagle with six AIM-120 AMRAAMs to its maximum potential in a Quick Battle Dogfights results in the battle being won within seconds without the opposing force even getting close enough to fire back. F/A-18F Super Hornet deploying AGM-154 JSOW into a far off battle. Mods that are more era appropriate, like the JA-37 Viggen or Mirage 2000C match with the current level of base game units players would be fighting against. The weapons they could potentially deploy also fit the level of aggression doled out by the NPC enemies. It helps that in Quick Mission mode, player controlled mods and AI only mods can be set as enemies, increasing the difficulty against the player as they have access to more advanced aircraft. A flight of F-15 Eagles versus a flight of Su-27 Flankers does even things out. But so far this does nothing for the Arena Campaigns, which are the bread and butter of Tiny Combat Arena. Though there does seem to be one ambitious mod that does address this. I want to take a closer look at that on its own as a separate article, without quickly glazing over it. Mirage 2000C mod database entry. Personally, I do not see myself extensively using mods of highly advanced aircraft but swapping in new third generation aircraft and early fourth generation aircraft could be a nice way to mix things up from time to time. Few flight games are this open to the addition of mods. People who are even vaguely interested should take the opportunity to dip into the modding scene and see what is being produced. As further updates to the core mechanics of Tiny Combat Arena are prioritized by its developer, dabbling in mods is a fine way to see how robust this platform can be. Player controlled F-15E merges with AI only Su-27. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

Visual Effects and Gameplay Impact In case you have not noticed, clouds are sort of the "big thing" in simulated flight in the past few years. The once taken for granted masses of water vapor have basically become a selling point for Digital Combat Simulator World. On the civilian side, Microsoft Flight Simulator's real-time weather has brought another layer of simulation and eye-popping beauty. In 2019, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown was the series first endeavor into the presentation and usage of clouds utilizing the hardware and software possibilities brought by current gaming PCs, 8th generation gaming consoles, Simul's TrueSky real-time weather creation system, and Unreal Engine 4. However, in a manner suiting Ace Combat, the clouds, wind, and rain were cranked up and altered in ways other games and simulators have not. The Ace Combat series has had clouds and weather in various forms within its long history, but not in the way the latest entry in the series has. It is not a stretch to say that most weather and clouds seen in the past Ace Combat games acted only as background dressing with a few notable uses of clouds for scripted events. But they usually were not a large factor in gameplay. A high-profile example of this is a close-range dogfight sequence in and around a hurricane in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (2011), where players could effortlessly fly in and out of the hurricane with their minds solely focused on the battle hand. Developing the Concept Ace Combat 7 Concept Art (2012) As stated in a Computer Entertainment Developers Conference 2019 presentation by Masato Kanno of the Project Aces development team in 2012, the proposal going forward was "we want to make the sky new." In this case, they meant "new" for the Ace Combat series. For a more technical, developer-minded explanation, see our translation of the presentation and other CEDEC 2019 materials. The use of clouds was a concept shortly after Ace Combat: Assault Horizon was released in 2011. An initial test to see if using clouds made gameplay more enjoyable was run in an ACAH environment with various white, round objects in the air. According to narrative director Kosuke Itomi in The Making of Ace Combat 7 Part 1 , the developers found flying in the environment to be rather fun. He felt as though he wanted to create "some kind of play like a jungle gym" that makes players want to interact with clouds. The concept and development of Ace Combat 7 were put on hold when the development of Ace Combat Infinity (2014) was prioritized. In the summer of 2014, following the release of Ace Combat Infinity, internal technical studies within the company were started. Working in parallel, Masato Kanno was asked to find middleware for generating weather. Eventually, Simul's trueSKY software was selected. A teaser trailer using trueSKY and Unreal Engine 4 was released for PlayStation Experience 2015 that heavily featured clouds and hinted at their usefulness. The early game mechanic proposal was to design clouds that affect combat as a whole. These early ideas were cross-referenced with actual Japanese Air Self Defense Force pilots and air traffic controllers from Komatsu Base in Ishikawa, Japan, regarding how clouds affect their operations. The subjects they discussed included the impact of clouds on air-to-air weaponry and how clouds impact air operations in general. The final result was the development team compromising on something that makes both reality and the proposed game mechanic possible. Clouds in Ace Combat 7 The final version of the clouds of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown played a prominent role in various single-player missions, with a limited but impactful presence in multiplayer gameplay. Here is how the clouds and related weather work in this game: An aircraft that dives into clouds is visually obscured from pursuers but still appears on radar and in the Heads Up Display (HUD) of other aircraft. This is unlike how Ace Combat portrays stealth aircraft, which can fade from radar and be lost in the HUD entirely, enabling them to perform surprise attacks. Air-to-air guided weapons are especially affected by clouds. To the point where air combat tactics that rely on cloud coverage are viable in multiplayer. While pursuing an enemy aircraft, it is possible to lose a weapons lock because it entered a cloud. Though it is momentary, losing lock in the middle of a close-range dogfight is a hazard. While in clouds, weapon lock-on times are somewhat extended, the missile-lock range is reduced, and missile homing capabilities are degraded to a degree. This does not make clouds the perfect cover, however. Aircraft icing has been modeled to prevent players from simply remaining within a cloud for as long as they like. After a certain period, ice buildup on the aircraft can cause its controls to lock up and force a stall, leaving the player that ices up vulnerable to attack. Example of an iced over canopy. Directed energy weaponry, like pulse lasers and larger output laser cannons, are also impacted by clouds. Their overall performance significantly attenuates as they pass through clouds. Both laser firepower and range decrease, making clouds the most effective defense against these weapons. The effect of clouds on aircraft, weapon systems, and the weapons themselves can be offset with modification parts purchased with in-game currency to increase aircraft capabilities to counteract the cover clouds provide. Furthermore, wind, rain, and lightning are a factor, albeit to less of an extent overall, because they are not as frequently present. High winds can push the aircraft off course rapidly and affect the flight path of missiles fired. This casts an unknown factor in close and medium-range combat in high wind, as once the missile is fired, it could easily be moved off course while it is in flight. Even well-aimed close-range missile shots from Special Weapons (secondary weapons) with thrust vectoring are not as reliable in high wind conditions. Players must either force their way through these wind currents or find ways to use them to their advantage. Other weather effects include rain which obscures vision, especially in the cockpit point of view, but rain does not have much impact in first person or third person views beyond adding to the atmosphere of the sortie. There are a few other low visibility situations like sandstorms and fog, but rain or moisture, in general, is the most reoccurring. Lightning strikes in AC7 only exist in one single-player mission, and one multiplayer map and are by far one of the deadliest random interactions one can have. These lightning strikes are shockingly catastrophic. Being stuck by lightning immediately sends the player aircraft into a nosedive with a momentary state of blindness from the flash. Aircraft systems remain on the fritz for roughly 30 seconds. With the heads-up display flickering on and off, players are forced to remain in combat with severely diminished situational awareness. Lightning strike in third person view. In Retrospect Looking back on it, the clouds of Ace Combat 7 are an exercise of compromise. The goal was to bring a fresh game mechanic to the proven "original formula" of Ace Combat which Ace Combat 7 brought to multiple modern gaming platforms. However, this had to be done while maintaining a few things that remain based in reality regarding how clouds influence air operations while not straying too far off the beaten path the series made for itself. Albeit, the intentional exaggeration of cloud and weather effects makes these concepts work while adhering to the high-paced combat players expect from the series. It is interesting to see how a conversation with actual JASDF pilots about subjects like the impact of clouds lead to a system that made artistic choices to enhance gameplay and encourage a specific type of gameplay among the player population of Ace Combat 7. It is hard to imagine something like a cover from enemy fire system in a flight game, but this is more or less what Project Aces created for Ace Combat 7. What real-world and full simulator combat pilots would consider "cloud surfing" became a combat effective tactic that frequently results in swirling dogfights through clouds banks. The random loss of missile lock and flying with reduced vision through cloud swept situations forced players to focus on timing their missile shots and getting a better read of the combat airspace. Players can build entire strategies or customize aircraft specifically for operations within cloud coverage to either take advantage of them or intercept other players that prefer to lurk within their whispy forms. A majority of the engagements that happen in this game are still within visual range, so having the default turn and burn air battles broken up by sequences of losing enemies in clouds does break up the cycle. Ironically, the one Ace Combat 7 multiplayer map which combines all cloud and weather elements into a single experience, is often the most vote skipped. Named "Yinshi Valley", it is not skipped because of bad level design, but more of an acknowledgment that harsh flight conditions are preferable to avoid. In my opinion this gives credence to the fact that Project Aces finally made clouds and weather in the Ace Combat series a serious part of the experience. Each Ace Combat title introduces some kind of new function that may or may not stick in future titles. I sincerely hope that the frequency and intensity of clouds and weather becomes a staple of the series going forward in the game mechanic-focused form it is currently in. Some may scoff at the idea of an AIM-9X Sidewinder missing its target because it was blown off course and lost lock while flying in a torrential storm but being able to take a step back from reality to enjoy the movie-like fighter pilot experience that Ace Combat has built itself off is just as important for overall entertainment. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

(Screenshot: Dantofu VisMod) Even the most unconventional, outright sci-fi elements of the Ace Combat series often have connections to real-world aircraft, weaponry, concepts, and projects. Airborne aircraft carriers, aft firing missiles, and forward-swept swing wings are all known for being seen in Ace Combat, but their design and presentation are drawn from influences in our past, present and future. One of the more recent and briefly intriguing examples of this came in the form of "stealth missiles". Following its release, the next three years of downloadable content for Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019) has primarily been made up of new aircraft liveries, emblems, and a dozen or so new aircraft added to the game's roster. The inclusion of three new missions is the most significant addition to the game's post-release content. In it, new villains, challenges, and weapons were introduced. Amid a rather elaborate plot by a rogue super submarine crew, two enemy ace pilots enter the equation. Known as Mimic Squadron, this brazen brother-sister pair of pilots appears on the battlefield, confusing friend and foe. Their shadowy mission is to assassinate the player's character while in the middle of a combat operation. Piloting a pair of Su-47 Berkut, Mimic Squadron appears in two missions with World War II dazzle paint-inspired liveries, painted on false canopies, various types of electronic countermeasures, and stealth missiles. Mimic Squadron (Source: Acepedia) It's no secret that stealthy, low observable (LO) weapons are becoming vital weapons for the real-world battlefields of the future. Because of the constantly progressing detection and interception abilities of anti-aircraft defense systems, early warning radar, and generation 4+ combat aircraft, the need for weapons capable of negating detection and striking hard-to-reach targets has rapidly increased in the past few years. But the types of weapons that currently receive LO designs are cruise missiles, glide bombs, and similar standoff munitions. It is larger, slower, often subsonic weapons that are susceptible to surface-to-air missiles, infrared or radar-guided point defenses, and high-speed fighter aircraft capable of running them down. But the missiles that Mimic uses are not of this type, but of a type not seen in modern real-world air forces. During the events of "Anchorhead Raid", the second Ace Combat 7 downloadable content mission, Mimic Squadron ambushes the player and their wingmen with stealth air-to-air missiles (AAMs). As combat begins between both flights of aircraft, it's observed that the AAMs do not trigger constant missile warning alerts. It is only until the missile is moments away from impact that it initiates the familiar warning tone within the player aircraft's radar warning receiver. Throughout the Ace Combat series, any guided missile fired at the player prompts missile warnings from the moment it is launched. Audible beeps from a radar warning receiver indicate how close a missile is to the player's aircraft. The more frequent and faster the beeps are, the closer the missile is. Knowing this, the dogfight against Mimic Squadron develops into a rare type of battle where the player is unsure of exactly when enemy missiles are inbound unless they see it fired visually or wait for the missile to get close enough. As far as Ace Combat is concerned, referring to these as stealth missiles isn't necessarily incorrect by its own standard. Mimic Stealth AAMs (Source: Dantofu VisMod) In the real world, the concept of a low observable air-to-air missile isn't unheard of. How they are presented in Ace Combat is similar to one of the few publicly known military research programs on this subject. Have Dash I (1985-1988) and Have Dash II (1990-1992) were United States Air Force programs that looked into creating a new generation of stealthy long-ranged AAMs. The defining feature of these test missiles was their trapezoidal asymmetrical flat-bottom design that used a radar-absorbing graphite composite fuselage which was also resistant to the high temperatures of hypersonic speeds. Their speed and minimized radar cross-section would reduce how soon an aircraft's radar warning sensors could detect the incoming missile. There is a finite amount of information about them available on the world wide web with hard to find physical publications listed as sources. Though missiles were actually tested, these programs ended with no clear or reliable publicly accessible information about their results. But the fact that fourth and fifth-generation aircraft have not carried low observable AAMs since the program's end may be the answer we seek. Collection of media about Have Dash. While the design inspiration and parts of Mimic's stealth AAMs' functionality can most likely be traced to Have Dash, the final missing piece does not lay in programs of old. It is instead in a well-founded set of technology that has been around for decades. The ability to launch missiles at the player without immediate warnings can be attributed to a Track While Scan radar mode. In short: unlike Range While Search radar modes which acquire the radar to maintain a "hard lock" to guide a missile onto a hostile aircraft, Track While Scan is capable of passively tracking targets and providing steering information for active radar homing missiles while they are in flight. This allows the onboard radar of the active radar homing missile to remain offline until it is close enough to the hostile aircraft to activate the missile's own radar and pursue the target without further support needed from the launch aircraft's radar. This minimizes the time that the hostile aircraft has to react to the unexpected new threat. A missile could be within 15 nautical miles of its target without that target knowing it will be in danger seconds later. Looking back, it's sort of a shame to see such an unusual addition to the Ace Combat series only be used in a single instance. The incorporation of some historical military aviation concepts and technologies players would only encounter in flight simulators has proven once again to be an eyebrow-raising challenge for flight arcade players. It's curveballs like these that make for memorable gameplay moments. Here's to hoping the stealth AAM of Ace Combat 7 doesn't wither away in the next installment of the series like the aft firing missiles of Ace Combat Zero did. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

An unrecognized prototype for 2010s flight games? Airforce Delta Strike . Airforce Delta Strike. Airforce Delta Strike. I’ve struggled to really define what Airforce Delta Strike means to the triumvirate of the flight arcade also-ran’s against Ace Combat. Perhaps I’ve given it too much credit in the twilight of its awareness. Perhaps I’ve misjudged its presentation entirely and am southpaw-ing my aim. But as a preacher of this series gospel, I can’t personally help but adore this entry for its insanity. As far as I’m concerned, Airforce Delta Strike (2004) was the unrecognized prototype of what the state of the genre became in the mid-2010’s, and to this day should be treated as a 101 reference for what the ideal flight shooter/visual novel should be. Is that a good thing, though? God… To put this game in a bucket… Good? Bad? Ugly? … Thirsty? Yes, in more ways than one. It may come off as overly-specific to combine these two genres, but bear with me; I can’t be the only one that saw the patterns, right? After Ace Combat 6 there was this “lull” in releases that truly appealed to the core demographic that this genre dominator sold to. That core demographic leaned heavily into the manga/anime crowd. I’ve commented in the past that those that either pedestal or deride Ace Combat for being an anime disguised as a flight shooter have probably never played this game. F4D-1 Skyray attacking rolling wheel fortresses. Gameplay Surprisingly, gameplay in general is probably Strike’s weakest platitude. It’s… serviceable. But if I could summarize it in a more accurate word, I’d call it “conservative”. Controls are, at the least, competent. Aircraft move with a pronounced recoil, similar to that of Airforce Delta Storm. However, the turn rate of all aircraft feels sharper than the previous entry. It’s as though there is a conscious effort to back away from the far more realistic handling that Storm provided. This is the reason I judge it as conservative; it feels like the result of developer response at other flight shooters from the time, as though there was a concerted effort to “re-arcade-ize”. But the decision to not simply go all the way and eliminate recoil is a puzzling decision. Even Ace Combat experimented with semi-realistic flight movement with Ace Combat 3 and made the wise decision to back off from it by the next entry. Here, Konami seems to avoid the rapid realignment and as a result its sort of…cowardly? It pains me to use those words, but if the string of footnote flight shooters using the same semi-realistic physics at the time are any indication, I’m legitimately tempted to say that had Airforce Delta made the same decision it may have been more accessible to the masses and put up a stronger fight against the reigning champion in the space. YAK-141 attacking large oil rig. A change up in late mission physics however are a welcome change of pace… we’ll get to that a little later. And this continues on in some ways into mission design. There’s more of an emphasis made on time limit missions. Certainly we don’t fall into the skirmish design trap of the first game here, but there feels like constant concentration on destruction of as many units as possible or defense of an escorted objective until time runs out. That’s not to say that there are signature wacky missions that bring back some of the charm this series embraces. Tiger’s Cave and Departure stand out in this regard. Weather machines creating tornadoes. But wacky or not, design also leans into the haphazard. You are quickly thrown into your obligatory canyon run (one of several, in fact!) by your third sortie; the objective being to survive to make it to the end while outmaneuvering bizarre single ultra-wide wheeled contraptions blocking your path. But at even first glance you feel like the decisions you make to dodge them are somewhat arbitrary. You WILL fail several times, and Airforce Delta’s retention of requiring an aircraft rebuy after crashing will force you to pay a hefty price to re-earn your prizes; get ready to fly and fight using an Su-24M far longer than you had ever wanted. I could probably generously make the argument that the mission design’s haphazard feel allows execution of greater freedoms by the player, but as the plethora of missions start to come your way, you’ll feel that uneasiness that the mission might have in fact been slapped together with minimal testing. But these main story missions get overshadowed by the constant barrage of “Standby” missions. These missions are your anti-reward for being competent at the game. Yes, yes—I know you can skip turns. I’m not going to admit that it took me until the end of the game to realize this, however. Like its predecessor, the map functions in a board-game like mission selection, but it’s really a veil—missions are very linear, with turns allocated to you for each mission phase. Exceed ten turns per phase by failing missions, and the game ends unceremoniously. However, efficiency in phase completion provides you with the ability to use up your remaining turns in “Standby” missions where you fight in a furball. These missions are provided as a way to let you destroy enemy aircraft to earn money and fly with any one of the nine pilots you wish to complete your collection. But these missions quickly become irritatingly monotonous. Recommendation: Turn down the voice volume for these. The games insistence on throwing the same ten voice lines at you multiple times overlapping with one and other can become grating. YF-12A on a recon mission. Soundtrack Man, you can tell that the music has a Konami backing to it. There’s no orchestra here—the sound team continues to lean heavily on dirty guitar shreds and electronic noise. That’s not to say there’s nothing to like. Despite the variance provided, there is an identifiable sound signature and an attempt to fit tracks to mission design. There’s also a splatter of remixes that will sound familiar to those who have a fondness for the Sega Dreamcast OG. Be sure to watch the intro scene at the beginning of the game to familiarize yourself with the game’s musical motif—you’ll be hearing it a lot. Older fans will appreciate the standouts in Chiron Lift and Tiger’s Cave as remixes/remakes of Dogfight and Military Supply Base respectively, with Chiron keeping a stanza of the title motif for good measure. As mentioned, tempos do a respectable job of matching the pace, urgency, or importance of each mission for the most part. But each time you hear the music for Standby show up in the main game, you’ll let out a groan. It’s not a bad song, just irritatingly Pavlovian. The off-world missions also hold a repetitive tone, but their elegant overtones and slower pace keep them from having the same effect—they’re actually quite nice. Wait… off-world? I said we’ll get to it! Something I tend to appreciate personally is the non-gameplay tracks. Main menu, briefing, and mid-selection tracks are very comfortable. This is something else that seemed to come over from the prequel. They’re also where some of the anime roots come into play—they don’t sound out of place in animation from the time period. I’ll find myself hunting these tracks back down from time-to-time for some light background noise and they hold a good aviation vibe to them. Story To those who can make sense of the story by the time you’re done, we salute you. I’ll try to summarize: The Earth Defense Alliance Force or E.D.A.F (God, I hate that name…) has been locked in combat following an invasion of the Orbital Citizens Community or O.C.C. (not much better…) for… reasons. I think they just want land or something? You fight for the E.D.A.F as part of a non-regular mixed aviation unit known as Delta, which has a reputation as outsiders and mavericks. You’ll regularly be insulted throughout the game for your affiliation by friend and foe alike. Your ragtag-band-of-misfit’s ultimate mission is to break a frontline stalemate and force the O.C.C back off world. Example of situation report. The land you are fighting over (the map of the original Airforce Delta flipped upside down) takes you across wide, varying terrain and mission types, where you thrust your sometimes outmoded fighter into combat against crazy alien gunships, both land and ground, and a limitless supply of Su-22’s. Example of mission briefing. The story tends to be character rather than plot driven, for what that’s worth. For as crazy as the war is, it seems to be an excuse plot rather than a focus in anyway, and that’s reflected by the lack of any definable frontline or logical back-to-back mission objectives. What you’re concentrating on is how each of the characters interact with the events or actions that brought them to where they are. Example of on base conversations. Let’s talk about that; characters. Lots of them. Fully-formed in mangaesque glory. You have your old-wise-coot-stuck-in-their-ways stock character, your bossy-14-year-old-that’s-actually-a-military-genius stock character, your bloodthirsty edgelord-I-am-actually-a-vicious-canine stock character—they’re all here! If you’re not familiar with anime from the 90’s and 2000’s, maybe there’s something novel to find here. But if you are familiar with it, you’ll probably roll your eyes and groan. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll look closer and note what they were trying for. …I kinda love it. They’re so edgy. They’re so bitchy. They’re so archetypical. They’re so--Oh my God, look at the abs on that guy! Do flight suits really show that much… definition? I’m not sure who these character designs are meant to appeal to, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for top of the demographic bell curve. In all seriousness, this may solidly be the start of what makes the game worth playing. I genuinely respect the attempt at actual character development--something to distract from the otherwise bizarre yet lackluster story. There is even a time or two where you actually feel for some of these flyboys/flygirls. However, the heroes themselves are the least entertaining of the bunch save for my boy Jamie and his stubborn defiance in the face of modernity. I too believe in piston-driven supremacy. Jamie in a P-38L Lightning strafing an armored train. The villains are the best part. They’re so hammy and over the top. Whether they’re evil femme fatales like Francine Davout and her ever-loyal servant Jake and their complicated and perhaps fatalistic relationship or the Starscream-esque cattiness of Leon and Giuseppe against their M.E.R.V sub-faction commanders, I love following these guys. Sure, they’re not archetypes you haven’t seen before, but each of their stories evolves programmatically through the game and your in-game actions provide each of them with serious consequences. The plot itself takes a serious turn late in the game, however, and you’ll find yourself shifting from playing a strange but conventional flight shooter to what is effectively a better-handling version of Rogue Squadron with rocket-sled equipped jet fighters. Your final destination? Mars. Yeah, like I said, it gets crazier and crazier, but this is where the story gets real legs and the gameplay shines through. I think this is what I have the fondest memories of for this game, and why I am at odds with myself on how I want to judge the game overall. The space missions you fight through have what I think are a very clean non-Newtonian physics set and a chance to blow up some serious O.C.C. equipment. Honestly, they could have made a whole game out of this part alone, and I lament that it didn’t get more exposure. Aircraft How many airplanes are too many airplanes? (There’s no such number…) Boasting over 100 aircraft to fly over multiple generations, Strike  fulfills the wish of so many an internet ranter with unbuilt obscurities like the F-108 Rapier to the option of facing off with advanced 5th generation fighters using a P-51D Mustang. The selection is a natural evolution of Airforce Delta Storm combining what it built up with vague story-driven excuses for why we would bother flying a Sea Vixen in . But let it be; so many of us have begged to fly the F-111 in these arcade shooters and they granted our request and properly made it the hog to fly that I would expect it to be. I also have to give credit to the fact that they did a better job of giving us plebeians of North America a complete aircraft selection after being denied by the previous series entry. Examples of aircraft selection. The aircraft selection clearly takes influence from Ace Combat 3 and 04 here and decides to add a secondary weapon slot. This is welcome, if limited. However, the decision to omit a gun from a handful of aircraft is a controversial decision. So much as I may respect the idea that we shouldn’t give the F-117 a gun it never had, removal of your credit-multiplying fallback weapon from what seems like arbitrary aircraft like the YF-23 is a frustrating limitation. Baseline weapons feel important in arcade shooters like this—I’ll take the inaccuracy of an F-117 having a gun if it means that there’s a consistent control set. The progenitor of the Assault Horizon locked aircraft selection rears its head here (though arguably this is something you can trace all the way back to Ace Combat 2). You’re stuck with a limited aircraft set for each character. That’s not to say it’s not a far wider berth as the afore mentioned spinoff since you generally have the option to play as one of three characters from each Element for each mission, granting you access to around 30 aircraft or so, but in the pursuit of uniqueness they again throw that unnecessary limiter at you. The' Vic Viper' from the Gradius series. Fictional, Konami-property inspired aircraft occupy the tail end of the fighter selection, highlighting the loss of the crazy original designs that Airforce Delta Storm provided. And you know what? I miss them. I really do. Maybe there is that small group of players in the States that get hyped flying the actual Vic Viper in this environment, but the XF-0002 Phosphorous was so much more invigorating as a design and homage. The space missions alone justify the expansion of an original roster. Oh, that reminds me: No Rafale or Mirage. Dassault screwed us here. Do you think they felt insulted after the last game gave the Rafale a tailplane and touted it as an “improvement”? Conclusion I think I see what it is about this game now that makes it a mixed bag. If I were twenty years younger, I’d love this to death again. It requires a lot of persistence and tolerance to get to the juicy story and character bits. The grinding requires a mindset I just don’t have so much of anymore. But the universe it introduces has a huge potential. These characters, locations, and factions could effortlessly expand. This is a lore-driven game that isn’t sure if it wants to be, and this is why I maintain it’s a prototype of much of what we see today. The voice-acting, dialogue, story beats—all of it feels like Sword Art Online with planes. I can’t call this a bad thing. I maintain that such a thing can be something of a guilty pleasure for a lot of us, and dammit, it would sell even today! I can’t help but wonder that if it weren’t for the aircraft licensing costs that this series could still be ongoing. I think this is where Konami found its voice. It created something unique, strange, and identifiable. Third time’s the charm, and just like with Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere I think it was off-putting at the time; this was an experiment that the western world wasn’t quite ready for, but sure as hell would be now. Promotional image for Airforce Delta Strike. The game needs refinement. A cleaner physics system, a better, less-aliased graphics engine, and a rethink of mission design and progression. But the foundation is there to create something unique and fun for entries going forward. Airforce Delta deserves a revisit today. Project Wingman and Vector Thrust had proven that there is still some sort of demand for newer project designs in this genre. I think that sometimes quantity has a quality all its own, and that’s the niche that Airforce Delta could have carved out for itself; the B-movie releases to Ace Combat’s blockbusters. I think we’d be eating better today if Konami kept serving these titles up because it may not have been the best, but it was innovative and unique. It may have been janky, but they really did put some goddamn heart into it. About the Writer T.J. "Millie" Archer A Life-long realist and aviation enthusiast. Once the co-founding Administrator of the Electrosphere.info English Ace Combat Database. In the present day he is freelance, roving the internet in search of the latest aviation news and entertainment.  Read Staff Profile .

A tremendous improvement over the demo Last year, we talked about Aviassembly’s demo, its very promising core concept - and also our mad journey in working around its limitations at the time . In April 11, 2025, the game was officially released in Early Access - and of course, we were in terested to see how it’s evolved ever since our first look! Back then, we mentioned how improvements to the game’s construction and flight systems could make it into a very solid game - and I’m pleased to say that is exactly what happened. Few times have I seen a game improve so much in so little time as Aviassembly did, and after our first article highlighted so many of the demo's flaws, it's only fair that we highlight the ways in which they've been addressed prior to release, turning this into a very strong title. We're excited to show you what we've found upon playing the game, so buckle up - it's time to create some flying machines! The Building System This is an area which has seen vast improvement since the demo - from quality-of-life upgrades such as being able to save your aircraft designs to new features such as being able to fine-tune the position of a part, building in Aviassembly feels much better! The impact of something seemingly small such as being able to fine-tune the placement of a part in the X, Y and Z axis has a tremendous impact, and allows for much more believable creations, both aesthetically and functionally. It is now a breeze to do things such as placing your piston engine’s nacelle in-line with the wing, for a classic DC-3-esque look. It wouldn't have been possible to make something that looks like this in the demo. Compare it to our last article's "Twin Scrunklo Mk. V" - this aircraft fills that same in-game role, yet Aviassembly's balance changes and new editor features allow it to look much better. The fine-tune feature allowed not only giving this aircraft a low wing, but also to recess the extra fuel tank inside the fuselage, reducing drag and making the aircraft look a lot better. New tools are also available for the fuselage parts, allowing players to angle and change the corner shapes on those fuselages as they see fit. This gives players a much greater degree of freedom over their design configurations, making things such as low- or high-mounted wings possible. These new fuselage-shaping tools are an incredibly helpful addition, and leave nothing to be designed compared to other games in the genre. The edge editing feature allows you to make fuselage corners more or less round. Wings are still only available as fixed, non-editable parts, which means you cannot adjust wing area, sweep, dihedral, or planform - players are restricted to the game's preset wings. While this is a major limitation, it's something KSP players will be well used to, and as we'll see later, the decreased complexity is a good match for the game and the niche it sits in. Another limitation is that, unfortunately, it is still not possible to make pusher-propeller aircraft, since the game sees the engine, instead of the pilot's seat, as the "front" of the aircraft. However, many other configurations, including rather unusual ones, are possible. The new tools allow players a vast degree of freedom on aircraft configurations, but of course there are limits. Here, I originally intended the left (port side) boom to house the cockpit, but since the builder does not allow one to set a symmetry plane offset from the cockpit, I ended up placing it in the centreline. Admittedly, this is an extremely minor inconvenience which will only be felt if you try your hand at really unconventional designs. There are also many more parts available now - including retractable landing gear! Many new additions greatly increase the number of tools in the player’s box of problem-solving items, such as drag chutes and electric engines. The game even shows the retractable gear "ghosted" in the built-in drag visualizer, showing these parts have no drag penalties when retracted. And aside from these functional upgrades, players are now also able to color parts, selecting from a preset color palette which perfectly matches the game’s charmingly cozy graphics. It is a welcome addition which can really make your creations pop. The Flight System Tweaks to the game's flight system and part performance means this is not only a viable early-game design, it also performed well enough to carry me through most of the campaign's first island. Note also the throttle slider on the lower left corner. The game’s flight mechanics and controls have also been touched up, and one of this game’s previously weak points has been addressed - the throttle control now works as a continuous slider, allowing the player to leave the engine in a desired power setting and bringing it closer in line with the control scheme of most flight games out there. Flying an approach to the lumber mill. Sadly, there are still no wheel brakes, so the only way to slow down on the ground is using reverse thrust - however, this does keep the control scheme dead simple and allows players to "self-pushback" (powerback) with ease. This fact alone improves the experience of flying in Aviassembly drastically - but it doesn’t stop there, because fuel consumption rates have been tweaked as well, and the performance values of parts in general seem to have been rebalanced - for instance, it’s now possible to create a perfectly functional monoplane at the game’s start. The Journey, Part II Having taken a look at these new features, I decided to start a new save file and experience Aviassembly’s campaign, eager to see how these changes impacted the gameplay. The cargo loading screen allows you to see exactly how much cargo space and weight each item takes, and what's the current weight and available space in your craft. Right off the bat, the cargo system has been largely reworked, with a completely different balance than before. Changes in part cost and performance also mean that conventional designs are perfectly effective right from the game’s very start - my very first aircraft was a completely conventional monoplane, and it was perfectly adequate for the game’s first quests. The "Monoplano Mk I", my first aircraft for this playthrough - no funny business required this time, it's a completely conventional configuration, looks reasonably similar to a 1920's airplane, and performs accordingly. Speaking of quests, they’ve changed considerably as well - there’s now a much greater variety of them, including new mechanics such as fragile cargo items which require smooth touchdowns on landing. The game even has a very simple story which gives meaning to these quests as you progress. The classic time-attack quests are still there, and as funny as having fruits go bad on you within 70 seconds sounds, as a gameplay mechanic it's a great way to force the player to combine cargo capacity and speed. Far more impactful than the story, though, is the new system for completing quests: If you need to deliver 5 crates of fruit somewhere, you don’t need to deliver them all at once - instead, you could deliver 3 in one flight, and then 2 in the next, for example. You’ll even get a partial reward on your first delivery, allowing players to incrementally upgrade their designs if you’re just under budget for the upgrade you need to finish the quest. At first, I feared this ability to partially complete quests would detract from the game’s challenge, but I was happy to see it did not at all - the many new items fill that gap, and you’ll still need to build highly optimized aircraft for certain quests (such as carrying one very large and heavy item, or delivering foodstuffs very fast). I'm delighted to report the game still allows you to get away with some truly insane designs. This particular abomination uses a hybrid distributed propulsion system and was my answer to having to transport a very large, very heavy piece of cargo near the endgame. Instead, I’ve found this new system hits a sweet spot between challenge and player-friendliness - you can progress gradually if you’re struggling to complete a certain quest, for instance, but nothing feels too easy. There’s some very good balancing work put in here by the developer, and it is definitely worthy of note. The combination of this new quest system and the reworked cargo system allows players to progress in a very different way from the demo - it is entirely feasible to gradually upgrade designs for most quests. For instance, my first monoplane design, fitted with upgrades every time I unlocked new, higher-performance parts, carried me through most of the first “part” of the campaign on the starting island. This family of single-engine monoplanes carried me through most of the early game. From left to right, then top to bottom: (1) - Monoplano Mk I; (2) - Monoplano Mk II with storage space increased via wingtip travel pods; (3) - Monoplano Mk IIId with new wings, a more powerful engine and retractable landing gear; (4, 5) - Monoplano Mk IIIe, losing the wingtip travel pods for increased speed and range, able to cross the island without refueling; (6) - Monoplano Mk IV with new wings and empennage, able to reach islands across the ocean using less than half of its internal fuel At the end of the campaign, I had a few “families” of aircraft, gradually upgraded and/or stretched as budget allowed and mission requirements dictated - a change of pace for sure, and in my opinion, a welcome one. Another early-game aircraft family and a pleasure to fly, the twin-engne "Explorador" was my main go-to whenever large cargo capacity was required. From left to right, then top to bottom: (1) - Explorador Mk I; (2) - Explorador Mk Ib, with increased fuel capacity, this version could cross the ocean and was used to complete the weather station quests; (3) - Explorador Mk II, with new wings, extended fuselage, and stronger landing gear. A mid- and late-game aircraft family, the unconventional "Tandem-Transporter" family was my answer to not being able to edit wings - if I can't get a larger wing, I'll just add more of them! From left to right, then top to bottom: (1) - Tandem-TP Mk I; (2, 3) - Tandem-TP Mk II, with a larger fuselage and two additional engines to carry larger, heavier payloads; (4) - Tandem-TP Mk III "Sisyphos", designed to carry a very large rock aloft; (5) - Tandem-TP Mk IV "Sisyphos II", designed to carry even heavier payloads; (6) - Tandem-TP Mk V "Sisyphos III", designed to carry the largest, most forbidden of rocks Speaking of the starting island, as the campaign progresses you get to fly to other islands and take up new quests there. There are three areas currently in-game; the starting island , the snow island , and the desert island , each one with its own set of places to visit, quests to complete, and available resources. Remember the desert airbase? You can finally land there now! You need to complete the quests on the other islands first, though. It is now much easier to fly to these islands, thanks to the performance tweaks and new parts, such as the retractable landing gears, which greatly decrease drag. This is particularly welcome since some of the missions require you to transport cargo between different islands - sometimes under a timer! I found these inter-continental missions, if you will, to be a very entertaining addition. The "Pescador" aircraft family was designed to deliver fish - an item which expires very quickly in-game, requiring expeditiously fast delivery. From left to right, then top to bottom: (1) - Pescador Mk I, which as a result of my poor planning on how to spend research points, had to make do with less than ideal parts for the job; (2) - Pescador Mk II, with extra engine power and a stronger empennage; (3) - Super Pescador Mk I, a late-game aircraft designed to transport fish to neighboring islands at supersonic speeds; (4) - Alfinete Mk I, a modification of the Super Pescador, trading some speed and range for lighter weight and better low-speed controllability, in order to transport very fragile and even more time-sensitive cargo at short ranges The much longer campaign means not only that you’ll have a lot more content to go through, but also that it’s perfectly possible to unlock every single available part by the time you reach the game’s final missions. There’s also plenty of open ocean, which gives the game ample room for expansion in case the developer decides to add new islands and quests in the future. Final Considerations  First of all, it’s important to point out this game isn’t directly comparable to sandbox “plane builders” such as SimplePlanes and Flyout - if you’re looking for a game where you can bring your ideas to life with complete control over how they look and function, there are better options out there. However, Aviassembly excels at what it sets out to do : it is an accessible, objective-driven plane-building game with a low barrier to entry. This gamified approach to aircraft design makes it, in my opinion, a perfect fit for younger players interested in aviation : it allows them to explore things such as aircraft configuration and design constraints without being overwhelmed by complexity, and apply problem-solving creativity in a child-friendly environment. The new part placement/adjustment functions, tweaks to the game’s balance and flight controls, and much greater variety of available parts allow for a much greater variety of designs and make this a very strong “build-a-plane” game. The more balanced approach to goals, which allows for gradual completion of in-game quests while still maintaining a good level of challenge, is particularly noteworthy. Aviassembly has come a long way ever since its early demo days, and the amount of effort and care put in by the developer is clear and worthy of praise. Overall, it is a very solid game which fills a previously unexplored niche in its genre. If you’re looking for a cozy, casual approach to flight games which scratch that problem-solving itch in your brain - this is definitely a game worth checking out! Connect with 'Aviassembly' Steam Developer Website Discord Presskit X.com About the Writer Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto An incurable aviation fanatic since childhood, fascinated by the design and history of practically anything that flies. A long-time fan of flight games, he holds a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering and pursues his hobbies of drawing, writing and flight simulation on his spare time. See Staff Profile .

In recent years, Eagle Dynamics has started trying to interact a bit more with its community, which was something that was generally well received. The livery creation community enjoyed a couple of successful contest, with the winners being rewarded with ED miles and the inclusion of their work into the game. The latest livery creation competition announced by Eagle Dynamics was for the F-5E Tiger II, specifically for the new remastered version of the module. Although, this time things did not go well, and it was ED's fault. Within the span of a couple of years, and with the release of new assets such as the remodeled versions of the S-3B, B-52H and B-1B; Eagle Dynamics changed the way that their assets were encrypted, making it impossible for their users to look at the models even through official means with the use of ModelViewer2, the built-in model viewer tool. This made it functionally impossible for creators to make liveries for these new models, including the remastered F-5E. Access to this model and some way of viewing it is essential for anyone who would like to create a livery for this module in any sort of human-tolerable timeframe. Livery creation became basically impossible for those that wanted to participate in the contest, which is something the Livery Art community immediately noticed. To protest this new encryption and the way that it affects the livery creation community, and the fact that ED hadn't done anything about it nor had offered an alternative to solve the issues; many members of the Livery Art community decided to join forces and boycott this newly announced F-5E Remastered competition. This was in light of many community-level grievances, as well as a general feeling that the community felt used and mistreated by Eagle Dynamics. Their grievances, ignored. Complaints, thrown to the side and put on a pile. Many creators felt used as what amounted to free labor by Eagle Dynamics, despite the fact that some prizes were offered by the devs for the winners of some of these competitions. The community was polite with this movement, and almost no one stepped out of line publicly with rude comments towards the devs. They stayed firm, making their points known in the best way possible. After the lack of entries was evident, ED decided to halt the competition and acknowledged the issues the community had brought up. I am very proud that this was the result that came out of this protest and of the way the entire community aligned themselves under a single banner to achieve this goal. I, personally, also did my part as a member of the community by not participating in the event, even though I did not air my existing grievances with the platform and some of their decisions in any public manner. Hopefully we will see a change in attitude from Eagle Dynamics, and an improvement to ModelViewer2 so that we can finally see those new models and make some awesome liveries for them without having to spend several hundred hours. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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 a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter  | Discord : Cubeboy

Announcing our first downloadable mission for Digital Combat Simulator Syria COIN is a cooperative multiplayer mission by Skyward Flight Media's lead Digital Combat Simulator World mission creator, Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto . The base version of the mission was created on January 2nd, 2023. During private playthroughs with Skyward staff and a few friends, it was gradually improved upon. When the decision was made to use this mission for a multiplayer event on February 11th, 2024, we also decided to release the mission for public download. It will be available both on the Skyward website and soon the DCS User Files. DOWNLOAD Want to know more? Ready to try it yourself? Download it with mods and without mods here: https://www.skywardfm.com/syria-coin-coop Soon it will be available on DCS User Files. ONLINE EVENT This mission is being launched with an online multiplayer event on February 24th, 2024, 12:00PM - 7:00 PM (UTC−7). Feel free to join other players as they play the mission. Connect with us here: https://www.skywardfm.com/syria-coin-2024 MISSION OVERVIEW This mission was designed as a lower-intensity operation to allow the effective use of lower-performance aircraft such as the A-29B Super Tucano, OV-10 Bronco, and less advanced attack helicopters such as the Hind.   Likewise, the mission is centered around these aircraft - though faster and more capable aircraft are available, these are stationed in airbases further away from the operational areas. This is done to encourage the use of low-performance aircraft while still allowing those who desire to play high-performance aircraft to enjoy this mission. ​ ​Players may land and refuel in any airfield not under enemy control. However, only those airfields which have friendly forces in them can be used as CTLD troop pickup zones.   Additionally, airbases listed as capture objectives on the kneeboard have spawn slots available once captured, however these are limited to lower-performance aircraft.  ​ Note this mission uses CTLD for JTAC lasing. Players should avoid using the standard DCS radio menu for JTACs. FEATURES Low intensity, Ground Attack-focused mission.   Fog of War is enabled. Identifying and attacking enemies will be more complex.   An opportunity for propeller-driven aircraft, light attackers and helicopters to shine.   Defend coalition outposts surrounded by insurgent forces.   Attack technical convoys, insurgent outposts, and elusive mobile mortar teams.   Change the flow of battle by striking ammunition depots and other strategic targets.   Anti-aircraft threats are limited, but watch out for MANPADS!   Player-controllable ground vehicles and CTLD allow players with Combined Arms to conduct air assault and JTAC operations.   Detailed mission background, briefing slides and kneeboards.

'Sand Castle' is the first mission from Skyward Flight Media for Nuclear Option by Shockfront Studio created by mission editor Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza . OVERVIEW 1 to 6 Players. Player VS Environment (Co-op). Fixed-Wing and Rotary Wing Aircraft. Night time, bad weather combat operation. Successful sorties give considerable credit boost. Limited enemy air assets. Recommend turning on Cinematic Mode in graphics settings. BRIEFING SITUATION A surprise amphibious invasion by a carrier battlegroup has seized a remote cluster of Vertical Factories to the far north. Using these factories as the backbone of the invasion, the enemy has established a network of Vehicle Depots to provide consistent reinforcements to capture Maris International Airport. If captured, this civilian airport will give the enemy a permanent foothold. The vanguard of the invasion force is approaching from the foothills and mountains to the west. They are minutes away from contact with friendly forces deployed to protect the international airport. At sea, the enemy carrier battle group is providing air cover to assist their advancing forces in taking the airport with an Annex-class Assault Carrier in reserve. Without air support our forces at Maris International Airport will eventually lose against the numerically superior enemy. Daring bad weather air strikes at midnight now launch to halt the invasion force. OBJECTIVES Primary Objective 'Destroy Factories' H alt production of enemy units to effectively stop the invasion. Destruction of all factories will complete the mission. Nuclear Option gives players the choice to either end the mission immediately or continue playing. Secondary Objective 'Attack Depots' Destroying the Vehicle Depots to the west of the Maris International Airport will slow down the deployment of enemy units produced by the Vertical Factories. Optional Objective 'Capture K92' A convoy of friendly ground forces has departed from Sandrift Air Base in the far south-east to set up a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) at K92 Highway Strip. If they are not intercepted by enemy air forces they will arrive at K92 in 15 to 17 minutes. FRIENDLY ASSETS Maris International Airport The frontline. Various main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and short range air defenses supplied by munitions trucks are holding defensive positions around the airport. This civilian airport cannot support combat aircraft operations. Maris Mountain Heliport A small military heliport attached to an early warning radar station on a mountain above Maris city. It hosts two landing pads with rotary-wing assets available. It is roughly 14.0km away from the combat zone. Sandrift Air Base The primary air base for fixed-wing aircraft in this mission. Located in a desert 48km from the frontline. K92 Highway Strip If friendly forces capture K92 forward deployed air operations will be much easier with aircraft spawns and a FARP assets available. K92 can also be captured by ground units air lifted by VL-49 Tarantula. DETAILS Except for the units produced by the Vertical Factories (Primary Objective), the enemy forces do not respawn. The enemy Hyperion-class Fleet Carrier has a realistically sized carrier air wing. It is possible for all aircraft to be destroyed in combat, winning air superiority. Enemy aircraft are limited to a maximum of Rank 2. Players begin at Rank 5, but have limited access to Rank 1, 2 and 3 aircraft. The reward for completing successful sorties is a vital part of players being able to purchase better aircraft, changing the tide of battle rapidly. PLAYER CUSTOMIZATION Nuclear Option provides players with the ability to quickly customize any mission they play without using the mission editor. Even for missions that are a part of the base game or downloaded via Steam Workshop. Use these options to change the settings of the 'Sand Castle' mission to your liking. Play during day time or even modify the mission so much you can fly with any aircraft at any time. MISSION DOWNLOAD ' Sand Castle 1.1 ' is available for download on the Steam Workshop for Nuclear Option .

Flight simulators are nothing without good terrain to accompany them, after all, of what use is having wonderful flight models, amazing 3D models and weapon systems when we are flying over flat, boring terrain? That's why I was initially excited about every single map that was released for DCS World. The South Atlantic is stunning, the Sinai is sublime and Syria is unbeaten in its flexibility, a title it shares with the Persian Gulf. So, knowing all of this, why am I not excited about the Fulda Gap? For all intents and purposes, I should be excited and happy that we are finally getting a map that I have always wanted. It is a very interesting geopolitical region that would have been the center of conflict if the Cold War had gone hot, there is absolutely nothing I don't like about it. From the beautiful historical recreations of Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig and many other cities, this map is the furthest away I would like to be from what has kind of plagued DCS for years: sand and desert. I think that there are only two main reasons as to why I am not as excited as I could be for this release: Map Release Burnout and Lack of Community Support. MAP RELEASE BURNOUT In the past two years, DCS has seen an explosion of terrain support from first and third party developers. It used to be a rarity to see a new terrain, and now it felt like we were getting a new map every other week, and initially I was happy about this change. But as time passed and some decisions were made by certain parties, I started to feel a bit of unease. All of these early access products being released one after the other, while several of these hadn't even finished delivering their initial release phases or were missing crucial aspects of these geographical areas; that just felt off to me. All of these amazing maps made by talented artists were just being shoehorned to us at a pace that the community just could not manage. These are good products, for sure, but the way these releases were paced just felt off. I understand that these are being developed by independent teams, but wouldn't it be better to grab a fraction of these resources and spend them on core features of the game, or even better, a much-needed refresh of Caucasus, the most popular map in the simulator? LACK OF COMMUNITY SUPPORT Speaking of Caucasus, that map grabs a big percentage of the population because of its role as DCS' default map. Most missions are made for or around Caucasus, with the Persian Gulf and Syria trailing behind by a considerable margin. This leads me to one of my main grievances and one that I feel very connected to: none of the new maps have been welcomed by the community. These terrains are expensive, and having these many has divided the population, making it so that community creators have to focus on the maps that the majority of the community own to make their missions or run their servers. There are almost no servers running Iraq and Afghanistan, even less running South Atlantic. Why would I buy any of these terrains if there is no one to play them with, or no servers running them? CONCLUSION I really want to be excited about the Cold War Germany map, but I just cannot justify spending another 55 dollars on another terrain just to fly on it for a couple of hours in single player, to just set it to the side and go back to the sandbox with my boys. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos 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 a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter  | Discord : Cubeboy

An extensive interview with a seasoned software developer Steam Next Fest events are always a good way to discover and interact with in development games from studios of any size. This is true for flight games as well. At Steam Next Fest February 2024, Blue Sky Aces  by Curious Dog Games immediately caught my attention. World War One era flight games / simulators are uncommon these days. My first impression  of the public demo for the game was good and I find myself returning to it somewhat frequently as work by its developer continues. The demo has had some notable changes since I last wrote about it. I strongly suggest trying the demo yourself if you haven’t since February.  I recently joined the Curious Dog Games Discord server  while researching this project and reached out to the developer for an interview. They were kind enough to provide us with screenshots of a new build of the game due to come out shortly after this interview. Hello! Thanks for joining me in this interview. I’m interested in learning more about you since there is not a lot of information about you out there on the internet.  Firstly thanks for giving me this opportunity. My name’s Brent, and I’ve been making games under the Curious Dog Games name for a little over 3 years now. By day I’m a husband, and father to two great kids, working as a software developer. By night, I’m a part time game developer working on what will be my first Steam game. Nice to meet you. Starting at the beginning, is game development something you had planned on trying when you were younger?  Yeah it’s something that’s been a dream for a really long time, but it’s only really become possible in the last 5 years after I discovered Unity by accident while installing Visual Studio. Like a lot of people, it was something that I first got seriously into while studying, but the realities of life quickly put an end to it, and I settled into a normal software development job for almost 20 years. Aircraft operating from a grass airfield. What inspired you to try your hand at game development?  My family’s first computer came with two large manuals, one was MS Dos which I knew of, and the other was something called GW Basic, which I had no idea about. One day curiosity got the better of me and I read the GW Basic book and quickly realized what it was, but while I tried making a few basic games, I didn’t get very far as it was a time before the internet, You Tube, Google, and all those resources that we take for granted now. It did however lay the foundation which would come in handy later in life. After some initial research about Curious Dog Games I was taken over to your Itch.io page  and saw that you have a few games completed. Has game development become more of a focus for you in recent years?  Yeah probably only the last 5 years. I’d got a bit disillusioned with the job I was in, and wanted to try something different, but at the same time I didn’t want to start again from the bottom as I have a family to support. I really didn’t know what that something was, but I figured that doing nothing wasn’t going to change anything. At this time I discovered Unity by accident, and I instantly knew what I was looking at, this was the thing that I’d tried to build so many times while I was in my early 20’s. Back then I just didn’t have the maturity or experience to realize the dream, which was only made harder by the limited tools available at the time. Around 3 years ago I decided it was time to leave the company that I’d worked at for the previous 19 years, and by pure chance a Unity development job came up locally, so I figured I had nothing to lose from applying. Fortunately I succeeded in getting the job, and now I work on a 3D training simulator for earthmoving machines during the day, and make a flight simulator in the evenings. This combination has been really beneficial for both, as what I learn in one can usually be applied to the other. Flying above new terrain coming soon to the game. How did you start creating the concept for Blue Sky Aces?  I made a WW1 game called Mech’s take the Somme for a game jam back in 2021, and as part of it I modeled a Fokker Dr1 triplane as one of the enemies. After this project I decided to have a go modeling a Sopwith Camel, with the idea that if I made a few, then I could create an asset pack to put on the Unity asset store. Somewhere throughout this process I got distracted from this asset pack idea, as I wanted to see if I could get them flying within a game. That led to seeing if I could create AI to fly the planes too, and from there the game was born. Looking back at other indie flight game development projects over the last four years, many of them focus on modern air combat with fourth generation combat aircraft or fictional future settings with fantastic super fighters. Why create a World War One era flight game?  I grew up when fourth generation aircraft were at their peak, and I love all the cool technology, and the raw power, but the most fun flight simulators I played as a kid were the WW2 ones. While guided missiles that can take out an enemy from dozens of miles away are amazing, I much prefer the feeling of getting up really close to an enemy in a proper dogfight. The reason I chose a WW1 era game was largely pragmatic, the period has many of the same attributes that I like, but the market isn’t as saturated. There’s also something I like about the simplicity of the aircraft of this period, where someone with a basic understanding of aerodynamics, some good woodworking skills, and a lot of perseverance, could probably build one in their garage. That said I wouldn’t recommend anyone try it, building a game is way less problematic for a marriage than an actual plane, and a whole lot cheaper too. Blue Sky Aces presents chaotic air battles of the era well. That is a good point about this specific type of genre not being saturated. What are some considerations that you need to take into account when creating a World War One era title? Is adhering to the technological restrictions of the era a challenge when trying to maintain high quality game play?  I do find getting reliable technical information for the period challenging, partially due to the time that has elapsed, and the limited science of the day, and also because the second world war tends to overshadow the first, so there’s a lot more information on it. That’s not to say it isn’t out there, but it just feels much harder to find. We’re trying to take a pragmatic approach with balancing technological restrictions and game play. If we have evidence of a technology being trialed during the period, then we’ll include it if it enhances the game play, even if in practice it was just a prototype, or saw limited use. Part of the justification for this was that there seemed to have been a lot of experimentation during the period, even by individual pilots, so it seems fitting to give players the ability to experiment with these technologies as well. Is this where the idea for the upgrade system introduced in May 2024 comes from?  It did play a part, but the main driver for the upgrades was from player feedback, people wanted more depth, and something to work towards. It was also the realization that people play games like this very differently, they’re just motivated by different things. Some like the history and technology of the period, other’s just like to collect stuff, and some just want a sandbox to play with. The upgrade system just seemed to offer something to all of these groups, as well as adding some replayability. The way aircraft and missions are unlocked is very interesting. I cannot think of another flight game that does it the way Blue Sky Aces does it. As players complete missions, the in-game date moves forward and that unlocks more content?  Yeah, the theory is that as you progress through the war more aircraft and missions will become available, as well as the types of threats that you’ll face. This is currently quite limited in the demo as I didn’t want people to have to grind away on the same few missions just to unlock a couple more, but it’ll happen slower in the full game. Like with many wars, technology progresses so quickly, and the first world war was no exception, so it doesn’t make much sense to put late war aircraft like the Fokker DVII against early war models like the Airco DH2. That said, there’s nothing stopping players from trying to play the later missions with earlier aircraft once they’ve unlocked them. I admit that at first I was unsure how this type of progression would fit, but during my time with the demo I can say it is working out so far. How do you plan on introducing missions going forward? Will there be a set single player campaign or will all missions be standalone like they are now?  The current plan is to split them into different groups, training or tutorials, single missions, dynamic campaigns, and mission builders. The first two are similar to what you see in the demo now, but with just more of them. These are handcrafted by me, and have global leaderboards that players can compete with each other. The dynamic campaigns is one I’m really looking forward to implementing, but at this stage it’s just a concept. The idea is that each map will have its own campaign, and that the goal will be to either create a localized gap in the enemies defenses, or to wear down their combat effectiveness over time, until the point where friendly forces can breach the enemies defenses. Each campaign will consist of multiple dynamic missions, which will vary depending on the results of the previous missions. There will be a strategic element to it, where you’ll have a limited number of aircraft available to you, as well as a limited rate of replacements. The enemy will have the same limitations, so you’ll be able to decide whether you want to focus on specific objectives like destroying key infrastructure, or broad goals like gaining air superiority. I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot of unknowns to work through to realize the vision, but I believe it’ll be worth it for replayability alone.  The mission builders are going to consist of a few different types such as fighter sweep, ground attack, and air combat. These will allow the player to customize the mission by choosing aircraft types and numbers, selecting targets, etc. They’ll be available for all of the maps, providing players the ability to just jump in and start flying, without needing to worry about tactics or strategies. Mission selection screen. Some of the other Skyward Flight Media staff members always think I’m a little odd for saying this, but I think one of the top features of the game is the inclusion of infantry in combat. It adds a rather “human element” that I think is intentionally forgone in many combat flight games. I’d like to know your thoughts on how infantry is presented in the game.  Despite all the technological advancements that happen in war, and all of the amazing aircraft, ships, and tanks involved, you still need boots on the ground to win. This was especially the case in the first world war, where men and horses probably bore the majority of the workload. Then there’s this weird thing where people are reasonably okay with the idea of a game where you can shoot soldiers, but at the same time will not tolerate shooting animals perceived to be pets. The end result is you get soldiers and trucks, but no horses, because I don't want to find videos of planes machine gunning horses! 😄 That said, the main reason for the soldiers is that I wanted to create a world with life and movement on the ground. Most flight simulators put a huge amount of processing power into making the ground look realistic, and it usually looks great from a 1000 feet up, but fly down low and you quickly find out their worlds are pretty empty, and the textures quickly start to pixelate. I’ve tried to do the opposite, I want you to be dogfighting in the treetops, in fact I’ve deliberately limited the altitude to around 3000 feet (1000m) to encourage it.  Another factor is that armies of the period weren’t mechanized, so I can’t have large numbers of vehicles roving around the battlefield providing that sense of life on the ground, so it only seems fitting to have soldiers given that most of the war involved men facing off against each other in trenches on the front lines. The first World War was certainly defined by the massive amount of infantry engaged in combat. I did not consider it from this point of view most likely because I am so accustomed to other games asking players to pick out armored vehicles as the main representation of ground combat. What are some of the hardest things you have solved development wise in Blue Sky Aces?  That’s a difficult question as there’s a lot of time that’s elapsed since I started, and so there’s been many challenges over the last few years. Probably the first big challenge was the scale of the world and the performance challenges that come with it. Modern hardware and game engines make it rather easy to build small and detailed worlds without much need for optimization, however the scale of terrain required for flight simulators doesn’t typically work out of the box without a lot of work. This specific challenge was one of the key factors that steered me towards the game’s art style, as I wanted to get on with building a game rather than spending years learning advanced algorithms for rendering large scale terrains. Another big one was the aircraft AI, as I’d only ever done character and vehicle AI in the past. This was definitely one of the most satisfying parts of the project, and the point where I knew I could actually turn what was then a prototype into a game. This was one of those tasks that had so many layers of complexity to it, from the basics of getting the AI to fly a plane, to teaching it to dog fight, and probably the most challenging which was teaching it how not to crash into each other or the ground. That last one is still a work in progress. The vehicle system that controls the trucks and trains driving around the world was another big challenge. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent countless hours watching them drive around test tracks, keenly looking for any glitches or problems. It’s rather hypnotic watching large numbers of them, and it provides a lot of insight into real world traffic issues that we all experience on our everyday commutes. Performance was something that was really important for this task, and probably took up the bulk of the time. It’s a real balancing act, as you want their movement to be good enough, but no more, as every millisecond of CPU time is precious. The other big challenge is actually a lot of little ones, anything related to the physics system is often a real hair pulling experience, whether it be aircraft movement, soldiers moving around, or water collisions. I just have this love-hate relationship with the physics system that has cost me many hours of sleep. The way you approach updates about the game is very transparent.  Besides your YouTube dev log videos  that started in September 2023, you also have a text channel development blog in the official Discord server . It is not all sunshine and quick updates either. You openly talk about the difficulties you have run into as well. Why be so transparent?  I’ve been a professional developer for over 20 years, and I’ve worked on all manner of enterprise projects, and I can honestly say that while game development is the most rewarding, it’s also the most difficult type of development. Part of that is because you’re not just a developer, you're wearing many hats, and you’re doing it at the same time. There’s a lot of people out there literally trying to sell the game development dream to people, “do these 5 things to make 6 figures guaranteed” kind of stuff. I don’t want to deceive people into thinking this is all roses, it is difficult, and it takes an extraordinary amount of time and perseverance to keep going, but it can also be extremely rewarding. Flight model is always important, but even more so when the scenario has some historic ties. How would you describe the flight model to someone that has yet to play Blue Sky Aces?  Believable but approachable is the goal. I want the player to feel like it’s realistic enough that they don’t question it, but without any of the weird nuances that aircraft of the period had such as propeller torque making turning one way easier than the other. One of the key drivers for this is that I want people to be able to play the game without any special hardware.  That said, I do have plans for a more realistic model as well, which would be best suited for players with HOTAS setups, where it’s much easier to make continuous small adjustments that you just can’t do very well with a mouse or controller. This model is likely to have the ability to perform maneuvers that you can’t do currently such as stall turns and spins, as well as additional forces such as propeller torque and wind. On that note, how is controller/device support looking? Are there any restrictions?  Generally speaking controllers, joysticks, throttles, rudder pedals, and other similar devices are all supported, however you will need to manually setup all of your control bindings. The exceptions to that are XBox style controllers which should just work, but of course you can always customize your controls. Unfortunately I’m really limited in what testing I can do with hardware as I simply can’t afford to go out and buy one of everything. That all said there’s still some work to do to improve the usability of the controls screen to make it easier to configure HOTAS style devices. Do you have an idea of where your game needs to be development wise before preparing for a full release or early access release on Steam?  That’s a tricky one as my own opinion of what done looks like is constantly evolving. Part of that comes down to the feedback from players, and the expectations that it places on you. Initially you get very little feedback and you think that you’ll add a couple of dozen missions and call it done, but then players start engaging with you and you realize that the whole thing is starting to snowball. At this point in the process it’s quite clear that I need more depth and breadth of content to live up to my own expectations, let alone the community’s. In practical terms that means more aircraft, and the ability to customize them, a wider variety of mission types, and a campaign mode. The last one is probably the key decider for me, as it feels like the big feature that’s still completely missing, whereas the others will arguably never be 100% done, and can always be incrementally improved post release. Thank you so much for this interview. I’m glad we could get deep into a few topics and really get your thoughts on game development. I’ll be writing about the next big update to Blue Sky Aces for sure. Good luck to you! Thanks again for the opportunity and support, I really appreciate the chance to show off something that’s been a big part of my life for almost three years now. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the other half of the team. Earlier this year I got an offer from someone who saw one of my development logs to model the aircraft. This has taken a huge load off my shoulders and has massively improved the overall look of the game - you only have to look at the early development logs to see the difference. To add to that he’s also extremely knowledgeable about aircraft of the period, which saves me a massive amount of research time. The Discord members have also been a huge help, whether it be offering suggestions, reporting bugs, or just providing reassurance, it’s all been invaluable to the process. Low altitude air combat. About the Interviewer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

“Everyone knows Star Wars was saved in the edit.” – Every Youtuber ever. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am more than willing to consume anything regarding Ace Combat 04. To me, it’s still the pinnacle of the series and should qualify as one of the best games ever made. One of its greatest strengths is in its storytelling. I’ve read it described as the retelling of a novel. This is very prescient; it does in fact feel like a chaptered comic or visual novel in the way it's built. It’s unique in this regard, as later installments of the franchise build themselves like a movie, from the after-action opening credits to an adherence to a three act format. But what if you could really make that novel shine through as well? Can you make that elusive novel-to-movie transition work for the first reboot of the franchise? Well, Nassault found a way. Nassault is a supremely talented video editor and as die-hard a fan of Ace Combat and aviation as they come. Utilizing Digital Combat Simulator as the engine for cinematics, he manages to translate the fun of the game missions and turn them into bite-sized, action-packed trailers that exude world-class editing expertise. But it also exposes his action as a world-class director and a pretty decent pilot. His videos constrain themselves to making the action feel real and within the time limit constraint of the mission’s soundtrack. He flies the planes themselves to get the action just right. He can make the simple flipping of a switch dramatic, and it’s in service of the story. Imminent Threat compacts the 8-10 minute mission into a realistic runway strike by Mobius 1 and his comrades by using standoff munitions as a way to condense the main objective. He does well to cut out anything superfluous, and uses in-game voice lines to great effect, demonstrating the strength of the game’s script. He keeps within the limitations of the game engine and convincingly portrays the destruction of the ramp at Rigley Air Base. “The hardest part about making this video was learning to fly the Phantom” (sic) – Nassault’s top YouTube comment for Imminent Threat. … But what about the substation?! This is not to dismiss his enormous backlog which has built this highlight. From his excellent interpretations of Ace Combat Zero to his dabbling in VTOL VR , he puts his best foot forward each time and uses tried-and-true methods to portray the story being told. Sitting Duck exemplifies this marvelously. Starting with the overlaid merging of the title attract screen with the iconic blue F-4 flown by Mobius One. The use of DCS also performs a great interpretation of that iconic first mission, with believable beyond-visual range engagements against the Bear bombers. The in-game audio works almost ideally as well, being snappy while following the plot-relevant details to the letter. The ace-focused dogfight is exciting and engaging and doesn’t overexert itself; the entire thing wraps up nicely. With the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 I’ve been on a bit of an eager kick for its bugs to be ironed out, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s got something to pay honor to that legacy as well. His Evolution of Microsoft Flight Simulator video could put Asobo and Microsoft’s marketing groups to task. With expert cuts between the primitive colored lines of the original and the still outstanding graphics of the 2020 release. It even implements a little humor in between the grandeur on display, with the CAS yelling about an imminent collision. Nassault can claim over 100 and a dozen videos dating back over 16 years. His steady buildup to the excellence you see today is exposed from day one, even if he may have been constrained with the technology of the time. Though he has dipped out of creating content from time to time, he always bounces back stronger than ever. You can catch his work on his website or check his YouTube channel . Writer T.J. "Millie" Archer T.J. "Millie" Archer is a life-long realist and aviation enthusiast. Once the co-founding Administrator of the Electrosphere.info English Ace Combat Database. In the present day, he is freelance, roving the internet in search of the latest aviation news and entertainment. [ Read Profile ]

Thoughts From Staff About 5 Years of Operation March 24th was our fifth anniversary! Since being founded in 2020, we have enjoyed five years of operation as a less-than-traditional flight simulation website. Striking out to do something out of pure passion, knowing it may or may not catch on is always a rollercoaster. Wins, losses, good times, bad times, amazing successes and quiet failures, but all of these experiences have tempered our organization into what it is today. Members of our staff now express their thoughts during this important time. Caio D. "Hueman" Barreto Writer To work with something you love is an incredible privilege. Since an early age, I've always known I wanted to work with aircraft; this road led me to university, an engineering career and, in one of its twists and turns, I ended up coming across a group of people who shared this same passion, the one that makes you read up on books about Corsairs and Spitfires, build scale models, and play flight simulation games. I've been around Skyward since its very start, though at the start it was mostly playing DCS with the lads. My first article , posted in 2022, started out almost by accident, when I mentioned I had really enjoyed playing Novalogic's old simulators as a kid. I've always loved writing, so when I heard "hey, you should write an article about it", that was exactly what I did - and since then, I've been able to experience my hobbies in ways I could never have anticipated. I’ve always liked sketching and dreaming up my own aircraft designs; but the harsh reality of aviation is that everything takes a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of people. And as aircraft have (for good reasons!) grown more complex, and their development cycles grown longer, gone are the days when engineers would’ve worked on dozens of different aircraft of various types by the end of their careers. However, designing airplanes is much faster (and a lot cheaper!) if your construction work is done in Blender rather than on a factory floor, and your flight testing is done in Unity rather than in ISA +20. And so, in something that started out almost by accident, I’ve found a creative outlet for my designing itch. We’ve written an entire article about the SW-201 Dragonfly , our first original aircraft design; later came the SW-210 Colibri, and we’re definitely not done yet! It’s hard to express in words how incredible it is to have a team - and a group of friends - who made this possible. To “sit” in the cockpit of an aircraft I had designed in VR, even if it was just a 3D model, and to fly it around, was an experience that is truly priceless. Skyward is a truly unique place; over the past five years, I've had the opportunity to meet truly amazing people, who share this passion for aviation and flying in the virtual skies. I've been able to write and draw about it, even create my own flying contraptions, and I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to do so. Thank you for being part of this journey with us - and stick around, there's a lot more yet to come! Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos Co-Founder The fact that 5 years have passed, and I still think of Skyward as a "new" aspect of my life is astonishing to me. Blue and I started this just to see what we could do after the unfortunate downfall of our previous project, but it has turned into something so much bigger than that. Skyward has taught me so much, and I have met so many people thanks to the work I have done here with Blue, Hue, Millie, Kosmos, Sournetic, Vtail and the others. It is amazing to see how this team, my friends, have stuck together through thick and thin and have pushed through many challenges to make this website what it is right now. I am extremely happy not only to have founded this community with Aaron, but also to have such a wonderful group of friends by my side that have the same creative drive than I do. It certainly makes everything fascinating when it comes down to putting the pen to the paper, be it when we write an article or tackle 3D modeling projects while modeling our original aircraft, just like how when Hue and I modeled both the Dragonfly and the Colibri. Technically, Skyward is the reason why I can call myself a professional 3D modeler now. Both of my current jobs got offered to me because of content that I made for Skyward, in one or another. So yes, I wouldn't have it any other way. I will be here, typing away about aviation games from past and present for the foreseeable future. This is just another anniversary, with many more to come, as there are no plans to stop doing what I love to do. T.J. "Millie" Archer Writer I wouldn’t call Skyward my first dogfight. Some people might actually remember my stint as a co-administrator of Electrosphere.info  nearly 10 years ago. In fact, I’m the reason the old Electrosphere URL forwards to skywardfm.com . But Skyward was my first foray into Web 2.0 and all that comes with it. Thank God my overlords let me be as opinionated as I am. When I first started writing for Skyward, I wasn’t really as in tune with the rest of the crowd. DCS, War Thunder, and VRChat weren’t really something I was heavily invested in. But if there’s one thing that this damn website has done, it’s forced me to get feet wet where I never thought I would, and now perhaps I’m just as lost as the rest of this crew. What amazes me the most is Skyward’s tenacity. I hold up Skyward as more proof in the bucket that hard work and persistence pays off. When this place first started, it was a struggle for every view. Now? People are approaching us regularly. And it’s been so much fun being a part of that growth. As long as Cube and Blue let me keep writing about obsolete Sega Saturn rail shooters, I suspect I’ll be here for the next five years and more. Aaron “Ribbon-Blue” Mendoza Co-Founder 5 years… is a long time. Lives change so much in that amount of time. People have children, friendships come and go, college degrees are attained, new skill sets are crafted, and Skyward Flight Media is still here. As of the time of this letter being posted, I am just three releases short of having 200 pieces  in my name posted on this website. It is quite a feeling when I sit back and think about that number. Admittedly, I am going through a bit of a tumultuous time in my life right now, but even in the midst of this, Skyward is a shining light.  When I think about Skyward in 2025 I think about bigger things. Things we have not tried before or did as a one-off never to repeat again. More consistently reaching out to fly together with the people that support us, more mission files in various games, more virtual reality experiences, reaching out to creators and manufacturers that we ourselves feel as though we were not “established enough” to try and contact before. This year it may be time for myself and other members of the Skyward staff to also believe that we, as an organization, are capable of a bit more than we expect.  As we move forward into this new year of Skyward operations, I plan on “swinging for the fences”, seeing where the organization will end up. Watch us fly!

Minor updates : 2/22/2023 // Originally published : 08/31/2018 What do you remember whenever you think of a Spanish guitar arrangement, flashy squadron intros, and a certain Round Table? Because if you remembered Ace Combat Zero, you must be one of the estimated 782,000 proud owners of this classic title. ​Coming back to that number, 782,000 units sold. That's the second worse selling mainline Ace Combat title, only behind the now infamously cheesy Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. This is an odd situation, as the game also received very good reviews at launch. Gamespot gave it a 7.9/10; users of Gamespot gave it an 8.7/10. We have to ask ourselves why did such a loved and greatly received title sell so little. Mitsubishi F-1 w/ Cipher's markings Remember, this game tends to be the benchmark of storytelling and the example that many longtime fans of the franchise use to describe what an Ace Combat title should be. It has one of the best soundtracks out of the franchise, if not, the best. The vibes that it gives tend to remind me of Area 88, a well-known manga/anime that is famous for its take on aerial warfare. These vibes mainly come from the protagonist, as he is a mercenary fighting a war for money, just like some of the characters based at Area 88. The interactions you have with the enemy squadrons, the allied units and his "Buddy", Larry "Pixy" Foulke are also very reminiscent of some of the conversations that the mercenaries had over the battlefields of Area 88. Galm Squadron's iconic F-15C liveries Colorful liveries and very identifiable enemy ace squadrons are also something that sets this game apart from the others. Usually, the standard Ace Combat titles focus on one or two main enemy ace units that you fight against several times throughout the story. In the case of Zero, you face multiple ace squadrons, each of them with their own identifiable leader and personality. Some of them are just more skilled enemy units with enhanced AI, others take specific strategies and apply them in battle; for example, the use of beyond visual range tactics by Schnee Squadron, the baiting/swarming strategies used by Schwarze or even Gelb's backwards firing missiles, etc. Each of these squadrons also present themselves before entering the battlefield with a very identifiable and trademark feature of Ace Combat Zero, the squadron introductions; and who can forget that you fight different enemy aces depending on your actions on the battlefield thanks to the Ace Style Gauge. Silber 1 DLC skin for AC7 This bar is a feature unique to Ace Combat Zero that has been forgotten in future titles. It presents a factor of choice and a bit of a connection with Cipher as you decide whether you kill neutral enemy units or you let them live. Decisions that are intrinsically moral in nature, if you do not look at the score and credit benefits that are gained whenever you destroy neutral targets. This bar has three states: Mercenary, Soldier, and Knight. Mercenary is attained by killing everything in sight, even the neutral targets; Soldier is attained by sparing some of the neutral targets but still killing some of them, and Knight is attained by sparing all neutral targets. Each represents a playing style and indicates your morality, much like the karma meters we see on some other games. A mechanic that was inherited from Ace Combat 5 were the Wingman Commands. This time around, the commands received several improvements that made them way more satisfying when compared to the original counterpart. Ace Combat 5 only let you decide from 4 options: Disperse, Attack, Cover and a Special Weapons toggle for your AI wingmen. All of these were given by pressing the corresponding button on the D-pad. Ace Combat Zero's version adds another layer to the commands by letting you decide which types of targets your wingman would attack, which was a choice between air, all and ground. This mechanic was enough to make you feel like you were putting some strategy whenever you have a command, even if the effect was negligible sometimes. All of these factors contribute to giving Ace Combat Zero a unique feel when compared to the other two PlayStation 2 titles (Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies and Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War) but both of these titles stumped Ace Combat Zero in terms of sales (2,640,000 for AC04 and 1,802,000 for AC5). Dassault Mirage 2000D One very plausible reason is that this title was launched just as the PlayStation 2 era was coming to a close, with the release of the much anticipated PlayStation 3 on the horizon. Many players could have thought about the upcoming launch of that console and decided to skip this title to save money for the shiny new toys that awaited them on the next generation. Another plausible reason is that, even in terms of gameplay and looks, it is very similar/takes much from Ace Combat 5; such as the flight physics, 3D models, textures, cockpits, etc. This does not ignore the improvements that Zero made such as the boresight mechanic and graphical improvements made to the replay viewer and to the game engine in general, but the average user could overlook improvements. Ace Combat Zero transcended its lackluster sales thanks to the spirit that the title possesses. The romance of battle and the scale of conflict in a truly bitter war in which a country ended up killing their own people under nuclear flames to stop a coalition that was about to reach into their homeland. The enemy aces reflecting heroes of old, knights and mercenaries fighting head to head in supersonic jousting. The birth of the Demon Lord of the Round Table and the fallen companion that succumbed to evil in search of salvation for humanity. Wizard DLC skin for AC7 The fans are another factor that made Zero a true success, even if it was a flop in the sales department. A game that made many dream of that idealized life that a fighter pilot would have, inspiring many artists such as Nassault in their short fan made film . Ace Combat Zero is a game that will always be in my heart, that's for sure, as it will be in the hearts of all of those that played it and understood what made it shine. About the Author Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos  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 a writer and content manager ever since. Twitter | Discord : Cubeboy #9034

Simulating the Weight of Responsibility in Combat The reality of war is the burden of loss of life. Even when you do "everything right" a life can be lost in seconds. It is often unavoidable on the battlefield. A blindly fired bullet or a well planned artillery round can equally undo the benefits of proper training and the right tactics. This is just as true for an infantryman in combat in 2025 as it was for a Royal Air Force squadron leader in 1940. Scramble: Battle of Britain by Slitherine Games captures the weight of death and responsibility in combat in ways similar flight games do not. As the upcoming documentary series about Scramble begins on March 31st, 2025, we look at how the early access game portrays the reality of war thus far: Balancing Death and Destruction, A question that we were not able to add in time for the launch day interview with Scramble's lead developer, Jon Coughlin , was about the potential of adversely impacting the player's experience by simulating what could be considered 'perma death' type characteristics. The idea of a flight game that models realistic damage and changes in flight control is fun in theory, but the reality of incorporating these game mechanics is that it can be a risk for players that are not prepared for it. While a combat aircraft with battle damage sounds like it would be visually appealing from a Hollywood aesthetics standpoint, in reality a single well placed cannon shell could be enough to cause massive damage to an aircraft or instant death to its pilot. Even taking a bit of damage is quite the risk. A risky merge to destroy two ME-110s almost resulting in the death of a RAF pilot. How a game incorporates these mechanics can be a make or break feature for its overall reception. A game where high stakes mechanics like perma death can feel unplayable if the worst case scenario consequences happen too frequently and too easily. I am sure we can all think of a few games where we have been stuck at a bad checkpoint in a scenario where failure is almost guaranteed each time the game boots up. That or sudden game over states because of an all to easy to achieve "lucky shot" that instantly ends the life of the player's character with a high frequency. If a sustained Very Positive review on Steam since October 30th, 2024 is anything to go off of, something was clearly done correctly. Squadron Leader If there was a single word to describe The Battle of Britain, it would be "attrition: "the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure." With the potential invasion of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany being halted primarily through aerial combat, the outnumbered Royal Air Force (RAF) had to inflict consistent and extensive damage to the Luftwaffe - German Air Force. The numerically smaller RAF was hard pressed to halt the Luftwaffe air campaign to weaken the United Kingdom's defenses in 1940 to make way for a potential amphibious invasion. Squadron Leader (SQL) is the best game mode in Scramble: Battle of Britain to experience the mindset and conditions of The Battle of Britain. According to the game description on the Steam page , Squadron Leader is designed as "the proving ground for current and future mechanics that will form the foundation of the full Channel Defense Campaign." The aforementioned campaign mode being the ultimate game mode of what the development team is trying to achieve. But have no doubt that SQL is currently more than able to have players experience the strategies and perils of the RAF effort to deter the Luftwaffe. A surprise attack by an ME-109 damaging a Hawker Hurricane. In Squadron Leader players are in command of an RAF fighter squadron flying in defense of the United Kingdom. They are challenged to manage a squadron of 12 pilots flying in two sections of three aircraft per section. Alpha Section flies with Supermarine Spitfires with Bravo Section flying Hawker Hurricanes. The progress in SQL is persistent which is great for long-term play. Players can jump into SQL, play one full in game day and move onto their next game if they wanted to stretch out the experience. But this is also where the true test begins. Upon launching with a new squadron at the start of a campaign, every action in and out of combat is recorded and irreversible. The only option to reset data being a completely new campaign starting from Day 1. Example of Squadron Leader pilot and section management screen. At the start of each day players will select pilots from their roster. Players assign the pilots to each section by using a mouse to drag and drop them from the roster into their flight positions. Each pilot has their own unique blend of traits. For this article, let us categorize these as personal traits, wingman traits and section leader traits. A personal trait mainly effects the pilot as an individual, for example the 'Rabbit Hunter' trait gives pilots a damage buff when they are attacking an enemy aircraft from close range. What could be considered a wingman trait is effected by the presence or death of allies while in flight. Like the 'Claustrophobic' trait that reduces a pilot's control if an ally is flying in close proximity to them. A Section Leader trait effects all pilots in a section when a pilot is set as the leader of a section. Like the 'Sea Spotter' trait that increases the rate at which bailed out pilots are rescued and brought back to the squadron to continue the fight. Example of pilot traits. Four times of day must pass until a day is considered complete - 0800 hours, 1100 hours, 1400 hours and 1700 hours. During those times it is possible for combat to occur. With these being randomized encounters, there is no telling if a day would pass with no action or if a RAF fighter section would be pressed into four engagements. During combat any mix of Luftwaffe aircraft is possible. One engagement may be an evenly matched battle with two to four ME-109s up against three RAF fighters or an ideal interception of six unescorted bombers or a scenario of being outnumbered by fighters and heavy fighters with a narrow margin of victory. While certain Section Leader skills can help prevent hard situations like having enemy forces attacking from behind and above from the start of the sortie, the reality that taking every battle head on as though it is a one and done sortie is the exact mindset that can make a SQL campaign fail fairly early. Learning how to pick and choose battles, avoid disadvantageous situations and flying efficiently to maintain pilot stamina are the ingredients for a successful long-term campaign. Being outnumbered with an altitude advantage. Risk engagement or escape to fight another day? After combat, the results of the engagement are shown at a mission ending screen with categories like Aircraft Destroyed, Fighters Destroyed, Survived Pilots, Dead Pilots etc. with a mission rating. A screen for victory and loss rate of the squadron is provided and the day moves on with next time slot for potential air combat. At the end of an entire day, pilots that did not bail out or were forced back to base because of aircraft damage can be switched between the Casualty list (shot down or injured during combat and made it back safely), On Leave (stamina recovery) and Active Duty (ready for combat). Players must manage their stamina from day to day to ensure that exhausted pilots are not constantly pressed into combat where more well rested enemies may have the advantage over them. It is a rather good type of personnel management system that fits in with a combat flight simulator like turn by turn game without reaching the level of having to manage even more minutiae. Example of pilots in all categories in various states. Example: Stuka Bounce Let us take a look at one engagement in particular to demonstrate the intricacies of this game mode. In this perfect bomber intercept situation, three Hurricanes catch six JU 87 Stukas laden with bomb load and without fighter escort. While this seems like a straightforward engagement there are many factors here to consider. RAF Hurricanes above an unescorted formation of Stukas. First, despite being slightly above the Luftwaffe attackers, the Hurricanes are within range of the Stuka tail gunners - all six of them. Aggressively diving and turning left will bring the Hurricanes into the firing arcs of all six tail gunners for an extended period of time. That volume of fire could cause considerable damage to the RAF fighters. By diving right and extending, the Hurricanes are able to escape the tail gunner's range, dive below the firing arcs of their machine guns, then re-engage using the superior speed of the Hurricanes to catch up to the Stuka formation and attack with all advantage. Second, this is the first flight of the day for the pilots of this RAF section. They will need their stamina in case other dogfights occur. Opting to continuously pull hard G maneuvers and push them to black out frequently could drain them for the rest of the day. Making even slightly contested battles later in the day much harder. In this lower threat engagement, the RAF Hurricane pilots use low G, long sweeping turns to calmly reposition themselves with minimal physical strain. Third, ammunition is a consideration. Letting one aircraft expend all its ammunition could have repercussions later where low ammo could be a problem. Allowing all aircraft in the flight to engage helps conserve ammo for the entire section. Fourth, remember that stopping attackers and bombers from reaching the United Kingdom is the ultimate goal of the Battle of Britain. As far as flight games go, this traditionally means that all enemy aircraft must be shot down during every sortie. However, Scramble differs in a way that mimics reality. While shooting down all aircraft in the Stuka formation would be ideal, causing enough damage to force their air crews to give up on their mission is an effective mission kill. Scramble counts deterred aircraft as a positive gain of points under the category "Bombers Diverted". Stukas in the formation being attacked from beneath. While deterring a bomber does not give as many points as shooting down an aircraft, in the grand scheme of things stopping the bombs from dropping is positive. In our Stuka Bounce example, two JU 87s are destroyed with the remaining four forced to return because of battle damage. Fifth, as the engagement comes to a close one of the RAF Hurricanes flies into debris from one of the last retreating aircraft. This causes significant damage to the aircraft's engine. With the remaining Stukas leaving the airspace, we elect to have all three RAF aircraft to retreat from the battle to save the damaged Hurricane rather than risk pressing it towards mechanical failure and risking the life of the pilot. While the pilot could bail out of the aircraft with ease if needed, there is no guarantee that they would survive their time in the cold waters of the British Channel. No need to risk it. Even in this one-sided victory a last second mistake could have led to a fatal incident, but it did bring down the overall mission score in the end. The last JU 87 turns to abandon its mission as a fireball that was its wingman dissipates Fortunately that was the last engagement of the day with all aircraft and pilots from both Sections back at base safely with minimal fatigue. The entire squadron is fresh and ready for combat the next day. Mixed results on the mission overview screen. Does It Work? I have been having a great time with the Squadron Leader game mode as the signature Channel Defense Campaign continues to be developed by the team at Slitherine Games. I find myself playing SQL more than the other game modes. Perma-death in games is something that is especially hard hitting in long-form games like role playing games and strategy games. Genres where a beloved character may die many hours into a playthrough. The similar high risk game mechanics that appear in Scramble: Battle of Britain work well as they remain in the context of the actual air war that happened with players focused on managing pilots and aircraft, but not overreaching outside of the scope of that. Even in the scenarios where it seems like player controlled pilots are all but doomed, quick thinking to give them the best chances of escape from the situation or bailing out of the aircraft at safe altitudes can greatly increase their chances of survival. In the end, forward thinking players can greatly reduce their losses. Squadron Leader is a good exercise in remembering that when it comes to winning a realistic air war success in combat is equally as important as surviving to fight another day. Connect with 'Scramble: Battle of Britain' Discord Slitherine Games Steam   X.com YouTube ME-110 damaged, leaking fuel moments after being attacked. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

The beginning of a change in development direction? It has been a little over a year since one of my favorite bush flight games has received a major update. Though my attention was elsewhere at the time, I still saw this major update for GroundFall release on October 27th, 2024. The developer of the game, Snow Creature, may seem like they are rather inconsistent if you look at the recent events and announcements page of the Steam listing, but they are rather active in the game's official Discord server . Even during the seemingly quiet periods, the developer and community are actively engaged. There is a main point I'd like to discuss, but it is important to take about the update as a whole first: The Key Points Season Maps : In the grand scheme of things, the star of the update for version 0.9.6D Papa is probably the new approach to map creation and updates moving forward. The developer has stated that starting with this update, an unusual release schedule for new content has been started. At the beginning of each season of the year, GroundFall will receive a new base map. That base map will then receive regular updates as the season progresses. Pure STOL : The existing maps in the game has been reclassified as smaller, challenge maps focused on landing at a series of different airstrips (or places long enough to fit an aircraft!) with gradually increasing difficulty. The developer describes these as follows, "think of these maps like racetracks in a driving game." Non Player Characters : For a time, non-player characters had tutorials tied to them, but they are now separate. Tutorials are now presented as books for players to interact with, which guide them throughout their learning process. NPCs offer side quests for players to engage in as they fly through each map. Tutorial books. Flight Experience Refinement: The bug fix and minor changelog this time around is rather large, but let's focus on flight model related updates. Back in November 2023 there were also a few noteworthy improvements related to this. I'll talk about them all at once. Natural Point Track IR head tracking is now supported when flying the aircraft from the cockpit point of view. Flap physics were reworked with multiple flap position settings for different flight regimes. Tuned aircraft trim responsiveness and effect. Aircraft weight impacts flight performance and handling - whether it is cargo, fuel or pilot weight. Operations at high altitude are heavily impacted by this. Plan ahead! Optional Survival Mode This is perhaps the most substantial change to GroundFall thus far. You would argue that the updates about flight model map development are higher priority, but I think that overlooks the impact of the choice to make survival elements optional in this game. Even during its initial concept in 2018, GroundFall had survival game elements built into the core of its experience. I would say it is a signature part of its identity that differentiates it from many other flight simulators. Navigating a mountain range. To put things in perspective, the original concept of the game was to have players fly to different locations and complete side objectives using a basic short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft as their primary means of transport. Maintaining a steady supply of food, sleep and medical supplies is just as important as keeping the aircraft operational. Whether they were flights to simply check out a new airstrip or complete an objective, players had to bring necessities to remain independent in a remote lifestyle. Rope, cutting tools, food, water, medical supplies, hunting rifle, compass - each of those were just as vital as fuel to keep the engine running and tools to repair damage that may accumulate during rough backcountry flying. Pushing the player's in game character too hard by not sleeping or staying exposed in the harsh weather can also increase fatigue to the point vision is impaired, and the character could die from over exertion. I can think of a few times I had to spend the evening in a cabin on the side of a foothill in contemplation. Whether I should try to fly my wing damaged aircraft back to an airport for repair or hike thousands of meters to a small airport where I know tools for repairs are and then walk them back. I am hard-pressed to think of current games that give a similar experience. Bad weather flying is not ideal in backcountry operations. As of October 27th, 2024, the survival options are now disabled by default, but they can be toggled back on easily from the in-game menu. To clarify, what is disabled is the need to eat, sleep and remain hydrated. If player health is reduced too much by receiving damage somehow or crashing the aircraft, they could still use in game health items or respawn to wipe damage. Similarly, if an aircraft has received too much damage to fly, the aircraft also respawns at is initial spawn point at the home airport when the player respawns. The aircraft will still need to be refueled by players and can be repaired at remote airstrips. Landed, ready for the next challenge. The fact that survival elements are now optional shows that Snow Creature listened to feedback from their player base as an open-minded developer. They were even willing to adjust a core component of the game's identity. Though I am very used to the survival part of the game, I can fully understand why someone who is flight sim focused would just want the backcountry STOL experience without all the extra parts. GroundFall can finally deliver that. Flying with them turned off, I noticed that I've been progressing through the first Season map and the Pure STOL maps much faster than before. Even the way I approach for landing has changed with the consequences being so heavily diminished. Though, this has encouraged me to push the absolute limit of the low speed flight envelope farther than I would have with survival options turned on. I find myself at the bare minimum engine output, maximum flap setting and immensely short approaches just so "see what would happen". The outcomes are frequently destructive but also very educational for my survival runs. In a way, it allows for practice in a less stressful environment. High altitude flight is risky when at high cargo weight. While I look forward to the new seasonal map and update schedule its developer has announced, I sincerely hope GroundFall never completely removes its survival element. In fact, I hope that system gets a bit more refined in the future to make construction of new buildings, delivery and storage of supplies, maybe even some type of extended mission that requires a player to be kept far from the home airport to have players operate remotely for days on end. I'll be watching where it goes! About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza   Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. [ Read Profile ]

Discussing the Details before Full Release on March 7th, 2025 I enjoy even the most obscure indie flight games. Where taxiing an F-22A through the crosswalks in Akihabara and flying through a psychedelic landscape of hands with waterfall fingertips are normal. And yet, Exosky  by Elevons LLC  somewhat raddled my brain. Something about the formula of this game and a few things I learned about it while doing research brought up a lot of questions in my mind. Fortunately, the solo developer behind the project agreed to an interview that has landed perfectly in the middle of Steam Next Fest: February 2025 (February 24th through March 3rd) where the demo for this game is available for download. The demo also received a considerable update just before game release on March 7th, 2025. What better time than now to discuss it all? Thanks so much for making time for this interview. We have not spoken much up to now, so I am happy to have the chance to get into a more detailed conversation. Hey! I’m Jordan Elevons. I am a professional 3D Designer in the Boston and New England areas. From some of my initial research I see that your background in working with 3D software and related 3D technologies is rather diverse. What are some things you have done with your skills that you are especially proud of?  The things I'm most proud of are projects that can help others. I created a low cost 3D printed prosthetic leg and worked with dentists to make surgical models for training college students. I also designed an airplane cockpit which was really fun and a great learning experience! Oh, a cockpit? Was that for a training course?  No actually it was for a light aircraft company in the UK called the eGo. They were gracious enough to give me the opportunity and working with them directly really helped me learn a lot about design. It’s a single seat aircraft meant to comply with the UK’s version of ultralight standards. It was also where I first realized that video game modeling tools could be used for real world objects and that any distinction between tools for physical manufacturing and digital manufacturing was completely arbitrary, as I built the designs for the cockpit in Modo, a digital content creation tool. How did you decide to pursue a career in this field? Was this something you decided to do before you went to university?  3D Design has been what I've done since as long as I can really remember, but I recall that it really swung into gear around 1998-2000 when I was 11ish years old and Freespace 2/Homeworld/IL-2 Sturmovik all came out around ‘99. These games informed and were informed by an obsession with building spaceships and airplanes. So I learned how to make 3D assets for those games and later did some freelancing for it. I also at the same time was learning about CAD through designing spaceships for 1,000 Planets, a startup that was trying to get funding to compete for the Ansari X Prize. As for your second question, not really no. I went to college originally for New Media Design, because I wanted to make a living and game design even then was fraught with instability and low pay. The program focused on web design, 3d animation, digital photography, etc. I learned so much about so many different digital tools during that program but about halfway through I decided to change majors. New Media was focusing too much on programming websites and advertising, so I joined Industrial Design and learned how to design for manufacturing, hand building models, mass manufacturing techniques and a lot more. Together I think the skills I learned between these two majors constitutes “3D Design”. The about me  page on the Elevons website goes into detail on your education and business ventures, but I wonder, when did you start considering working on video games?  I got my start modding games like Freespace, Unreal Tournament, etc. so I was always kind of doing it. I've always tried to avoid working in the video game industry because it's such a meat grinder so it's ironic I ended up doing game development full time. The scenery of Exosky is truly unmatched at times. In the first Exosky teaser trailer it mentions that the game was designed by a ‘real pilot’. That made my ears perk up a bit considering how fantastical Exosky is. What is your aviation experience?  Ever since I can remember I've been fascinated by aircraft and aerospace. Some of my earliest memories were of this red Waco biplane that offered aerobatics ride on the island where I’m from (St. Croix, USVI). I loved  doing that and did it every year on my birthday for a couple years in a row. We did hammerheads, rolls, zero-Gs and more. So that really cemented it as the coolest thing to do ever. When I was 13 I was fortunate to start pilot training, though I didn’t pursue it seriously until I was 16 and obtained my PPL when I was 18. I’ve only got about 150-200 hours, mostly logged in the Diamond DA-20 and the Cessna 152. Other types I’ve flown have been a Cessna 175, a De Havilland Tigermoth and an American Champion Citabria. Fun fact; the .aero domain of the website exosky.aero can only be obtained by people involved in the aviation industry, whether as a pilot or operator in some other capacity. Thanks for the fun fact, I did not know that. Of the aircraft you’ve flown, do you have a favorite?  I think the Citabria just because of what I got to do in it. I really enjoyed the Tigermoth but I think I would have to pick the DA-20. Not only is it the most familiar but the wraparound canopy frankly gives the best views! I appreciate that even with your real world experience and professional stance towards aviation you still allow yourself to embrace creativity around it. Before working on Exosky, did you have any other game development projects?  The biggest two would probably be Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line and Angels Fall First. The former is a space sim dogfighting mod for Freespace 2 where I did the flight dynamics and gameplay balancing. The latter is a sort of Battlefield-in-space where players can fight on the ground, on foot, board spaceships, etc. and for that I made some background props and weapon models. Both of these were back in high school/early college. When I switched to Industrial Design my game work dropped off but I did keep modeling and took contracts for a few other games out there. Description of a Twodevil drone. During our research about Exosky, there were a few references to a game called “Yesplane!”. Is this the predecessor of Exosky?  Yesplane was the predecessor, yes! The original alpha included the basic flight model, some of the aircraft and a quick deathmatch dogfighting mode. It was named by one of my nephews. I had brought an RC plane to visit and I asked him if he wanted to name it, so he said “Yes!”. I asked him what we should name it and he said “Yes!” and I liked it so much I wanted to use it for my game, Yesplane! How did the concept between Yesplane and Exosky change?  The biggest thing was that Exosky was supposed to be just one of the game modes of Yesplane, where the primary game mode of that game was aerial laser tag. I also wanted to incorporate a bit of sportsball, like Rocket League. However when I really got into developing the game I realized that all of that was too much and scaled down the scope significantly. Lots of stuff stuck around though; for example, the ability to fly in a custom atmosphere was because the game was originally supposed to simulate this sport in the clouds of Venus and so we needed a custom atmospheric model for that. Kickstarter graphic related to aerial combat. This is a favorite question of mine. Why did you choose to make a non-combat flight game?  That’s a good question and it has a couple answers! The first and most important is because it’s the game I wanted to play. I grew up playing IL-2, MS Combat Flight Sim 2 and MSFS. The former taught me how to fly and the latter helped me practice aircraft systems and procedures while I was getting my pilot’s license. However while I consider myself a good pilot I was never very good at gunnery and I found civilian flying to be too boring. So I created Exosky as the in-between game I always wanted; a game that was about flying skill that would be a pure flight challenge. From a larger standpoint games in general are pretty stale. We have this magic box that can create immersive experiences for literally anything we can imagine. You could be a cat, or a fly, or as big as a planet and experience what all of that is like. However for the most part games boil down to “enemies vs. you”. It’s definitely harder to create non-combat based games because it’s harder to find that challenge, but I really think it’s a worthwhile pursuit to be more creative in games and gaming objectives and really stretch our imaginations and experience more. The universe is infinitely full of possibilities, so when I design games I want to challenge myself to find unique games that aren’t just about shooting something else. For example, I’ve built a small game for HTC where the player is a bored teenager and the objective is to graffiti a space station. Stuff like that - there’s so much potential when you get beyond filling the level with enemies. The internet loves cats, so I have to ask. Is Norton, the artificial entity, based on anyone's cat?  Yes! Norton was my cat, who passed into Valhalla in 2022. I got him right out of college when I walked into an animal shelter in New Jersey and said “give me whichever cat you want to go to a good home”. They pointed me towards him and after that it’s history. My spouse actually says that Norton was the reason she kept hanging out with me when we first started dating, since they figured anyone who fawned over his cat like I did must not be all that bad.  A celestial refence to Norton, the legendary "wingman". Aerobatics in an arcade flight game is all well and good when you can just throw the aircraft around the sky with little worry, but Exosky has a rather detailed flight model . Can you tell us some more about it?  Sure, so the flight model was originally built by a contractor and then improved on by me; I added double precision, some extra features, atmospheric transitions, etc. The double precision was necessary for some very fast aircraft, which would generate some large forces for their size. This ended up with force numbers drifting over time or spiking to extreme values at different points, since they would change so much between each physics tic. Tracking them as doubles meant higher precision so we could see smaller fluctuations between each tic and keep the simulation more stable. The atmospheric transition was me taking the original atmospheric code and enabling it to be applied inside of a volume as well as in the entire level. I have a main “Aircraft” component that gets initialized at the beginning of the level and gets all of the atmospheric data from another system. The transition happens when an aircraft enters a trigger collider, that collider basically jumps in and temporarily overwrites the atmospheric data that the aircraft is reading from. On trigger exit, we replace the new values with the original level values and keep flying. As for the specifics of how the model works, we take each wing component and sum up the lift forces for it and apply that to a rigid body within Unity and I designed it in such a way as to be easily editable; just slap a plane down in Blender and export it with my plugin and you will have a wing. It’s very fast to concept out an airplane by tugging on vertices. The tool also lets you build the fuselage and then it will calculate the frontal area for you for drag calculations. That being said it does have quite a few compromises, as I’m sure any sim pilot out there will feel when they play the game. The wing does not take spanwise lift into account and so each wing section force is summed individually. I don’t take the airstream into account either, so blown wind (propellers, jets) will not have an effect on nearby surfaces. Transonic compression is very simply modeled and very large aircraft are not feasible without dropping the physics tic down to a very low amount - something I decided not to do for performance reasons. Post-stall behavior is also something I’m constantly tweaking. I really want to get the sort of violent stall behavior that I saw in IL-2 but at the moment it’s too gentle for my tastes.  Example of flight model documentation. The changes of flight characteristics when entering some of the out of this world atmospheres in the different levels is a nice touch. How did you come up with these unusual levels made up of different atmospheres and… computer graphics cards?  Growing up my dad owned a computer repair store and I used to spend ages tracing circuit lines in miniature cities. My father really hated my interest in computers, ironically, so he would only begrudgingly get me any sort of equipment. This meant that I grew up finding old parts laying around the shop and trying to piece together a gaming PC from them. I got very comfortable and familiar with the literal nuts-and-bolts of computer hardware and my dream some day is to host public computer classes where I just toss an old motherboard in front of people to demonstrate just how sturdy computer parts are and how you don’t have to treat them with kid gloves. When I really got into defining the theme of Exosky, I decided that instead of making a game set in the future, I would make a game that someone in the future might play. That’s when I decided to do all these wacky levels and the idea of flying through those miniature cities really appealed to something deep inside me so I just went for it. Some of the level concepts came from my own experience as a pilot; the Motherboard level takes place in and around a scaled down map of Fajardo airport, Puerto Rico. I had a pretty intense experience there during my training where I struggled to land due to a strong updraft from a nearby land feature. My spouse also gave me a ton of great ideas, like the Norton easter eggs in every level and the sea turtle in the Graphics Card level. After the January 16th demo update I found myself having an amazing experience playing with a Hands-On Throttle and Stick controller more than I did with a gamepad previously. What were some of the improvements made to the flight model?  There were so many small changes but I can break out the three main ones. The first was flow-aligned drag/lift. In the previous model the wing would make the same amount of lift/drag regardless of it’s alignment with the forward velocity. So if a wing was parallel with the ground and falling straight down it would generate both lift and drag, making the aircraft very “floaty” and unable to really drop. Conversely, if the aircraft was flying in a normal configuration, it would generate the same amount of drag as it was falling down. This was obviously unrealistic so a big change was changing the lift calculation to factor in vector alignment. The second change was changing how effective control surfaces were - you can see some of it there, but basically the biggest change was artificially boosting control surface effectiveness at low speed. This is a bit of an artistic tweak to make the planes “feel” more correct, especially when they neared the slow-speed stall flight regimes. You can see the code below; The final big change was just optimization. Awhile back I converted a lot of float values to doubles for better precision at high speed and increased the frequency of physics ticks to make larger aircraft fly correctly. This came with the unfortunate side effect of really destroying performance on lower end hardware. So I went in and was smarter about what was converted to doubles and improved performance overall to where it was back to the pre-conversion state. Here’s is the actual code if you’re interested: Flow-Aligned Drag/Lift Code   // Default scaling for non-control surfaces         float controlSurfaceScaling = 1f;                  // Calculate alignment factor for all surfaces         float alignmentFactor = Mathf.Abs(Mathf.Cos(_angleOfAttack));         currentLift *= alignmentFactor;                  // Additional scaling for control surfaces         if (_isControlSurface) {             float minSpeed = 10f;             float referenceSpeed = 200f;                          float speedRatio = referenceSpeed / Mathf.Max(_velocityMagnitude, minSpeed);             controlSurfaceScaling = Mathf.Clamp(speedRatio, 0.5f, 3f);                          // Apply speed scaling (alignment already applied above)             float speedScaling = Mathf.Clamp(speedRatio, 0.75f, 2f);             currentLift *= speedScaling;         }    Control Surface Adjustments    float InterpolateDeflection(float inputAxis) {         // Lower minimum speed threshold         float minSpeed = 2f;                  // Lower reference speed to improve low-speed handling         float referenceSpeed = 50f;                  float currentSpeed = Mathf.Max(_velocityMagnitude, minSpeed);                  // Inverse the ratio to give more control at low speeds         float controlBoostFactor = currentSpeed / referenceSpeed;                  // Adjust clamp values to give more control authority at low speeds         controlBoostFactor = Mathf.Clamp(controlBoostFactor, 0.5f, 4.0f);                  // Increase base interpolation speed         float baseInterpolationSpeed = 8f;                  // Apply stronger boost at low speeds         float interpolationSpeed = baseInterpolationSpeed / controlBoostFactor;                  float newInterpolation = deflection / maximumDeflection +              (-inputAxis - deflection / maximumDeflection) interpolationSpeed Time.deltaTime;                  float unclampedLerp = Mathf.LerpUnclamped(0, _maximumDeflection, newInterpolation);         return Mathf.Clamp(unclampedLerp, -_maximumDeflection, _maximumDeflection);     } A Two-Devil drone hit by paintballs, deploying flares. The documentation for the flight model is a part of helping players mod aircraft  into the game. It is very detailed, which is quite helpful. Could the flight model documentation also be used by other developers to create or edit their own projects?  Sure - hey maybe they could help me? Haha…yea I think that the documentation could definitely be helpful for others and I’d be happy if someone wanted to use it as a basis for their own projects. Like I explained previously there are compromises in the model and areas where I had to fudge things to make it “feel” right (looking at you low-speed control forces), but I think the documentation does a good job of taking a lot of complex concepts and centralizing them into a spot where someone can build on top of it. In Exosky players fly along strings of procedurally generated waypoints to complete a level. Pre-January update it was definitely harder to fulfill level requirements for unlocking new levels. It seemed like it was difficult to stray off the path and focus on aerobatics. While it does feel more attainable, I cannot say it is exactly easy. What changes were made?  The biggest change came after some tester feedback on how difficult it was to meet the score requirements of each level. This was because the requirements were a large monolithic value without a lot of direction on how to attain it. The newer version of the scoring system breaks them out into smaller specific requirements. Not only does this guide players towards scoring opportunities but it also allows me to design score requirements around specific levels; if one level has a lot of interesting objects then the score requirements coild be heavily weighted towards Points-Of-Interest. If another level has lots of tunnels then it could be weighted towards Proximity scores. The actual scoring values didn’t change much, it was the breaking down of larger score values into discrete chunks. Concept art example. The amount of Extras currently in the demo are quite substantial. There are many radical aircraft designs from throughout the years. Are any of these designs going to be included in the game in the future? To be honest I think the answer depends on how bored I get with the existing aircraft. I’ve been toying with the idea of releasing DLC packs of new aircraft in the future, but since I don’t know how successful the game will be I don’t know if that would be worth it from a cost/benefit analysis. This means it comes down to whether or not I want different planes to fly. If I do then I’ll probably start with implementing those aircraft - a few of them are already modeled and one of them is even mostly textured. Frankly I’m really hoping some people latch onto the mod tools and make some creative new planes for everyone to try out! The concept art, test videos and other development related content show that the development arc that led to Exosky was quite elaborate. Can you summarize what Exosky or the project before it was planned to be? Exosky is…big. I’ve been working on it for a long time. When the metaverse craze took off I wrote an article  that defined a true metaverse as “...a self-referential entity; something that is created to create itself.” In another article  I wrote: “The metaverse offers us an amazing opportunity to not only imagine but also to consciously design and test different futures for life on Earth. We need to use that; great leaps in humanity were not built to sell products, they were made because we wanted to push the boundaries of what we could do.” I’m not bound to the word “metaverse”, in fact I would prefer to not use it, but what Exosky is really meant to be is a visionary future for our species. It’s a grand social experiment; can we build a simulation of the future so compelling that it actively itself becomes  that future? Exosky/YesPlane were made up of two distinct components. The first is the flight sim, which Exosky (as released) is a cut-down version of. The original vision was to have a celebration of flight, with several different gamemodes ranging from a sort of Aerial Rocket League to a multi-level aerial laser tag simulation, where large airships would be commanded by captains using virtual reality to steer the ships and pick out targets amongst smaller aircraft which were piloted by both players and bot pilots. There’s other stuff there and I even have an unlaunched Kickstarter with the list of game modes and such.  The second component is the overworld - the simulation of a future society, one that exists in a universe where the Robotosphere (as mentioned in the game’s intro) has been made manifest. The initial release would have players navigating Venus from a top-down grid view, plotting the course of their airship across the planet as they explore, trade, mine, etc. “Combat” would tie into the laser tag experience, where players could either fly matches against each other or even bet on other player’s teams. Players could let others board their airships to hang out, trade, etc. Visual example of Robotosphere during game intro. The social simulation aspect would be the next layer on top of that. In the original draft it was a sort of “economic system deathmatch”, where there would be different types of economies existing in parallel, including my own . Through player actions these economic factions would compete and strive for dominance in synergy with new government strategies as well. This would test to see which really was the most effective system for this new world. We would also test if the Robotosphere itself could work as designed and more than that, what AI’s role in society could be through AI run NPCs. Eventually, I could see this simulation becoming more and more real. If players started trading real money using these new economic systems, started using the in-game governments and groups to organize and affect change in the real world, started trading virtual goods for real ones and vica-versa then this system in time could become the actual system people live by. It would be a universe that created the conditions for itself to exist. Years later, as Exosky nears release, how do you personally feel? At the moment, pretty tired haha. I have a couple other projects also all due around the same time that the game is releasing. If I take a step back from that though I guess I’d say happy and proud of what I’ve accomplished. It’s kind of weird, when you work on a project this long each task sort of blurs together. Release is just another task, made up of a list of smaller tasks. It’s a big moment because the game will be out there but it’s just another spot on a timeline in the grand scheme of the game. It’s releasing on my birthday though so I am definitely going to be having a party, lol! A medical drone flying away from a fish over a motherboard in simulated deep space. Pre-happy birthday to you! It is a bit early to ask this, but after early access release do you have any ideas about what else needs to be added towards making this a 1.0 release?  So it’s funny that you ask that, because the March 7th date is the 1.0 release. I remember back in like, 1999-2001 when DSL was new and many people were still transitioning from 56k modems. Steam wasn't even around until 2004. Back then games had to be ready to go out of the box because you didn't have a way to reliably patch it or update it once it shipped. Ever since then we've gotten more comfortable with unfinished games and I decided I wanted to do it old school. That's why I'm going straight to full release with no EA or open beta period. That means all the game content is in there, everything has been tested multiple times, etc. New features may come later but those are in addition to the completed spec that is being shipped. Oh my goodness. I am so used to early access releases I made the assumption it was not a full release. Haha! Well, thank you so much for this interview. I appreciate getting into the fine details about Exosky. I just want to say that I really appreciate this interview opportunity. I’m really excited to share my game with the world on March 7th. Regardless of how well it does it’s been a labor of love and a great learning experience and hey, maybe in the future those bigger ideas will take flight too. In the meantime, I hope players enjoy the unique flying challenges I've created and perhaps even build their own unique aircraft with the modding tools I’ve included in the game. I also wanted to say that it means a lot to be able to talk about the project in such great detail and I am happy that I got to do it on your platform. Skyward Flight Media reminds me a lot of the old Internet, where individual websites dedicated to niche interests ruled the web. See you in the skies! :) Connect with 'Exosky' Discord : https://discord.gg/nnM2cUPUW4 Steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2795160/Exosky/ Website : https://exosky.aero/ About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

The place where it all started, still alive and going strong April 17th is the anniversary day for VRChat Aviation (VRCA). Almost five years ago the prefab that became the core of almost all aviation operations going forward was released. For players looking at trying their hand at flying aircraft and burgeoning world creators curious if their flight focused visions could be built, the core of their interests was a world known as ' Test Pilots '. Before this world release, VRChat was a massively multiplayer virtual world platform of used created and driven experiences was mainly known for engaging social experiences in smaller user made worlds. While a form of pseudo-aviation did exist between 2014 and 2019, the true flight experiences started in 2020. The Beginning Development of the Sacc Flight and Vehicles prefab by its solo developer Sacchan truly 'took off' in April 2020 with the release of VRChat software development kit 3 (SDK). This creator's initial goal was to make vehicles that handled better compared to those made with the previous SDK. Our Creator Highlight Month 2022 interview with Sacchan goes into detail about the exact development path, but with the release of Test Pilots and the prefab code base, users across the globe to try out the first iterations of this type of aviation on the VRChat platform. An early version of Test Pilots by Sacchan. During the first summer after its release, the developer was joined by a cadre of friends with varying degrees of aviation knowledge. From real world operations and years of experience with flight simulators of varying complexities. This collaborative effort helped refine Sacc Flight. New weapons, aircraft capabilities, changes in default values and the groundwork for other types of aircraft in the future. For players looking to try their hand at piloting aircraft or hopeful new world creators wanting to see what was possible with the prefab, Test Pilots was truly at the center of everything. Changes and Advancements As the years went on, the VRChat aviation community gained dozens of new world creators. Some making one-off worlds that faded out with no ongoing support, others still dedicated creators with multiple worlds to their name. The free to download and use prefab was thoroughly customized by these creators to make various types of flight experiences. Much like indie flight game development, VRCA worlds reflect the skill level and desire of their developer(s). They cross the entire spectrum of aviation experiences at a rather high rate thanks to how accessible Sacc Flight is. Skyward Flight Media staff in transit to an aircraft carrier. This creates an interesting environment where frequent world releases create the need for new worlds to be produced to remain relevant in the steady stream of world creation. It is somewhat easy for even the best worlds at one point in time to gradually slide into hidden gem status if a world creator does not find ways to update it semi-consistently. There are few VRCA worlds that remain within the Popular World tab for the entire VRChat platform for extended periods of time when they receive considerable updates. Going against the grain, Test Pilots continues to be the most active VRCA world, even almost five years after its release. A feat very, very few other worlds have been able to replicate. Vehicle Variety Back in 2020, Test Pilots was the location to go to try out the newest additions to the prefab, new aircraft that would be built around specific concepts and functions. The venerable SF-1 fixed-wing fighter created by Sacchan was gradually joined by a wide variety of believable and pure sci-fi aircraft. Some of them designed by Sagi-chan with Sagi Aerospace , one of the first highly well known 3D modelers for VRCA. In 2025, there are 21 vehicles in the world's roster. The selection is so diverse. They include anti-aircraft emplacements, cars, seaplanes, airshow stunt plane, biplanes, fixed-wing combat aircraft, light and heavy lift rotary-wing, highspeed reconnaissance, anti-gravity bike, strategic bombers, spacefighter - a wild variety. During a recent private session to gather materials for this article, we took photos of these aircraft to visually demonstrate what players get access to in one visit. The breadth of the capabilities these aircraft possess are air-to-air missiles, unguided bombs, vertical take off and landing capability, hypersonic cruise, forward swept swing wings, thrust vectoring, airshow fireworks and laser effects, multi-passenger transport, main rotor tilt and more. An original design aircraft carrier with two SAK-1 carrier borne fighters from Sagi Aerospace is also featured in this world. My personal favorites are the propeller driven two-seater aircraft. Within VRChat as a whole prop aircraft are uncommon, but these aircraft are capable of passing control of the aircraft from the front seat to the back seat both on the ground and in flight. In my opinion this is useful as a training tool to have new players be introduced to flying by more experienced players and it adds to the unique social side of aviation in VRChat. Even for the newest player that has never flown a simulated aircraft or the tried and true flight simulation pilot wanting to see is possible on the platform, the sheer variety and quality of the aircraft in Test Pilots continues to make this world a perfect introductory experience to VRCA. Device Compatibility VRChat as a platform certainly has limitations for its user created worlds. Especially strict limitations if you compare it to standalone, offline VR games. Many VRCA world creators choose to make their experiences exactly as they plan, prioritizing achieving their vision even if it means worlds are only compatible with Personal Computer tethered VR headsets. Test Pilots has continued to be a rather accessible world in terms of devices used to connect to it. The world is currently Cross-Platform compatible, which means it is compatible with Meta Quest, SteamVR, Pico and Google Play. While the differences between PC connected and headset standalone versions of VRChat is stark in a few ways, the core experience of the vehicles in Test Pilots remains intact and available for a massive number of users. There are dozens of VRChat aviation worlds that could be described as more detailed in aircraft handling characteristics, cockpit instruments or with elaborate terrains, but many of them give up Cross-Platform capabilities, which Test Pilots seems to capitalize on. Dissimilar formation. In World Activities It is safe to say that even during early development, VRCA is primarily player versus player combat focused. Two or more players locked into close range air combat within minutes of loading into the world and flinging themselves into the nearest fighter. As surprising as this may sound, constant back-to-back dogfights can eventually get boring for some players. Test Pilots is built with other types of gameplay in mind as well. The Sacc Flight prefab includes time trials where players can select different courses. The courses are visually represented by rings hovering in the air for players to fly through. Each world instance of Test Pilots shows the top players and their fastest times. Players that achieve fast times and/or other feats sometimes put them on social media to keep track of the fastest times. Example of Time Trial in Test Pilots. The terrain of this world also includes challenges like short runways scattered around the world, natural terrain (caves, valleys) traditional structures (bridges, city buildings) and immensely complicated structures built specifically for players to challenge themselves to fly through. Some of them being truly massive in size. Time of Day Test Pilots has something very few VRChat aviation worlds have: a working day and night cycle. While that seems like a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, much like how clouds and weather change an experience, a gradual sunrise or twinkling night produces memorable moments. Placed a top the air traffic control tower in the main spawn area of the world, players can physically interreact with this model of the planet and sun and set the time of day manually. An SF-1 above a city at night. Flight Model Developer and world creator Sacchan describes the flight model as: "The performance of the planes there is more on the Ace Combat side of things, and sometimes I think I'd like to make it more realistic, but as it's so established as it is, that'll have to be done in other worlds." -Sacchan, Creator Highlight Month 2022 Interview This still remains true in 2025. Keeping the more Ace Combat-y arcade flight model in place makes Test Pilots easily accessible for players of any skill level. However, it is not all unlimited afterburners and extreme aerial maneuvers with no repercussions. The high performance fixed-wing fighters that can perform post stall maneuvers are just as capable of ripping themselves apart mid-flight. A key part of the SaccFlight system is the ability to turn Flight Limits on and off. Think of this function as turning off the flight control system limiters in a fly-by-wire aircraft. With them off there are no control dampening functions to keep the aircraft or pilot safe, but with them disabled more skilled players can eke extra performance out of their aircraft at the very real risk of destroying the aircraft within seconds of pushing it beyond their structural limits. It is a natural risk vs reward system. To The Future There is an impressive list of world creators that have used the Sacc Flight and Vehicles Prefab to take VRChat aviation in new directions. Through it all Test Pilots has remained "at the top" it terms of numbers of user visit. Its combination of accessibility, vehicle variety and activities are a proven formula. Developer and world creator Sacchan is working on the newest iteration of Sacc Flight 1.7, which is sure to define the next generation of VRChat aviation for world creators that choose to delve into its upcoming features. Connect with 'Sacchan' Test Pilots | X.com | Github | Kofi About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info , the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

Developer of SaccFlight for VRChat Aviation It's no secret that VRChat aviation is something we've covered here on Skyward Flight Media with great interest. In the mind of the flight simulation enthusiast, they might be imagining aircraft flying in VRChat as objects shaped like aircraft unnaturally levitating in the sky with the spiciest internet memes flying out the back. Our previous articles on the subject show that not to be the case at all. Virtual reality players will find themselves controlling aircraft by gripping the in game stick and throttle the same way they would in other VR flight simulator. Roaring dogfights, air-to-air refueling, aircraft carrier landings, working instruments, stall characteristics and more can be experienced across dozens of worlds. The evolution of flight physics, ever expanding flight experiences, and a firmly established international community continues to capture our attention. "How is this happening?" is the most frequently asked question by those from the outside looking in. Our next entry in Creator Highlight Month 2022 is with Sacchan , the developer of the SaccFlight system and free to download prefab . that has made this all possible. We discuss how it all started, achievements, hurdles crossed, and the state of VRC aviation today. It probably goes without saying that I’m a big fan of your work. Please introduce yourself. I'm Sacchan, my friends call me Sacc, I'm a gamer with something of a creative side, and VRChat has taken over my entire life for the last 4 years. Nearly 2 years ago I had the idea to make an airplane as an experiment, and now I find myself standing at the center of a worldwide community of creative aircraft enthusiasts. How and why did you get involved with VRChat? In early 2018 I saw it after it got famous because of the Uganda Knuckles meme, and I thought the anime characters looked cute so I tried it out. I never expected to play it for more than a day or two. When did you decide to shift from being a general user to begin world creation? Could you describe some of your pre-flight worlds? Almost straight away. I've always been a bit creative, so when I realized that making your own content was possible of course I wanted to learn. I started learning to make avatars only a day or two after installing the game, starting with MMD model conversions to learn Unity. I didn't have a VR headset when I started, but I quickly realized I really wanted one. A few days later, after I had bought a VR headset, I decided I wanted to make a world too. I wanted to make a very dark and atmospheric world, to relax in. My first world 'Stormy Cave' was relatively popular. It's a campfire in a cave at night with wind and rain sounds and 500m^2 of surrounding terrain to explore with flashlights, umbrellas, and torches. Over the course of about a year it evolved into a full blown puzzle map with sci-fi/demonic elements and a large underground cave system to explore. My other worlds are 'The Sacc Shack' which was me experimenting with modeling a house, I went a little bit crazy with the interactivity on items there. 'Orange Days' is a small island/beach hangout world with some weird architecture, and a lighthouse model that I have used in Test Pilots. The SF-1 is the first VRChat original design aircraft (2021). Something many users that have seen your work wonder is, do you have any previous experience with game development? I've been into mapping since I was about 11 years old, starting with Unreal Tournament (the first one), around 20 years ago. Over the years I have experimented with mapping/modding UT99/2004/3, Quake3, Freespace and more, but never really releasing much. My friend and I were working on a game for a bit back in 2013~, with him as the programmer and me as the artist, but it never got close to being finished. All of those games are a bit old, and learning Unity through VRChat for me was a great experience because it brought me up to speed with a modern game engine, and gave me a creative outlet to improve my modeling skills. After only a few months I had modeled my first from scratch rigged humanoid character to use as an avatar, which I used to think would always be beyond me. What is the general process of making a world in VRC? How did the April 2020 Udon update change this process? To make a world for VRChat, you must install Unity, install the VRChat SDK package, place something to stand on, place a spawn point, click upload/test and you're done. To do anything complex prior to April 2020, (using SDK2) the only option you had was to use the VRC_Trigger script. It's a componant with options for trigger method, and a bunch of things to do when triggered. It does allow you to do a lot of things, but it's limited by it's nature. In April 2020, SDK3 was released, which allowed for node-based programming, and a VRC user created a compiler for Unity C# called UdonSharp that enabled users to write code directly for use in VRC worlds. Creating things for VRC is now very similar to creating things for Unity in general, with some limitations, many VRC-specific things you need to know, and the code runs around a thousands times slower. How did your idea for trying to bring a more accurate version of aviation to VRChat start? That idea never existed, I just wanted to learn how to use SDK3 when it was released, and I had been wanting to learn programming for a long time but had never managed to get into it. Initially I had no idea how to get started with SDK3. Luckily I had a programmer friend who helped me get everything set up, and kickstarted my efforts. So, since SDK3 allowed programming directly, I wanted to do something that was always very poorly done in SDK2, vehicles. The first thing I tried to make was a car, but I had no idea about the correct way to do it. With my first attempt at a car I couldn't even get the wheels to stay attached to the car without causing big problems with bouncing around a glitching out. Since the car was such a failure (I only tried for about 2 hours), I decided to try making a simple helicopter-like vehicle, as I could make something fly without attaching wheels to it. That was pretty easy to get working, and the people I showed it to liked it, but also wanted airplanes. I had some vague idea of what a dot product was, so I tried putting the result of dot(VehicleRigidbody.velocty, VehicleTransform.Down) into the relative up force with a configurable multiplier, which gave me a very basic lift force. Early Test Pilots aircraft concepts (April 2020). It was fun, so I continued improving it, I also made a few variations on the simple vehicles I initially created and just played with them with my friends, and random people who joined the public instance. Since SDK3 was so new I figured I was probably one of the few people who had actually managed to create something with it, so I decided to release what I had made as a prefab. Anyone with any experience with unity would laugh at the first few releases, since I was very inexperienced with Unity code, but because it was out there and was representing me, I felt a strong need to improve it further. At some point during the first days, I created a script to allow players to fly around without a vehicle, just to get to the vehicles faster, which has now become an important feature that almost every flight world has enabled. After a while I started making friends with people who were into flight simulation games, and who had real jobs working with aircraft. They pushed me to improve things further and further, and I guess that's all that has been happening since, really. Early version of Test Pilots (April 2020). The summer of 2020 in particular was really fun, that was the time I was initially coding all of the functions for the function dials in the plane. Each day I would wake up, code a new feature for 6 hours or so, upload a test world, and all my friends would jump on to test it for the rest of the day. This period was when I added Afterburner, Bombs, AGMs, AAMs, Brake, Flight Limits, Display Smoke, Flares, Hook (carrier landings), Catapult (carrier takeoff), Fly Level (autopilot), Cruise (hold speed), Canopy Toggle, Fuel Consumption, and the HUD. Some of this was only possible because of the pandemic. One of my friends, Zweikaku , was laid off from his job as an aircraft mechanic when the pandemic started. He wouldn't have been playing VRC nearly so much if he was at his job and wouldn't have been able to advise me on how aircraft actually work. During this time is also when I taught one of my long time VRChat friends, ' Sagi-chan ' how to use Blender, and he's been modeling planes ever since. Take a look at the 'SAK' aircraft in Test Pilots to see his handy work. Early model of the SF-1 (2020). It’s notable that while you were encouraged to further develop it to include more advanced features, you did not go as far as adding navigation systems, radars, instrument landing systems, etc. Why is that? I won't create anything for my prefab that I don't think will be interesting to me (as a coding exercise or gameplay). I'm only really interested in the flight/combat itself. The specifics of navigation, or targeting are boring to me unless they serve gameplay (which should be fast paced). All the games I enjoy the most are fast paced games that are the easy-to-learn hard-to-master types, like Quake, and Rocket League. I think flying a plane falls into that easy-to-learn, hard-to-master category even without any physics simplifications, but to get to flying, there are often hurdles to overcome that make it much harder to experience the joy of pure flight, such as managing the aircraft's systems. What I have created is something simple enough that someone who cares nothing about planes, but thinks it might be fun to fly, can learn in a few minutes and experience what it's like to fly with physics that are realistic enough that it doesn't dilute the experience too much. I think this is especially important for VR, because the experience is so much more rich being inside a cockpit in VR. Many people that have never cared for flight before have discovered a love for it thanks to my world, Test Pilots. It being a popular world is also greatly beneficial. Anyone who doesn't know how to fly can find help in the form of a conversation with any of the other players that are standing around in the spawn area. That being said, the purpose of the modularization of the 1.5 update was to allow addition of extension code to the prefab without changing the original code. If anyone using the prefab wishes to make more complex systems, I am willing to help and support them. On April 16th, 2020, the first aviation world, Test Pilots, entered community labs (a type of quality assurance phase). Since then this world has been at the forefront of all VRC aviation. How do you feel about Test Pilots after nearly two years of development? I think it's really good. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I'd like to continue adding more and more vehicles to it but the performance gets a bit too low with a lot of players already, so there probably aren't going to be too many large changes any more. The performance of the planes there is more on the Ace Combat side of things, and sometimes I think I'd like to make it more realistic, but as it's so established as it is, that'll have to be done in other worlds. I am always surprised by how communal the development process for VRC aviation is. There are developers and their friends always pinging each other to test things like new aircraft, flight characteristics, map changes, etc. Is the average flight world development process like that? I think it has to be communal at this point, centered around me, because I haven't written any tutorials on how to use it (other than my Instructions.txt, but most people can't read?), people who are experienced with Unity are able to use it without help, but many of the people who are interested in making plane worlds are a bit less experienced. There is also a Japanese community of friends who communicate amongst each other (occasionally asking me something if they get stuck), creating stuff. A few of them are very advanced. Do other world creators ever ask you for assistance with their works? People ask me quite often for help using my prefab to create a world, but if they have no prior experience with unity, I'm not going to teach them the whole thing. If they have made some progress and are just stuck with something, I'll help. It's quite rare that a world will be uploaded to VRChat using my prefab with a customized vehicle without my help , but when it does happen it's very cool to see. Community events like dogfight tournaments, airshows, and aircraft unveiling showcases have become very popular over time. What are your thoughts on these events? They're really, really fun, and it's amazing that such a thing is possible in a social game. The big tournaments are the main time when all of the communities come together. The unveiling of a new plane with the whole community present after the finals of a tournament is a really cool experience. Unfortunately the format of these events is going to have to change soon because they're getting too popular. The framerate in VRChat gets very low with 80 people in one instance and 80 people is the hard cap for number of players, so we're going to be moving to a setup with a hangout world containing a stream of the matches. VRChat is a quirky development platform, isn't it? What have been some of the greatest development hurdles that you have had to solve? Pressing a 'VRChat Button' is impossible in a very fast moving vehicle, which is why I created the function dial system, which ended up being a good thing in my opinion, because it's so fast and easy to use compared to moving your hands to each button. Buttons are possible to create for a fast moving vehicle, but require you to code your own version. One of the Japanese users of the prefab has done it. I may create my own version soon for the prefab. For the most part the hurdles that I have had to overcome have been due to my inexperience with Unity/programming in general, or not knowing how to get specific values out of VRChat componants. Luckily I have a few friends who know a good amount. I have also managed to become acquainted with some of the VRChat developers. There have been multiple times where a VRChat update has broken some aspect of my planes, and it has been somewhat stressful dealing with it, but it's usually not too difficult to fix stuff. If you had to make a top-five list of greatest features or fixes you've had to figure out, what would they be? 5. Creating a prefab that is customizable and simple enough that people have been able to create their own vehicles without any help from me. 4. The Air-to-air missiles (not too difficult, unless you need to sync them over network!) 3. The code modularization in version 1.5 (required such a huge code refactor) 2. The custom position sync. The default VRChat object synchronization is very delayed, making formation flight, and anything resembling a realistic dogfight impossible. 1. Such a easily customizable flight model which allows almost any kind of air vehicle (including VTOL, seaplanes, ground-effect vehicles, helicopters, hoverbikes) Pre-custom position sync lag diagram. (Twitter) Could you describe the significant change that the addition of custom position sync brought? Before the custom position sync, which was added in my prefab's version 1.5, which came out about a year and 8 months after development started, the aircraft were using VRChat's inbuilt VRC_ObjectSync script to sync their positions, it's designed for small scale objects you can pick up, not vehicles, and it has no lag compensation. So if you try to use it for formation flight, it will look to you like you are flying next to someone, but they will see you more than a second behind where you think you are, making formation flying essentially impossible. So once the custom sync was in, formation flying became possible, and quickly became popular among the aviation groups. Dogfights also became much, much more interesting, as things like rolling scissors became possible. Previously you would see someone fly past you, and wonder if you were about to explode because they shot you a second ago. Additionally you can also see bullets flying towards your plane, which wouldn't happen before because the opponent would be shooting at the lagged version of you, behind you. Offering the Sacc Flight and Vehicles prefab as a free resource is generous. There are easily over 50 aviation worlds by creators from around the globe now. Did you ever think there would be so many worlds? My thought was, that I wanted to make VRChat more interesting, because in the days before the Udon update (The one that allowed coding in worlds), VRChat didn't really have a whole lot of things to do. I guess I've succeeded in that. Almost every day I can log in and visit an in-development aircraft world to see what's new, plus there are interesting tweets about the daily occurrences in the flight community. The Japanese community in particular has made a lot of interesting stuff, especially since the prefab's 1.5 modularization release, because it's been possible to non-destructively add functionality. They have a weekly Flight Academy which is listed on the Japanese event calendar in VRChat, where anyone can show up and be taught the basics of flying through a short sit-down classroom lesson, then straight into a vehicle with an instructor. Their world has a near true-to-life Control Tower with radios that is actually manned and used during events, their vehicles also have avionics that are slowly but surely increasing in functionality over time. There's another guy who's decent at modeling and often just creates a whole new plane in one day. While they may not be of the highest quality, it's very interesting to see what he comes up with. In the English speaking communities we have many vehicle-particular dogfight worlds, someone dedicated to making helicopters, someone dedicated to making GA aircraft, various role-play groups with worlds specifically for their needs, some vehicle modelers, and a few people doing more advanced stuff, like Project Fairy , a Yukikaze fan project. More recently there's also been a lot of interest in creating multi-crew vehicles, as version 1.5 of the prefab supports this functionality, more code needs to be written to create functionality beyond simple gunner seats though. What do you think are the biggest hurdles that new flight focused VRChat world creators need to overcome? If they're making their own custom aircraft, they need to learn what each of the variables in the main flight control script do, so that they can make it fly how they want. They also need to learn how to replace all the animations, to make everything on their aircraft move. The biggest challenge being creating a landing gear animation. In general though, if you're good with Unity you should be able to work things out. The hardest part is being good with Unity. While combat aircraft are the most frequently seen vehicles, is there a technical restriction that prevents use of more large aircraft like airliners? There are some large aircraft in VRChat, my world has the crazy modified B-52, the Japanese community has a 737 in which it's possible to sit in nearly every seat, that they use regularly in their events. One of my friends even made a Lockheed CL-1201, which we showed off at the VRChat community meetup event, and got 80 people sitting in it at once. I think the main reason there aren't more large aircraft though, is because my prefab package doesn't come with an example of one that can be easily copied and modified. SAK-52 (top left), SC-1 (bottom left), SF-1 (bottom right) and SAK 2 (top right). Have there been any functions you wanted to add but were unable to get working? Any abandoned concepts? It's been tough, but I've managed to get almost everything I've wanted working in the end. Stuff like missiles, or custom position sync would have fallen into this category in the past. One of my friends has made a 'floating origin' system (that moves the world, instead of the plane), which enables much larger worlds to be made. If it could be improved to the point where it's bug-free it would be very interesting. One thing I'd love to be able to do is have pilotable aircraft carrier, that people can walk around on the deck of, and vehicles can take off and land on. I have made an attempt at it, but it's very difficult, maybe impossible to do well with the current version of VRChat. As you become more familiar with programming, have you considered developing your own game outside of VRChat someday? I've been considering it for a while, but it'd mean stopping making the VRChat stuff, and I don't want to stop while it's still growing so much. I can also re-use the code I write for VRChat, so I don't see it as a waste. I'm also not sure what kind of game I'd make, I think there's a gap in the market for a semi realistic competitive flight combat game, but I don't know if I can pull that off as my first game. Aircraft in formation in Test Pilots. With the two year anniversary of the release of Sacc Flight coming up, do you have any ideas about what the next big updates could be? I want to create a car/land vehicle prefab, as it's the last major vehicle type that I don't have, and if I do it well it could spawn it's own community with the car-people. Other possible future improvements could be things like: Weapons, fuel, etc. contributing to the weight of the vehicles. Aircraft falling out of the sky rather that just instantly exploding. Touchable buttons for the cockpit in VR. I have already created an air-refueling system that is not part of the prefab yet. Vehicle damage models. Your efforts seem to have made quite the impact. To the point that Test Pilots had a diorama and building-sized poster in the official VRC New Year’s Eve 2021 world. It was seen by tens of thousands of people. What are your thoughts on how far your efforts and the community it has spawned have come? New Year's Eve 2021 poster for Test Pilots. It's weird, someone who was already good at programming could have probably created something like what I've made with a lot less effort, but they would probably also have just made what they wanted and moved on. I think it's largely because I was learning and struggling through the whole process, and writing code was novel to me that I was able to stick with it for so long, and build something so big. Thinking back, there are many features working now that I have thought to be impossible at some point. I even thought it was impossible to implement missiles early on. So many people have helped in small ways, and it's amazing what we've accomplished. Test Pilots has just passed 3 million visits, and has 150,000+ favorites. Most of these are from children who are playing VRChat in standalone mode on their Oculus Quest 2s they got for Christmas. So at the very least I've probably awakened a love of flight in a fairly large group from the next generation. About the Interviewer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .

A Well-Timed Signal Flare from a Silent Project I am going to be honest with you, I have not thought of this project for at least a year. My last interaction with it happened back on October 24th, 2022, when Skyward Flight Media received an announcement to journalists about upcoming projects from MicroProse and access to the press kit. The Mighty Eighth VR slipped from my mind, not because it was a boring venture, but because it seemingly went silent almost immediately. The initial attempts to reach out to journalists during that time also did not go anywhere either. So you can imagine my genuine surprise to see a dev blog posted on Steam on January 23rd, 2024. Something I did not notice until I was reminded of this game by an adjacent piece of media just last week. I only remembered this apparently still in development virtual reality game because of my recent near obsession with Masters of the Air . This Apple TV original series follows the story of the United States Army Air Force, 8th Air Force, 100th Bomb Group in World War II from 1943 well into 1945. Its portrayal of air combat with B-17 Flying Fortress crews over occupied Europe pulls no punches. Watching these pitched battles unfold, I vaguely remembered a virtual reality simulator focused on B-17s. With players operating from Thorpe Abbots  RAF base, the home air base seen in Masters of the Air. On a whim, I did a quick search and, to my surprise, saw an update from MicroProse. B-17 heavy bombers in formation (2022 Press Kit). For those that do not know or do not remember, the description on The Mighty Eighth VR product page is: "The Mighty 8th VR puts you in the shoes of a B-17 Flying Fortress crew member at the height of the Strategic Bombing Campaign over Europe. Partner up with friends and do your part to ensure that the plane reaches the target and returns home safely." It plans to be a virtual reality simulator that places teams of up to 10 human players into a B-17 Flying Fortress. AI crew mates are available as well. The crews must work together to complete and survive combat missions over occupied Europe. All positions can be occupied by the players, with the ability to move through the aircraft mid-flight to take up other positions or attempt to repair battle damage. Listed on the official website, the positions are: Pilot Co-Pilot Navigator Bombardier /Chin Turret Gunner Radio Operator Engineer/Top Turret Gunner Port Waist Gunner Starboard Waist Gunner Ball Gunner Tail Gunner Walking through the aircraft (2022 Press Kit). Media from the October 2022 press kit, which I am using throughout this article, focuses on interactions with opening doors, operating .50 caliber machine guns, inspecting the Norden bomb sight and walking through the aircraft. The idea of being as hands on as possible within a virtual reality experience that emphasizes atmosphere could be a winning combination if the attention to detail is there. If pushing for a simulator like experience where a player(s) are spending decently long amounts of time within a restricted space, the portrayal and functionality of the interior of the B-17 is going to be just as important as its flight model. Inspecting the Norden Bombsight (2022 Presskit). It is one thing to make sure an aircraft is accurately modeled in every way possible when it is a single seat or two seat aircraft. But something on the scale of a bomber with an average crew of 10 people that move through its fuselage is an entirely different beast. There are still plenty of unknowns about how players will gather, mission briefings, aerial combat and the depth and quantity of interactions. Though, it seems like the scope of the project has extended from just the aircraft. The January 2024  dev blog  showcases the ability to drive a Jeep on base out to their aircraft as a part of pre-mission preparations. Immersion wise, this certainly adds to the "like you are actually there" atmosphere they are hoping to maintain throughout the game. I have to say that I am happy to see there is some life still left in this project. The timing of the update was well-timed with Masters of the Air releasing new episodes over the past few weeks. I find myself getting somewhat excited over the prospect of working in a coordinated bomber crew with friends and strangers, just hoping to make it to the target and back. This has the potential to be a large-scale cooperative air combat simulator on a scale very, very few developers have attempted. My fingers are crossed for future, hopefully consistent updates. Radio compartment .50 caliber machine gun. About the Writer Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile .