Flight Simulator City!

Report from the front line by aviator Peter Mellow.

I've always wanted to fly! Since childhood and looking up at birds, to flight movies the calibre of Top Gun, the skies have called out my name. But upon looking in my bank account I could never afford the trip to the airport, let alone a flying lesson. I also have a fear of crashing and burning, so I was so happy to find flying sims on the Mac. The other good thing about flight sims, is that most of them are war based, and after a hard day at work, there is nothing better than being able to kill something! ( I can feel the stress reducing, just talking about it, especially when you pretend your boss is in the plane in front of your battle sights )

So it all started with Hellcats over the Pacific. When this Mac game came out, it was state of the art and wow! Great colours, realistic missions and a holiday in the pacific. Just what you need in the middle of a cold winter. There was always something great about it raining outside my house, while I was inside flying in the sunny pacific. And in none of the missions did I ever see a single rain cloud. But you can only fly so much over the same ground without getting bored, so I was ready to move on and suddenly along came.........

Missions at Leyte Gulf was a breath of fresh air. New missions and new weapons. Those 5 inch rockets and torpedoes added a new dimension to the games. But by now the graphics started to appear a bit chunky.

Good old Chuck Yeager walked in with his Air Combat. The man who broke the sound barrier and whose autobiography read like a flight manual for all of the new exciting planes in his game blew away the cobwebs. Who cares if it was a ported PC game, Macs were in the flight business. A choice of 6 planes to fly against a wide variety of other planes. A chance to play against other Mac players with only a serial cable between your two computers, and best of all ( H.G. Wells would love it! ) the ability to travel through time. This is one feature all flight sims ( and first person walk through games ) should have. It was wonderful! Only in a WW2 Mustang I was able to shoot down a MIG 21 and an F-4 Phantom. The last wonderful feature of this game was in true Yeager style, in the jets, when you went faster than 750 miles per hour, you produced a sonic boom! Heat seeking and radar missiles added another powerful string to your bow.
But yes, you guessed it, after 15,000 hours flight time the game was getting predictable.

Domark was next to put themselves in the air with Flying Nightmares. A war game and flight sim in one, with an aircraft that can take off vertically. The harrier is fun, especially when trying to 'viff' a bad guy ( or guyess - it could be a woman pilot ) off your tail. But the autopilot was the true wonder. I have never seen an autopilot that could LAND a plane on an aircraft carrier!

F/A-18 Hornetadded new altitude ( and attitude ) to my flying. Tactically better flying and great instrument flying combined with catapult takeoffs from the carrier. The only way to fly! All of the wonderful flying I could ever want and flight training in Hawaii. They wouldn't let me off the base to do any duty free shopping, so I couldn't buy you anything. Hornet kept me happy for many weeks. But after only so many flight sims where could I go next?

I was promoted to starfleet and flew with Luke in Rebel Assault. But I was slightly disappointed with this. I could never fly off the screen like the previous games. I always had my flying restricted to a limited range of motion in Rebel Assault, and while I liked it for a short time, I quickly moved on.

Out of the Sun was made out to be my saviour, and it looked good on paper. A lot of the features that made CYAC great were included. A variety of planes to fly in various theatres ( war is in a theatre, does that make it entertaining? ), I had high expectations. But this game just didn't hit it with me. I don't know if it was that people said that the flight parameters were the most realistic ever, but I kept crashing! And I thought I was such a good pilot. So I quickly put the box in the back of my wardrobe.

Thank goodness for the Korean Crisis. I was about to hang up my flying jacket when this game came along. It recalled me into active duty and I was saved again. Better graphics had me happily flying through the blue skies and singing in the cockpit. One of the great thing about the K Crisis was the radio messages that added to the realism.

Now I'm onto A-10 Attack. A warthog is a bit different to fly after breaking the sound (and space) barrier, but the challenges are still there, and that's what makes flight sims so great. Its as if we have come around full circle, as A10 is made by the same person who designed Hellcats.

I'd like to leave you with two thoughts. I remember when video games first came out, 5 years before the first Mac in 1985. There was the rumor that flight sims were a plot by the CIA to train kids to fly drones into future battles. I can't think of a better idea! Defend your country and the only thing that gets hurt is the hardware.

Sitting here now, with a pile of software boxes beside me, I added up all the price tags. I have spent enough on these games to pay for almost 8 hours of real flying lessons. If only I had saved that money. But I wouldn't have had all the many, many hours of pleasure that I did get from those games. And now when I'm flying overseas on a commercial airline, and the voice comes over the intercom, '"'Both of our pilots have food poisoning, is there a pilot in the aeroplane?'"' and no one puts their hand up I can say "I've logged over 4,000 hours on a Mac!"

I now fly for "The Flying Wallies" and fly a flight sim called Skyfighters 2000 made by Bullseye.