military and historical

The best combat flight simulator yet! Obviously not done for the sole purpose of selling new computers (like the microsoft games). Il2 sturmovic was the best and this is the same thing taken further. Fly multi-engine bombers and the stuka. At first I thought there were insufficient single missions--but that is because it is so blindingly easy to knock them together yourself of Ouick Mission Builder. This game has infinite difficulty and complexity for the simulator fanatic and yet when set on easy is just fine for the total beginner. Manual is inadequate, as was the Il 2 manual--but that is no big deal, you can puzzle it all out easily enough. You can save the tracks of your missions and watch them afterwards like a movie--except that you have the ability to pan the camera around the battle zone as you watch. Also it is possible to watch yourself in action from outside the plane. Highly recommended all round. Also very good historicaly. Now if they would just bring out a World War One game--Red Baron, but with all this games graphics and modeling--I would be in heaven.

Three versions of the Ju-87 Stuka. Three versions of the P-47 Thunderbolt. P-51 Mustang. Two versions of the He-111 bomber with pilot, bombardier and five gunner positions. Soviet TB-3 four-engine bomber with pilot, bombardier and three gunners. Two versions of the Me-262 jet. Whole new airforce - Finnish - with virtually all its planes modeled. Many more new planes.

Dynamic campaign for Russian, German, Hungarian and Finnish pilots in fighter, ground attack and bomber roles. Squadron rosters, with faces from pilot photos also appearing inside their cockpits in the game engine. Famous aces flying with and against you in the campaign, with historical unique camo schemes.

Complex engine management with prop pitch, mixture, superchargers and more.

Incredible new maps, larger and more complex than anything you've ever seen before. Whole cities of Leningrad and Helsinki modeled on the same map with many landmarks in the way MS Flight Simulator series never approached even remotely. More realistic navigation - you can actually fly from Leningrad to Helsinki in a single flight using a real world map. And all this smoothly playable on a mid-range machine in the way MS never thought possible.

1C:Maddox Games flight sims actually ARE as real - and as good - as it gets.

P.S. Rob Orwin: maybe the people reviewing the game before it was out have still somehow played it. Ever heard of a beta test?

I bought this sim. I find it to be the best one yet! Yes it is difficult, but I play it often. You might want to adjust it to suit you. I added external views and automatic engine controls.
I'm running a campaign now and its really addicting. My system is a ecs L7s7a2 mainboard, 2 different sticks of 256meg DDR ram a amd xp2100 processor and a chaintech nvidia fx5200 128 meg agp video card. The controler is a logitech usb wingman flight stick. It stutters once in a while, but I have several background apps running. I only get about 5 victories in 20 missions. I love the challenge. I have ms combat flight sims, but haven't bothered to put them on this system.