WE TAKE TO THE SKY this month, with three challenging flight simulators. Out of the Sun lets you fly vintage aircraft in three famous WWII battles. F/A-18 Hornet puts you behind the yoke of a modern-day F-18 jet fighter in the Middle East. And A-10 Attack! has you looking for trouble over Germany in an A-10 Warthog, the world's toughest and ugliest airborne assault vehicle.
Out of the Sun
Rosie Would Be Riveted
FLIGHT SIMS ARE DIFFICULT to learn, with their myriad instruments to control and maps to navigate. Out of the Sun, like all other flight sims, is challenging, but it has features that simplify simulated flying.
First of all, the flight controls of this game have a slow response. (Domark, maker of Out of the Sun, claims that the slow response is intended to mimic the feel of WWII aircraft.) Thus, the controls are more forgiving than those of most other sims -- once you've tamed your tendency to overcompensate.
You'll also find that there isn't an overwhelming number of controls. It's old-time open-cockpit flying -- you hunt down an enemy by using only a map, a compass, and your wits and eyeballs.
The controls may be simplified, but there's plenty of variety in the game. You can choose from 17 U.S. and foreign aircraft. You also have three historically accurate WWII battles to try out, and you can opt to fly in the "arena" mode, in which you fight your choice of enemy aircraft. You can fight your battles in any of four skill levels. This combination of features makes each battle unique. It's an excellent introduction to the art and craft of flight simulation (as long as you have a Quadra or a faster Mac; it won't run on anything else).
F/A-18 Hornet
Stimulating Simulator
HERE'S A "KILLER" SIM that takes you to battle in the Middle East. Fast and fluid on most modern Macs (all you need is a Mac with a 68020 processor or better), it is, in a word, a blast.
F/A-18's instrumentation is realistic in almost every detail. Like it or not, you oversee dozens of controls and a good variety of weapons and guidance systems, including heat-seeking, radar-guided, and TV-guided missiles. Given such complexity, you'll be grateful for its helpful command-reference card.
With F/A-18, you're guaranteed variety. It has six training missions, difficulty settings that are almost infinitely adjustable, optional tutorial voice commands, and the most-comprehensive documentation of the three flight sims in this review.
If you're willing to scale its steep learning curve, your reward is hours of intriguing play in one of the best Mac flight sims yet.
A-10 Attack!
It Soars Above the Rest
IF F/A-18 ISN'T the best flight sim around, A-10 Attack! is. Although the locations of their missions are different (A-10 takes you to the skies over Germany in one version and to Guantanamo Bay in another), the two games have many similarities. They're both challenging and realistic; you must use almost every key on the keyboard; they provide training missions, adjustable difficulty levels, and quick-reference cards to make the learning curve more manageable; both offer multiple views of the action; and, finally, they support up to three monitors at once.
However, A-10 has an edge in the weaponry department, stocking a greater number and diversity of weapons systems. The weapons range from bombs, for air-to-ground destruction, to a brutal cannon capable of firing 67 depleted-uranium shells per second, for air-to-air annihilation.
Additionally, A-10 gives you more control over your battles, by letting you tweak the flight paths of all friendly aircraft.
Its biggest downfall is that its documentation is the weakest of the three flight sims in this review. As a result, I found this one the most difficult to master.
Bob LeVitus is a MacUser contributing editor and Power Computing's director of evangelism.
Game Point
I thoroughly enjoyed all three flight sims. Out of the Sun is the least intimidating, with its manageable number of flight controls and its slow response. The other two take more time to learn and will challenge even the most seasoned sim pilot.
Out of the Sun
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
Price: $45 (estimated street).
Company: Domark Software, San Mateo, CA; 800-695-4263 or 415-513-8929.
F/A-18 Hornet 2.0
Rating: Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Price: $50 (estimated street).
Company: Graphic Simulations, Dallas, TX; 800-580-4723 or 214-386-7575.
