So, after waiting for the massive download to finish, I had a bit of time to jump in for a few quick jaunts before I had to call it a night last night- early morning today.
The two plane choices we have thus far:
I was better driving the Albatros than I was any Fokker in Rise of Flight, so I started out by taking the SPAD up for a spin. Also, there were cough difficulties getting the DR.1’s engine to turn over and catch. I’ll check the blip switch mapping later.
Speaking of key mapping and setup… As best I can tell there aren’t any options available yet for dialing in axis curves, deadzones, or anything like that for controllers, and there was a bit of wonkiness when setting up my Warthog- pay very close attention to the instructions on-screen when trying to program axes for control.
A familiar view for me from my Rise of Flight days, and much like the initial release, the default point of view feels way too close to the canopy (this is with the zoom manually set all the way out):
I’ll be looking forward to Requiem’s custom files to fix this, much like he did for Rise of Flight (and yes, I’m still using his TrackIR profile for this one).
My first attempted takeoff- a wild bunker jumped in front of my plane right before I lifted off, and this is the end result. I’m fairly certain if this was the damage model from RoF, my wings would’ve been completely destroyed and I would’ve been dead.
Second time was a bit more of a charm- taxied from the parking area to the actual runway (I guess this is one of the maps from BoS as a placeholder?), and was able to get airborne quickly.
I haven’t flown RoF in probably over a year, but the SPAD felt a bit heavier and more sluggish than I remember it. Also, even with all the flight assist settings off aside from warmed-up engine, stall recovery was easier than I remember it being, and spin recovery was basically a hands-off affair. I’m guessing the flight model is still being incorporated into the game. Further, I set up turbulence and wind in the quick mission builder, but I barely noticed any of either when I was flying, even at altitude, Clouds looked amazing though, and the “water on your goggles” effect appears to have made the jump over.
In-game map doesn’t seem to be enabled yet, so when I decided to attempt a landing, I just picked (what looked like) a flat, open field and gently set her down.
Turning your plane on its back will still kill you, so that model seems to have it right.
And a few more screens showing some of the options for setting up the planes and quick missions (the only things available for FC just now). I also checked multiplayer, and I saw a single server that had the name “Jasta” in it, but I wasn’t able to connect. Not sure yet if multiplayer is enabled.
Pistols, streamers, scarves, and extra instruments and weapons are all included, but there’s only a couple of skins included thus far. According to the forums, existing skins from RoF will also import without any issues whatsoever, even if they won’t be able to take advantage of the 4K resolution available in BoS. It’ll be fun seeing what the community puts out, and I’m already looking forward to a Spad VII with Eugene Bullard’s paint scheme on it.
This is still very, very early access, but I’m looking forward to seeing what 1C has in store for this one. I haven’t playe anything else in the BoX series, so I’ll defer to those experts in terms of what else that one has available that we should be able to expect in the future. That said, I had fun tooling around in the SPAD, and when I have more time, I’ll try setting up some scenarios to see how the damage model and combat AI is these days.
