Sim Speak: Rise Of Flight Gets Wet

It's been in the pipeline for months and, as a timely Christmas Eve present, the fine folks at 777 Studios finally released their much-anticipated English Channel map to an enthusiastic group of Rise of Flight pilots. The $20 add-on introduces an entirely new combat front for WWI aviators to flex those canvas Sopwith and Fokker wings.


Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War delivers one of the most realistic treatments of WWI air combat ever created and the free-to-try simulation has expanded dramatically since its 2009 release. Most of that growth occurred in the aircraft department -- the game now boasts over thirty individually priced fighters, scouts, and bombers -- while the battle-scarred Western Front scenery remained largely static.

Water View

That's why the new Channel environment is such a big deal for battle-hardened ROF fans. Airplanes are natural sightseeing platforms and the new map provides a host of new attractions to distract pilots transiting to and from the action. Apart from the English Channel itself, the map includes parts of northern France, western Belgium, and southern England with scores of new towns, villages, cities, and coastal scenery. I'm also impressed with all the maritime traffic constantly plying the waters and the gorgeous 3D water effects that rival or surpass anything you'll find in Ubisoft's Silent Hunter submarine series.


"The Channel Map has really expanded the base scenery for ROF," explains 777 Studios President Jason Williams. "It's allowed us to create new buildings, ports, cranes and texture substrates that users really enjoy seeing. Other than the beautiful scenery, we're just really proud of the overall speed in which we produced a fun new map for the sim. Not many teams could have pulled this off and we really like our version of the white Cliffs of Dover and how the 3D water turned out. Watching ship convoys sailing the channel puts a smile on our face [and] I hope we can increase the types of ships we have in the game in the future. They are a blast to bomb!"

Although currently only available in Quick Mission or multiplayer, 777 Studios plans to integrate the map into ROF's single-player Career mode soon. "Of course, we have been working on that since the map's release and we have amassed a lot of info on the squadrons that were present near the Channel," confirms Williams. "Assuming everything goes to plan we will have it ready before winter ends."

Watercraft

ROF's dev team has also created a new plane to compliment this liquid environment, the Felixstowe F.2A flying boat. A powerful multi-station reconnaissance plane and bomber, the F.2A is an intricately detailed and surprisingly enjoyable plane to fly (at $16, it should be). You probably won't want to engage enemy Albatros's or Fokkers in a turning dogfight but I had a lot of fun keeping German interlopers at bay with the plane's fore, aft, and waist machine gun stations.


Jason Williams expands. "We chose the Felixstowe because it was a noteworthy aircraft that kind of invented the long range maritime patrol mission. Airships and smaller planes weren't as capable and we felt the Felixstowe just spoke to us when we thought of the channel and combat in WWI. It [also] has a lot of defensive guns and can take some punishment which makes for good fun. We spent a considerable amount of time working on it and it was a good training tool for some new members of the team to get their hands dirty."

Online Brawling

After I'd wrecked a couple of these stately beasts with some ill-advised combat maneuvers in the Quick Mission scenarios, I decided to hop online and let someone else do the flying while I jumped into a defensive gunner position. My four-person crew got shot down a lot (these big boats seem to be favored targets since their release) but not before we ventilated a lot of encroaching fighters with a withering spray of 7.69mm rounds from our Lewis machine guns. Once I learn how to use the bombsight properly (I've killed a lot of fish so far but naval targets have been largely immune to my airborne attacks) I'll give the pilot's seat another chance and try some hardcore U-boat hunting.


Whatever your lofty ambitions, Rise of Flight's Channel Map and Felixstowe F.2A flying boat add tremendous scope to the leather-cap-and-scarf school of aerial warfare.

An Update On IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad

777 Studios and IL-2 Sturmovik developer 1C Company recently announced their plans to collaborate on a new WWII combat flight simulator entitled IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad. The idea of two such esteemed pedigrees combining on a shared project has everyone in the flight sim community buzzing so I asked 777's Jason Williams to comment on it.

"We intend to make a solid product that works on day one, which pushes our engine a bit further on the technical side, and is also innovative on the gameplay side. We hope all Sturmovik fans will join us and usher in a new era of WWII sim development. It's high time WWII sim fans caught a break and have newly released titles to actually play with instead of more daydreaming of what could be. However, we can only make those dreams a reality with their support. The overall vision is that elusive one in which a next-gen WWII sim series features many different combat theaters with many different types of airplanes with a high level of realism and a regular release schedule of new modules. This has been promised before by others. Can we do it? I hope so."

So do I Jason. So do I.