Any advice on a solid WW II flight sim that will run on the XBOX 360, MAC or PC platforms?

-DA 

Do not buy Tom Clancys H.A.W.X. It is the biggest pile of sh!te I have ever had the misfortune to buy!!!! Note to self: Read reviews in future to know what you are getting!!!!

Don't know about XBox, but I've heard good things about Il-2 on the PC.

 

Then again, the last WWII flight sim I played regularly was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.  Yeah, the graphics were kinda crappy and it was cutting edge tech in 1992.  But at least I didn't have to actually have a pilot's license to fly the aircraft in it.

 

Do not buy Tom Clancys H.A.W.X. It is the biggest pile of sh!te I have ever had the misfortune to buy!!!! Note to self: Read reviews in future to know what you are getting!!!!

If you're a 15 year old lad who doesn't really care about it being realistic and just wants to blow sh!t up then it's the perfect game for you!..

 

...if you like your propper flight sims and appreciate the realism of them then stay clear.

They are about 5 years old at this point but the Il2-Sturmovik series was awfully good.  That was on a PC only platform.  There was the original Il-2, and then several expansions that broadened it to the Pacific and had French, Italian, German, English, Russian, and U.S. planes.  I know there were plans for some quirky Aussie stuff too but not sure if that made it in. 

 

As far as another sim the development studio for Il-2, which was Maddox Games I believe, was working on a sequel with ridiculous graphics and very very precise damage modeling (down to the individual spars and stuff in the wings).  It was going to be called Battle of Britain.  Of course I have not heard a thing about it in a few years, but I have not been looking either.

 

Ubisoft was there publisher, if you are interested perhaps poking around them might get some info out, otherwise I would google Maddox games.  It might have been 1c Maddox Games actually...

 

Either way: Il-2 was good, quite good.

RE: Il-2,

I'll order today.

Thanks 

-DA 

Buy 1946 version so you have vanilla IL-2, Pacific fighters and some Nazi fantasy jets in the game. And also remember to get a good stick.

 

"Lock On: Modern Air Combat" is also excellent combat FS, especially if you can read Russian.

Do not buy Tom Clancys H.A.W.X. It is the biggest pile of sh!te I have ever had the misfortune to buy!!!! Note to self: Read reviews in future to know what you are getting!!!!

Not many 25 35, 45 year old would be interested in learning landing procedure, remembering 6 different radar modes plus the control keys filling the whole keyboard plus $100 game stick. High cost of development didn't kill flight sim, steep learning curve plus the boredom of cruising at 30,000ft killed it.

 

The thickness of game manual of Falcon 4 and Su-27 1.5 would discourage most from even thinking playing the game.

 There was a sim in 1998/99 called "FigherSquadron: Screaming Deamons Over Europe". It isprobably the most comprehensive WW2 (and general) sim there is. Just for the illustration, when you model your plane (or edit existing one), you get to move CG of each wing, engine, fuselage and even ailerons, rudder and tail wheel! Published by Parsoft.

 

 Cola

Totally agree.  The last really highly detailed flight sim I really played intensively was Tornado back in the early 90s (brief writeup here).  Later on I was all into Red Baron 3D but that wasn't exactly a complex sim.  Now the only ones I play are Strike Fighters / Wings Over Vietnam and the new WWI sim by the same company, First Eagles.  The Strike Fighters achieves a pretty good balance I think; the flight models are pretty accurate and the behavior of things like radar are fairly realistic, but the controls aren't excessively complex and you don't have to micromanage things the way you do in Falcon 4 and the like.  Depending on your game settings, the radar can either look like a real radar (b-sweep line, range gate circle, etc) or a simplified "god's eye" view.

HAWX is an arcade game not a flight sim...