Solo Flight Plus is really an expansion on its
acclaimed forerunner, Solo Flight. The plane
the program is trying to simulate is an old single engine
1934 Ryan ST-A monoplane, a close relative of the famous
Spirit of St Louis flown across the Atlantic
by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. The new version of the
popular flight simulator boasts a new cockpit design
and flight instrumentation, more maps and high quality
digitised speech. The program is essentially a trainer
but also allows you (once you've mastered the art of
flight) to take off and battle against the clock, adverse
weather conditions and mechanical failures in special
scheduled mail runs over several US states.
The
simulation is quite an unusual one due to its novel
viewpoint: the cockpit dials and displays are shown
at the bottom of the screen as per normal and out of
the window is the landscape, viewed in 3D style. Now,
there's nothing special about that, but what is novel
is that the plane is also seen on the landscape, viewed
from above and behind. This makes it a lot easier to
fly because you can see exactly what's going on.
Just
because the plane is driven by a propeller doesn't mean
it's uncomplicated to fly when compared with modern
day jets, and one glance at the cockpit display soon
shows that. There are four big dials snowing the airspeed
indicator, attitude indicator, altimeter and vertical
velocity indicator. Below are numerical displays showing
pitch, flaps, heading indicator, vertical ascent/descent,
radials from VOR 1 and 2, DME from VOR 1 and 2, landing
gear indicator, brake light Indicator, weather indicator,
ILS localiser, ILS glide slope indicator and time elapsed
indicator. There is also a bar showing how much fuel
is left. All these must be used to fly the plane successfully.
When
the simulator is first loaded, an option screen is presented
allowing you to choose between flying practice and going
for a mail run. Choosing one of these puts you onto
the next options screen which asks whether you would
like to fly over Kansas, Washington, Colorado, Michigan,
Massachusetts or Texas. If you choose the mail run option
you're asked to input the level from the four provided:
student, private, senior and command. Practice run also
has four levels which are clear, landing, contest and
IFR. After that it's up to you to choose whether you're
flying by day or night.
The
practice run offers a useful training mission and allows
you to get the hang of flying the plane. The object
of the practice run is to take off, fly a long loop
around the runway and land again safely, and to help
you with this simple manoeuvre the program offers both
audio and visual aid. On taking off advice is offered
in the form of superb digitised speech saying 'increase
throttle and climb to 1500 feet'. You're told to 'retract
landing gear' and 'turn left to 270 degrees'. If you're
not following the instructions, flying too high or low,
you are told of your mistake, and repeatedly told until
the mistake is rectified. Verbal help is on hand all
the way around the loop and if the instructions are
dutifully followed than it's quite a simple task to
land the plane. If you still can't get the hang of landing
then you can try the landing option which puts you on
the glide path down to the runway. Again speech is used
to guide you through. This option really gets you used
to landing the plane successfully.
The
contest mode allows multiple players to compete in completing
a tricky cross-wind landing and a score is given depending
on how gently the plane touches down.
As
a Mail Pilot your job is to deliver five mailbags to
their destinations in the least amount of time. The
program lets you decide how much fuel and mail to take
(don't forget, the more mail and fuel on board the more
the plane weighs, giving a loss in performance and speed).
Once you've decided on your supplies, a map of the state
you're overflying (as in 'US state') is displayed on
screen, showing the landscape features and the five
aerodromes you have to fly to. Using this it's up to
you to plan the best possible route. As the game progresses
the weather conditions gradually deteriorate with winds
and clouds increasing, and there's a possibility that
turbulence could develop. On the higher difficulty levels
the plane is also prone to mechanical and instrument
failure, for example the engine may overheat.
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