Game - Gunship III Combat Flight Simulator by PNTK Inc.

• Free version Mac OSX 10.6.6 orgreater, vers. 3.7.9

  Target Audience and Genre

  Intermediate Gamer

  Combat flight simulators - VietNam War

  Rated “Family Sharable”

  I found Gunship III (the free version) mildly fun and equally frustrating. The positive aspects of multiple aircraft types, jet, piston powered fixed wing, and various rotowing craft (helicopters) add variety and expand the players skills. Many have found this game comparable to Winds of Steel by Jerome Labussiere, WW2 Wings of Duty also by PNTK. In the plus side it has reasonable good graphis for the terrain especcially at the higest resolutin and quaility (with the associated increase use of rescources). Myself and many other reviewers had a problem with the controls and documentation that led to a lot of frustration until one figures our the quirks for the aircraft the user wants to fly.

  Camera problems noted

  The developer should pay increased attention to the connection between input and visual displayed particulary cockpit views. For example in the helicopter pitch changes often looked like the helicopter ‘backed up’ for a second to get the new view before resuming forward motion. The developer should also try make the camera transition smoother.

  Control problems noted

  I find that ‘aerodynamiccly correct’ response of the instuments displayed in the cockpit to user input greatly increases the enjoyment of the game, the developer should do further testing and work in this area, Xplane11 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X have set the gold standard for such integration.

  Interaction problems noted

  The developer should make sure that user inputs get translated to belivable movement of the air craft and that some consistency exists in the controls. The trim settings use steps from the key board allowing the ‘pilot’ to fine tune the flight and the roll resonse I found reasonable for keyboard input. The helicopter controls had no such steps they had either a neutral position or full up, full down, full left or full right with no ability to fine tune the flight. I did not find any “cross controls” i.e. controls that react differently in reality than it does in the game.

  Final remarks

  The devolper could of bemeifitted with more testing of the user interface especially the ‘help’ screen for first time users. Such testing would have brought many of the problem to light.