In the last 3 months I've managed maybe five minutes total in flight time. I either run the damn things into a tree, or get shot down almost immediately after leaving the warpgate, and with the respawn timer I haven't got a chance in hell of getting the practice I need to get over this hump. Since it's been decided by the powers that be that you will not do well in this game without flying I clearly need this skill. Therefore I need a simulator. Unfortunately despite the fact that video simulations have become common as a training tool in the 21st century, apparently this ability has been lost by the 23rd. God knows why Sony couldn't put a simple flight sim in the game, since the game INCLUDES a flight sim. Way to fail in the tutorial department guys. Is there a game out there where I can practice flying with a comparable system to Planetside where I don't need to wait 15 minutes between chances to ACTUALLY FLY THE F*&*&)*G PLANE?
Sadly, I don't believe so. It'd be awesome to be able to take a plane and learn how to fly in a VR non-combat area. Flying is probably the most difficult thing you can do in this game to be honest, because of the steep learning curve, and restrictions on resources/spawn timers. If anyone DOES know a relatively decent game that's got similar flight mechanics I'd be interested in giving it a shot.
The closest thing you'll find is a helicopter simulator. Couple of games out there for that. Apache: Air Assault probably has the closest thing to Planetside 2's flight. That being said, understand that Planetside 2's flight mechanics are weird as **** and a flight sim won't really help all that much. It's mostly just practice. Find a continent your faction mostly controls, screw around near the warpgate for a while. The most important thing to remember is that your thrust is split between forward/back and up/down, relative to your current orientation, not the ground. Gravity and aerodynamics are almost entirely absent from the flight modeling (they're there, just not very important), so throw out your concepts of normal flight physics and it gets a lot easier to deal with. Edit - I THINK there's some VTOL aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator X but getting into that will take you an absurd amount of time due to it making you learn a lot of stuff that isn't even vaguely relevant to PS2 flight.
Air Rivals would probably be a better one. It's a silly free MMO Jet game but it has relatively the same physics.
Try flying around in an Apache helicopter in Battlefield 3 if you have it. In Planetside the ESFs are kind of a hybrid chopper and jet, it doesn't really fly so much as it is a really fast helicopter.
Try Battlefield 3, you can get the basic game fairly cheap (I think $20 now), and they have jets in that game which flies similar to the fighters in this game. As you die a new one spawns, if you play via multiplayer you'll have to try to get in them before other people do, but not everybody flies jets in BF3 so you should have a chance. But again you could get shotdown often lol.
Also, remember don't just try and learn to fly using the default controls, customize them to what you are comfortable with. Change the ascent and descent keys use inverse mouse or a joystick, whatever makes it yours.
it takes time yes, but cert into the timer, the first one is pretty cheep and the second one is too If you wanna learn to fly in PS2 you are going to have to just fly in planet side 2. Yeah you're going to die, really quickly allot, and because of the lack of a tutorial. your just going to have to buckle up and soldier on. I know its not what you wanna hear. but its simple. Get good at flying the weird jet hybrids on planet side 2, by flying in planet side 2. Allso galaxys are the easiest to learn. another tip i can give you alot of new pilots dont know is you flip over and get stuck on the ground, press cntrl. Space is up, cntrl is down, but that is only relative to your ship not the world. (much like drive and reverse) so when you are upside down and you hit cntrl you go up instead of down.
Understanding and learning how to use vertical thrust, aid in pitch, roll turn maneuvers will increase your surviveability 10 fold. I have seen pilots going 200km turn on a dime and shoot opposite direction(Battlestar galactica viper style). Even having flown in beta a good bit, its a pain in the *** to try to dogfight good pilots. I use ESF as quick transport vehicles only, with rocketpods to kill tanks/infantry out in the open on the way to waypoint. Joystick would go a long way in helping as get sick of moving mouse constantly to turn, flip, s turn etc. (could probably increase sensitivity but then i would run into the ground more). The problem with joystick is its too sensitive with no analog control(for the most part).
I was just thinking they need a large area that is non combat for training purposes. I see guys trying to learn to fly in the warp zones and crashing into everything. Crashing into the 3 full transports about ready to take off is frustrating.
you would be surprised, most joysticks auto center, but the game wont register that, so when the stick auto center and your ship in game dose not flatten back out. it becomes awkward. this game is a pretty joystick unfriendly game, Id stick to mouse and keyboard if i were you.
this game is a pretty joystick unfriendly game, Id stick to mouse and keyboard if i were you. Yep, i had to turn the left/right roll off on joystick(move to keys on joystick) for it to be even somewhat useful. Finally unplugged it as i was better with the mouse/keyboard. It worked great in every other flying game out there.
Any simulation game will be much harder but will probably help a lot. You can check out some alternative mmofps or multiplayer games which offer air simulation with ground attacks on players.
boy start with a reaver, and practice flying 'nap of the earth' ie nothing higher than 15-30 ft. get used to navigating and mastering the terrain you'll invevatibly get good. Camouflage also helps. If you're a high flyer go blue, ifyou're low go camo so it matches the terrain
Oh also flares will increase your survival time. Your camo color does not matter. sometimes it dose not even change the underside of your plane and it stays white. Lastly if your shooting at them no would think, "dang that sky hates me!" anyways, save your money.
You could try an alternative mmofps which offers f2p gameing its called BattlegroundEurope, its similar to Planetside with probably a superb gameplay. Huge map and you can capture buildings. They offer combined arms with air & ground on a huge battlefield. The game is older so the graphics are not up to date, but its for sure a free alternative to train with a flight sim and with players online. You can attack them on the ground aswell. As far I remember they offer a free trial and f2p option. http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/ Another idea would be military sims like Armed Assault 2 or just pure air simulations, but you have to buy the game.
The closest real-world counterpart to fighters in PS2 is a VTOL jet, so any flight-sim or combined arms FPS that allows you to fly those are about as close as you can get. Either way, there really isn't anything that's identical. Even VTOLs in most other games that have them don't fly that similarly, the only shared characteristic being the use of both vertical and horizontal thrust in the same aircraft, but I think that's the bulk of the learning curve. Definitely some folks have made solid videos that teach you the basics, but most of it is unfortunately just going to be trial and error within the game. Again, this is why the VR sim from PS1 needs to make a comeback at some point. The trial system comes no where near that kind of flexibility, and the Warpgate is simply too small/crouded. Also, keep in mind that even good pilots will occasionally do stupid **** like crashing into cliffsides/trees and things like that, so I wouldn't stress about it too much if that happens to you.
