to get started in FT, even before you try the campaigns...

set yourself up in a single player dogfight with a couple of japanese Ann light bombers on a flat map such as Rangoon, then practice head-ons for a few minutes. I've attempted to literally head-on collide with enemy planes, but only have been successful once... but that death may have been from a kill by the enemy, so it appears that collisions may be disabled?

to fire with any real accuracy, i had to set my mouse settings very low, in both Windows itself and in-game... ymmv
(edit: mouse controls have now been adjusted by the devs, so spend some time with them first)

because my mouse was now set to lowest setting... instead of using my mouse to turn, i used my 'sharp turn left' and 'right' keys to do fast left and right 180s, and blipped those keys to turn in smaller turns

after the head-on practice, lead the remaining enemy planes up a couple of thousand feet, and they will dutifully follow you upstairs.... now BnZ 'em by quickly turning 180 degrees, then diving on the end plane and zoom away... then repeat until all are dead, or at least until enough are dead to allow you to safely dogfight.

watch your 'radar' and stop your 180 turn just as the farthest-away enemy plane enters the darker V-shaped visible area, and concentrate fire on him alone, ignoring the others.
you'll have a better chance at knocking him down with a prolonged burst.

now, rerun 'dogfight' again with a different weather condition, and add several more light bombers during each rerun until you can easily kill all ten...
then switch to light fighters. LFs are much more manueverable.
however, AI pilots are not nearly as deadly as RL pilots, so...


***enjoy the 'brake' key!*** as i haven't had to land any plane yet, i'm not able to comment on the actual braking effect on the ground... but in the air, it's a joy!

it's a fully automated horizontal stall Pugachev's Cobra, where you instantly pitch up and stall, bleeding off an easy 100 mph! you're able to blip it and modify the length of the stall if required, enabling your attempts to remain behind a slower target

the lead compensation circle accurary does seem to vary at different distances... if you're firing deflection shots at a distant enemy, 'lead' even the lead compensator by a few degrees

i've seen an already reported, repeatable bug... if you lead AI enemy planes up too high too quickly from the surface at the beginning of the dogfight, some enemy planes will appear to have dived under the surface of the ground, and become unkillable (as of 0.8.0)
you'll see the red 'enemy indicators', but no plane can be seen in the air. Dive on those red triangles from high, then pull out... you'll see them change directions and attempt to follow you from below ground level!

on the rangoon map, you'll see an identical onscreen red 'enemy indicator' as you see with enemy planes, but it's actually an enemy bombing target, killable only should you choose to dogfight with a bomber. good luck if you try that

it shows up on radar as a building, but in the heat of a dogfight, when you see a red triangle, you jump on it... sadly, it's that @&$* building again!

I hope that someday this might be changed to a red square or some shape / color than the identical arrowhead triangle shape used by flying enemies.


i'm looking forward to the release of the remaining campaigns, and more pilots in the multiplayer area!

see you in the air!