Warbirds 3

Rating:
Summary: Warbirds - The closest experience to WWII air combat
Review: My first experience with Warbirds was back in August 1995 when it was known as Confirmed Kill. The version I'm reviewing now is the downloadable version of Warbirds III. Warbirds is primarily a massively multiplayer WW2 air combat simulation. Although there are some offline training missions, the online experience is what makes Warbirds special. The best single player flight simulation doesn't come close to giving you a realistic air combat experience. Imagine flying with/against hundreds of other skilled human pilots and not some flawed AI! Players select one of four "countries" identified by colour (gold, green, red, purple). Get noticed for your combat skills and you may be invited to join the many virtual squadrons which greatly enhance the online experience. There are also organised scenarios which recreate historical battles and these are really the greatest experiences an online pilot can participate in.
Naturally a good internet connection to the servers is critical to having a good experience.

You can choose to fly any of the numerous (and growing) list of aircraft, fighters, bombers, transport planes and even drive ground vehicles. The simulation strives to model aircraft performance as accurately as possible and that is one of the strengths of the simulation (although there are reduced realism arenas for new pilots).

Warbirds III is a major improvement over the previous incarnation graphically...breathtaking graphics! Unfortunately that does mean older systems and graphics hardware aren't supported (my voodoo3 had to be replaced with a GeForce3 Ti200). Pilots don't have the hardware but still want the great experience can revert to Warbirds 2.