Dawn of Aces
$14.95		(Win95/98/Me) (Retail) (DAWNACESPR)

Interactive Magic

Game / Flight Sim

Ratings:

7.5 / 10 from Cyber Gamer

Featuring Offline and Online Gameplay

Taking off at first light from your secluded airfield, you begin the hunt. You are a proud knight, not sheathed in armor, but surrounded by wood and canvas. Soaring through the air now, and high over enemy lines, you suddenly spot your prey. You pause a second to catch a breath, and with the sun to your back bank your aeroplane into a steep dive, whining toward your enemy.

As you bear down on the unsuspecting aviator, the words of your first flight instructor still ring in your ears, "He who conquers his fear of death will be the master of the air." Indeed, those that follow the belief survive, those who don't go down in flames. You're in range now, ravaging the enemy's backside with bullets as your machine gun spouts flame and hot metal. Then it happens - you make eye contact, and as quickly as it began, it ends, your victim spinning and falling from the sky in a gyrating dance of death.

Suddenly you realize, it could have just as easily been you.

Features:

Offline training to hone your flight, gunnery, and gunnery skills

Head-to-head play - 2 players can connect via modem, serial, LAN, or Internet connections.

Features legendary WWI planes including Fokker Dr.1, Spad VII, Sopwith Camel, Halberstadt CLII, Albatross D Va, and Bristol F.2B.

High-fidelity flight models based on actual WWI data..

3D-accelerated and non-accelerated gameplay available in the same online arenas.

Exclusive MEGAplayer technology for smooth Internet play with and against hundreds of players per online arena.

Multiple online arenas, each supporting hundreds of players simultaneously.

Welcome to Dawn of Aces!

In 1914, merely 11 years after the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kittyhawk, the world plunged into war. As the conflict in Europe ground towards a year long stalemate in the trenches, aviation became one of the primary means of seeing beyond the enemy's front and of carrying the battle past the desolation of No Man's Land.

The task of these early pilots was to scout enemy positions, spot for artillery, carry out light bombing, and deny the use of the air to the enemy for those same purposes.

At the start of the war, unarmed planes simply carried a pilot and an observer aloft on scouting flights. When enemy aircraft passed each other nothing more than a wave was exchanged. It wasn't long, however, before pilots started bringing rifles to fire at enemy aircraft. These evolved into machine gun mounts for the observer, and then to single seat machines with machine guns mounted above or to the side of the propeller and, finally, to synchronized machine guns firing through the propeller of the ever more advanced aircraft designs. The fighter plane was born.

The average life span of a pilot at the front was woefully short. The aircraft were fragile, often experimental, and the pilots lacked useful devices such as parachutes. Although many accounts recall the chivalry of the air, the war for the skies was a brutal and unforgiving business. Surviving and succeeding called for skill, daring, and no small measure of luck.

In Dawn of Aces, you fly as a pilot for either the Allied or Central powers, and your mission is to actively seek out and shoot the enemy from the sky. If successful, you gain awards, rank, and perhaps fame in the international community of pilots in this mega multiplayer game.

If you fail...well...you have an advantage over such famous Aces as Richthofen, Lufbery, Fonck, Ball, Udet, Mannock, Voss, and Richenbacker...because you can just hit Fly again.

Requirements:

Requirements: Windows 95/98/Me with DirectX installed, 20MB hard disk space for full install, 25MB for complete 1024x768 resolution art, Pentium 133, Pentium 166 for D3D version, 32MB RAM.

Other Requirements: DirectX 5 video card with 2MB for 1024, D3D version compatible with many popular cards supporting Direct 3D (performance may vary), DirectX 5 compatible sound card, 9600 baud modem, MS compatible mouse.

Recommended for Best Results: Pentium 200 or faster, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95 compatible joystick, recommended 3D accelerator cards: check our website 3D FAQ.

Reviews:

Cyber Gamer, January 1999

"The first time you fire up the rotary engine of the Sopwith Camel in Dawn of Aces you may have a flashback. Yes, this looks and sounds like an ancient biplane, but the controls, radios and view system seem very familiar. Yep, Dawn of Aces' ancestry shines through. Imagic Online, the makers of one of the most successful World War II online flight sims, Warbirds, has now gone back in time and added a World War I sim for those who prefer an open cockpit and the wind rushing through their hair, and rarely want to get above 2,000 feet.

"With a graphics engine borrowed from Warbirds 2.01, Dawn of Aces is a younger brother with his own advantages and disadvantages. The result is an enjoyable flight sim but one that still has some growing up to do. Most significant on the list of advantages are flight models that are specially tuned for World War I planes. That sounds simple, but factors like engine torque and spin modeling are dramatically different between a World War II 2,000 horsepower brute and a 115 horsepower Fokker triplane. I can't vouch for what these World War I planes perform like in real life as I haven't had a chance to take a Sopwith Camel for a spin, but they do feel right. These planes are slow, underpowered and sometimes tricky to handle, just as they should be. It's like flying a moped. At the same time, planes this light and with this much wing area can turn on a dime. The Camel and triplane dance around in turns as if they had Harrier-style thrust vectoring. Even the less nimble F2B, Spad, Albatross and Halberstadt turn easily."

"Consider Dawn of Aces a work in progress. Unlike a boxed game, Dawn of Aces will receive revisions every couple of months or so. In the future it will probably add many of the improvements that it's screaming for. Two years from now it may have Zeppelins, Gothas and Handley-Page bombers, reconnaissance planes and ongoing trench warfare. But right now the multiplayer service runs at two bucks an hour, which is pretty steep for such a limited game. The game itself is a free download, but without multiplayer services it's quite boring. If you already have a Warbirds account, you're all set for Dawn of Aces (same login and password), so it's worth a look. Others may want to wait a couple of months for later versions to come out."

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