Hi Everyone,

I purchased YAP2 and an additional mission pack but have yet to get into it. I never got involved with the Wings Over series, not sure why, but I want to jump in now! I've spent many hours in the past with sims like Falcon4, Janes F-18 and many of the Heli sims including Black Shark.

I would appreciate any advice or suggestions on getting up to speed with YAP2 given my lack of WO* experience.

Thanks!

Let me take a stab at this.

Polls we have run reveal that our demographic describes our customer as someone interested in aviation history. The average YAP player does not describe himself as a hard-core gamer (then turn around and list all the games they have gone through getting to this point).

The first thing, then, is to ask yourself what book, story, myth or image from the era draws you to it? Phantoms? Hueys? Crusaders? Next, prepare yourself to go relive one of those missions.

By "prepare", we mean fly the practice missions like you mean it. YAP is not PacMan or Grand Theft Auto...where any doofus can just push a button and "do". The downfall and entry fee of aviation sims is that the player must fly. The complication of YAP is that the player must fly well.

There are 5 practice missions that will get you up to speed to fly the first "10" sorties. They are not dull. We purposely filled them with eye candy so you will fly them. You will learn what you need to know and learn what you need to research (like what keystrokes do what).

Then pick a mission from the first set and go do it. But here there is also something to do first. Read about the mission. We provide a short briefing about the history and what goes on in the game. You may want to Google more about it. The more you know, the better we look. You will see that we went to a some trouble to make it familiar to both a participant and someone wishing to see it from the inside. Also, the more you know, the more likely you are to WANT to see it as real. Once you take the Leap of Faith, you are in Vietnam in the 1960's and the outcome of your flight is entirely up to you. You will see what the aircrews saw...what the teller of the story told us.

I had Falcon 4. It's great art and programming. But it's just a cartoon of a fantasy using 3D drawings of airplanes...Grand Theft Airplane. When you have completed a YAP mission, you will know you have accomplished something and learned something, too.

Try that.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot....you get to blow things up.

Well if you do decide to get into WOx as well as YAP2 bear in mind the series has now been replaced with the Strike Fighters 2 Platform - which out of the box are far superior to their original incarnations.
For example the new version of WOV is called Strike Fighters: Vietnam - they had to be rewritten to work with Vista/Win7 properly - but some of the new feature and cockpits with the new series are just too good to turn down

I have had Falcon 4AF for Years and had the original before that - but have everyone of the TW series - they can be a bit addictive due to the amount of things you can do with them.

However there is plenty of life in WOV still - and 1000s of mods out there for it - I would assume you have a separate install of WOV (YAP2 must be kept separate)that you have patched upto the latest version? (October 2008 I think)

You may be best off getting used to some of the standard WOV game play before going into YAP which may be too advanced straight off - you will also appreciate YAP more haha

Thank you for your responses!

I have already purchased SF2 but have not gotten around to playing, similiar to YAP2. I just need to fire them up and jump in!

zerocinco, I really like the steps you listed and can see how your sim would be much more immersive give the history of it. I'm looking forward to getting into it after some much needed practice!

Thanks