Hi all,

I haven't had time for sims for a number of years. I used to spend time on this forum under the handle "Slappy". For whatever reason I can't get into that old account, and the email address is long gone so I made a new one.

On a lark, I picked up Hornet. I came into it cold. Out of fond recollection for Janes Superhornet I figured what the heck.

I also have fond recollection for this forum, and figured I'd post my first impressions.

I consider this module in its current state a masterpiece and worth twice the price.

It all depends on what you are looking for I suppose. I'm a HOTAS and cockpit geek. One of those. I'm not a pilot, but have sat in an F14, an F16 and an F4 cockpit. Something about that office...

...and I gotta say. Belsimtek / ED just NAILED it with this module. Holy hell when I put on the Oculus and fired this thing up for the first time I was completely floored. I mean every control pops out. Weathered perfectly. Just... pure visceral joy. The displays... HUD... all of it. All clickable.

The feeling of flight is top notch. Way better than anything I remember from Janes or BMS (haven't tried that one in ages).

To be fair, some of this is about VR. In 2d, although still amazing, is not the same. Like seeing the Mona Lisa in black and white.

It has been a long long time since any sim has inspired me like this one. To make sure I wasn't missing some renaissance, I did fire up some of the FC3 birds and took a super brief look at the latest BMS. Nope. This thing is special. As soon as the final manual is released I am going to pony up for full color printing. Haven't decided on spiral bound or hardcover.

I already ponied up for a Warthog HOTAS. The CH gear I have is fine, but this thing deserves the very best. Comes on Friday and I'm so excited.

I noticed other things about the sim too. I picked up the Persian Gulf map, because, you know you can't fly a Hornet and it not be desert. I was tooling around in free flight and ran out of fuel near a city. I slowly glided down, preparing to try a street landing and suddenly I noticed the civilian traffic. Cars with headlights! Little thing I know, but blew me away. Never flown a sim that had that.

I read a post here angry that they were going to be adding cows, but I gotta say, the little touches like that really elevate this thing. As long as they don't have the same developer who is working on A2G radar work on this instead, I say absolutely go for it.

I've also read a lot of vitriol about broken promises from ED. I can't speak to that as I haven't been following them. I will say that I got more for my money than I expected, and certainly their early access is nothing like getting a jpg #%&*$# ala Star Citizen.

Back to learning carrier landings and seeing if I can make sense of the mission builder.