It's a real shame this is having such a rough launch, "very negative" feels harsh BUT the flight sim genre has had years of forming and developing to the point where it's most avid users expect a certain level of features and interaction, in those departments it feels like Aces of Thunder falls short for die-hard flight sim fans.

However, for me, a MUCH more casual user, I'm having a blast with the game, whilst I agree there are issues that need addressing (a proper tutorial, a little more interaction in the cockpits and some tightening up of the control schemes on offer) I will say that this is a fantastic VR flight combat experience that treads the line between arcade fun and simulation realism pretty nicely. Fingers crossed Gaijin take on board all this initial feedback and deploy some patches to appease the masses.

I'd personally like to see two things implemented:

- An option to lean more towards "arcadey" for those who want that kind of experience, nothing crazy but perhaps just a setting that can be toggled which marks enemies/objectives with red diamonds/markers so that less experienced players spend less time flying about looking for their objective (it can sometimes feel a tad aimless).
- I'd love to see the missions extended a little bit with actual take off and landing segments, the dogfights are fantastic but it often feels like missions end abruptly, I'd love to have a proper wind down at the end of a mission where you need to reach a location or put wheels back on the ground.

LISTEN, i have to call out some of these reviews as i cant work out if they're dcs fanboys or just incompetent. the games menus and keybinding is clunky for sure and that is a fair point and it should have way more hotas/hosas ease of use out of the box this i agree with, however after 20 minutes in free flight i had my HOSAS gladiator vkb's working fine with no problems at all. you also need to to lower all relative sense for all axis all the way down to around 20% minimum. is this ideal no...but most new sim games need elbow grease to get going out of the box.

you can bind any key to your joysticks/throttle i have no idea what these reviews are talking about, i personally leave the motion controls on the desk and only use them for menus. as far as graphics are concerned in VR this game is stunning and runs great (for VR). the audio design is top tier. you can also use manual trim, R and L brakes, manual landing gear, throttle propellor manually, change mixture, change water pressure, manually adjust flaps and canopy. its DEFINITELY a sim. in battles your plane over heats, suffers from temperture spikes, the wind can snap your wings, you can black out, bottom out etc among other things

some of the most fun i've had in VR in a flight sim. combat is great and intense as the damage model is also great, the sense of immersion and the scale in VR might be the best i've seen in a flight sim.

only negative i can find so far is the menus and keybinding stuff is clunky and needs work but can be worked with, with a little perserverance

EDIT: my experience is in the VR mode only but for me this is one of the best VR Games ive played in years.

Please don't listen to the negative reviews. I am a long time War Thunder VR player using HOTAS and have been looking forward to a game that levels the playing field, locking everyone to cockpit view and no awful homing missiles so it takes actual skill rather than just clicking the mouse on something for it to die.

HOTAS is easily configured in the menu, I have no understanding why people can't do that. Configured mine in moments. VR controllers work great for the menu and I can also use them in cockpit if needed. Not every control in the cockpit is accessible - I don't care, if you want that fly MSFS, everything you need is usable. Throttle seems to on a switch up/down basis rather than axis - no big deal.

Performance is excellent, I'm on a 4070TS put graphics to Max and it's pulling 90fps with no issues at all. Looks really nice inside, great balance between realism and performance. Dials look so clear and readable, love the way it uses the head tracking to show up each dial.

I've only played for half an hour so will update this review later but felt it was important to counter a lot of the silly negative reviews I saw. It nearly put me off but Gaijin have always made War Thunder absolutely excellent, especially in VR. I only gave up getting up the tree in War Thunder because I actually found the jets and homing missiles were a bit boring compared to the raw dogfighting in the earlier planes and now this game brings all that together and makes everyone fight in realistic style. Can't wait to get into this properly.

Congratulations to Gaijin on another great game and thank you double that for waiting until the game was ready to go instead of all the nonsense "Beta" releases we see lately where it's not worth buying until a year later and there's every danger they just give up and you end up with a game that doesn't even work (Yes, I'm looking at you EA WRC!)

See you in the skies!