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!

Looks Good
Feels Good


DONT LET PEOPLE TELL YOU THAT HOTAS DOESNT WORK...
they are just slow. you can just go into options and bind it yourself... i played for 1.5hrs now just in VR and using HOTAS

It was amazing and fun.

I was sooo excited for this game, bought the deluxe edition and everything, but there are a ton of issues readily apparent as soon as I booted it up and started messing with things, this all coming from a flight sim nerd, doing complex things and setting bindings is not something I'm a stranger to in other games, this isn't a skill issue review, this is technical difficulties. One, I can't use solely the HOTAS and mouse, I have to pick up my VR controllers and use them for menus despite me not wanting to use them at all, and despite the game having a flatscreen version where this is all apparently possible without VR controllers. I want HOTAS only, mouse as secondary if necessary. Secondly to this, the valve index controller support is awful, the toggle grip is so unreliable I can't even even take off reliably.

I maxed out all the graphics settings and had stable framerates on the 5090 and a 9800x3d and 64gb of ram. Besides the cockpit and plane models up close, which are beautiful, the graphics are awful, vegetation and other vehicles are either a shimmery mess without using Anti Aliasing or a blurry mess with the anti aliasing. Changing resolution or letting it auto select did not help whatsoever, using steam VR supersampling helped a lot though. I couldn't figure out how to simply use HOTAS once i was in the cockpit or out of it because they force you to use VR controllers for the menus outside of the cockpit, it wanted to keep only using the joysticks on my VR controllers. I honestly don't know how the VR version of this game passed quality control. I actually think War thunder has better VR support somehow. Ultimately, the lack of support for HOTAS and mouse is what sealed the deal for me. I will probably want to try this again when VR and HOTAS support are better

As someone who played Warbirds online in the 90's, IL2 and DCS, the negative reviews I have read are all from people who have spent 20 minutes with the game. If you spend a little time setting it up, everything works. It seems that everyone is getting immediately frustrated with the UI and gives up because they dont want to spend too much time and not be able to get a refund. I have VKB Joystick and rudder pedals. A Winwing Orion 2 throttle and was able to bind all of them perfectly.
Admittedly the UI is very clunky and I would like to see the developers make it optional to use the hand controllers or control it with a mouse, that would be a great improvement. They must have been shooting for some kind of realism but failed miserably.
Other than that the game is definitely a keeper, graphics are smooth and very good.
Spend some time setting it up and I am sure you will be rewarded. Havent played very long yet but the flight model seems decent.

You can view my VR gameplay & impressions here: https://youtu.be/eqlkI8hZvvw

I definitely see why several people have left a negative review for this game. Yes, the UI is absolutely terrible, especially in VR. It's ugly and difficult to navigate. The controls aren't always great either.

If you're expecting the interactivity of a VTOL, you're going to be disappointed. There's a few things you can interact with, but most of the gauges and what nots, are just there for the visual information. However, there are some things you can interact with in the cockpit, including the flight stick, the throttle, and the gears lever ... you can also interact with the canopy on some planes. You can also use the joystick or buttons on your motion controller for greater control.

The focus of the game is on online multiplayer pvp. However, there's a lot of single player content. There's missions you can select. Plus there's scenarios you can play out as well. I do wish the tutorial was better. Currently, it's just really pictograms you're supposed to decipher. Even the starter missions that are supposed to train you ... do a very bad job of it. You have the yellow rings in the air in some of the missions which take you out of the immersion.

Despite the negatives, the flying itself is fun. It's difficult enough to bring a challenge with some nice physics as well. It's no so difficult that you give up right away (like some hard core sims). It's simcade. A good balance for those newer to flying IMO or looking to upgrade their flying skills.

Game is running on the Dagor Engine. On my RTX 5090, I was getting a steady 90 fps. I did not experience any serious issues or bugs. You can play comfortably seated.

Rate 7.5/10. Easy enough to fly in the air, hard enough that landing for me usually ended in a ball of fire.

I bought this game! If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator group Oculus Rift Reviews.

i was extremely excited for this game personally, stayed up all night to purchase it as soon as it released only to find a poorly optimized mess, coming from gaijin i expected better, after all this is just a reskin of war thunder with vr being the focus. but to get to the point game struggles to run smoothly on even the lowest of setting, even in the main lobby i struggled with freezes and game crashes, this is not a worth while investment at this current time the devs need to work on it some more and optimize it better, i couldn't even test the issues other players where having with the controls because i couldn't even get into a match without crashing, btw my pc runs smooth with a multitude of other vr titles so i know its not my pc being bad with vr games.

Well, I am 2.6 hours into this game, but with the state of the VERY mixed reviews, I feel like I must write an early review, and I will update it as I get more time into it.

I will start off by saying that I am a lifelong consumer of this genre of games, and I am also a War Thunder player since way back before it even had its name. I alpha-tested War Thunder way back then (Dec. 1st, 2011) in the first wave of alpha testing, so I have been around Gaijin for years and have seen all their ups and downs, the good and the bad.
Let's start with what Aces of Thunder is:
I think that this game is meant to be a throwback to the early days of Gaijin's first flight combat games, such as IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey (2009), Birds of Steel (2012), and the earlier side of War Thunder, but with the focus on virtual reality with 4K headset support.
This game has no planes to unlock, no aircraft parts to unlock, none of the upgrade side of War Thunder.
It is for the fans of these games, and it adds a smooth VR experience into that mix.
In time, it may further expand on gameplay for the flat-screen player, but currently, just know that if you are buying it to play on a screen and not in VR, it has its limitations, which are mostly because of the lack of head tracker support. So expect to go old school and use an analog stick, mouse, or hat switch for looking around in the cockpit.
Also note that there is no third-person view, and you are locked in the cockpit.
For many of us, this is a huge and important positive thing that many of us have wanted.
As many have pointed out, War Thunder has Sim mode (full flight models locked in cockpit), but in WT's Sim mode, you must have: Your plane fully parts-out.
I would say at least 2 hours+ of time to play.
The willingness to put in all that time and constantly search for a fight.

Aces of Thunder fixes most of that, as PvP matches are like 24 minutes long on smaller maps, and you are in the action of a furball pretty quickly. You pretty much put on your VR, click a button or two, and BAM—you're in a PvP fight. Locked into cockpit only and in your selected aircraft. You are not punished, as the plane doesn't need parts to be viable in a dogfight!
That is, in a nutshell, where Aces of Thunder currently shines.

Are there problems?
Yes, but they are more minor annoyances that need to be worked out.
My biggest complaint is that I have to use VR controllers for the menus!
It's not game-breaking, but it is annoying, and I expect this to be fixed pretty quickly.
One of the main pluses of Gaijin is that they fix things that are issues very quickly—way beyond most game companies out there. Lord knows they make the money on WT but they do work on it a lot.

Now, controls are actually pretty solid in this game, but every single flight combat game needs its controls tweaked and set up to each individual's preference, so know that going in!
The fastest way is to completely play with your VR headset's VR controllers, and while not optimal, I will say that this actually works pretty well except for using the menu system.
This again is annoying but not game-breaking.
Controlling the aircraft in flight and combat with the VR controllers actually surprised me! It is not my thing, but it works surprisingly well, and you can use the analog sticks on these controllers to fly also.
Point is, if you just want to jump right in and play quickly, this is a very valid way to do so.

A standard game controller works well for flying, but it will need to be tweaked to your liking.
I had zero issues doing this, and I would say in 15 minutes I had my game controller dialed in and was shooting people down. Most flight sticks can be set up and bound to the controls with no issues, but I am sure that will be further expanded on.

Look, the game is pretty reasonably priced in both available options, and despite a couple of annoying minor issues that I have mentioned, it runs super smooth on my rig, which is an older PC but with an upgraded 5070 Ti.

I feel safe in saying that the recommended specs they have listed seem pretty spot on (they recommend an RTX 3070 Ti or higher for optimal performance). I have a buddy playing it on a 30-series card with no issues also.
Final conclusion:
If you're a flat-screen player and you can no longer play without a head tracker, then wait to buy it or know that you are going to play old school until that is added.
If you're a VR player with a solid mid-range 30-series GPU or above that, and you want a War Thunder experience with a little tweaking and setup, with locked cockpit and a blend of WT's RB and Sim battles blended together for a player that just wants to have a LOT of fun in a 2-hour evening, then this is a game you're gonna LOVE!
And it's only going to get better.
It runs smooth in VR at 4K and holds 90 FPS with no issues for me.
I have ZERO Simmering or any Anti-Alias problems, like some have mentioned.
For me the game looks Great in 4k on a Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop.

I have had zero crashes or freezes yet, and other than the couple things I mentioned, I am enjoying it a lot so far!
Tonight, I plan to put in a solid 8 hours of gameplay, and if anything comes up, I will add what I found to this "early review."
Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped some of you out on your decision to pick it up or wait a bit or not to get it.
If you do get it, I will see you in the skies!
Most sincerely,
Desode

The graphics are surprisingly poor, it has a forced sharpening filter which makes the game visually very ugly, it looks *much* worse ingame than in trailers. Its not the edge smoothing, even with it turned off its still present - its a classic case of it looks great in a video, but it looks bad as a *game* in motion

Because of all the post processing applied to the game, much of the test in the cockpit is very difficult to read, as everything has sharpening halos around it. The game is graphically very poor as a result

There's also minimal content, you'll have seen everything after an hour of play for a £25 game