|
| By Brad Cook Birds have always made it look easy. Leonardo da Vinci longed to do it. The Wright brothers made it a reality. And now you can do it on your Mac, courtesy of MacSoft’s Fly! II for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. |
|
 Graphics soar to new heights: Sunset at 10,000 feet |
Helicopters are included on your flight roster.
And if you’ve talked to PC-using friends who spent hours downloading the 862 MB of additional data that didn’t come with their copies of the game, feel free to let them know that the Mac version of Fly! II is ready for takeoff right out of the box. The three CDs include 72 extra maps and 6 additional planes, plus a performance enhancement or two. |
An Open-Ended Experience
Actually, we should let you in on a technicality: Fly! II isn’t really a game. It’s more of an open-ended experience that allows you to decide how long you will play. There’s no way to win or lose, so load it on your PowerBook and take it with you on the road for some flights of fancy when business trips get boring.
“I’m not a pilot,” says MacSoft product manager Al Schilling, “but I have had the occasional opportunity to take the yoke while in a small plane. There’s something about it that just gives you a very cool feeling, and Fly! II does an amazing job of capturing that feeling.”
Excellent in-flight physics mean more fun.
To fully immerse yourself in that feeling, make sure your Mac is equipped with a joystick or, for more realism, a flight yoke. You can even add on pedals and a rudder control for the ultimate flight experience.
And if you want to play Fly! II online, just select the “Multiplayer” option in the game’s main screen and click on “Connect...” A window that lists the available servers to join will appear; you can play with both PC and Mac users when you play online.
Flights of Fancy
When you first step into your virtual plane, the complicated control panel in front of you may look daunting, but Fly! II offers a tutorial that helps you get in the air quickly. After you get a feel for flying, we bet you’ll be hooked on the experience.
 |
Fly! II Media |  |
||||
 |
|
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
Says Schilling: “If you’ve ever wanted to fly — and a lot of people have — I would strongly recommend getting this game. It’s not about shooting things out of the sky. It’s about getting things into the sky.”
Once you’re up in the air, you’ll notice that the scenery around you is just as realistic as the plane you’re flying in. Fly! II checks the clock on your Mac when you start the game, so your surroundings will be night or day depending on the clock. And if you get comfortable with the cockpit view and want to get a different vantage on the game, you can select one of five exterior views and watch your plane cruise through the sky.
Fully rendered cockpits add to the realism.
The Mac OS X Advantage
If you choose to fly in Mac OS X, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the speed advantages gained in dual-processor Power Macs, thanks to the enhancements in OpenGL and Core Audio, according to Rob Minnis, senior software engineer at Fly! II developer Terminal Reality.
OpenGL and Core Audio take the graphics and the sound, respectively, and assign them to a separate processor in Mac OS X, which allows the primary processor to increase the overall speed of the game. This translates to a better flying experience for you.
Fly vintage aircraft.
So are you ready to get your virtual pilot’s license? Fly! II is available now at the online Apple Store, a Apple retail store, or an Apple authorized reseller near you.
Check out what aircraft are waiting for you to hop into and see what destinations you can visit. 
  
|