Tom Puleo (cmdrAmphetamine)

If you’re a Star Wars/Sci-fi Geek who likes to play games not just to win but to enjoy the experience, especially in VR, READ ON! I’ve been playing flight sims since the 80’s on my IBM PC jr. so sitting in the cockpit of an X Wing and TIE Fighter is right up there with sitting in the captains chair on the bridge of my own star ship; it’s a dream come true. To be clear, this game was made to be played in VR. In fact, I would say this is a VR game with 2D support and not the other way around. The visuals and sounds are what they are supposed to be to make playing this game an experience. Content is NOT king here, the game play is the reason to purchase. There’s just enough ships to fly with just enough customization options to make play really fun and not cumbersome. If you think you might complain about not having enough hairstyles to choose from for your pilot, you might choose to spend your money elsewhere. So is it perfect? Of course not! What game is at release? It’s pretty darn good though. I’m playing with a Coffee Lake i5 OC’d to 4.4 with 16GB 2800. The game is installed to an M.2 drive. I use an Oculus Rift driven by an EVGA 1080 SC OC’d to about 1970/5600. With ASW off I can get pretty constant 90 fps with some drops. I spent a bunch of time trying to play with the graphics settings but haven’t quite found the best balance for my rig to stop the frame drops but a driver update or game update will likely come around soon. I’m playing with a Saitek X52. It took me like 2 hours to get the game playable and there’s still some functions I have yet to map. Which brings me to my only real gripe. The controls are way to complicated. The different pop up menus and “wheels” are so complex that I’ve done all I can to configure the HOTAS so that I don’t need to access them which to me means they could do without them. Another example is that with all the buttons on the X52 I still haven’t figured out how to how to map “Divert Power” AND “Convert Power” yet. It’s a cool concept but, do you need both and If you do, it makes flying feel way clunky and not fluid, intuitive. Again, I’m sure these will be address over time. If you decide if you want to join in, I think you’ll agree, “Squadrons” is WELL worth the $39.99.