User Guide

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Flight Instruction

Fly! - Chapter 1

Those features, though, aren’t what we’ll address in this

manual. With an interface as realistic as FLY!’s, you don’t need

“yet another computer manual” (and, for those of you who want

to learn about keyboard shortcuts and other “simulator only” fea-

tures, those total nerds

my esteemed colleagues over at the com-

puter side of the house have provided an excellent one). Instead,

what you’re holding is almost entirely a flight manual, written as

though I were actually instructing you in the airplane (as I do in

real life). In fact, I’ll make almost no mention of keyboard or even

mouse commands unless absolutely necessary; since operation of

the program is so simple and instinctive, I’ll just say something like

“use the prop control to increase the RPM” or “tune the nav radio

to 118.5 mHz,” with the assumption that you’ll simply reach out

and do it.

This means that it’s very worthwhile for you to take a look

through the Simulation Interface (see page 4) now to make sure

you’re up to speed on the basic techniques. They’re all simple and

self-consistent: you use the same moves to “grab” and operate any

switch, knob, or handle on the panel, regardless of its function (or,

for that matter, in which airplane it’s installed). Again, this is mere-

ly realism - in the real airplane, your hand would work the same

way all the time.

A MATTER OF CONTROL:

FLY! supports just about any input device currently available,

including both conventional and force-feedback joysticks. That

being said, however, I’d personally suggest that you’ll get the most

out of FLY! if you use a control yoke: all five of the airplanes mod-

eled in this release have yokes, rather than sticks, in their actual

cockpits. Similarly, for single-engine airplanes, a simple throttle (or

the one provided on most yokes) will suffice; those fancy multi-

function ones, studded with so many buttons and switches they

look like a chunk sawed out of a bassoon, are more suited to mil-

itary flight simulations, and have no counterpart in civil aircraft at

this time. (For multi-engine airplanes you’ll most likely be grab-

bing the screen throttles with your mouse.) Rudder pedals are an

excellent idea, particularly if you’re planning serious engine-fail-

ure work in the multiengine birds.

Fly! - Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the start of what we’re sure will be an exciting,

entertaining, and instructive experience. FLY! has been designed

to replicate the sights and sounds of flying some of general avia-

tion’s best-known aircraft with unparalleled realism. It goes much

farther than that, however. The handling and aerodynamic

responses of all the airplanes available have been mathematically

duplicated, or “modeled,” with a level of accuracy that approach-

es (and, in many cases, surpasses) that of full-scale airline and mil-

itary flight simulation systems. Extremely detailed terrain render-

ing, based on actual satellite imagery and topographic data, makes

the outside view as realistic as possible, while the combination of

photorealistic instrument panels and actual working panel con-

trols (i.e., you can simply “grab” the appropriate switch or knob

with your mouse) completes the picture and puts you right in the

pilot’s seat. (After all - how many real airplanes are controlled from

keyboards?)

Want even more realism? FLY! has a very sophisticated

weather “engine” to provide weather effects from innocuous fair-

weather clouds to blinding fog, or the firehose rain of a thunder-

storm.