As I'm finishing up my Master's in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering degrees, and being in the Space industry for several years now with most experience being in rocket & missile design, and some in aircraft design, I can honestly say this game is a surprising amount of fun, and that the developers did their homework in achieving close to real-time physics, while making this accessible for all to enjoy. While I am no pilot, I am a flight sim enthusiast, and I understand how aircrafts of all sorts from kites to hypersonic missiles operate.
What I absolutely love about the game is that this is one of the few games I've seen that has captured the 4 forces of flight (weight, drag, thrust, lift) and put them in an actual numerical sense, so that you can build, try, and re-try if things go haywire--and honestly--sometimes you like to shoot for the Moon and put too much weight on your aircraft before it can take off. When the developers make it available to understand these numbers, it allows someone with experience to theorize adding certain additions to the plane and prioritizing what is needed next. For example, if you're too weighted down to the point where you cannot lift off or travel large distances, you'll need to assess the largest priorities of increasing lift (wing design mostly), upgrading the power source (propellers, turbofans, etc.), or even reconstructing the wheel design to reduce drag (air resistance) and increase overall velocity. The game negates many aspects of real-time flight, but I am also still quite new at this game, and very impressed overall. I have seen other parts of the map that make me assume changes are coming, and I am looking forward to those!
The game, I feel, respects your time and energy you put into designing or redesigning aircrafts of all sorts, and even allows you to try your hand at ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy ideas that likely won't work, but hey--it'd be cool if it did--amirite?
If I have one complaint in the game, it's that there are no units in the game itself, and being an aerospace nerd such as myself, I love to do math, and especially the math behind such things. But this is a very minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. Another minor complaint is that, as soon as I take off, I basically have to land again lol, but I presume that gets fixed as I get further into the campaign, or even sandbox mode--which I admittedly still have yet to try.
The design builder is nice and easy to use, you can easily undo mistakes (whether by misclicks or design), mirror common design objects like wings & wheels, you can try absurd designs, and you can also attempt to "stretch your limits" weight-wise without having the fear of losing your real life job or being incarcerated lol. For me, that's a fun addition :) And if and when you fail (and you probably will at some point, especially without units), you can just so easily go back to the drawing board with a simple "undo" function that brings you to the nearest airfield or base.
Whether you are a flight sim enthusiast, expert in the field who enjoys proper physics, a casual wanting to learn a bit of light design and flight mechanics, give this game a shot! It's a very chill game with no fear of flight or failure. As Ed Harris states: "Failure is not an option"...well, in this light-hearted simulator, it is. Go nuts, fail often, learn from your mistakes, and go do big things, like carrying those 5 fruit baskets to your neighbor before the time expires :)
