What A500 combat simulation 3D games had the best FPS?

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I was watching a video of Knights of the Sky for Amiga, clearly the reviewer was using supercharged WinUAE settings, but I checked out a video of it running on the A500 and was quite impressed.

I had always assumed these sort of games would be really laggy like in Wings but clearly not. There were quite a few games like these, my preference is for bi-plane or just propeller engine planes WW1-WW2 era but any 3D routine that is surprisingly fast on an A500 would be cool to check out.

Hopefully I have a copy of Knights of the Sky somewhere to check out, feels like I missed out on a game that ran acceptably well for my 80s Amiga I had and I would have really enjoyed long term.

If I do find a copy it's also a good incentive to find a replacement disk drive for my A1200 too, looks great on the A1200 on youtube.

A500 VHS capture here
[ Show youtube player ]

Red Baron is another game I never got round to getting for my Amiga that looks to have a similarly snappy framerate most of the time after a quick look on youtube again.

[derSammler]

Combat Air Patrol and F/A-18 Interceptor were quite fluid, too.

I also played a ton of F-15 Strike Eagle II on my A500 back then. So it must have been very playable, too, I guess.

[Megalomaniac]

I think Red Baron is pretty horrendous on the A500, Tornado sticks out as another wildly overambitious one. Is F-29 Retaliator pretty quick? Thudnerhawk?

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I had FA18 Interceptor, also Flight Simulator II by Sublogic, in the 80s. Can't remember 100% but I think they had slower update speed than Knights of the Sky, a bit more like Wings bombing runs.

I think from memory F-29 is quite faster than what you'd expect on an A500 if it's the one I am remembering, Falcon also matches the Atari ST speed due to the fact the ST used software samples which took some CPU time away, but Falcon was sort of like read the manual for an hour to get started type flight simulator from what I remember of my ST years.

Would like a game that is like the best mini-game of Wings as a full game, fly around and shoot the other planes with no complex missions to navigate Hopefully one of the Amiga bundles I bought over the years came with Knights of the Sky.

Battlehawks 1942 is another one I remember but I don't know what the framerate was like.

Red Barron looked quite fast on the A500 labelled video I found on youtube.

[derSammler]

Can't remember 100% but I think they had slower update speed than Knights of the Sky, a bit more like Wings bombing runs.

Maybe have a look again, because F/A-18 is certainly not slower than Knights of the Sky. Also, don't judge the frame rate of any game based on videos made by others. You could be disappointed when actually playing it on your real A500.

Battlehawks 1942 is another one I remember but I don't know what the framerate was like.

Battlehawks 1942 used sprites for most stuff on screen.

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Originally Posted by derSammler

Maybe have a look again, because F/A-18 is certainly not slower than Knights of the Sky. Also, don't judge the frame rate of any game based on videos made by others. You could be disappointed when actually playing it on your real A500.


Battlehawks 1942 used sprites for most stuff on screen.

FA/18, FS II and Falcon were the only games I got to see, 'slower' I meant per polygon etc not side by side overall speed. I think Zeewolf is another polygon game that impressed me back then, but that's more like Virus/Zarch to play.

Yes, I try to stick to channels that use real hardware for 16bit or above games. Stuff like Atari, Commodore, Amstrad is usually OK. Spectrum emulation users rarely bother to show how the 48k versions of games like Gauntlet sounded which is quite important given the 128k plus models were the pretty close price as the CPC 464 (with modulator) and C64 bundles by 86/87, which is important really.

[AmigaHope]

Not really a sim, but Armour Geddon was pretty darn fast for what was onscreen. But yeah F29 Retaliator would have to be the fastest (also not really a sim). Starglider II would also fall into this "not really a sim" category.

[Angus]

F15 II was pretty fast for a Microprose game as I recall although rather arcadey. Falcon certainly was fast and beautiful looking. MiG 29 wasn't too bad. F29 Retaliator looked great and updated well, but I think pyramid shaped hills actually had cube shaped collision detection. And there were a lot of shortcuts, like the ship changing course in very large increments. Looked the business, though. :-)

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I am pretty sure I have Mig-29, massive box, whether it loads or not couldn't say.

Not sure I have any of the others yet, been a while since my stuff was put in storage. Probably do have Starglider II even if it's just a loose disk.