Hangsim features seven types of aircraft: three hang gliders (one powered), two paragliders, a glider, and an ultralight plane. The areas that you fly in are all based on real life locations throughout California and France. The physics in the game are also very realistic, and the gliders respond to your movements nicely. You are also aided by a mess of instruments. Each craft comes with an altimeter, airspeed indicator, compass, vertical-speed indicator, and a GPS readout to find the nearest bathroom, pizza delivery restaurant, and Starbucks. Flight is also determined by winds, thermals, cloud suck (heh), sunspots, and geese flying into your motor. Oops...I'm afraid the last two issues are untrue.

As long as you don't look too closely at something, the graphics can be quite gorgeous. At high altitudes, the panorama can be stunning at times. At low altitudes, the terrain becomes square, intersected by lines that take away much of the realism; repeating textures are also a problem. At zero altitude, things become paranormal. Your hanglider has the ability to pass through solid objects, and, in a reenactment of a miracle of God, you can run across water as easily as if it was solid ground, including footsteps.

Sound is fairly bland within the game, the exceptions being some wind sound effects and the sharp crack as you dive and hit the ground head first. The hackneyed background music stems from a blind and deaf organist who never learned how to play.

The manual goes into intense detail (understatement) about the physics of wind and thermals and how to ride them; it also reads as tediously as a textbook. All of it makes sense to a hang gliding buff, I'm sure, but for the uninitiated, it's a bit much to grasp, especially when trying to apply it to a computer game.

The reading is a requirement if you want to have even the most remote chance of staying airborne in one of the game's four modes: free flight, competition, challenge, and "just for fun." Free flight is just a practice mode to let you get acquainted with the different gliders. In competition, you fly against computer opponants in a race to get to different waypoints. In challenge, you have a specific goal to complete, such as trying to stay in the air to reach a certain spot.

And then there's the "just for fun" mode. This was the last-ditch effort by the developer to try to include some fast fun. Your glider or ultralight is equipped with dumb-fire rockets and your task is to shoot down other gliders who are also armed...not that it does any good though, as not once do the other gliders fire a rocket. Also, your rockets seem to travel at the speed of living mucus crawling uphill, and the enemy gliders have more evasive prowess than a fighter jet. The "Just for fun" mode gets boring rather quickly, as it merely turns into a slow motion Deer Hunter in the air, only less fun. Lack of damage skins or models don't help either.

Hangsim also suffers from constant disk accessing that tend to slow the gameplay dramatically at times. Also, starting a new scenario with a broken glider or in an irreversable dive is a constant source of frustration. I had more fun trying to kill myself (the cracking and snapping sound as you hit the ground is very satisfying.)

The end result of all this is that Hangsim might be fun for the obssessed sportsman, but for the rest, fly away screaming if you see it.

· · · Mithril