Minimal Google Research has led me to the conclusion that amongst heli sim fans out there, Jane's Longbow 2 is the best heli sim around. My questions are thus:
1. Is there any way to get this friggin' game to work under Windows XP?
2. Is this really the best heli sim out there? I'm looking for realism, especially in the flight model. But also I'm looking for war too, not just some MS Flight Simulator garbage
When I run the Longbow 2 demo on my PC in *any* mode (software, D3D, any res), all I get is a 640x480 black window with a small message at the top left corner that says "Good luck, pilot!" or something to that effect. My hard disk runs a little bit, then the message disappears after about 10 seconds and the black window just sits there, along with the rest of my PC, apparently doing nothing. Meanwhile, the mouse cursor has been an hourglass this entire time. I have to use Task Manager (which I need to move over because the black window is stubbornly forcing itself on top of everything) to end the program. I've messed about with a few of the ini and cfg files and such but nothing changes. It simply can't even get to the menu or the startup logo or anything, apparently.
I checked ntcompatible of course and saw a "No" in red for Longbow 2 under 2k, but of course no explanation was given.
I'm really hoping some hardcore Longbow 2 fan reads this and has come up with a good solution. I'm also hoping that there is a better or at least similar heli sim game that *does* run under XP. TIA
Incidentally, what got me interested in this was the helicopters in the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.