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Quick start

Getting airborne, in about five minutes. Assumes the game is installed.

Get in the air

Start the game and pick Instant Action from the menu. That drops you straight into a skirmish with an aircraft, a wingman and something to shoot at. Free Flight gives you the same aircraft in an empty world if you would rather just fly.

You start airborne. There is no takeoff to get wrong.

Fly it

Key Does Binding
↑ / ↓ Nose down / up PitchDown / PitchUp
← / → Roll left / right RollLeft / RollRight
Z / X Rudder left / right YawLeft / YawRight
Page Up / Page Down Throttle up / down ThrottleUp / ThrottleDown
Left Shift Max throttle while held ThrottleMax
Tab Afterburner Afterburner
K Airbrake — held, not latched Airbrake

Pull gently. These are combat aircraft with real aerodynamics behind them — yank the stick at speed and you will bleed energy, buffet and depart. The HUD's left column shows airspeed, altitude and altitude above ground; the right column shows throttle and fuel.

The full map is in Controls.

Look around

Key View Binding
F1 Cockpit CameraCockpit
F2 Chase CameraChase
F4 Free camera — fly the camera anywhere with WASD/QE, drag with the left mouse button CameraFree
F5 Padlock — keeps the target in view PadlockToggle

The cockpit view pans with the keypad cross (Numpad 8 / 2 / 4 / 6). The arrows fly the aircraft, so they are not also the view.

Hold the right mouse button in cockpit view to look around without changing where the aircraft is going.

Shoot something

Your aircraft starts armed.

Key Does Binding
N / P Cycle to the next / previous target NextTarget / PrevTarget
1 / 2 Select the next / previous weapon station NextWeapon / PrevWeapon
Space Fire the gun FireWeapon
Enter Release the selected store FireStore

The HUD's right column reads ARM <weapon> x<rounds>. In cockpit view you get a gun pipper with ballistic lead, and a designator box around the target with range and closure.

If nothing fires at all, check master arm: 4 toggles ARM / SAFE, and SAFE really does suppress the triggers.

Order your wingman

Press C, then a number.

Item Order
1 Attack my target — whatever you are looking at
2 Engage bandits near itself
3 Rejoin formation
4 Cover me
5 Hold fire
6 Return to base

The menu does not freeze the aircraft — you keep flying while it is open, because a radio call is a sub-second action and being frozen mid-fight to make one would be wrong.

In single-player you always have a wingman. On a dedicated server you only get one if the operator configured a flight. More in Wingman & voice.

Other things worth knowing early

  • ` opens the console. Careful: it does suspend your flight controls, unlike the radio menu.
  • F3 cycles the performance overlay — frame rate, entity count, tick time.
  • Escape pauses in single-player and opens the menu.
  • Every match is recorded. A server records by default, and you can watch a match back with a scrubbable timeline and any camera. See Replays & photo mode.

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