Background Information

Aces High is an online WWII air combat simulation from HiTech Creations. Warbirds models more than 50 aircrasft from six countries, covering the entire period of WWII, from 1939 to 1945, and more planes will be added as the simulation is updated. Flying online, players connect to the HiTech Creations Aces High server and fly in arenas with up to five hundred other pilots in the air, or can fly head-to-head with up to eight people, or can practice offline by themselves to hone their skills.Aces High supports screen resolutions of up to 1600x1200 and 32-bit color.

In the main arena online, players fly for one of three countries, and victory comes from attacking and capturing another country's bases, at which time the map resets and the process starts over; in special scenarios, players sign up to fly for one side or another in a recreation of historical engagements, and victory is determined by which side completed more of its predetermined goals. It's a lot of fun, but while it's easy to learn the basics, it's extremely difficult to master. I have been playing Aces High for several years now, and Warbirds before that, and Air Warrior before that, and I'm still learning.

Every player online in Aces High picks their handle; mine is 'Shiva'. Why I picked that is a long story, and goes back to another online WWII air combat simulation, Air Warrior, when it was still a DOS program. My connections to the server were so bad that what I saw was where planes had been fifteen to thirty seconds earlier. When I fired at someone, they weren't really there any more, so the server threw out my 'hits'. So I switched to bombers; the ground didn't move. And I learned to be one of the best bomber pilots in Air Warrior, holding the #1 bomber rank for several months toward the end of the DOS Air Warrior server (Air Warrior for Windows taking over in its place). My call sign came from the Hindu god Shiva, whose statement from the Bhagavad-Gita was quoted by Oppenheimer when witnessing the first atomic bomb blast -- "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I am a member of 'The Damned', a collection of air-combat simulations players formed in the DOS Air Warrior community that has spread out to form squadrons in other air combat simulations such as Aces High, WWII Online, and Warbirds, and has even expanded to other online games such as NukeZone and EverQuest. In Aces High, the Damned fly for the Knights (the other countries are the Bishops and the Rooks).