Hopefully I can make this intro quick, because the rest is likely to be long.

I've been playing Aces High off and on since 2007. Due to the open world tri country war, you're unlikely to find anything else like it. I play it in VR, but I played it when VR was just a thought. If you stick through the learning curve, and like WWII combat, I'm pretty sure you'll realize you've found a jewel.

If you are determined to read the minimum possible to get flying, read controls and views.

Now, I want to get you in the air as soon as possible, so move on to the controls section.

Controls can seem overwhelming, so let me give you some of the basics that you will need to get started, you can always modify or add more to these later, but this is just to get you started.

Everything listed here can done by clicking on options>map controllers

Axis assignment first!
-Ensure that the flight controls are mapped to the correct axis for your gear and preference. If it appears to be inverted, check the 'advanced' box above the controls list, and then check/uncheck the 'invert' box at the top left.

Moving on to Buttons.
-If you click a button twice while on the map controllers screen, it will automatically jump to mapping it. As an example, if I pull the trigger on my stick twice, I can then find fire primary and assign it, I don't have to know if it's button 1 or 12, which makes it easy to make sure you get it where you want it.

Heres a list of what you want for sure:
-Fire primary (or Fire all guns) by preference
-Fire secondary
-Weapon select secondary
-WEP (War Emergency Power)
-Voice transmit ranged (how you key your mic to use in-game comms to other players nearby)
-Voice transmit channel (how you key your mic to anyone in the same channel as you, regardless of distance)
-Views. If you have Track-Ir or VR, don't worry about this.
Everyone else: before I had VR, I set up my flat directional views on a hat switch (right, left, back, forward, and everything in between) and on something I can reach with my other hand (or at least can press at the same time that I'm using the hat switch) I set up an 'up' and 'down' view. I would then use a combination of the hat switch and up/down to see everywhere the airplane will let me.
Views are important, and I'll come back to them later.

These are things you shouldn't need for combat, but you really want to know where they are located, find them or map them.
-Start engine
-Landing gear
-Flaps up
-Flaps down
-Autopilot speed
-Autopilot level
-Autopilot angle
-Clipboard
-Dive brakes

Useful stuff.
-Map zoom in
-Map zoom out
-Fuel tank select
-Damage list display

If you've gotten through all of the controls above, you don't need me anymore, you've got this.

Your views and how much you use them are going to be directly linked to how often you die.

Your head position can be adjusted to look around stuff and saved to always default to that spot. Let's focus on your rear view. At default, if you look back all you're going to see is the headrest (super useful right...) but you can use the arrow keys to move your head around (left, right, forward, back) and 'page up' and 'page down' for up and down. You need to hold the view while you do this. When you have it where you want it, press 'F10' and you should see a 'head position saved' text line in orange across the bottom. The tricky part is that you have to hold the view while you set and save it. You might be thinking, that doesn't seem tricky... but you haven't tried to do the 'upper right rear' view yet. Let me give you a tip, '5' on the keypad is also up, so you can hold that with one finger while adjusting your head position and then hit 'F10' for me that was always easier that trying to hold the buttons I used for views.

You are automatically connected to 2 voice radios and 5 chat radios.

When you hit '/' to type you will bring up the communications overlay.
To tune a radio to a specific channel you can either click on the number and make a selection on the drop down, or you can type '.radio # (channel)' As an example if I wanted to tune radio 3 to channel 150, I would type it like this: '.radio 3 150'

-Radio 1(non voice) which is either defaulted to the help channel (orange text) or country (green text).
-Radio 2 should be range and is chat and voice, you can turn off the ranged text by selecting something else (I don't know why you would), but the voice radio will stay tuned.
-Radio 3 (non voice) is usually 'all' chat, which is disabled. If you would like to participate in an all chat, tune radio 3 to channel 200, it's a cross country channel where many pilots chat.
-Radio 4 (non voice) I can't remember what this is by default... I don't pay attention to that often and I'll update it later.
-Radio 5 is a voice and chat linked channel. This is the 'tunable voice radio.' You can use this to chat with people from all over the map. If you join a squad you will have access to a 'squad' from the drop down menu here that is exclusive to those in your squad. You can also select 'mission' if you have joined a mission (but I don't see as many of those as I used to).

The numbered channels breakdown into to groups. channels begining with 1, like channel 150 0r 101, will only be for your country, channels begining with 2, like 200 or 297, will be accessable by all countries.

I highly recommend that you first flight be either in the offline arena or the training arena. This will give you a chance to feel the flight model a bit, and there are drones you can turn on and off in the 'arena settings' menu of the offline arenas to practice shooting. If there are people in the Training arena, they are one of 2 types: Those trying to learn, and those willing to teach. Aces High has trainers. These are players who will take the time to teach you how to fly, or fly better in Aces High... I've never seen this anywhere else. Also, if you find that you've missed something important in controls, or that the place you thought was a good idea wasn't, at least you have the chance to fix it without combat distracting you.

There are two options you need to consider, you can leave them both, but one of them will hinder you as you get better.
In the Clipboard, under options>preferences>flight:
There are two check boxes I want you to think about 'Enable Stall Limiter' and 'auto take off'
-The stall limiter prevents you from pulling so hard on the stick that you stall the airplane, this sounds good, but it doesn't get you to the edge of a stall like actually controlling the plane can. In equal aircraft, a pilot who can manage his own stalls will always beat one with the stall limiter on, he can push the limits harder.
-Auto take off isn't as important, but knowing how your aircraft takes off will teach you alot about how it handles when it's slow and on the edge of a stall. Also, if for some reason you don't have time for auto take off to finish getting you in the air, once you hit the stick and turn it off, it's off. It's good to be able to take off on your own, but that can be pretty tricky in some of the planes.

As for aircraft, there is a lot of choices. You can fly what you want. If your hearts set on flying a P-51 like you've see in the movies, or a Spitfire, or a Hellcat, then don't let anyone hold you back. I was determined to fly a corsair, and for around a decade I almost exclusively did, and I still fly it (but not as often these days). But if you're just learning to fly though, I suggest you try out the P-38J or P-38L, it's very forgiving, and will be nicer to you than some of the others will when you mishandle her. Just don't dive her over 350 mph.

Utilizing the clipboard map, your first choice is where to take-off from. Let me breakdown a couple basic things about the map.

First, it's a war, and the objective is to win. There are three countries. To win the war you must take 20% of each other countries bases while maintaining 90%(I think it's 90, I'll check and update this) of your own.

Bases titled A## are airfields. You can fly out of them (provided the enemy hasn't destroyed the hangers) and you can also get vehicles out of them. Bases titled V## are vehicle bases, you can take vehilces out of them and I think there is a spotter aircraft you can fly out of them, but that's it, no fighters or bombers. P## is a port, you can take vehicles out of them, and they spawn 1 carrier at a time (until that carrier is destroyed, then after a time it will respawn it). C## are aircraft carriers, you can only take carrier aircraft from them, and PT-boats and LVTs.

If any base is flashing, there are enemy aircraft or vehicles within it's 'dar-ring.' Dar meaning RADAR. While this does not mean that the base is directly under attack, it does mean enemies nearby. At the top of any sector with active aircraft will be a 'darbar' which will be a proportionate representation of enemy to friendly aircraft in that sector.

I do not reccomend taking off from a base that is actively under attack. They will kill you on the runway if they can, this is called vulching. You will not stand a chance, and if the base is 'covered up' or 'capped' by the enemy, there are probably 2 or more people literally just waiting for you to take off so they can vulch you. This sounds terrible, but if they're trying to take the base, it makes sense. To add to that, you usually have plenty of warning that the base is under fire, it will be flashing, and you will usually see and hear the bad guys while you're still in the tower... So if you get vulched, you have at least a little blame in it too.

So I recommend finding a base that is under attack (friendly or enemy) on the map, and going to the next closest base that's not under attack, and take off there. You will have a chance to gain altitude that way, and as you learn to fight, you will learn that altitude is very important.

Once you're in the air, try to find some friendlies and stay with or near them. Even if you're not coordinating, planes in groups do better.

The community has puts together and runs events regularly in a separate server, accessable from the servers tab.

The most popular one is FSO, Friday Squad Ops. This event requires you to be part of a squad to participate, but if you ask around, there are often people who will let you fly with their squad to check it out. I often describe these as historical fights that are altered enough to be made playable and fun by both sides. We run these 3 Fridays a month. In August we flew the Battle of Britain, Spitfires and Hurricanes, against bf109s, bf110s, ju-87s, and he-111s. It was alot of fun. And this really is the kind of thing that's better with more people, I once saw the Special Events arena with over 500 people in it flying a late war europe setting and it was amazing.

There is also an event call 'Scenario.' I haven't been able to be in many of these, they tend to conflict with my real life timelines. But they allow walk-ons, so if you want to see what special events are about without the commitment of FSO, check one of these out. If you can pre-register, you are more likely to get a plane you would like. If you walk-on, you will have to be assigned to a side and a plane so that we can keep the balance and playability of the event.

There is also always an Axis v Allies arena set up. It doesn't always have people in it, but it's the kind of thing that could change if we had the numbers and interest. This is an arena that will be temporarily dedicated to a theater of WWII with a fairly small map, and aircraft that generally match what was there historically. It will rotates periodically. When there are even small numbers of people there is can be a lot of fun.

For a full list of events check out this link:

http://ahevents.net/

Don't get discouraged, or even engage with if you can avoid it, anyone who gets overly negative in chat or the forums. Think about it like this, just because those people tend to be the loudest in the room, doesn't make them the majority.

I can honestly say that I've seen alot of chat in game about people wanting new players in the game, and how we need to be more welcoming and helpful as a community. There was a time when I would see 500 people on at once, and that stuff gets fun. As a whole we would like to grow the community, so regardless of the bad apples, if you look around, you will find people willing to work and fly with you.

I've probably missed something, so if you have a question feel free to ask in the comments.

Hope to see you up there, and I hope I see you first!