Ultrawings

I WANT MORE!
Island dlc - don't care take my money!
planes dlc- don't care take my money!
This game is fun, but needs more content!!
Edits: June 2019......Content?

if u liked pilotwings 64: get it!
its a really cool game. it looks nice and it flys great.
very enjoyable

Pretty fun game so far. Not too easy, not too hard. Lots of progression and missions to do. You earn money from doing the tasks and buy new planes and airports. If you get motion sickness there are comfort options. I turned all comfort options off and flew in simulation mode. I got a little disoriented flying like this, first time in a while this has happened to me in VR!!
Very fun flight sim with unique controls, the Vive motion controls do everything from flipping switches in the cockpit to grabbing the stick and operating the aircraft.
There are different things to do, I haven't tried all of them yet. You fly through objectives to start, later on trying to land in tight spots and take pictures of different landmarks. Holding the iPad while flying can be a little disorienting but I'm sure I'll get used to it.
The flight mechanics seem realistic enough and it does take a little learning to get a hang of flying the first ultralite aircraft. The music and sound effects are fun, although sometimes its hard to push in the starter button long enough to start the engine.
Would be nice to see a bit more life on the islands/ocean/air and some graphics options as well as a supersampling option in game. Not all audio prompts are for the Vive controller but controls are basic and can be found beside the laptop. If you want a flight sim/pilot wings style game this is it!
Overall 8/10.

So far this delivers. How fun , the controls are easy and the physics do not punnish you too much.
Just finished my first job ,, 20 min of flying and just a lil wonkey. I usually get sick as soon as things start to move. I get sick when in the passenger seat in a car,, I dont fly in real planes well. Forget boats on the ocean ,, blarp. So just a little tilty after 20 min is amazing for me!! I Think it is because it moves like you expect it to ,, omg i want peddle rudders ...
I recomend this very much to anyone who likes to fly prop aircraft ( it IS slow moving ultralights) This is the game that is gunna make me push for my vr legs.
(will update after finishing the jobs just so happy with this i thought i would rave a bit while i took a break)

I'm really enjoying this so far, it might be the best $12 I've spent on a steam sale. If you have a VR headset and enjoy even the concept of flight just a little bit, I cannot recommend this game enough. I was looking for a flight simulator that supported visible, working VR hands.
I was also hoping to find one with some planes that were a little more accessible and simple, not requiring dozens of buttons and switches. This was everything all in one package. If you keep it on Arcade mode, it's incredibly easy to jump into, and I can't wait to share it with my dad (who just loves planes in general) and grandpa (a former pilot).

Pros:
- Nice flight model, i prefer simulation mode personally but that's subjective.
- some really fun missions in particular the ultra light shooting levels.
- graphics are both pro and con. In the pro, they are simple clean and as a result easy on the computer system so fps is not an issus at all.
- the overall sense of flight is great, and if you remember pilotwings on the N64 then this is that but you are in the cockpit!!!
- Controls are fun, oculus touch of vive controllers are a MUST for this. Don't buy it if you don't have them.
- Overall an outstanding game highly recommended.
Cons
- missions are incredibly repetative and as a result i suspect replay value is not great. add to that progressin becomes a bit grindy but it's nothing compared to other games.
- If you are prone to motion sickness (simulator sickness) then this one is gonna make you hurl. I am not luckily but even i had some moments where i didn't feel 100%
- Graphics, well just too simple, tho as previously mentioned in pros it helps a lot with a smooth experience so it's a trade off there.
- Lifeless world. the world is dead and lifeless and it's a real shame.
- The mission design should have had way more of the shooting stuff and way less of the repetative mundane flight through a circle and land type stuff, also the landing missions are just bad. simple as that. bad and annoying.
- if you plan to use a controller prepare yourself for shockingly bad dead zones so touch and vice motion controllers are highly recommended.
100% worth buying despite the cons' the pros totally outweigh them and make for a great VR experience.

I just landed an ultralight on the deck of a small yacht. 10 out of 10, would crash a millionaire's party again.
This is another game in a long line I've seen that are a weird combination of arcadey style video game, and real world physics simulation (kinda like KSP, for example). The game's atmosphere is relaxing, and has an in depth and colorful cartoony world to explore. There are 3 different aircraft to choose from, and a number of islands with different geographies. The game consists of a decent difficulty curve, a simple economic and progression system, and dozens of challenges, from the relaxing to the hair raising.
If you are interested in learning how to fly, but know LITERALLY NOTHING about flight, then pick up this game. Despite its arcadey feel, the flight models of the 3 aircraft are surprisingly realistic... There are 2 flight models; "Arcade", and "Simulator"... I highly recommend that, regardless of how new you are to flight, that you switch it to simulator immediately. You can learn actual basic flying skills from this game, but you'll only pick those skills up if you start off with the simulator flight model right off the bat. The arcade one will only teach you bad habits... Also, the simulator model lets you push the plane closer to its limits, meaning you're more likely to get better scores on the challenges if you master it.
The flight models feel right. The ultralight, even right down to a tendency to side slip, the glider feels like a glider, soaring on practically nothing for quite a while, and the sports plane feels like a sports plane... Twitchy as all hell, and prone to stalling and flat spins.
Each one teaches you new skills. The ultralight is an introduction to basic flight, and is so easy to fly, you're have to TRY to crash it. The glider teaches extreme power and speed management (it's rocket powered, but only fires in bursts, and has extremely little fuel) as well as unpowered landings, and the sports plane teaches the importance of fine controls, and feeling a stall before it occurs.
I'd honestly probably use this game as a teaching tool before moving someone on to more realistic flight sims like Microsoft X. The great advantage of this game is that it was built from the ground up for use with VR, while flight sims like X-Plane and Microsoft X only have VERY clunky and glitchy paid mods for VR support. There NEEDS to be a new training sim dedicated to VR, but until that sim comes, this is pretty much the closest (besides DCS and WT, but those are combat games).
The 8 hours I spent was a joy, and I plan on palying much more of it... That being said, it is not a perfect game. This is where my criticisms come in.
Firstly, this game only relies on touch controls for controlling the aircraft. I found a post on here of one of the devs stating that they weren't going to introduce joystick and hotas support because it would be a UI nightmare. I can see where they're coming from, but honestly, it's a NECESSITY. Yes, it's a UI nightmare for you, but if you take on the challenge of coding that, it saves the PLAYER of the nightmare of trying to control an aircraft with touch controllers.
I've seen this problem in the Microsoft X paid VR mod as well. Sure, the idea of using touch controllers to grab a virtual yoke, and interact with the cockpit sounds nice IN THEORY, but it rarely works out, and instead usually just detracts from the experience. For myself, I had difficulty even grabbing the stick because my sensors can't see very well below keyboard level. And the complete and total lack of feeling an actual stick made it hard to fly by muscle memory. I'd be rotating the touch controller to the left, but instead the plane would roll right because my hand was on the right. It's hard to tell when you're even successfully grabbing the control stick because it's all VR... There's nothing there TO grab.
There is an alternative. You can simply resort to using the thumb sticks, as I did... Flying a plane with thumbsticks just isn't natural. It's why I hate flying in console games. In fact, using the left thumb stick is actually required in this game, as it's the only way to control yaw. And these thumbsticks have a very large deadzone as well, making the planes twitchy to fly this way... This isn't a problem for the glider or ultralight as they're pretty chill, but it became a BIG problem when I first started flying the sports plane. That thing is twitchy enough as it is. With it, I NEED the sensitivity that the big deadzone takes away from me... Not that thumbsticks are very sensitive to begin with. Problems get worse when there are moments you're actually required to use the touch control scheme for certain things. You still need to physically grab the throttle, and you have to use the touch control on the stick to take pictures and fire at balloons in certain mission. So it becomes awkward switching back and forth from using thumbsticks to make a 180 turn, and then grabbing the stick for an attack run. I can't make my own key bindings, I can't change the stick sensitivity or deadzone... This isn't just stuff any flight sim would have, this is stuff most GAMES have. And don't get me wrong, I get it, VR UIs are REALLY hard to do compared to the normal UIs you see in video games. But it's NEEDED. Touch controllers are in their infancy. This is the first generation that I know of that not only detect the location of your hands, but also what gesture they're making. It's amazing technology, it truly is... But it's inconsistent and clunky. Half the time the controller loses connection, and next thing you know, the plane rolls over and crashes. It's obnoxious to keep my finger pointed 24/7 to push the rocket button in the glider during a hair-raising, corner-cutting race, only to be distracted by the fact that the button isn't registering my movement, or because I keep accidently flicking the magneto switch when I go to push the button.
... It's CLUNKY. When I crash, or fail a challenge, I want it to be because I am the one who failed... Not because my stupid Occulus controllers are practically prototypes. Touch controllers are nice, but they only work well in very specific circumstances, like in horror games, or those cheesy room scale games like job simulator... It simply doesn't work where vehicle controls are involved. For a racing VR game, I'd rather have pedals and a logitech steering wheel. For flight VR games, I'd rather have my logitech extreme 3D pro. These things offer me the real world tactile feedback I NEED to fly and drive well. Without them, the gameplay suddenly becomes frustrating.
This is all a major problem of VR in general, not just this game. That being said, there is one thing the devs of this game could do to alleviate this problem for their game in particular: introduce Hotas and joystick support, with remappable options... That would make this game literally 10 times better than it already is. It would make it a far more useful educational tool as well. And there's a very simple and easy way to avoid most of the "UI nightmare": Start the game in a launcher window. Make it so that the game's settings are only accessible through this really simple 2D launcher. Here, players can go through, set up their joystick or hotas the way they like, and then launch the game when they're ready. There. That solves most of the problem of implementing a key binding UI in a VR environment. I am litterally on my hands and knees begging you to add this right now. It would make the game far more accessible to the demographic most likely to buy this game: Flight sim buffs. Put in the effort now to implement better joystick and hotas support, and you'll be rewarded with sales.
Besides that, most of the issues I take with the game are nit picks. Bugs that are obviously going to eventually get worked out (like my issue with the glider's nose wheel steering control being inverted for no apparent reason). See replies for more.