Knights of the Sky IBM PC 1990 MPS Labs Microprose

Knights of the Sky 1990

MPS Labs of MicroProse released Knights of the Sky in 1990 for IBM PC MS-DOS 2.1. Knights of the Sky was designed by Jeff Briggs, drawn by Jackie Ross and programmed by Scott Spanburg and Bill Becker.

While its 3D flat-shaded graphics and presentation are not as good as Red Baron of 1990, Knights of the Sky's simulation of WWI biplane combat is more realistic.

Knights of the Sky requires an i80286 CPU, 640K of RAM and 256K of vRAM. Knights of the Sky supports keyboard, mouse and joystick control. Knights of the Sky audio supports IBM sounds, Tandy sounds, AdLib sound board and Roland MT-32 sound board.

Knights of the Sky controls support mouse, keyboard or analogue joystick.

Knights of the Sky was distributed on 2x 3.5" 720kB DS DD diskettes. The hard disk drive install size is 1.4 megs and consists of 114 files.

Knights of the Sky Features

• Flat-shaded real-time 3D graphics
• 3D tiling system for rivers and road networks (Scott Spanburg)
• 256-color VGA 320x200 (also supports MCGA, CGA, EGA and Tandy 1000 graphics) 
• Realistic World War I dogfighting simulator
• 20x different WWI aircraft to fly
• 11x out-of-cockpit views switchable on-the-fly
• 4x in-cockpit views with zoom/unzoom
• Flight controls: altimeter, compass, fuel gauge, air speed indicator, tachometer, slip indicator, ammo counter
• Flight physics: roll, pitch, yaw
• Take off, landing, spins, spin recovery, stall, stall recovery
• Fire Vickers machine gun and drop bombs
• Instant replays
• Head to head play via modem or serial link
• Knights of the Sky manual written by Jeffrey L. Briggs: 102 pages.

Knights of the Sky Aircraft

• Fokker EIII
• Airco DH2
• Nieuport 11
• Halberstadt D2
• Nieuport 17
• Spad 7
• Albatros D2
• Sopwith Pup
• Albatros D3
• Sopwith Triplane
• SE 5A
• Spad 13
• Albatros D5
• Sopwith Camel
• Fokker DR1
• Pfalz D3
• Nieuport 27
• Fokker D7
• Fokker D8
• Sopwith Snipe

Knights of the Sky Flight Maneuvers

• Fokker Bounce
• Full Loop
• Immelmann Turn
• Split-S
• Strafing
• Climbing Turn

cf.

• A-10 Tank Killer IBM PC MS-DOS Dynamix 1989
• Red Baron IBM PC MS-DOS 1990 Dynamix
• Aces of the Pacific IBM PC MS-DOS Dynamix 1992

Return to: History of Combat flight Simulators.

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