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When our editor asked me to do this one, I was intrigued. A hang glider sim? Umm, OK. I thought this would be a incredibly boring sim with nothing to do and no one to shoot down. Boy was I wrong. After it arrived I leafed through the paper work that came with it. Still didn't think it was anything impressive, until I loaded it and dropped into a free flight mode in a high performance glider, tooling along at 1000 feet doing about 35 miles a hour.

I flew gliders in air cadets, and more recently when I worked with the cadet units I got to go flying a bit more. Hangsim was so realistic I shuddered. They had everything right, from the wind whistling past the cockpit to the controls. It really felt like I was in a glider. Boredom never came as I tried to make my flights longer and longer and see more of the scenery and detail. Most of the time you spend tooling around trying to find thermals (yes, they have those in the game) and generally just having fun. When gravity finally does win out, you have the battle to try and find a nice place to land without turning yourself into a lawn dart. Hangsim offers several types of ultralight aircraft and gliders. I played with each one, and they all flew nicely. If the glider is any indication of the flight models used, then I would have to say they are all well done.

This is a middle to late beta, and it's not quite finished - hence the beta designation. Some things are missing or not there at all yet. But from what is there that I've seen, I'll definitely be picking this one up when it goes final.

Created by Belgium's Wilco Publishing, a company that deals mainly in flight sims, Hangsim is sure to be a winner for people wanting a change from the everyday flight sim. You move slowly, and playing yank and crank is a sure way to rip something important off your aircraft and send you into the ground fast. The terrain is modeled nicely, and the closer to the ground you get the better it looks. Buildings appear and are not a hodge podge of random ones - they are in town and village formations like they should be. The beta came with 3 maps, covering a wide range of terrain types from water to canyons, and I flew on all of them. More maps are sure to be included in the final.

The sim offers 4 ways of playing:

• Free Flight: Do what you want where you want and flying what you want. You're alone and the sky belongs to you.
• Challenge: You have an AI "wingman" with you that you make do things like look for thermals, fly after you, or have you fly after him.
• Competitions: Just like it sounds. You fly against AI-controlled pilots in races. Get there first and land where you're supposed to.
• Just for fun: The final play mode is kinda like air combat in ultralights. Think James Bond here. Your job is to clear the sky of other gliders with your onboard rockets. Shoot someone and watch them fall.

There are currently eight flyable aircraft in the game, and more may be added in the final. The current aircraft selection includes the classic sailplane, two types of paragliders (competition class and medium), a twin engined hang glider, a sporty looking ultralight, a powered para glider, and two hang gliders (again, medium and competition class).