OWL FLY III is the war of OWL FLY II, flown the way 1988 saw it. It is a multiplayer combat flight simulator written in pure 8086 assembly that can draw on CGA, EGA and VGA. It runs in your browser in DOSBox via js-dos. Multiplayer has its own sky, separate from OWL FLY II.

Before you fly: click the game screen first so it grabs the keyboard, and keep the window visible. A hidden tab freezes your jet.

Select video system

The game starts by asking for a video card. Every mode shows its resolution and colours:

• 2 - CGA 320x200 - the classic cyan, magenta and white palette, cockpit redrawn as 1988 line art. Press H in flight to swap to the green, red and yellow palette and back.

• 3 - EGA 320x200 - sixteen colours on any EGA card.

• 4 - EGA 640x350 - the best of EGA: sixteen picked colours and a drawn grey cockpit.

• 6 - VGA 320x200 - the game as it was born, 256 colours.

• 7 - VGA 640x480 - sixteen colours and the sharpest picture.

• 1 - Hercules - not available here, the browser machine is VGA.

Then choose graphics detail (full, medium or low) and the sound system: Sound Blaster with a recorded turbine, PC speaker the 1988 way, or no sound. Enter picks a sensible answer on every screen. N switches day and night in every mode.

Controls

The keys are the same as in OWL FLY II, where you can find the full manual:

• Arrows - fly

• W / S - throttle, Shift+W / Shift+S - full / idle

• A - afterburner

• Enter - lock target

• Space - cannon, Backspace - missile

• L - landing gear, F - flaps, B - brakes / airbrake

• F2 - F7 - views

• H - CGA palette swap

• Alt+Q - quit

To take off: B to release the brakes, Shift+W, A for the afterburner, then hold the stick back.

Pause

ESC pauses the game, which is new in this edition. The world stands still but the cockpit stays alive: you can switch views F2 - F7, orbit the camera with the arrows, zoom the radar and map and flip screen pages. A red P on the panel shows the pause. Pause a dogfight, orbit it and frame the perfect screenshot.

On a phone

Turn the phone sideways. The stick and eight buttons sit over the picture for everything you hold: stick, throttle, trigger. One-press functions (gear, flaps, radios, cameras) are on the keyboard button in the side menu: GEAR, FLAP, IFF. The last row has digits 1 - 7 for the video menu, ENTER, and PAL for the CGA palette swap.

Links

• Original page

• OWL FLY II manual

• Source code on GitHub

• OWLOS community

• Built by Owlos