Starting a flight
The game opens on its start screen, with the clock held at zero: the aircraft waits on the menu rather than climbing away behind it. The menu is flown the same way the pause menu is, and every key it sees is swallowed by the screen, so working it never also moves a control surface.
| Entry | Does |
|---|---|
START FLIGHT | Releases the clock and hands the controls over |
GAME MODES | Opens the list of modes, and free flight |
CONTROLS | Puts the control list on screen, over the title, before anything is flying, and takes it back off when chosen again |
SETTINGS | Opens the settings panel |
The mouse works the screen too, and every menu it opens. The pointer moving onto an entry puts the cursor there and a click chooses it, so START FLIGHT is one click from the page loading and a world in the settings panel is one click from being flown. It is the same cursor the keys move rather than a second one beside it: a click chooses the entry it landed on whatever the keys had walked to, and the keys carry on from wherever the pointer left off. The title screen and the pause card are otherwise transparent to the mouse - only the menu on each takes the pointer, and the world behind them goes on being a world rather than a button.
This is the opening screen rather than a menu to come back to: once the flight has started, the way back to Game Modes, Controls, and Settings is the pause menu.