Just going to repost my impressions I had made on another forum:
Graphics: Lets get this out of the way right now. It runs pretty much butter smooth on my system on very high (I didn't crank it higher yet), I didn't notice any lagginess or anything. CryEngine scales well, so even those I've seen running it on low looked impressive. Things come apart very nicely, though I noticed that if something was even slightly offscreen when hit with a missile the explosion effect was not rendered at all.
Controls: I don't have a HOTAS yet so I'm using mkb, and that definitely took some getting used to. It's sort of like a terrible version of War Thunder's controls, which I always found to be pretty damn good for a flight sim. Think Freelancer, but with an enormous deadzone and the jittery response of War Thunder on Historic (not full realism). There's a ton of arguing on the RSI forums about mkb vs joystick and which is overpowered.
They also need to find a proper balance of "space dust" so you have a better idea of how your ship is moving, because while turning off the engine assist is awesome for complex maneuvering it's not always easy to tell how you're moving vs your orientation.
AI: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Sound: A very mixed bag, the atmospheric sounds like your engines and the voiceover work of the computer are excellent. The guns sound completely impotent, lacking any real punch and drama that cannons the size of a truck should have.
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In general, after getting used to the controls and key bindings it was "alright" to play for a while. I have major issues with a lot of the presentation part of things, for one the game does not telegraph properly when you're getting shot. Often my first indicator is when my shields have dropped and the computer that never shuts up stops telling me about something overheating to say that I'm taking hull damage now. OR, you notice when your guns stop firing because half your ship is shredded. It's quite terrible.
The AI is just junk. I get killed more by them colliding with me, and once it actually severed my cockpit away from my craft. While this was cool, it took four AI enemies six minutes to land a single hit on me to kill the pilot.
Another annoyance, the HUD is supposed to be projected in the helmet visor, and for some stupid reason the game will often have various hud elements sliding off the screen based on how you're moving. I know it's because they're simulating g-forces, and your guy's head is bouncing around in the helmet, but that's just **** UI design. Realism is no excuse for it. The HUD is also totally cluttered, those missile lock animations should have been canned after their PAX demo but they only add noise to an already over-designed mess.
The point of a HUD is to be informative to the pilot, not to distract constantly from things they should be concentrating on.
Anyway, that's my initial impressions anyway. Will post more as I remember more things. For a pre-pre-pre-alpha it's pretty nice overall, though there's some serious circlejerking going on by RSI when you jump into your ship via all those long winded canned animations, only to find you forgot to pick up the helmet you left sitting on the other side of your hangar because the game never said you should have done that first.
They have a TON of work to do.
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