"Using the 3D terrain modelling system designed for Bruce Artwick's famous Flight Simulator series, subLOGIC created a whole new flight sim – UFO.

You do indeed control a UFO, careening and skidding around the earth under the power of standard thrusters or a gluon disruptor propulsion system, avoiding detection by humans, in a search for fuel for your species' galactic ships. You can return to your mother ship and trade your scavenged fuel for additional supplies.

The controls are akin to a helicopter's. You can control the amount of anti-gravity; you can pitch, roll, and yaw; you can thrust back and forth, up and down, and side to side. For advanced flying, it is possible to use anti-laminar transducers to completely eliminate drag (important to keep your hull from overheating), and use the aforementioned gluon devices to fly forwards (but watch out for spinouts!)

There are other options available, including landing pods, illuminator beams, probes, gravitons, shields and teleportation. UFO is also compatible with the subLogic Scenery Disks."

When the novelty wears out and after you have fiddled with all the options, UFO becomes a more or less standard flight simulator that is just a bit harder to get a hang of. It's still quite a lot of fun, though, and the physics model is quite impressive and reasonably realistic. Recommended!

Note: as improbable as it may seem, the concept was actually picked up again in 1997 with Flying Saucer by Software 2000, a 3D flying saucer sim released only in Europe.