Again the copy-paste from sourceforge page
OpenBirds is a massive multiplayer war simulation situated in second world war. The purpose of OpenBirds is to be a free (as in beer and speech) open source simulation comparable to commercial alternatives such as WW2 Online and Aces High.OpenBirds project was started by Ville 'cosmo' Ranki. It's philosophy is to avoid re-inventing the wheel i.e using as much ready code as possible. It is programmed in object-oriented c++.
Some explainations what we're trying to do
- Realistic simulation. Not like BF1942 or other fantasy shoot'em'up's.
- On the other hand we are not doing complete vehicle system simulation. This means that for example engine management will be simplified. We try to leave options for hard-core players to manage everything as manually as they want.
- We're going to model all kinds of vehicles and personnel types. Just like WW2Online, but with ability to board and leave vehicles.
- First person game will be realistic. Operation Flashpoint and WW2Online are good models for this.
- OpenBirds will not be biased on any side like the commercial alternatives tend to be. All flight model and it's source data will be published.
- We will model all nationalities - both good and evil - with historical markings. There will be swastikas, von rosen crosses, roundels, stars of different colors, and any other symbols that were used in the game.
- Massively multiplayer means that there is no 16, 64, or even 128 player limit. It means that there's generally no limit. There also is only one server that has all players in single game world. In commercial alternatives there are a few hundred to few thousands players online.
- It's open source - if you want something, just do it!