Sky High
How high is the ceiling in Battlefield 2? This is a question that I’ve had for awhile now and thought I’d try out a little experiment to find out for myself.
The method of getting to extreme altitude is relatively simple. First, you take off normally. Then, try to fly as straight upwards as you possibly can while using the mini-map to help make adjustments. When your icon on the mini-map is no longer moving in any direction, that’s a good indicator that you’re headed in a straight line upwards. Once you’re in a comfortable position, ease back on the throttle to about 700-780 mph. If you fly much faster than that, your plane will drift or even worse, flip over careening out of your control. After you hit the 5,000 mark (approximately), the plane will happily fly itself. You are then free to let go of the controls (assuming you’re flying with a joystick that has a throttle control). Sit back, relax, get a drink, and watch your jet attain altitude at an alarming rate.
Assuming that all went according to plan, you can expect your aircraft to fly at a rate of around 200,000 meters per hour (again, approximately). This is best done on either a completely empty server or on a dedicated server of your own. Otherwise you will no doubt cause other players to become angry with you for not helping your team- or the round will simply end before you can get very far.
I used the popular program Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/) to take a couple screenshots of me flying up in the stratosphere, but the program stopped responding after I hit the 150,000 meter mark. I had read reports of pilots reaching 1,000,000 meters in the game and was well on my way to getting there until my jet started drifting into the out-of-bounds area. The last time I was in front of my PC, I had reached 650,000 meters. By the time I reached 20,000 meters, the jet’s sound had deadened completely and the graphics started glitching horribly.
Image available for your viewing pleasure here:
http://graphicintegrity.net/temp/bf2/sky_high_002.jpg
http://graphicintegrity.net/temp/bf2/sky_high_003.jpg
So, even though my question was never thoroughly answered, I have a feeling that there is no real ceiling in Battlefield 2. It all depends on whether or not the server has no time limit and that your PC doesn’t choke from lack of resources.
