Computer Gaming World reports on FIGHTER SQUADRON:
THE SCREAMIN' DEMONS OVER EUROPE.
Denny Atkin 12/1/98
Real-world Physics Rule in This World War II Sim
The Focke-Wulf 190 dives for safety as tracer bullets from the nose of your
P-38 chew into its wing. As the ground rushes toward you, you realize you're
heading down an unsafe speed. But you've worked too hard for this kill to give
up now. One final burst and you start to pull up. The 190 seems to have survived
your onslaught; but suddenly, as it begins its pullout, the plane's left wing
rips free--too weakened from your fire to handle the stress of the pull-up--and
the Focke-Wulf spirals into the ground. You recover from your own dive with
barely 100 feet to spare, savoring your victory. But then you look out the side
of your canopy and realize that you actually bent your plane's wings during the
pullout. You're going to have to nurse this one home.
This is just a typical dogfight in Activision's upcoming FIGHTER SQUADRON:
THE SCREAMIN' DEMONS OVER EUROPE. In a crowded field of WWII flight sims,
FIGHTER SQUADRON has a number of distinguishing features, but none more than its
physics modeling. The sim is being developed by Eric Parker's Parsoft. Fans who
experienced the previous effort by that team, A-10 CUBA, will be happy to know
that this one makes the already impressive physics model in that previous game
look positively primitive.
Wings of Density
I have to admit that even though the game's artificial intelligence was
already doing a good job in combat in the alpha version I tested, I spent at
least as much time playing "test pilot" as I did in combat. I performed
successful experiments, such as hopping into a B-17, jumping into its ball
turret, and shooting an engine nacelle and part of the tail off another plane in
the formation. Then I jumped into the cockpit of the other plane and tested how
it flew with the damage. Its performance was convincingly hampered.
Then it was time to test-fly the P-38. Looking out the side window while
performing high-G maneuvers, I could actually see the plane's wing flexing up
and down. Then I purposefully came in for a couple of hard landings. On the
first one, I bent the left main gear strut. On the second, I actually knocked
the wheel off. What was impressive, though, was what followed. The wheel
continued to roll down the runway and down a hill. It finally came to a rest at
the bottom, wobbling to a stop like a spinning quarter.
For the less experimentally inclined, the detail of the sim's physics model
will translate into a convincing flight environment. Aircraft handling feels
authentic, and when you shoot off parts of another plane, its performance will
be hampered accordingly. Don't follow too closely behind a bandit when you're
blasting him. If you saw off a wing, it will spin back toward you in a manner
eto your own plane. Bullet modeling is very good, with the effects of gravity and
gun convergence on your tracers very evident when firing at distant targets.
It was particularly impressive when I made a close pass behind a Hawker
Typhoon during a dogfight and actually felt my plane jerk as it passed through
the plane's "wake." This brought back an immediate deja vu to a real-life
dogfight against Robin Kim in Sky Warriors T-34s--the plane reacted to the
slipstream in the sim just as it did in real life. While other upcoming sims may
match FIGHTER SQUADRON when it comes to getting the performance and handling
numbers right, no other sim I've flown has so fully captured the feeling of the
entire flying experience.
Fire in a Crowded Theater
Combat takes place in three theaters: Dover, covering battles over the
English Channel; North Africa; and Rhineland over Germany. These theaters are
compressed in size: Targets it would take an hour to fly to in reality can be
reached in a few minutes of flight in the game. While this will offend purists,
it simply means you won't be faced with the choice of equally unrealistic time
compression or spending a lot of time flying a boring, uneventful straight line
to the target.
The terrain here is absolutely beautiful, with rolling hills and river
valleys that promise to be great for low-level dogfighting in multiplayer mode.
Roads run between the towns, which are modeled in nice detail, and transparent
smoke emits from chimneys. Even this smoke is useful, because it can indicate
the current wind conditions. Fogging is used to good effect, keeping the
frame-rate up without generating an unrealistic experience.
You can fly missions for three sides in a variety of aircraft. For the U.S.,
you can pilot the B-17G Flying Fortress, the P-38J Lightning, and the P-51D
Mustang. For England, choices are the Lancaster Mk.II bomber, the Mosquito
fighter-bomber, and Spitfire and Typhoon fighters. Finally, German pilots can
fly the Focke-Wulf 190A, Me-262A, and the Ju-88 bomber. When flying bombers, you
can man each of the plane's positions, so you'll be able to put the plane into
autopilot and jump into a turret when you're engaged by fighters.
The current build of the game has 10 missions in each of the three theaters,
but there are far more than 30 different flying opportunities. Each mission has
aircraft from all three countries taking part, and you can fly the mission from
the viewpoint of any of these aircraft. You might fly a dam-busting mission in a
Lancaster bomber, then fly it again from the perspective of a Spitfire escort.
Next you can revisit this mission from the other side as a FW-190 pilot
trying to take out the Lancasters. In addition, there are training missions for
each aircraft, a scramble instant-action mode, and multiplayer missions. The
latter weren't implemented in the version I flew. However, given the layout of
the terrain, the superb damage modeling, and the smooth multiplayer play in
Parsoft's earlier A-10 CUBA, multiplayer mode should be quite intriguing here.
Call in an Editor
The sim also includes a complete mission editor, so you'll be able to add
your own missions or download new ones from the Net. You can set waypoints,
orders, and targets; assign squadrons to escort other squadrons; and adjust
weapons and fuel loadouts for each plane. You can also adjust numerous aspects
of each squadron's artificial intelligence: Skill, Aggression, Loyalty, Morale,
and Sanity. Even in this early version, the AI is quite convincing. I could drop
planes into an arena and they would engage in realistic furballs.
More extensibility will come from Parsoft's Open Plane Interface. The
developer will document the formats and flight model structure for the sim's
aircraft, so third-party developers will be able to create new planes. However,
they won't be doing an actual plane editor. And after having had a few of
Parker's intriguing flight physics discussions go skyrocketing over my head, I
don't think creating new planes will be a task for the uninitiated. I hope an
enterprising third-party developer like Game Tool Technologies will come up with
a user-friendly plane editor.
Fighter Squadron has enough unique features to stand out from the pack. When
you factor in its quality physics model and extensible plane set, it has the
potential to offer long-term gameplay.
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