Review: Combat Flight Simulator 3,
The Battle for Europe
By Hugh Shoults for Simviation
March, 1943...
Haupman Dieter Kaufman watched the altimeter and Vertical Speed Indicator closely as he neared the English coast. The two Jumo engines roared outside the flight deck of his Ju88A4 as the first black bursts of flak began to appear against the few white clouds in an otherwise brilliant blue winter sky. Staying low to avoid radar detection, the flight roared over the coast near Brighton without incident.
Once they were across the coast and safely inland, Dieter turned his flight of Ju88s west, the escort of Bf109s staying above and behind. It was much easier to maintain their low level now that he could gauge his altitude by the trees and low snow-covered hills rushing below him.
He began to sweat as his mind imaged what would happen if he clipped the top of a tree. At best he could jettison his bombs and limp his wounded bomber back toward the French coast. He chuckled and told himself again that you don't grow old in this game by taking unnecessary chances. Dieter had several missions under his belt, and had become quite adept at making torpedo runs against British shipping in the channel. However, bombing was a different sort of mission and had its own set of challenges.
They climbed as they neared the target. Leveling off at 3000 feet, Dieter trimmed the aircraft and held it as steady as possible. In the nose, the bombardier peered through the bombsite, making minute adjustments to the heading to line up on the bridge below. Again, flack came up to meat them, but this time there could be no dodging. Bombbay doors open… 250kg and 50kg bombs selected… Wait…. Wait… Bombs away!
As soon as the last bomb dropped, Dieter banked the aircraft hard right and dove to pick up speed, and the other Ju88s followed. Now that they'd made their attack, everyone in the world would be looking for them. As the Gs built, the airframe creaked. Not many bombers could handle this kind of stress, but the Ju88 was something special. Behind, the lower gunner watched as the line of bombs impacted directly across the bridge, and part of the span collapsed. Success!
They weren’t away safely yet. Over channel a flight of Spitfires caught up to them. The rear gunners hammered away with their 7.92mm MGs, inflicting some damage, while Dieter steered into the clouds. The fight continued off-and-on for over ten minutes, but as they neared the French Coast the Spitfires broke off their attack and turned for home.
Dieter was shaking and sweaty as he slowed the bomber for final approach. It'd be bad form to crash after a successful mission. Flaps down, gear down, and the he eased back on the yoke as he crossed the airfield boundary. Throttle back, and apply brakes carefully, before turning off the tail wheel lock and taxiing for the parking pad. This was yet another successful mission to add to his career, but in a few days or even hours he'd be going back up again. Then, who knew what would happen…
Thus starts my review of Microsoft's Aces studio game design shop's long-awaited Combat Flight Simulator 3, The Battle for Europe. The above was one of the many missions I've flown in the CFS3 campaign. However, CFS3 is so flexible that it easily could have been a quick combat mission or even an on-line multiplayer session (with others manning the different crew positions, flying the other bombers--or the fighters--on either side) as we battled to drop our bombs and get safely home.
CFS3 is both more and less than I'd hoped for. It has more aircraft than ever seen in a Microsoft Flight Sim (34 of them, all flyable). It has props, jets, bombers with multiple crew positions, a dynamic campaign, role-playing, missions, several options for quick combat and multiplayer, and the ability for designers to make aircraft and scenery objects using gMax (just as in FS2002).
However, in what I believe will be the most controversial move with their new sim, MS has decided to depart from the Flight Simulator engine. In the past releases of CFS, FS aircraft, scenery, gauges and the like could be imported with little or no modification. However, the only similarity FS2002 and CFS3 share is the airfile format. Everything else is different and not compatible.
The new engine, however, has enabled all sorts of other things that come under the heading of "Higher level of detail with better frame rates," which should be the goal of any combat simulator. When weighing the "pros" of more detail and better quality against the "cons" of non-compatibility, I've decided in favor of the new sim. Sometimes you must make sacrifices in the name of progress. I believe the new CFS3 engine to be a leap forward in combat flight sims, and I hope to see it continue to grow and expand as it's predecessors have.
So, without further ado, let' s take a look at CFS3:
Frame Rates
You're going to hate me saying this, but I tested CFS3 on a higher-end computer (Pentium4, 2GHz GeForce4) so I have had no real problems running full detail on a 1024x768 screen. However, when CFS3 first installs, it runs a diagnostic of your system, which will take nearly three minutes (it seems like much longer when you're impatient to do some flying!). When done, the detail and video settings will be optimized for good detail with the best performance your computer can handle. I've heard that some slower machines will run CFS3 as well (or better) than they ran CFS2, but I haven't experinaced this. I can say that my Machine runs CFS3 as well as it does CFS2. However, the settings the diagnostic will give you are somewhat conservative--my screen resolution by default was 800x600--but you can tweak it as you fly to get what you want.
And don't worry, after the first install initial load times for CFS3 (not including the opening video) are down below 40 seconds!
User Interface
The Interface isn't a simple backdrop, but kind of an active movie that runs on the game engine with some good martial music playing in the background (based on Wagner's Götterdämmerung, I believe). When you select an aircraft, it appears on a parking pad in front of a hanger at (what I assume) is a fictitious airfield somewhere in Europe, and you can see the gear compress as you add or delete fuel and weapons from the load out. There are US, British, and German aircraft and building scattered about in the background, and in the foreground is your pilot, impatiently waiting for you to complete your selections so he can start flying.
All of the sim can be reached from this one screen: Options, Quick Combat, Missions, Campaigns, and Multiplayer.
The Campaign
The Campaign is easily the most dramatic departure from the former CFS sims. Rather than the old "string of single missions", the new CFS campaign allows the player to have a direct impact on the course of the war as he either succeeds or fails in his missions.
The campaign revolves around a role-playing type scenario. When you begin, you select a nationality (US, British, or German), aircraft type (bomber or fighter), name, age, and a pilot to base your character on from a list. Your Character is then assigned certain attributes (vision, G-Stress tolerance, etc.), which can be improved through experience. You can even look up the history of your pilot (where he was born, how he got into aviation, etc.) or you can create your own.
Then you go to the campaign map. It covers a large area, from northern England down to northern Italy, and from the French coast almost to the Polish border. The front line (which begins in the English channel) is in red.
You select the "sector" of front line you want to effect, and a drop-down menu appears with a selection of three or four missions you can choose to fly, such as air patrol, anti-shipping, bombing, and ground attack against various targets.
Once you take off you'll find you're not alone. Besides your flight of aircraft, and the enemy you're sent to attack, there's an entire war going on out there. Planes, trains, ships, tanks, trucks… The entire war is happening as you fly. Because of this, the "warp" (X-key) doesn’t magically teleport you to the next action (as in previous version of CFS) but takes you on a wild "fast forward" ride as you zip along at a rate of about 8 kilometers a second until you run into the enemy or arrive at your next waypoint. Anytime you want to get out and investigate something you can hit Cntl-X to drop out of warp.
Success in your missions helps you to earn "experience points" and "prestige points" which allow you to upgrade your aircraft to a better model or change your squadron location. Points can be earned even on flights when you don't complete the specified mission, so if you can't find the tanks you wanted to destroy, you can go on a hunt and find what you can. "Something" is better than "nothing".
You can also order a ground assault and otherwise fight the campaign as you go, based on the amount of national resources you've built up. You can directly attack your enemy's resources by concentrating your attacks on factories and infrastructure (bridges, shipping, etc.).
Role-Playing
I'm 35 years old, married with kids, and haven't done any role-playing since I played D&D in Junior High. My first reaction was that this role playing was kind of silly. However, I was surprised to find myself growing rather fond of old Dieter, my pilot.
One mission, after being damaged on a torpedo run in my Ju88, I was bounced by a couple of RAF Typhoons on the way home. I'd had several successful missions with this guy, and I really didn't want him to get killed. I jinked around as much as I could, tried diving into a cloud (loosing too much altitude in the process) and eventually had to ditch the plane inthe channel (I was too low to bail out). I realized when I was done that I'd fought much harder to keep my pilot alive than maybe I ever had in a sim before.
So on the matter of role-playing I've got to give MS and the Aces Team a "thumbs up".
Single Missions
Single missions (such as the type already familiar in CFS 1 & 2) are present, and include Historical Missions, "What-If Missions, and several "Training Missions". I haven't yet seen a Mission Builder, but I'm sure something like that will be included with the sim (as in CFS2) or as an SDK (as in CFS1).
Quick Combat
Quick Combat has grown a lot since CFS2. You can now choose between several different mission profiles, including freeflight, ground attack (bomber or fighter), bomber escort, intercept, or dogfight. You can choose the number of friendly and enemy aircraft and their types, the airfield to start at, the time, the weather, and the altitude.
Multiplayer
I really think Multiplayer will be a hit, as it will do everything Single Missions or Quick Combat will. I spent several hours the other night flying MP… Fighter pilot, bomber pilot, and bomber crew. I flew in QC, and also in a cooperative mission, with others flying (along with AIs) as the enemy. It was a lot of fun.
Aircraft
Visual models are good. I'm sure some of the after-market designer will be able to do better, but these are really outstanding considering they are made with as low a poly count as possible (to have hits on Frame Rates). The sun reflects off the canopy and the wings beautifully. On the mosquito, the engine nacelles and leading edge of the wing (metal) reflect more than the fuselage and wings (wood). The way the bare metal aircraft (B-26F, P-47D-25, P-51D, P-38L, and P-80A) reflect the light are gorgeous and realistic.
There are lots of small details. Canopies open and close, Bombbay doors open, dive brakes deploy, textures (paint schemes) on some aircraft change with the season (as do the flight suits the pilots wear), landing gear will compress under weight or on rough ground, and more.
Virtual Cockpits: There are no longer "2d panels" as we knew them in CFS 1 & 2. Everything is a "Virtual Cockpit." Some are better than others, but overall I'd say they're a good balance of "detail vs. poly count," although the gun sights could use some work to appear more "reflective". Nice details include moving control levers, yokes, sticks, and rudder pedals. I really like the P-38, B-25, and the Ju88, while I was a little disappointed with the P-51 and B-26. One nice touch: The inside of the canopy is reflective, which helps you maintain your orientation while dog fighting in "padlock view", even in the bubble-canopied aircraft.
On all the aircraft I've found the gauges reasonably easy to read and well placed, once I figured out to use "Scroll Lock" to get "smooth scrolling" (using either the keypad arrow keys or the hat switch), otherwise you get the front/45° right/right/45° up/45° down views that jump and for me were hard for me to use, although I'm sure others will like them. With scroll lock I could pan down to watch my gauges (and the view would stay there) as I was flying without having to adjust. In the Ju88a4 this also allows one to watch the scenery through the bombardier's nose, which is really fun.
To make reading a gauge even easier, you can position the mouse over a gauge, and a small tag will appear to give you the gauge's reading (i.e., "11,204 feet" or "324 mph"). This is the case for all the gauges; speed, oil pressure, manifold pressure, etc. I would think that "clickable" gauges, switches, and levers would only be a step away. I'd hope that MS would make that extra step at some point in the future.
Heads Up Display (HUD): There is a Heads Up Display you can use when you're flying in "Wonder Woman mode, (no panel), outside the aircraft, or manning another crew position. It consists of five semi-transparent gauges and a simple black bombsite. You can also customize the selection of gauges, as you want.
Flight Models: While I didn't do any "formal" flight testing, all Flight models seem to behave OK, and I couldn't find any major problems (like the way the Fw190 in CFS1 would "porpoise" at high altitude). The P-47 is a power house, the Typhoon a steady gun & rocket platform, the Fw190 can roll like nothing else, the Spitfires are great dogfighters, and the P-38L has aileron boost and dive flaps, which will make it a terror in the free-for-all fight. The Bombers have that big, twin-engine feel to them, and I've had a lot of fun bouncing around in the Ju88 in low-level bombing and torpedo runs, or dive-bombing from altitude (remember, the early Ju88s were also dive-bombers). The jets add a lot to the sim because the tactics and techniques used differ so greatly from their propeller driven counterparts. The Me262 is as fun as you can imagine, to Gotha as unusual, and the Vampire is really a nifty little fighter.
My only concern with the Flight Models is that some aircraft seem a little too easy to fly. I've never flown a WWII-era fighter, but to be a good dogfighter an aircraft must be a little unstable. However, I found some aircraft difficult--if not impossible--to spin, or even stall in a turn. I understand that MS is still tweaking the Flight Models and hope they behave a little more realistically when the sim hits the stores. If not, I'll anxiously be waiting for the 714 guys CFS3 V.1.0 set of airfiles!
Scenery and Effects
The over-all look of the scenery is beautiful. As we've been hearing for several months, the clouds are the best we've ever seen. They are truly amazing, and I was surprised at how much they lent toward a "total immersion" in the sim. They add so much that I can't possible say enough about them.
But that's not where "the cloud effect" ends. Aircraft produce dust while taxiing on dirt strips or fields, which (like the smoke from a burning aircraft) drifts and behaves in a surprisingly realistic way. Paved runways will produce skid-smoke when you land, or sparks if you belly-in.
Unfortunately, the "world" only seems to cover the same area as the Campaign map: Northern England down to northern Italy, and from the French coast almost to the Polish border. Because of the new engine, I'm not sure that we'll have any add-ons in terrain before MS releases an SDK.
The most serious omission of the entire sim seems to be the lack of any type of in-flight map. In missions and campaigns you can check your waypoints on a map one last time before getting in the cockpit, but once you're there, you can't get back to the map.
The scenery down low is really nice. Trees flanking small fields zip by as you fly low, and airports and cities are well detailed, although there seem to be too many trees in the cities. Yes, you can fly under the Eiffel Tower. Or the Tower Bridge, for that matter. I look forward to a designer adding a Lysander, Cub, or Storch so I can conduct more landings in these fields. I managed to get the B-25 down, but getting it stopped before the tree line was difficult!
There aren't any carriers, and don't expect to see them added for this release. Maybe MS ran out of time, or they're saving something for CFS4. However, I was able to ditch my aircraft "in the drink", and suppose the floatplanes will be possible.
There seem to be (and probably are) hundreds of vehicle and ship types populating the sim. All that I've seen have good detail and (like the aircraft) seem to be a good balance between detail and poly count I flew on a Pentium II 350 MHz for too long (I did mention that I'm married, right?) and so I'm a big fan of frame-rate saving design. Like the aircraft, they'll leave dust behind on dirt roads and the steam locomotives even produce steam (and the stack glows at night).
The weather can be atrocious. No, not the way it looks (it looks wonderful) but in the way it behaves! Trying to land or find your target in the middle of a snow storm or thunder storm can be a hair-raising experience, as you drop down and down through the clouds, watching the altimeter while white-knuckling the stick.
The explosive and damage effects are also excellent. Going into the "outside" view (F4 key) and watching as your bombs impact or a torpedo blasts into the side of a destroyer is such a joy that I've come close to crashing though inattention several times when I was gawking instead of flying.
Had I crashed, the effects would have been spectacular. Downed aircraft leave a skid in the ground followed by a smoking hole, and debris from water impacts leave splashes themselves. I think it really adds to the feel of the sim when you come around in a dogfight and still see a smoking crater or oils slick left from an earlier kill… This is true in QC and multiplayer as well.
As for damage effects on aircraft, I'm surprised at the level of detail possible. Yes, the pilot can be killed. Yes, you can survive a mid-air collision or brush with the trees, so I'm sure "V1 Tipping" will be possible. There are "wind sounds"
in the cockpit when the canopy is holed, and the engine will freeze up is run at high power for too long. High Gs will produce excellent blackout effects as the airframe creaks (or breaks) under the stress. Lowering the flaps or gear at too high of a speed will cause damage, as will over-speed dives.
When the damage is too much, you've got to bail out. The effects for this are outstanding. First, you must have enough altitude and low enough speed. Opening the Canopy (Shift-C) will save some time, so do that early. Then you bail (O key three times) as the view jumps outside and you watch your pilot climb up and tumble out, before stabilizing in free-fall.
Press the O key one more time and he will pull his ripcord to open his parachute, and then hang in the harness and watch his aircraft auger in. On nearing the ground a short "active video" (using the game engine for location and pilot) will show your pilot drift in and conduct a parachute-landing fall.
There's also a video clip showing your pilot running form his burning aircraft after you survive a crash-landing. I'm sure there are more, but I've been trying not to crash while flying the sim!
Artificial Intelligence
The Friendly AI: The wingmen in CFS3 accept the same commands as those in CFS2, (attack, help, rejoin, etc...) but they seem to "act smarter". The don't run off when you first sight enemy aircraft, but will stay with you as long as they can through the dogfight (until you give them the "attack" order), and will rejoin pretty quickly when you ask them to.
The Enemy AI: Where I've noticed the biggest improvement in the AI is with the enemy. They really know how to fight, without pulling any of the "impossible" maneuvers that we all had to contend with in the previous CFS versions. In fact, the CFS3 AI has been the first I've experienced to use an honest-to-goodness "Rolling Scissors" maneuver while dog fighting. Bear with me while I give you another excerpt from a QC session:
Two P-51Bs, 25,000 feet over southern Germany…
There they were. Two Fw190s in winter colors. They were hard to see against the clouds, but I caught sight of them as the sun glinted off their canopy. They banked hard to our right, and we followed in a nose-to-nose turn. Then one of them dropped low, and the other went high, and the battle was on!
We twisted and turned for over 10 minutes. My wingman tried to stick with me, but I lost him in a high yo-yo, and he took off after one of the FWs. Then I and the other one really did some FLYING. I was really impressed with the way he flew as we danced about the clouds.
Several times I found my self amazed with his skill and knowledge of tactical manuevers. I really had to fly and shoot well to keep myself in the fight. As I pulled Gs, the screen began blackening at the edges, working it's way in, and the plane's frame creaked…After about 8 minutes, my wingman got shot down and I was up against both the 190s. I'd had hits on both of the buggers, but was running low of ammunition and tricks. Finally they both got on my tail and I couldn't shake them, so I dove for the clouds. Down, down, down…But then I started getting hit. Twist, turn… Nope. Didn't have it. Then I broke out of the clouds (there weren't enough to hide in anyway) and then I really got hammered. I opened the canopy (Shift-C) just in case I'd need to get out in a hurry, and tried a few more tricks. No-go. Finally, with the engine sputtering and the controls sluggish, I rolled her over and dropped out.
I tumbled a couple of times until stabilizing, then continued to fall for a few seconds to keep from making myself a tempting target as I hung in the 'chute. I could see my Mustang smoking heavily as she continued her long fall to the earth, finally cratering in near an airfield. I went ahead and pulled the ripcord and the chute opened, and I swung lazily as I drifted down into captivity or escape, we're not sure which... Total combat time was 13:25!
Add-Ons
Scenery: As I stated earlier, it looks like it'll be difficult for the scenery guys to add terrain to the sim without more information forthcoming from MS. In the past they've released scenery SDK within about six months. I hope for once they'll get it released earlier!
Aircraft & Scenery Objects: The press release states that Aircraft and other objects (buildings, ships, vehicles) will be producible using gMax, a freeware program by Discreet, maker of such programs as 3ds max. While gMax is free, you'll need the gMax "game pack" for CFS3 to actually produce aircraft and objects. I'm not sure if it'll be in the regular version of CFS3, or if MS will release a "CFS3-Pro" version like they did with FS2002.
Panels and Gauges are now part of the aircraft, and cannot be traded, moved, and/or otherwise transferred from one aircraft to another. There are only a limited number of gauges in the sim itself, and I'm not sure that community designers will be able to program more. It looks like the gauges will be added into the Virtual Cockpit with gMax like the FS2002 aircraft Here's a partial list of gauges that are available for designers to use:
Missions/Campaigns: Mission files appear to be in XML format, like much of the sim. While these are readable with Notepad, there are hundreds of codes for vehicles, equipment, airfields, and whatnot that we can't know. I haven't seen a Mission Builder yet, but hope that one is released with the sim or shortly thereafter as an SDK. If not, I believe it will negatively impact on the success of the sim, so I'm sure MS won't neglect this area.
Flight Models: This is the one area I've seen that still traces it's roots directly back to FS2002. The airfile formats are still readable with AirEd, and seem (for the most part) to be relatively unchanged from the last version of Flight Simulator. I find this good news, as all the work in the past few years to produce realistic flight models for add-on aircraft by groups such as the 714th will not have been in vain.
Conclusion
My overall impressions of Combat Flight Simulator are positive. It's a well-detailed combat sim with lots of beautiful effects for a small hit on computing power. However, my biggest regret is the fact that we won't have any of the "bells and whistles" we were able to import in from FS for previous versions of CFS; Nav aids, gauges, scenery, aircraft, etc...
"Out of the Box" Combat Flight Simulator 3, The Battle for Europe is much more than CFS1 or 2 were "as installed." However, you can't upgrade CFS3 immediately with FS add-ons, and the new engine means that many of these capabilities may no longer be possible... I'm not sure that MS fully realizes that the success of CFS1 & 2 amongst the serious simmers was due to the ability to integrate "combat sim" and "flight sim" missions together to get a unique experience.
We can only hope that the developers in the Flight Sim Community are able to produce the means to add these capabilities back in and turn a good sim into an outstanding one.
