Functional MFD and avionics almost at par with Jane's F15E.

First we will go into what I think is sub-par in CSF when compared to its contemporaries from the sim vendors aforementioned. CSF has chosen the path of photo realistic satellite stereographic terrain as opposed to repeating computer generated terrain maps. The good news is that the terrain looks good above 10 K feet, but progressively worse as you go down. Also good news is that it does look better and run much faster than what we saw in iF22. What's bad is that the low level flying that a fighter-bomber strike will do a lot of, is not going to be fun in this sim.

GSC's Hornet Korea's repeating mapped world is much better and sharper. Once again its that design trade off of terrain accuracy at high altitude versus low level game play. CSF looks very good at high altitudes, and GSC's HK at low altitudes. Some day in the near future we will probably get both. As far as aircraft graphics are concerned, I think they are very similar with HK's planes slightly better, but CSF's load out looking much sharper. As for cockpit and avionics, CSF's excels here over HK, with its functional avionics suite and active MFDs. The exception of HK having a much better padlocking system with MFD's super imposed onto the padlock view with the HUD information. When it comes to dogfighting, HK is far better equipped.

Lets move away from graphics now and look at the game play aspects. The graphical user interfaces of CSF are very attractive and add to the being immersion of being in a squadron on an aircraft carrier. The other big investment was in the fine tuning of the TALON campaign and mission editors. One big advantage over HK and F15E is that you can virtually never run out of missions to fly as opposed to the others that have a few scripted missions, with their mission editor as the only means to get new sorties to fly.

Another area of strength is CSF's flight model (FM). The only jet sims that are as complex are Jane's F15E and SSI's Su27 Flanker. You can choose the full FM or the relaxed version, personally I only fly the full realistic FM's.

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AV8R and BUCKO flying in formation over TCP/IP internet: very stable for 2 players.

Yanking and banking with no regard to energy management is what separates the hard core from the novice flight simmer. In fact, I'll go as far as to say ill take a good FM over eye-candy every time. This either/or situation is also diminishing as technology moves forward and our pocket books grow smaller. FM judgment is a very hard argument to make, which is why I had Jim Harler speak from experience. But my opinion is that CSF lies somewhere between F15E and HK in fidelity.

Finally, let's talk about multiplayer (MP) support. MP head to head scenario provides an arena for dogfighting with your friends. What it doesn't provide is a believable aircraft carrier mission based battle setup. I have had 2 to 4 player MP sessions that connected fine (Noting that using a fast computer - P200 and up, with a 3D accelerator and with a fast internet connection are essentials to MP success).

What was a dramatic improvement over iF22 was the ability to find each other with radar and then form up. Look at the picture with me and a human wingman, we were that close with very little warp. A very stable 2 player session. When I try formation flying this close in HK, there's lots of warping which makes it impossible. On the other hand, I've been involved in TCP/IP and IPX/Kali 4 player HK dogfights that are no problem. In fact I'll say that HK is better suited for MP and squadron dogfighting. CSF does have a good damage modeling and even a spin recovery system like the real Super Hornet.

So how does it all sum up? CSF has made a very strong showing in the areas of: flight model, avionics, high altitude terrain graphics, mission editor and campaign generator, carrier takeoff and landings, and stable MP head to head. If I already owned GSC's HK, buying CSF would be hard to justify. Where CSF is topgun is that it sports the best carrier cat launches and the finals to the carrier with the full FM is a real challenge. If you think you're really a hot stick, try doing it with the time acceleration on. I think this gives you the real heart stopping sensations.

Where does CSF fall short? Low level graphics, wingman and enemy AI. Looking forward, we can expect the official patch very soon and it will address many bugs (like your a/c exploding 4 seconds after a successful carrier landing), addition of COOP MP missions, and other things too. If IMagic Labs continues the trend of improvement we've seen with iF22 to iF18, the future looks bright for them. My overall grading for this sim is split: as a solo sim 85%, as a multiplayer sim 80%.

Till we meet in the skies, Check Six.

Download the v.1.2 patch by clicking HERE

Ed. Note: Thomas Spann was a beta tester for Interactive Magic on if18. Download his TM files for if18 by clicking HERE.