It’s a trade off of game complexity versus available bandwidth and CPU cycles. As technology continues to race forward, we will be getting more complexity over our faster connectivity technologies. Needless to say, having ISDN, IDSL, Cable modems or a local area network (LAN) are going to give you the best experience online.

Flying formation over internet TCP/IP

Below is an example of flying upclose and personal with a pilot from the Kali flight server. We were dogfighting over TCP/IP. I have a cable modem, he has a 56K modem running at 31kbs (due to his ISP’s limitations). Our ping value was near 350 ms with 0 to 10% packet transmission loss.

What this gave us was about 45 minutes of fantastic gun battles until the packet loss finally caught up to us. What happened was when he flew under a few hundred feet from the ground, he would appear on my screen as flying half buried under ground. Obviously positional data was being lost over time. To solve this we just restarted the mission.

Note too, that we used ROGER WILCO (http://www.resounding.com) for voice comms the whole time. (If you haven’t experienced live verbal communications while dogfighting or COOP missions, you’re missing the 7th dimension in the flight simming experience: 3D visual, 3D aural, and now voice).

If you can’t do voice comms, text chat is well supported in multiplayer. The remaining option is to fly on Jane’s own dedicated flight server called JCN. They have a lot of problems with their login database, but once you get in to their system which is TCP/IP based, it is a smooth flying connection.

Janes has a fast server that hosts the missions, helping reduce the peer to peer connection loading effects. The best part is that usually there is someone 24-7 (24 hours, 7 days per week available). Apart from lack of IPX/Kali support, I give Jane’s a thumbs up on their multiplayer support.

Lining up a victim who failed to check six - good multiplayer stability

SUMMARY

So we come full circle and have to sum up WW2 Fighters and try to answer that hard question: which WW2 sim do I get?

On the down side, WW2 Fighters is plagued with both minor bugs (i.e. cannot start a MP COOP on the tarmac without a hideous repetitive crash bug), to serious hard-core rating stoppers like the flight modeling (spin, compressibility) short falls, and the magical auto pilot and targeting. Also the manual was a ¼ inch, 90 page deal, targeting only the bare basics.

What I would have liked to have seen coming from Jane’s is details on each avionics instrument and how it is to be employed. Energy management (E-M) tables for a/c comparison would have been useful. Granted, much of the historical and pictorial details are embedded in the Museum GUI, so that detail was not left out. I did notice that the cockpit instrumentation from the museum did not match those in the cockpit art while flying (specifically the placement of the gas temp and pressure gauges are swapped).

I also experienced a few lock ups when I shot all my R4M rockets on auto fire when up close to my target. But the lack of wingman commands is also a big area of neglect. When you fly solo or COOP, wingman commands make or break a mission. EAW does a much better job of this. It seems to me that Jane’s left the hangar door open for SDOE to surpass them. We will have to wait and see as to what SDOE delivers.

Click to continue . . .

Single Mission Selection.

On the plus side of the coin, WW2 Fighters is the most graphically and sound pleasing (engines, weapons, explosions and that wonderful big band music) sim ever crafted to date. The enemy AI is splendid. The damage modeling is unparalleled.

The attention to detail on both the cockpit interior and exterior accuracy and flight control surfaces is very good. The multiplayer support continues to be an area of strength for most all of Jane’s sims.

Mission Builder and Quick Missions access screen.

The mission editor gives user created missions for both solo or MP game play, making WW2 Fighters unique (this area could have also been covered better in the manual). This is where Jane’s F15E failed us, and where LongBow2 delighted us. The viewing and padlocking systems provide good SA, almost too good as I mentioned earlier, due to the targeting range and target pop-up window.

Jane’s WW2 Fighters tries to be all things to all people, and we know this is a very precarious path to follow. I would rather they make some sims targeted just for the larger easy to mid-level market, and other signature sims targeted primarily for the bleeding edge hard-core simming community, and then identify the target market on their website and on the box to that effect.

I regrettably report that IMHO Jane’s WW2 Fighters is not what it could have been, but still could be. If serious attention is paid to the many bugs and short falls, and a patch released within a reasonable time, then this could be the classic hard-core WW2 sim. With SDOE, Falcon4, and Su27 V2 coming out soon, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Life spans for non- classic sims are measured in months, and for classics, in years (EF2000, Flanker, Falcon3 and WarBirds).

So do I recommend this sim? Absolutely! Under the proviso that you have the right hardware and online connection bandwidth, AND that if you are a hard-core simmer, you are aware of the short falls and are willing to gamble on Jane’s dealing with those serious flaws outlined in this review. If you are an easy to mid-level weekend warrior, I know you will love this sim.

I think its the best of the bunch thus far with Screamin’ Demons Over Europe (SDOE) yet to be released, reportedly in February or March of '99. There is far too much good in WW2 Fighters for it not to be in your simulation hangar, especially if you have high end hardware. But, as always, one has to keep his/her expectations in check.

Till we meet in the skies, Check Six.

AV8R

P.S. Special thanks to the many hard-core simmers on Kali FLIGHT who unselfishly spend their time with me online to test MP for this review.