by Kurt Giesselman

  I was fortunate to meet Arnie Lee, head of Abacus. He told me that he hopes to add several more expansion packs to the CFS in 2000. Abacus has been working on Tuskeegee Flight and plans to release this in mid Q1. Arnie said he would like to do more in the Pacific Theater. He could not name anything specific but you can bet that if he thinks it is a good idea then it will happen. We visited the CH Products booth where Kath Hills walked us through the broad CH product line.

They had their new two lever USB Flight Yoke for sale and a working prototype of the three lever USB Flight Yoke to be released early next year. She said that the new USB throttle should hit the shelves at about the same time the yoke does. As long as they arrive in time for B-17 II, I will be happy. Kath told COMBATSIM.COM™ that their customer survey had been very successful and would help them guide their coming generation of HOTAS, yokes, throttles, and rudder pedals.

Our stop at the Microprose display had to be one of the many highlights of the show. MP was running early versions of B-17 II and Gunship III. I had the opportunity to fly both simulations and I have to say that these are going to raise the bar again in 2000. I was fortunate to be able to fly B-17 II (and several other aircraft modeled in this sim) at length and get a thorough tour around its remarkable interface by no less than the game's producer. He was quick to point out the parts of the sim that are still under development like the terrain art and mission builder.

Aside from the areas that are still to be finished the rest of the sim looks gorgeous. Flying through the clouds was totally real. You can really hide in the clouds (and lose track of your flight as I managed to do). Looking through the bombsite through moderate cloud cover was spooky. I felt like I was watching an old newsreel.

The damage modeling is simply the best I have ever seen. The interior shows smoke damage after there has been a fire, shattered Plexiglas (and dead crewmen) from AAA and enemy fighters. I could see the wing fuel tanks and struts through the wing's shredded skin! The twin-skin technology and damage modeling is unique and incredibly detailed.

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In this development version I saw all the potential areas for damage as data which made it easy to see how a strafing had shot up my B-17. In the finished version a visual inspection of the fuselage will be required to spot damage, along with reports from the maintenance crew. The pilot has to decide what should be repaired based on available spare parts, number of aircraft out of service, and the needs of the campaign. Wow!

There are several flyable aircraft in B-17 II including a P-51 which I tried out. The flight model was excellent ("here are no plans to dampen down the spin and stall characteristics, except at the lower realism levels. The exact magnitude of any changes to the flight models for the lower realism level have yet to be worked out, and will be assessed during the gameplay testing process," Iain Howe). I even had an opportunity to test out the damage modeling when I bent the prop trying to fly too close to the ground. The cockpit was very detailed and will be fully clickable in the finished product.

B-17 II uses full bump mapping. Wayward has chosen to do everything through DirectX 7.X (no T&L). This yields high performance on current graphic cards. This development version of the program was running on a PII 450 with 128 meg of RAM and a TNT2 Ultra graphics card. The Voodoo3s have been tested and perform well too. Everything was smooth as silk with eight B-17s in my flight (Wayward plans to tweak this up to full squadron strength so you can jump between 12 aircraft). The release date is still targeted for Q1 2000 so save your pocket change folks.

Gunship III…..IT HAS TREES!!! What else can I say? No more slinking behind hills, searching for cover that is sparse at best. IT HAS TREES! The flight model seemed up to snuff, although it was hard for me to gauge with the Microsoft Twist-o-Flex joystick. I just cannot fly a chopper without throwing my body around like someone having a fit. This style is not a good match to the twist rudder of the MS product.

This demo was a very early development version of Gunship III with no damage modeling for your helicopter. I could fly into trees (I did), crash into the ground (I did), even Kamakazi into enemy armor (I did that too) without the impervious Gunship even getting a nick. The MP person that was helping me try to keep in the air said that there was a newer version of Gunship III in internal development but that it had not made it to the show in time to be shown as a demo.

Go to Part III