by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson

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I have now had about six hours in JANE'S F/A 18 beta, so it's time to share with you some first impressions.

In a word.. WOW! There is no doubt that the Skunkworks are about to pull off another incredible bit of work. The overall quality shows throughout. The graphics engine is fantastic. COMMS appear to be solid. The use of additional voice cues is going to be a fantastic aid for the novice.

I haven't yet had a chance to seriously test the AI; that will come tonight and tomorrow. My goal has been to supply the demand for a good look around while becoming familiar with the interface.

The mission builder looks to be incredible, by far the most advanced one we have seen from JANE'S yet. I have taken all my shots at 1024x768 with all graphics options cranked to the max. I'm not certain if ALL effects and objects are in place yet, but it looks to be fairly complete.

Believe it or not, I have had only one lock up and no crashes to desktop. The sim appears to be amazingly solid. My system is an overclocked Celeron (558 MHz) running a Guillemot Xentor 32 (TNT2 the slow version). Frame rate has been excellent so far, and it's likely there is still some optimization to be done.

IFR.. hold still!

ZOOM In MFD

Oh-oh... I'm in trouble!

Yep, that's trouble.

Click to continue

Zowie! (That's a complex journalistic term I learned somewheres...) Bring up the large image and notice the dynamic light reflection from the fire! Gulp!

A fascination with fire.

What goes up...

Where'd they put the carrier?

Outa time, but yes, the FLIR looks great and have you seen how many kinds of weapons they mount on these birds???

More Screens, More Info