Team Alligator by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson January 5th, 2000
	In late June, 1998, SIMIS and Mindscape/SSI released Team Apache, a unique approach to a military helicopter simulation. The emphasis was on "team," and managing your team was a simulation in itself, much like the role-playing "simulations" that are popular with Japanese console gamers. In June we posted an extensive interview on the next game from SIMIS, Team Alligator and then in July I posted an alpha update. Team Alligator models the Russian side of the conflict from a similar simulation perspective, but with key changes and enhancements. (Note: images are at 1024x768). Airbase in fog in Belarus. Caught in the Updraught Team Alligator is improved over the earlier Team Apache in every way possible: graphics, AI, flight model, wingman control and interaction, campaign, damage model and avionics. That's good news for helo fans! I spent an hour last night flying around in a late beta. My first impression was very positive. For the eye-candy enthusiasts, there are ten times the polygon count in the cockpit. Buildings and trees are both more numerous and much more impressive. The sim is quite beautiful. Wing#4 in Belarus. Voices are also impressive. The Russian accents are nicely done. And if you happen to understand Russian, you can toggle a switch to get the actual Russian language! Training missions are looking good, and voice narration is a great way to get the player involved. The impatience of the Instructor when you don't follow directions seems quite realistic! Click to continue		Slewed down slightly. Atmosphere It's only reasonable to expect atmosphere in spades with the hardware we are running these days. Team Alligator looks set to meet expectations in this area. I flew day missions, dusk missions, and bad weather missions. Flying in fog was very cool and very much a nail biting enterprise. The feeling of flight is good, and if you select high detail and complex texture mesh the sense of speed is excellent. I tested on a Celeron running at 500MHz with 128 MB and Matrox G400. I was able to run with all settings to the max and a fluid frame rate. Flight response feels very different from Team Apache when all realism options are toggled on. The chopper feels solid and with an inertia that I haven't noticed in other helo sims. It's different also interesting getting used to the torque cancelling effect of counter rotating rotors. Ka52 in fog in Belarus. Good weather. Note the jet landing on the runway. The general feeling of the landscape is much better integration of roads and objects than anything I have previously seen. But you can see for yourself! Objects themselves are very detailed. Go to Page Two: Comms and Control
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