Pacific Theatre for CFS by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson
	Next I noticed that the graphical modeling of damage appears to be different than in CFS. I didn't see pieces flying off aircraft when I hit them with guns or cannon. While it's not a big deal, that graphical effect was a great way to give notice that your shells have found their mark. You WILL, however, see smoke when appropriate and the effective damage modeling itself is intact. I flew that first mission about four times to get a feel for the situation. My job was to protect the Kates from the American aircraft. I did only moderately well; there are MANY American aircraft and I found myself flying too fast most of the time. The Defenders I then switched to the USAAF, taking off from an inland field against the incoming Japanese fighters. View to my wingman. The P40B Warhawk cockpit is one of the better ones, though not as good as the original Microsoft cockpits. The same goes for the aircraft skins themselves. But the downer for some will be that there are no moving control surfaces modeled here and the propellers are transparent rather than animated. In spite of that I found the mission to be a good one, and enjoyed the feeling of flight. The Warhawk is a FAST airplane, however, and it's a challenge not to overfly your target. Into Pearl in the P40-B. The Warhawk is very well armored, so you are less likely to be killed outright while flying this one. It's also fairly well armed, and once you get on the tail of a Zero it won't take you long to dispatch your opponent. Recommended: boom n' zoom tactics. Attempted to defend Pearl Harbor is a lost cause, of course. But you will experience the tension of the attempt as the Pacific Fleet gradually succumbs to the attackers. Mind you, you will also have more airborne help than the actual USAAF had back in 1941. This mission, like the missions on the Japanese side are atmospheric. With the combination of AAA and flak around you, burning and smoking ships, exploding or broken aircraft... yep, it's exciting! Click to continue		Ship Explosion P40 B Warhawk Cockpit The scenery itself does capture Hawaii. The mountains are nicely rendered and the geography itself is quite adequate. Pearl Harbor is crammed with ships, and they are accurately positioned, along with numerous other targets. If you are motivated you can even take out the fuel tanks that the Japanese missed in the actual battle. Naturally, Pacific Theatre also allows you to access the free flight mode and you can place your aircraft on any of the Hawaiian bases. The odd omission is that while there is a tiny Pearl Harbor map in the manual (what a nice touch if this had been separate and larger!) there is no theatre map in the simulation itself. As a result, when selecting missions you get the map of Europeap so you can't view the mission routes. As for frame rate, I hope you have better than a Banshee board. When flying with a couple of wingmen or going head to head with a few opponents the sim is smooth as can be. But once into the melee of Pearl, I saw rates as low as eight fps. To their credit, Abacus released an enhancement download not long after the release of the original package. The Pacific Theatre Enhancement Pack is five meg and can be had on the Abacus web site. I installed this package before any of my flights in Pacific Theatre. Here is the info supplied by Abacus: "An additional set of Artificial Intelligence (enemy) aircraft. When these aircraft are used in missions, they appear in "normal size" and have "normal performance" characteristics. "The Pearl Harbor scenery area and coastlines have been optimized for faster frame rates across a wide variety of 3D video cards. A replacement set of missions have been created and redesigned for optimized frame rates, and there is an improved set of damage profiles for all aircraft. "The entire fleet of Pacific Theatre aircraft have been redesigned to include a custom AI format. This means that you'll also be able to use them in your own custom missions where they will appear accurate in both size and speed."   Note: On Jun 25th Abacus released a set 12 new missions which combine into a campaign that takes the player on a "what-if" tour of how the war may have turned out. Players can download the FREE Bonus Campaign from their website. Go to the Summary and Midway Press Info
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