By Thomas "AV8R" Spann

  In this last of our three part journey through SSI's Flanker 2.0 we now proceed to the last of AV8R's sim Top Ten core aspects: Special Effects, Mission Editor, Documentation, and Multiplayer.

In parts 1 and 2 we have seen that F2 is chock full of features, and captures that "right feel" of flight like no other sim before it. On the other side of the balance sheet, while Flanker 2.0 is very stable it has its warts. So without any further adieu, let's suit up and kick the tires and light the fires.

SPECIAL EFFECTS:
Graphics and Sound

The graphics for Flanker1.5 were a child that only Mother Russia could love. While 1.5 afforded great frame rates, the drawbacks were in lack of immersion, navigation, target ID, and linear perspective. Oh, how many times I crashed into mountain ridges or slammed the runway due to lack of graphical detail!

Flanker2.0 does not suffer from any of these shortcomings as you can see for yourself. Whether you are 6000 meters high or just a few meters off the hard deck, Flanker is great looking with its non repeating terrain graphics.

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What this affords the F2 pilot is the ability to fly dead reckoning, or by actual terrain recognition - seat of the pants flying. Flanker 2 models a relatively small theatre of operations, the Crimean Peninsula, using actual satellite mapping and a new graphics engine.

My only issue is with the objects like buildings, roads, rivers, etc that literally pop up before you as you fly along. Depending upon your computer's power and the option settings, you do have a handle on how close to you this happens. You can also use the commands Ctrl-D or Shf-D to affect this popup behavior. While this detracts from immersion, it does afford F2 an excellent sensation of speed - one of those very tough developer tradeoff decisions.

Going on to other FX qualities in F2, we have: lighting, cockpit reflections, rear view mirrors, fire and smoke, flying objects from damage, moving flight surfaces, explosions, missile trails, individual tarmac wheel marks, wingtip smoke, contrails, high-G vapor compression condensation, clouds and fog, wind and turbulence, sun glare, "Nagging Nadia", engine growl, and wingman responses, to name the most noticeable ones.

None of these are unique to F2 alone, except for lovely Nagging Nadia's voice, but the combination of the whole helps to build that "being there" immersive environment. For those of you not familiar with "Nagging Nadia", let me be the first to introduce you to this Soviet seductress.

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