by Obi Offiah

He opened the bomb bay and started tracking a random spot on the ground. A few moments later he pickled the bombs and switched to the bomb bay view and we watched the bombs fall to earth. It was incredible, the general purpose 500lb bombs all gave a traditional wiggle as they fell away from the bay. They fell many feet before they stabilised.

I had a ridiculous grin on my face as I watched. I was like a small child in a sweet shop, I really couldn't help it. Ken explained how the different ballistic properties of the bombs had been modelled and that at release they all exhibited different flight characteristics, he said that the incendaries would tumble continuously until impact (I can't wait).

Moments later there was a brilliant flast of light that lit up the ground and surroundings below as the bombs impacted and exploded. The explosions were gloriously detailed: they sent dirt and fragments up into the air in a wide cone shaped pattern. It was very realisitic and with extremely impressive special effects, by far the best bomb explosions I've seen modeled. Then Ken showed me the brown craters in the earth, scars of our attack.

He switched to the view of the waist gunners compartment. The compartment was beautifully rendered, and very detailed. There were two gunners present, one in the foreground and one in the background. They were both very detailed, especially their oxygen masks, faces and head covers. Ken had chosen the gunner in the foreground so he was highlighted with a bright white outline.

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Then Graham pointed out the details I had overlooked. I was very surprised as he showed me the dynamic shadows the gunners were casting in the compartment. He explained that the crew were all motion captured and they had added some animation to them to get them just right.

At that time Ken was demonstrating how the crew acted when the guns jammed. He fired the gun until it jammed and the waist gunner shouted that his gun was jammed, so Ken gave the command to fix it. The motion captured gunner proceeded to bang and shake the gun and pull some kind of device along the side of the gun.

I was stunned, the whole event happened so smoothly as the gunners animation was very slick and life like. Graham was telling me that they had a full scale model fuselage of the B-17 built, with all of the handles and other grips in place. They had then used motion capture techniques to capture the movement of a member of their team in the full scale fuselage, grabbing onto the various overhead bars etc that enable the crew to move more easily around the fuselage and into different compartments.

By now, like me, you are astonished at the lengths Wayward have gone to!

I was still conversing with Graham, and he had mentioned the multiplayer aspects of the sim. He was gesticulating how great it would be to see one of your friends playing the position of waist gunner, slewing the waist gun up, down, left and right. He certainly did make it sound like a truly exciting prospect. He said that B-17 will allow the use of voice comm hardware, so players can talk directly to one another. The system will take a low priority among other tasks, so will be delayed by maybe a second or so.

The 3D models are unbelievable, simply and truly unbelievable. I was standing beside Ken admiring the marvellous B-17 with it's unpainted silver finish. At ECTS B-17 was running at 1024 by 768 on a PIII 500 TNT2. Frame rates were non existent, in the sense that there was no rate at all. It was running very swiftly, I'd guess at 30 plus FPS. Ken was panning around the aircraft showing off all of its details.

Go to Part III