by Obi Offiah

I continued to talk with Graham and he began to explain the details of their terrain system. The current system has a resolution down to 20cm, but it can go a lot furtherm he told me. This accounts for the tremendous sense of speed down low. Graham continued to explain how some other sims used tiles which were large and blurred down low, therefore somewhat nullifing the sense of ground rush.

Other sims have detailed low-level terrain but higher up it can be seen repeating. B-17 has fantastic terrain graphics both high up and down low.

Ken reset the the mission and was placed as a B-17 on the ground. The first thing I noticed was the level of detail present on the grass. Wayward have even applied bump mapping to the grass and it makes a hell of a difference. It gives the ground depth and an earthy texture, making it much easier to judge the distance from the ground. He started running the engines; their start sequences were impressive.

As the engines started, a white jet of smoke shot out a short distance behind, then swirled and spread in a vortex like fashion, before dissipating. Whew, it looked very realistic.

The B-17 taxied with others following behind it onto the runway. Ken throttled up and the B-17 began to trundle down the runway, building up speed all the time.

We're approaching takeoff speed now. Ken panned to the left in the cockpit view, so we could watch the ground and surrounding, as the bomber continued to accelerate. Even on the ground you easily felt a genuine sense of speed, as the ground and some hills to the left raced by. The B-17 seemed to simply roll into the air, it was so smooth and graceful and I watched the earth fall away, mesmerised. Graham pointed out some details on the ground, such as pigs on a farm.

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In the air Graham explained how there were no sharp edges in the terrain, everything was created to be smooth. The roads didn't kink sharply as we are used to in other sims and the base of hills were not straight lines that connected to the rest of the landscape, everything was curved and flowed very naturally, it was very picturesque.

I took control of one of the waist guns. The machine gun had a natural metallic look, which like the exterior of the aircraft reflected light realistically. They looked so right, they gave you the feeling both in look and control that they were very dense, solid and beefy. Not to say they were sluggish to use, on the contrary! They were very easy to slew and aim, just perfect.

I pressed the trigger and was greeted by the most fabulous gun sounds ever. They had some kind of metallic ring to them. It's quite difficult to describe but it was very good.

After this I went over to talk with Andrew about what Wayward had accomplished with B-17 II and my thoughts on it. I told him that we were all asking the wrong questions with B-17. Instead of asking has it got this or that and how is this or that modelled, we should be asking: "What HASN'T B-17 modelled?" With the superchargers, starters, hydraulics etc... what has been left out? He just laughed.

Go to Part VII