by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson

Q: This past year we've seen incredible advances in virtually every area of modeling on the PC. Fighter Squadron was ground breaking in it's simulating real-world physics, even in such esoterica as landing-gear and belly landing physics. How will these developments be reflected in Fighter Ace II?

Physics and FM

PC: With Fighter Ace II we went back to the drawing board for the flight modeling, and the results from VR-1 are stunning!

The beauty of FA II flight modeling is in its incredible flexibility. Fighter Ace's strength has always been ease of entry and we have improved on that for Fighter Ace II. Fighter Ace II creates an entry path for players to start in an arcade environment that is quite forgiving but challenging, and as they progress they can ratchet up the flight difficulty in arenas that will offer all the realistic flight modeling they can stand.

The good news for players is that this is all preset for each arena so that all online users will be flying by the same rules, but in the offline environment users can practice with whatever settings they desire.

Our new physics engine is a state of the art, force based model, and creates much more realistic modeling of the aircraft we put in our game. We will be modeling many more force moments in FA II than in Fighter Ace 1.X. Forces we're modeling include:

the recoil of your machine guns and cannon, compressibility, wind, force moments from hits and damage to your airframe, multi-engine modeling with independent control, engine torque effects, payload and ordnance moments, unequal flap deployment due to damage, over-speeding in flight, belly landings, and a new improved spin model. (Can you tell I'm excited?)

The total list of features is significant and we feel very confident of the caliber of game we are delivering. One overriding goal of the entire Fighter Ace II team has been to insure that even with all this advanced modeling Fighter Ace II will still be the most fun you can have in the air on the Net.

The Big Difference is that our Fighter Ace players will be able to grow in the sim, learning more skills as pilots, and progressing to fly against more advanced pilots as they improve, making this a much more fulfilling game environment.

Q: When I first saw FAII at E3 this past May it was obvious that a new graphics engine was in the works. Tell us about this new engine and the artwork we'll see.

As I mentioned above, FA II is introducing 3D hardware acceleration. We will support both D3d and Glide. However this is not at the expense our Software only folks, they will be receiving the many improvements that effect both SW and HW modes.

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Typhoon on Tanks

New Graphics Engine

One aspect of the graphics that is really exciting is our terrain. With Fighter Ace II we have really improved our terrain modeling. Our partners at VR-1 have done a great job in creating varied and interesting terrain. We now have snow capped peaks up to 21,000 feet!, sheer cliffs, narrow canyons, high passes and lowland terrain with rivers, lakes and shoreline.

Terrain modeling now utilizes full floating point processing, giving us huge improvements in the overall ground look, reducing the effects of crawl etc. The use of dynamic lighting and haze creates a more complete sky effect AND faster performance for the user.

Frame Rate

A key focus for FAII is to insure the player maximum performance in terms of frame rate and polygon count while introducing far superior visual terrain textures and the addition of many more object types.

Russian Tanks

The models for our aircraft have been reworked completely and for 3D card users, the cockpit art and views have also been improved dramatically. We are going to knock people's socks off with the articulation in the plane models and the overall graphic quality.

Q: The graphics boards now being released make good use of AGP. Will players with AGP hardware see a difference in FA II?

PC: Absolutely! AGP support is built into FAII. Players running an AGP bus will receive the benefits they should in video performance.

Go to Part III: Sound, Voice and Damage