Where's the Beef?

Gameplay is smooth and well executed. FS:SDOE has the typical key commands with a wide variety to allow you to control your engine, prop feathering, flaps, landing gear, braking, ejecting, weapons selections, etc. Also there are trim controls, view commands (internal and external), and HUD overlays to help the new flyer or experienced flyer who desires that extra amount of information on what goes on around him or her. System commands like gamma control and window sizing are also present. For online communications there is the typical chat key and type-in communications.

The sensation of flight is truly stunning. The physics that were promised are fully present. Watch a piece of a wing get shot off and flutter away on it's own spiral and maple seed effect. Lose a wheel and see it race down the runway until its momentum fades and then see it spiral in like a quarter, tighter and tighter until it stops. Come in too hard and watch your plane bounce and possibly damage the landing gear.

Or watch two planes collide in mid-air and see them both careen out of control as you would expect. Blow up a target and pieces and parts fly away on their own trajectories, reacting to their environment as they should.

Naturally, the physics of flight are also present. Each aircraft has their own unique characteristics which closely parallel the historical abilities of those aircraft. This adds greatly to the immersion of flight. You can even feel the airflow over the wings and tail, modified by your aileron/rudder/elevator inputs!

Who Stole My Flight Model?

Oddly enough, despite this wonderful sensation of flight and seeing the FM working and interacting as you would expect, ActiVision, during the beta process decided to dampen the effects of three key elements: energy bleed, stall effects and spins. ActiVision did this in an attempt to attract the common gamer as well as the hard core gamer. Here is an example (pointed out to me by a fellow enthusiast) of the FM remaining intact but somehow the Stall/Spin just isn't fully there:

Get the Me262 up to normal speed and with the power full on begin a climb of 40 degrees nose up and to the left at around 30 to 40 degrees (turn on the HUD.) Keep that attitude as your speed bleeds off, and dwindles down to around 120 kts and below. You should have full deflection on your elevator, and use your ailerons just enough to keep you at that 30 degrees turn to the left. When you feel airflow completely separate, the plane will snap roll off to the right violently. Unfortunately, that's it, it won't stall any further.

Click to continue

Looking through the open bomb bay doors.

Oddly, this is only true of undamaged aircraft. Once a plane has been damaged to the point that stalls and spins are a real danger, then they are modeled as such in the game. This discrepancy has caused more than one gamer to turn red in the face, and I'm don't mean from embarrassment. Why ActiVision didn't decide to deal with this as an option setting will remain a mystery.

I tried contacting ActiVision as well as ParSoft. Although ParSoft responded and all our correspondence was Cc'd to ActiVision, ActiVision has remained silent. This is not unusual for a Software company, since they usually have a policy to not preannounce any planned fixes or updates until patch/updates pass QA and are ready to launch.

Michael Harrison, the lead programmer for FS:SDOE at ParSoft, on the other hand, has been very open. He had said on some forums that ActiVision had requested that ParSoft tone the FM down. I contacted Michael about this, and he had this to say:

Well, what I actually said was: Fighter Squadron belongs to ActiVision (at least, the game and name do. The engine's ours) and there are some things that got dumbed down at their request, but overall I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

And to be equally honest, I regret using the words "dumbed down". This has resulted in many people making the assumption that ActiVision came along and told us to make the planes arcadish, which isn't true. What I was referring to (with my unfortunate choice of words) was us (ParSoft and ActiVision) working to get rid of some extreme stalling behavior that made the aircraft much harder to fly than they should have been.

At the time we were making these changes, we were also working like mad to get the game out the door and it would appear that we may have gone too far in the other direction for the hard-core sim fans." 1

When I asked Michael about ActiVision's silence and ParSoft's immediate plans to address some of the FM issues, he had this to say:

To be perfectly blunt (which is normal behavior for me), we have given the public what we can as far as information goes. As soon as the game came out I let people know that we were working on the CD problem and a Rush patch, I've stated that I'm working with ActiVision to determine what will be in the more general patch and that I'd let them know what we're going to do, as soon as we know. Many of the people who are complaining that we haven't told them what we're going to do, simply haven't taken the time to look for the answers that are already out there." 1

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