Our glorious La-7s proved no match for the Stukas. Soon four of them lay smoldering below us in the snow...

If the MiG 15 wanted to slow down and fight my F4U that was fine. The Corsair easily cut inside the jet's turn even with his dive brakes extended. Pieces began coming off the plane as my cannon rounds hit home.

The three sim scenarios could never happen since nobody makes those aircraft or simulations, right? Wrong!

MS Combat Flight Simulator. Click for 800x600.

I've flown all of the above and more. How? With modified versions of Dynamix's ancient Aces Over Europe that die-hard hackers like myself have tweaked to death, that's how!

READ THE COOK BOOK-

Hold on before you pity me for being totally deluded. The fact is that the versatile AOE can be morphed into almost anything you want. But wait! Even in it's original form it's a great sim. The same can be said for the earlier Aces Over The Pacific. Why? What makes a great combat flight simulator?

Comprehensiveness. If it does not involve you in the illusion, no amount of "wowie" graphics will save it. I want a sim so good that I think about how to "beat" it as I daydream at work and count the time until I can immerse myself in the fantasy of being Don Gentile, Saburo Sakai or Hans Marseille again.

INGREDIENTS-

It must have a full campaign feature that puts you through a tour of duty complete with medals and a dozen planes to fly. To sell at retail a sim must have multi-skill levels so a person desiring entertainment can enjoy it as much as a history and realism fanatic can. Flight models must be programable to a high degree for the same reason. The better you become, the more of a challenge you want.

Armament also demands easy modification. The ability to create custom missions that will count in your battle record should be included. Remember Lucasfilms' Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe? You could create custom missions and it kept complete statistics on your battle activity. It tallied the amount of ordnance fired, the percentage on target and the types of aircraft you downed. And the strategic part was a whole separate component. I enjoyed the ability to change the outcome of the war if I fought hard enough. Veteran simmers all agree on the need to control wingmen's actions.

But the simulations aforementioned are dog years old. With hardware advances we now have the capability to run just about anything no matter how graphics intensive it is. I want to see all that fine detail when I close in on an enemy plane. I want to see variable sized pieces fly off as I hit him. .

FSSD. Click for 800x600.

Damage modelling and special effects should rival Janes F15. The figure of a pilot in the cockpit would be nice. My plane should have realistic instruments. I loved Secret Weapons' instrument functions. No "idiot lights" like AOE/AOTP. Let's have both auto pilot and a 16X time speed up. I hate the auto pilot only feature in AOE/AOTP. Let's leave bombers as non-flyable targets only. Careers in bombers are suicide in every sim ever. This goes for dive bombers too.

Click for 640x480.

Please, let's have semi-standard keys. The < and > make logical left/right rudders. Worst I can recall is USNF where the number one and three on the extreme right of the keyboard are rudder controls forcing crossed wrists. "F" is good for flaps, "L" or "G" for landing gear, "space" or "enter" preceded by "B" or "R" could launch bombs or rockets. I want to select the guns via the joystick buttons only not the keyboard.

GIVE ME A TASTE-

Look, I REALLY want to buy a new WWII flight sim. And from reading forum comments written by simmers all over the web, they want the same thing. We all fly "those jet sims" with disdain and return to our WWII favorites. The usual "Vulcan Salute," split fingered keying needed to invoke some command or weapon in the jet sims keyboard dance is underwhelming. I'm fortunate to be a left-handed mouse user so I can fondle the joystick in my right hand simultaneously without playing Chinese handcuffs.

Many of us find it a snooze to fire long range, over-the-horizon missiles and watch a little dot move across a radar scope. We want to skid and roll and pump rounds into the bad guys at close range. And the aircraft, pilots and history of World War II are legendary.

Hammering an enemy with 30mm cannon at close range gives much more a sense of accomplishment than Artificial Intelligence control of a simulated missile. And modern jet sims are all based on pure speculation. Quick! What's the Saudi pilot's name that got the only double flying an F-15 over Iraq? Now, who's Dick Bong? Case closed!

Fighter Duel 2.0: Click for 640x480

I've flown a number of the other, later WWII flight sims and found things I like. But the Aces duo are so complete the others gather dust on the hard drive. I love flying P-51s, Zeros and 109s, but the exotic things like the Shinden and Bearcat in AOTP 1946 plus the D0 335 and Go 229 from Secret Weapons were sublime. The esoteric factors can set a sim apart. Sure it's fine to have the "umpteenth" simulated Mustang or Zero but inclusion of the distinctive can be a purchase decision factor. For that matter, how many F-16 sims do we need? For many, the "hackability" is a determinant. We all love those little advantages or unique things to set our personal copy apart from the stock simulator.

DESSERT-

If forthcoming projects have some of the features that are being touted we may be in for some awesome new scenarios. Several of the things on the "wish list" may become a reality. I for one am more than ready to wade into an new illusion of World War II air action. Forget the fairy tale, role playing, kick boxing, alien monster stuff and give us an honest, complete WWII combat flight simulation!

For a survey of coming prop sims see our E3 Prop Sim Survey