Microsoft has come out of the WW2 flight sim hangar before Jane's WW2 Fighters, Screaming Demon Over Europe, European Air War, or Confirmed Kill. To be honest, it was hard for me like MS-CFS because I was so impressed with the beta of WW2 Fighters. But before I knew it, I was at the local game store and this sim was in my hands.

With Flight98 being such a success, and with a good flight model, I wanted to see what kind of combat sim Billy could come out with. My first impression of MS-CFS after installing was that this is a serious contender.

The graphics are excellent. On a P2 333 with Voodoo2, I was getting frame rates between 12 to 40 depending upon how much detail was on the screen. The good news is that when I tried a 4 player multiplayer session over Kali/IPX, the frame rates were smooth. Not glassy, but not enough slowing for me to notice any effect on the game play.

As you can see from the pictures, the ground terrain is simply beautiful, much like Falcon4's ground terrain. You can select from the single missions and campaigns, and fly over realistic scenery and elevation in many of the historic air battles from the Battle of Britain and Battle of Europe theaters.

Aircraft detail is once again, great. In my opinion, MS-CFS has surpassed Warbirds level of graphics details, both exterior and interior-cockit art. Whether this is a result of the difference between Online sims (mega-multiplayer like WB, AW) and sims online (boxed sims with limited online capacity, usually 4 - 16); I'm not certain.

The special FX like gun muzzle flashes, whirling propellers, fully functional avionics, wispy clouds, smoke, haze, aircraft damage and more comes together to make a very immersive package. We've all seen the many WW2 aerial combat flicks on TV where the fighter is hammering away at the victim in his sights. You see the tracers, fuselage hit flashes, puffs of smoke, and pieces falling away.

Microsoft recreates all this very well, as they should since the programmers watched many hours of gun camera footage in order to attain this accuracy. In my opinion, this is where MS-CFS stands head and shoulders above all other sims to date.

Another area of greatness in this sim is in the sound effects. Start the engine, and it coughs, sputters and then comes to a smooth idle. Every plane is distinctive in its throaty sounds. Get into a dogfight and you will fall in love with the fly by sounds as the enemy roars by you. The cannon and machine guns are as realistic as I've heard yet. If you are unfortunate enough to get your engine hit, the engine will miss and sputter. Smoke will come around the cowl, and even the windshield will have bullet holes ripped across it.

The virtual cockpit padlocking is excellent. What you get is a simplified avionics suite that is functional, but allows for greater frame rate which is usually the first victim to fall in padlocking. There are even some functional gadgets for the pilot's mouse to manipulate.

To compensate, there is a very full set of keyboard commands that allow you to do very detailed things; like hand pumping the gear should your hydraulics be damaged. You can even bring up a kneeboard checklist for takeoff, cruise, descent or landing. Situational awareness cheats also abound, like the tactical display you can see top left in the third shot in this column. Here is a larger view:

Padlock View.

Unfortunately, Microsoft provides no stick files, and assumes you are using a MS-Sidewinder. Big Bad Billy at it again. 8^P Never fear, you can build on ours: MS CFS Thrustmaster config.

The following status display comes on when you use the no cockpit view. Its logical and informative, but you can also turn it off. Check it out:

As if this weren't enough, Microsoft has offered a full set of narrated training missions! For those who are unfamiliar, Janes pioneered this route in Longbow. You will find yourself in the seat of a particular aircraft, with the instructor speaking to you as if he is in the seat behind you. The instructor guides you as you make the manouver, from a manouver as simple as landing to the complexities of air combat moves.

Another area of detail is the flight model. It has a 0-100% realism setting mechanism. If you go directly to HARD (100%), even take off will challenge you. Dogfighting is tough. Its going to take some stick time to get proficient with your turns, rolls, and loops. I noticed that if you aren't careful low on the deck, you will side slip right into the ground if you try a last minute pullout or stay in a 90 degree bank for too long. Spins and flips are easily incurred if you aren't watching your airspeed and nose angle.

I've flown my share of Warbirds full model, and this seems on par with that level of difficulty. It does however have a different "feel" than do the models of Warbirds. In my opinion, the AXIS planes are under modeled. I've seen many a WINGS show where American pilots who have flown both the Me109F and the FW190 comment on the feel. What they usually say is that they both are excellent fighters with comparable flight characteristics to the P51 and Spitfire. The only complaint they had was the cockpit visibility.

Multiplayer with MS-CFS was good over Kali/IPX LAN emulation. I didn't have time to try TCP/IP. I was involved with a 2v2 Kali session and it was really smooth and fun. What really stuck out was that it has a join/leave use model that is awesome. The host can choose to admit or deny others from jumping into the game while it is ongoing. If you don't like the interruption, you can preset the number of players and teams allowed before you start the engagement.

Whether or not you can get more than 4 players will probably be a function of the connection rates of the host, primarily, and the players secondarily. What was missing was any provision for a mission editor or even cooperative game play. So unfortunately, this sim only sports dog fighting. I believe this is where Jane's WW2 Fighters, and others, will blow past this otherwise very good sim.

I tried to connect to the online gaming arena hosted by Microsoft, The Internet Gaming Zone. It works fine, IF you're willing to wade through a maze of windows, forms and 3 separate file downloads to get it running. Even then I had to reboot my computer 3 times before it all worked. Microsoft has a long way to go before it will be simple and easy like NovaLogic's NOVAWORLD.

In summary, I really enjoyed MS-CFS. It scores very high in the areas of graphical and sound effects. The avionics and cockpit art are excellent, and the padlocking and virtual cockpit are all well thought out and implemented. The flight model allows for the beginner to the very advanced. On the hard realism setting, you will have to fly the plane as well as fight. (One of the things I preach as a MUST for a great sim).

Where it's soft is that the Allied planes seem to be more accurate than do the Axis planes. This may be remedied by the fact that the plane graphics and flight models can be user defined. While I like this for the ability to add planes and improve on FM accuracy, I don't like this at all for multiplayer dog fighting. This is what killed fairness in Jane's ATF engagements, making it much less attractive for serious competitors.

Only having 8 planes is also a limitation: 2 Spits, 2 Me209s, P51 and P47, FW190 and a Sopwith Camel? It's a good thing that we will see third party add-ons soon!

As for multiplayer, if you like dog fighting, you'll love this sim. If you want to do bomber escort, ground strikes, cooperative missions - forget it. CFS completely lacks the ability to command wingmen.

The single play and training missions give you a feel of what this sim could have been if they would have made cooperative missions in multiplayer. On the bright side, MS-CFS came with a manual this time!

Overall, we still have something to look for in the coming wave of other WW2 flight sims. I give CFS a mediocre rating because the potential greatness is dragged down by a lack of completeness.

Till next time, Check Six.