Yes the WW2 sims have hit the Normandy beach head!!! First Microsoft’s Combat Flight Simulator (MS-CFS), and now Microprose’s European Air War (EAW).

If the graphics, sounds, flight model and excellent online multiplayer dogfighting of MS-CFS weren’t enough to keep your attention - EAW adds more planes and online multiplayer cooperative missions to our WW2 sim onslaught. With Jane’s WW2 Fighter and Activision’s Screamin Demons Over Europe soon to follow, this winter is a WW2 prop-head’s dream come true.

FW190-A8 dropping a 500 kg bomb, yes releasing bombs works in EAW.

This review is not intended to be a comprehensive decompilation of EAW. What I wanted to do was to give you, the CSIM reader, a hands-on look at what I think is a really good WW2 sim - from the online multiplayer perspective. I’ll leave the solo and campaigning to the in-depth review.

What differentiates EAW from MS-CFS in my opinion is that COOP MP is supported in a big way. You can get with your mates and fly together or against each other in the most fearsome fighters of the era. Sorry no player controlled heavy bombers in EAW. My understanding is that we will have to wait for Fighter Squadron for that feature.

I have successfully flown online with as many as 6 players while in the midst of scores of AI controlled bombers and fighters - not even counting the ground activity. This is where EAW pulls away from MS-CFS.

The way I look at it, MS-CFS focuses on the pilot in the fighter, and EAW focuses more on the pilot within the context of the entire battle. As a result, expect the strengths and weaknesses of each to be along those lines, IMHO. I won’t beat EAW to death here with its pros and cons, but instead I wanted to deliver a feel for what its like to be _IN_ this sim. This is the strength of EAW: it’s immersive feel.

PART I: In the Luftwaffe

Me262-A1 flight scrambles to intercept the heavies.

Imagine yourself in the elite JV-44 Expertin Me262 Stormbird flight (schwarm = 2 rottes, rotte = element). Your ground control scrambles you to intercept incoming B-17 heavy bombers approaching Berlin, your home town. Fierce fighter escort can be expected as usual.

You and your online (TCP/IP or Kali/IPX or LAN/IPX) buddies scramble. Some of you take Me262s and others may take Me109s or FW190s. But you are the Expertin Jagdeschwader commander, only the best of the best get the new fighter jets capable of speed exceeding the best enemy fighters by over 100 MPH.

Gunsight view of straffing run on formation of B-17s

Having this raw speed available to you is both a blessing and a curse. While you can out run any plane out there, you must also employ B&Z fighter tactics (Boom & Zoom) and fight your innate urge to mix it up with the single seat fighters. Your role is in defense of the Riech, and to bring down the heavies.

Now with this added speed come two major challenges: learning to have excellent gunnery skills due to very high closure rates, and flying in what is virtually a kerosene malitov cocktail. You are probably the most vulnerable aircraft of the era, including the Japanese Zero. So it is wise to not become a target for very long.

B-17 limping along on 2 running engines

In fact, while I was very successful in downing 2 bombers on this run, the best approach is to attack a bomber head on. Killing the flight crew is the most effective method, and exposes you to the least gun fire and TOT (time on target). But you knew that, you're an ACE Expertin!

So down goes one of your victims, and the other is limping along on 2 engines. Yes we can either come back for the coup-de-gras, or leave them to the butcher birds. Why expose our plane unnecessarily?

EAW has given us a very good damage model. Not the kind sported by Janes WW2, where physical damage is apparent, but in the actual physics itself, where placement of hits results in differing damage to the victim’s plane and systems. Here we see our hits to the port side results in 2 of the engines being taken out, a very good thing when dealing with big planes. I hate the old models where one shot results in a total fireball every time.

You look over your shoulder to see if your wingman is still tactical

Let’s egress the battle area. We have a very limited fuel capacity (440 gals) with a combat range of only 150 miles (241 km). While our four 30 mm cannons carry a lethal punch, we only have about 100 rounds per cannon. Hit and run tactics are our strength. Is my wingman still with me? A quick glance with the snap view shows that he is in good form.

Your trip home requires you to light up your cockpit.

Well its getting late, let’s hit the cockpit lighting. The red wavelength fulfills two roles: first, red light isn’t as perceptible over distance - thus good for stealthy reasons; secondly, it helps the pilot to keep his eyes sharp. Any bright source of light at night can temporarily blind the pilot or reduce their ability to discern smaller objects like incoming bandits.

EAW’s cockpit is both functional and scrollable. What is lacking is a high resolution on all the gauges, being that the sim is 256 color and 640 X 400 resolution. Also there aren't any mouse interactive controls in the cockpit. "Zie goot!" back home to brag, drink, and mingle mit der fraulines. (Please no emails on my horrible German diction. Work with me, ok? )

There’s nothing like the smell of… jet fumes and victory

PART II: In the US 8th Army Airforces

Now imagine, if you will, that you’re a young teenager lieutenant in the 8th Army Air Corps. Our forces have pretty much cleared the Luftwaffe from the skies over Europe. Our role is to escort our heavies to knock out the Axis’ ability to conduct the war: to destroy their industrial capacities.

On the return leg, we are allowed to hit anything of military value: to fly interdiction, to search and destroy all targets of opportunity. Translation: knock out the support infrastructure, preventing the front lines from continuing the battle effort.

Me and my Mustang, note functional gauges. only.

Well, time is short. I really don’t want to fly the ingress all the way to the target area. So I can hit the CONTROL-n keys and place myself near the action area. Another method would be to speed up the real time clock of the sim (solo and campaign play only), but I have found that this is risky business. You can find your plane damaged by the enemy while in that accelerated mode. Use the accelerated time feature sparingly.

Note too that ALT-p is pause. This allows you to safely view the map with ALT-m and even look around both in and outside of your plane. While you can move around on the map with the mouse, you cannot zoom in on the map. I also stumbled on the fact that when you are setting up the solo mission parameters, you can use the map to click on an airstrip of your choice. This allows you to shorten your flight time also. As you can probably guess, I flew this interdiction mission in solo (single mission) mode.

Scoring big time on Hitler’s life lines.

OK, back to our story line. Here I am, cruising at low altitude in my brand new P51-D Pony armed with 2 bombs and 6 wing mounted 50 cal machine guns (400 rounds/gun on 2 inner pair, 270 rounds/gun on the one outer pair). Needless to say, this is a great all purpose guns platform. The only real draw back is that its 100 MPH slower than what the enemy has, and that the guns are notorious for jamming in high G load situations - due to the long gun belts.

Padlocking your ground target while in the padlock mode.

Tally Ho! There’s a supply train running at full steam. Look at her go with a full plume. Its carrying a fuel tank car, probably badly needed av-gas for the Luftwaffe. A quick check reveals no triple-A gun emplacement. This baby is gunna be like shooting ducks in a pond. The biggest threat will be the flying debris and the proper pull up timing. Let ‘er rip! Ka Bam! Scratch one Nazis choo-choo. Let’s go down for a look see.

The padlock allows me to lock onto ground targets. Used in conjunction with the virtual cockpit, you have a good system to keep situation awareness - and not auger or become captured. I have witnessed one of my wounded P47-C pilots get downed and survive, only to then see him surrounded and captured by ground forces. Very nice touch. I didn’t want to risk straffing them and hitting my unfortunate compatriot.

And you thought going home was going to be a piece of cake?

What’s that? Fast moving Me109 bandits approaching? Dang it all. I didn’t even have time to use my eggs (bombs) yet. Well I’m not going to let this guy spoil my eggs. Let’s see what he is made of.

Just look at that beautiful 109! It will be a pitty to waste her. While the graphics of EAW are not up to the standards of Janes WW2 demo, nor MS-CFS, it is still D3D and Glide acceleratable.

The graphics have a grainy look to them, even a dated quality to them. But in its own way, its beautiful. It almost adds to the vintage nature of this sim. What is important is that the graphics are fast and smooth on the P2 333 with Voodoo2 that I used. All the cool special effects are there (save I never did hear that train or plane explode).

Note the falling away of the spent shells, and the trailing smoke from the firing guns. Release your bombs and you can hear them whistle on their way down. (you might have to use a different unused key, and un-map the default BUTTON2 choice for the secondary weapon release function in the CONTROLS setup GUI). When dogfighting, the fast flybys are awesome.

Wild pony with spent shells streaming and puffs of muzzle smoke.

What I have found in flying most of all the planes that the flight models are VERY good. In fact, try flying the Spit, and compare it to the other WW2 sims. (see Viking1’s Flight Model review). You can get yourself in trouble pronto if you don’t watch your AOA and speed. Departures are easy if you’re in the realistic mode.

FM is a _strong_ suit for EAW, as we would expect from the developers of PAW and Falcon3.0 and now 4.0. The flyable planes within EAW are: the P38-H,J Lightning; P47-C,D Thunderbolt; P51-B,D Mustang; Hawker Hurricane; Hawker Tempest-V; Hawker Typhoon Mk-1B; Supermarine Spitfire-IA,IXC,XIVE; FW190-A8,D9; Bf/Me109-E4,G6,K4; Me110-C,G; and the Me262-A1 Swallow. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and if properly exploited, each can be great fun to fly and fight with.

This ejecting Luftwaffe pilot lived to see another day.

As you probably can guess, we transformed this Me109 into a MakeEject109. The AI when set to EXPERT is very good. Not great, like I’ve seen in Su27 Flanker or Jane’s F15-E, but much better than what I saw in MS-CFS and WarBirds (offline of coarse). I’ve seen elements bracket me, and even use the vertical while in a B&Z attack.

Note that if you use the TAB key, you have a healthy set of wingman, flight and squadron commands to motivate your AI forces to do something other than to look pretty. If you don’t use them in time, don’t be surprised if they just loiter around.

But for me, there’s nothing like real human pilots. EAW supports multiplayer very well, as we expect from an MPS product!

However, it does seem to be hit or miss with connections. Some have reported to me of having near perfect connections over TCP/IP and KALI/IPX; while others were threatening to take the software back. My experiences were mostly good. A few hangs due to the mismatch I believe in packet sizes and connection rates between servers and clients.

But if you do get online, and you do connect up, you’re in for a REAL treat. EAW is the only boxed-sim-online, to date, that offers a truly immersive feel to it - like really being in the Battle of Britain or the Battle over Europe. By this I mean truly cooperative game play. The only other place to experience WW2 coop action is to go to the pay-per-hour online-sims like WB or AW.

To sum it up, I really like EAW. It has many warts and holes, but there’s a jewel to be had beneath the crudeness that covers it. Until Jane’s WW2 or SDOE or CK come out with a better online coop offering, this is where I’ll be spending my time. One last word, many of the voodoo2 problems can be answered either by calling Microprose’s hotline - or by going to this web based support site.

EAW’s weakness in its graphics could very well be its strength when it comes to being able to field scores of AI and human (HI) planes in what becomes a very immersive aerial battlefield.

Till we meet in the skies, Check Six…. or else end up like the Luftwaffe pilot. 8^D

AV8R