A brief introduction is in order. I started flying Air Combat sims back in about 1986 on a Commodore64. My first game was F-15 StrikeEagle by Microprose, and soon I moved on to Microprose's F-19 Stealth-Fighter followed by Gunship2000.

Then came the day I purchased a "real" computer: a 386SX/16 w/4 meg RAM and a 40meg HD and started in on games like Birds of Prey, Falcon AT, Origin's Wing Commander series and Strike Commander. After many upgrades to the 386 (now a 486DX/100), I moved on to games like Jane's US Navy Fighters, ATF, Fighter's Anthology, Microprose's 1942 PAW, and LucasArt's Xwing.

Moving to Kali I've played DiD's F-22ADF, Jane's F-15, Graphic Simulations F/A-18 Korea, Novalogic's F-16/MiG-29 and Falcon4. After-burned out on jet sims, I moved on to props in Air Warrior 3 (AW3), after trying a free demo disk included on a PC gamer's mag.

I downloaded the complete Imagic Warbirds/Dawn of Aces and Air Warrior 3 games online for free, but later I purchased the "boxed" version of AW3 for the offline missions and mission editor. Finally, last Christmas I purchased WW2 Fighter's, but I freely admit I prefer Warbirds (WB) to any of these.

Test Machine:

• PII 300 w/96meg RAM
• 6.4gig HD
• 56k-x2 modem
• 8meg Voodoo2 3dfx/Nitro 3d video cards
• MS Force Feedback joystick
• Win95, DirectX 6.1

I have an online account with WB and AW3, both of them at the $9.95 a month plan. I maintain my AW3 account only because I belong to a squad that fears the $1.99 an hour structure in WB, even though they all like WB better than anything else. I fly mainly in the Air Combat Arena which is $0.00 an hour so I do not incur any added expense.

Recently I was able to email Chris "--MO--" Sherland a few questions about Warbirds and where it is headed. These are his responses.

Q. -Mo-can you give us a brief BIO and some background on how you became involved with Warbirds?

A. I was invited to bring my squadron to the ICI beta of then "Confirmed Kill" in 1995. Early on I was simply a player and tester, lending my "humble" advice and pissing off PYRO J From there I made trainer in 1997 and trainer of the year that same season, then CM.

Shortly after Con '97 I was invited to take a position assisting PYRO with game management of WarBirds. I accepted and started with IMOL in February of '98. PYRO had been going at it for 3 solid years, and as WarBirds manager helped make this sim the best on the net. He eventually found a desire to move on and in his final weeks he tried to impart his wealth of experience to me. Since he has left I have been swamped with work and engaged in a very steep learning curve…but I love the work.

Q. Being in production must be very challenging, and I understand a move is in the works. How do you manage to find time to fly online?

A. I don't fly as much as I'd like. I do have a "secret" account that I fly when I don't want to be "online" as myself. But flying as "-MO-" is important to me, and I believe it's critical to my job. Without the player's point of view I feel that there is a danger of derailing a product so well supported by this community. I fly with my squad mostly, but I try to get into the main arena at least 3-4 times a week to answer questions, and then to kill as many customers as I can!

Q. I subscribe to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim newsgroup and have read many articles comparing WB with AW, one article from Gary "-moggy" Cooper of Kesmai that said, "Warbirds started out, in its rawest form, as a utility for Air Warrior." Is this true? And could you describe the evolution of WB to its current form?

A. This is true. Dale "Hightech" Addink wrote a gun camera utility for AW called "V-Film". This utility evolved into what was called "HT SIM". After that, John "Killer" Mac Queen, Robert "Gunjam" Salinas, Dale, and Bob "Joker" McCarthy decided to create their own online WW2 sim. This was the birth of "Confirmed Kill." They partnered with DoMark and went into closed beta.

After some testing a new graphics engine was acquired from "Graphic Simulations." This is when WarBirds came to life. From there it was adding planes and features all in line with getting to the original goal: The best WW2 air combat sim on the net with the most dynamic feature set.

Warbirds 2.5r

Q. I read Mo's Warbird's News daily and see that 2.5r3 release will include Squad-wide HL command, a more intuitive gunner interface, trainer page function, refined offline selection menus, analog controlled brakes, new ground modeling, gunnery model improvements, revised special effects, a Japanese Ki-61, new "heavy" bomber (classified as yet), new gunnery effects, and new terrain.. wow! This is all AWESOME. Can you elaborate on what 2.6 and 3.0 will have in store for us?

A. These two revisions will be our last with this current 3D graphics engine. We are going to take it as far as we can with these releases. The stuff on my news page is fairly complete, and I'm taking the stance of informing the community of what we're up to. Beyond the above mentioned stuff we are experimenting with artillery fire, ground vehicles, and steer-able shipping.

Q. Many I talk to actually enjoy WB more than other sims, but are scared off by the $1.99 an hour pricing, how do you respond to this?

A. Well, this is a tough one. Online game pricing models are still not set in stone, and I don't profess to be an expert on the subject. But I look at it this way: If I'm going to settle in for an evening of entertainment, I have choices on where to spend my money. For a 3 hour stint on WarBirds I'm out $6. To take my sweety to a movie it's gonna be $13 just for tickets…and my sweety eats a lot of popcorn!

Now then, in a community like WarBirds, it's nice to know that everyone around you has made a "$2 commitment" to being there. Without implying that this helps keep the Quakers out... it helps keep the Quakers out.

Q. Do you see WB going to a "flatrate across the board" pricing plan in the future?

A. Again, I'm not an expert on this, but I do know that when I'm flying I can bank on the fact that the guys I'm flying with are serious about this hobby. I have had MANY nasty experiences on flat rate services. The future is unwritten, anything could happen.

But for now IMOL views WarBirds as a "premium" game, and the pricing stucture for the main arena will remain. There has been talk of buying "tickets" for special events such as scenarios that will be a flat rate for the whole event. There will be news on this later in the year.

Q. Myself and others have downloaded WB and AW3 from the Internet. I later purchased a "boxed' version of AW3. Does WB have a boxed version? If so, does it have "canned" missions for offline play?

A. There is a box version of WarBirds. The offline missions are the same as the ones in the downloadable version. Our marketing department wanted WB in a box to help get the sim into the public eye. Ultimately WarBirds is an ONLINE experience, and in that regard the updates and patches soon leave box versions out of date. (For additional thoughts on this approach see our recent editorial: Patches and Paradigms.)

Q. Do you foresee Imagic releasing a patch to allow for 8 player H2H or "EF2000 like" base defense multiplay?

A. There are no plans for this in the near future, but different modes of connectivity have been discussed. We want WarBirds to be a complete experience, and its lure is multiplayer... real human opponents. LAN based multiplayer connectivity is not currently on the design board, but you never know.

Q. Imagic has Dawn of Aces (WW1 sim) and Warbirds (WW2 sim). Are there any plans for a Jet sim? If so, could you give us a peek of the era and planes it might include?

A. Well, the next concept would be a Korea era combat sim. This seems like a playable concept, but it would be nowhere near the appeal of WW2 style combat. My personal concept of a Korean sim would include:

· F86/P80/F8F/F51/F4U5/MiG15/Yak9

· Focus on ground attack and a very advanced strategic system to facilitate more of a mission based gameplay.

Beyond that, Viet Nam seems like the next place to go, but again I think that gameplay issues would have to pull the focus off of Air to Air Combat and more on ground support to hold player interest. But I'd sure love to bounce a flight of F105s in a MiG 21 J.

Q. Which is your favorite plane and arena to fly?

A. Without a doubt my fave is any variant of the 190. Second in line is the P47D. After that my obsession fades to just plain old lust. I love all the planes in WarBirds…. Some others that make me smile are:

• · P40B
• · 109F/G/K
• · FM2
• · P51B
• · B25H
• · Ki43

Thank you very much for taking time out to answer a few questions, and I'd like to congratulate you on the great job you and the Imagic staff are doing.

I admit most of the above listed items are about preference. But if we didn't want the improvements we would all be content to fly the old' RED BARON wire-framed, polygon mountain type games that first came out over a decade ago =)