There has been a hue and cry from the flight sim community for quite a while for a good, multi-player, multi-station bomber sim. Two companies have dared to deliver. Both model the venerable B-17, arguably the greatest bomber of all time. But Looking Glass has gone a bit further.

You may recognize the name Looking Glass if you're a Flight Unlimited series fan. They have been making flight sims for quite a while and have decided to enter into the combat market. Their first submission, FLIGHT COMBAT, sticks with their well known prop sim experience with WW II aircraft. And not just a few, there are 10 Allied aircraft to fly and 14 German aircraft.

USAAC

• P51D
• P38J
• P47D
• B17G
• B24D

RAF

• Spitfire Mk.I,
• Spitfire Mk.IX
• Hurricane Mk.I
• Mosquito Fb.Mk.VI
• Avro-Lancaster Mk.I

Luftwaffe

• Bf109 E-4/B, Bf109 G-6
• Fw190 A-8, Fw190 D-9
• Ju87 B-2
• Me163 B-1A
• Me262 A1B
• Bf110 C-4
• Me110 G-2, Me110 G-4c/R3 (night fighter)
• Ju88 A-1, Ju88 A-4/torpedo
• Ju88 G-7 (night fighter)
• He111 H-3

While there are a few variants, of the 24 flyable aircraft there are 18 unique aircraft available to fly. The aircraft that have multiple variants are distinctly different in their performance and handling characteristics as well as combat rolls.

Take a good look at the list. Several of these aircraft are multi-station. In single player mode, AI can occupy these stations or you can pop in to them while the AI does the other operations. But here is the beauty, in multi-player, if the plane is a multi-crew aircraft, a human can occupy that position. All bold faced aircraft on the list are fully multi-player/multi-station capable.

With a planned player capacity of 32 players, you can fully man a couple of bombers and have a full human ESCORT package with you at the same time. The actual number of players over the net will be determined in testing, but the team felt confident that they would be able support a large number of players over the Internet. 32 players over a LAN should be a shoe in. Dynamic entry and exit, as in Falcon4, is also planned.

Bf110g

Bf110 Cockpit and External

Flight models will be on par with the excellent flight models everyone has grown to expect from the Flight Unlimited series of simulations. And the familiar ability to customize your game will be included as well. Planned options will include adjustments for :

• AutoTrim
• Rudder-Aileron control (for those without rudder pedals/sidewinders)
• Flight model, AI accuracy
• Cheats (unlimited Fuel, ammo ...etc.)
• Slider adjustments for difficulty
• Graphics detail (independant sliders for items such as terrain, sky, damage FX, as well as a master slider)
• Weather on/off (if off, there will still be clouds, but no winds/updrafts...etc.) as well as other common adjustments.

Paris: Searchlights

Ground objects will interact with each other and with you and fire upon your flight. I watched as a ME110 flew over Paris at night. Search lights beamed from the ground. I was told that if the search lights hit you, the AAA can see you. Then the AAA would become more accurate and your chance of getting shot down goes way up, how much depends upon the difficulty level you are set at. (Click HERE for the belly view from a B17 and HERE for the rear gunner view from a Stuka.)

Another neat feature is the "body english" on waist gunner positions, where the view swings with the gun and you get a view similar to what you would expect in real life. At this time, I am not sure of the extent of ground forces interaction with each other.

Mission Options

As with most successful sims these days, a full complement of features are included. There are two campaigns, the "Battle of Britain" and "Defense of the Reich", an Instant Mission generator, Instant Action, and a Training Module. All modules of the simulation will interface with the multi-player.

The single missions will be pre-scripted missions, Instant Action will allow the player to manipulate the environment, and the campaign will be based on a "semi-dynamic" branching campaign.

While there are some limitations to all "semi-dynamic" campaigns, the inclusion of primary and secondary targets will help keep the campaign fresh and ever changing. Weather will be adjustable except in campaign, where weather will be somewhat random (unless you have turned it off in the options screen.) And weather will buffet your aircraft and cause handling issues. 3D rain is also planned.

The Mission Editor is designed to begin a story where you click on the highlighted areas to lay out the rough outline of your mission. Below is an example of a Bomber Intercept mission. Once you adjust the highlighted sections to begin your "story", go fly it and make history! Or as they say, "What happens next will amaze and astound you …" There is a similar template for each type of instant action mission in the game. This includes :

• 1V1
• Furball
• Strategic bombing
• Escort
• Dive bombing
• Sub hunting
• Bridge busting

Gun Camera

A full featured mission recorder and gun camera is planned. And the game will release with an aircraft editor that is the most powerful yet seen. You can tweak virtually any parameter and build your own unique aircraft. Online play will have an option allowing the host to restrict the use of home built aircraft to keep things fair.

Graphics are not fully optimized, and there are plans for quite a few more enhancements. The version shown at E3 was very smooth, with a great deal of detail. The version being shown was very pre-alpha, so many of the features were not fully implemented, or may change by release time. I hope to get a beta to review sometime in the near future so we can look at AI, and exactly how the multi-station action works.

Aircraft Editor

It looks like FLIGHT COMBAT will easily compete with the current host of WWII simulations on the market as well as those being scheduled for release in the near future. This is one to watch and may turn out to be a sleeper with all the attention be given to other similar sims in production right now.