Sonar Screen from Janes 688 I Hunter/Killer

The CGDC has evolved over the years from a get-together for programmers to share ideas and party to a marketplace for hardware and tool developers to show their wares and party. Most people think that such a show would be terribly dry, but in fact there were at least as many interesting games to see as at COMDEX, and the trends that we can see at CGDC help us peek further into the future than COMDEX typically does - in the games department, anyway.

The most important thing about the CGDC is the total clarity of one major thing. 3d-acceleration is finally arriving in droves. Out of all the titles on display, about two-thirds of them involved accelerator support of some kind. This is especially important, because lately we've been getting mixed signals from much of the industry about how willing they are to commit to acceleration. 3dfx's booth is directly in front of the main entrance, where they had such heavily anticipated titles as Psygnosis F1, Moto Racer, and MDK on display, as well as a few lesser known titles like Sub-Culture, Winter Race 3d, a Descent-a-like, and an interesting hovercraft racing game.

The Rendition booth was pretty much par for the course, although they were showing Rendition EF2000 G+. The really big thing at the Rendition booth though, was the showing of Flying Nightmares 2. Apparently the game just barely got developed far enough to show because collision detection was barely implemented. It's kind of distressing to try VSTOL landing your Harrier on the deck of the Tarawa just to pass right through :).

Flying Nightmares 2 really looks great at this stage. I was fortunate enough to get to sample the Cobra and the Harrier, the latter both in VTOL and standard modes. Both of them were very cool, although there were a few nits to pick. Something was wrong in the physics modeling for hovering. I'm not exactly sure what it was considering the short time I played it. However, even though something felt missing there, overall the modeling of lateral and rotational inertia vs. the lift/gravity forces were very impressive. Infinitely better than Marine Fighters/ATF using the Harrier, although I still think Microprose AV-8B Harrier was better there. When the assistant loaded down the Harrier with Mavericks in mid-hover, it quickly became a crash-landing.

Forward flight feels very good. Aircraft model detail is truly exquisite. (although the rotor on the Cobra seems to rotate at 120rpm) Contrails off the Harrier are very nice. Missile trails are well executed. Overall, the impression I've been getting with FN2 is that we're going to get an amazingly accurate recreation of the simulators the military used back in the 80's. I kept on getting that feeling again and again, and I liked it! Whatever quirks the game has should easily be worked out before release. (Ed note: the flight model at CGDC was a demo model only, not the full force model that will later be in place.)

Watching a motion-capture demonstration was an interesting experience. It seems that whenever wearable computer equipment is being demonstrated, you can count on blonde girls and tight-fitting clothing regardless of what convention it is. Anyhow, we waited for the demonstration for some time while the crew tried to get the virtual actor on the screen to calibrate properly with the girl doing the demo. What we really learned is that the technology is still really picky and difficult to calibrate. Considering that many motion-capture crews charge for their services by the hour, it certainly can become a really expensive proposition for companies that make heavy use of it.

Tools were being pushed hard at the show. Not the kind you use to open your case, but the kind game development companies use to reduce the work they have to do to create the game engine and focus on the game. 3d world development systems and API's were the name of the game, with NetImmerse and Multigen being the main players. NetImmerse is a system we haven't seen before, but it's the one Imagic is using to build iF-22 Raptor. Multigen was used in making Super Mario 64, San Francisco Rush, and supposedly one or more Janes' games. This is an interesting trend, and definitely worth following, as in many cases games made with the same set of tools tend to have family resemblances.

Also worth mentioning is the multiplayer companies. While I didn't pay very close attention, all the big name multiplayer services were there, hawking their services and trying to encourage developers to sign on. X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter was a part of the DirectPlay demonstration, and a very sophisticated network and monitoring station was set up to let folks play. Unfortunately, even with a 10-Base T network and a high-end hub serving NEC Pentium 200's, the game really crawled along at a slow framerate. It wouldn't be unfair to say that every game at the show that didn't support 3d-acceleration certainly would have benefitted from it.

The other big technology being pushed at CGDC was force-feedback. We've heard the hype many times before, and certainly force-feedback has much to offer in certain respects, but the demonstrations I-Force put on showed just how advanced the current technology really was. Not only will future games be able to support varying levels of stiffness as a feedback technique, they'll also handle force impulses and textures. What is a force texture? Grab a pencil by the end like a joystick and rub the tip across a cheese grater or screen door - you've just sampled two different force textures. Indeed it sounds improbable, but this amazing degree of precision in force feedback exists and will be available to you very soon.

Should we care about force-feedback in combat sims? While in driving sims the usefulness is totally obvious, in combat flight sims the usefulness still exists but is less clear-cut. Modern fly-by-wire jet fighters simply don't have any force-feedback built into them, and are unlikely to offer real-world pilots much feedback of any sort at all. Thus you could have the game jerk the stick around to simulate flak bursts, explosions, and impacts, but these things would be not much more than "cheap tricks" since they have no basis in reality. On the other hand, feeling the pop-pop-pop recoil of the 30mm chain gun in the Apache or the buzz of the GAU-8 Avenger in the A-10 might enhance the feeling of power in these weapons, but it would be much too easy for the first few sims that appear to totally overdo these effects and thus cheapen them to the level of schtick.

Where this would really be good in sims is simulating a prop-plane or glider, where you could really feel the onset of a stall or compressibility making pulling out of a dive a losing proposition. Aside from this, however - using force feedback in modern sims might require ignoring the lack of feedback in the real item in order to help the pilot feel the performance of his aircraft.

Yet imagine the possibilities of flying an A-10 just on control linkages after the hydraulics have failed, but you can feel how some of the links are damaged, or imagine trying to work a gearshift in an racing sim where you can feel the grinding of the gears when the clutch fails. It will take some imagination to really wring out the possibilities for us, but the potential for improving the gaming experience is there, and its benefits will reach us much sooner than say, VR glasses.

Matrox's display wasn't exactly sexy, no talk about new equipment or anything. However, the latest 3d accelerated games they were running were operating very nicely indeed. It seems a lot of optimization has been taking place in the Mystique drivers since the very early versions from last year.

Thrustmaster was showing the Millenium stick, but the force-feedback version of the T2 wheel was markedly absent.

The last exciting development was a super monster home theatre/computer/entertainment system from Compaq. This is strictly extreme-high end. It included the regular suite of TV/VCR/etc but it also added a very large projection screen, and some really amazing stereo equipment that really brought the "theatre sound" to the 3dfx version of MDK they had on display. A real great way to impress your friends, next-door neighbors, and the occasional policeman.

That's basically it. Brace yourself for the attack of 3d-acceleration and force-feedback. It seems that these and internet multiplayer play are going to be the buzzwords of the year. 3D animation tools are also improving greatly, to the point that it seems that we're eventually going to see more fusing between the worlds of Lightwave/3DStudio Max and games. The real news is going to be at E3 in June though, and we will be making arrangements to get the real scoop for sim players long before the magazines do.