Last year Eidos International released JSF, a simulation of the Joint Strike Fighter aimed at the middle level combat gamer, featuring a ground breaking 3d engine. Eidos is near to releasing the first expansion pack for JSF, and we should have more info for you soon.

In the meantime, Confirmed Kill has hit beta. I know.. you haven't been holding your breath! This sim has been on the drawing board ever since the ICI/Domark split. ICI launched Warbirds and Domark (now Eidos) kept the CK name and began working on an entirely new sim.

The Simulation

When we spoke to Eidos last fall it appeared that the largest delay for CK was due to the construction of flight models. At that time Eidos aimed at modeling in CK that would surpass anything yet seen, based on a system being developed by an aerospace engineer who is currently working on a variety of military based full scale simulations.

More than 450 parameters, including gunnery and damage models, are being individually entered for each aircraft. From weights and dimensions, to measurements of thrust lines, and even prop dimensions... all this information goes into making a state of the combat prop simulation. Lately the ante haa been upped by a handful of sim producers from Activision to SPGS and Eidos faces a real challenge!

Nevertheless, Producer Mike Gilmartin (a.k.a. Gilly) has more than three hundred testers working hard on a closed beta, and his sights remain high. Part of the attraction of CK is that it has been planned since the beginning with a historical approach, so that a great deal of research and preparation has gone into it. The historical twist extends across the board, from flight characteristics to avionics and weapon systems; its possible that CK will surpass Warbirds in many dimensions.

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What does this attention to detail mean for the player? When your Focke-Wulf goes to the armory you'll have a chance to decide wether you'll use incendiary rounds, ball rounds, armor piercing or high explosive. You'll base your selection on on your knowledge of your intended targets and what you desire to accomplish. With historical accuracy in mind, there will even be a load-out that specifies no tracers, since this was the preference of some pilots in the Battle of Britain. With your bullet stream lacking tracers your target has no idea he's being shot at until he starts taking hits!

When you first see Confirmed Kill you will be immediately impressed by the clouds. At the moment there is only one cloud level which starts around ten thousand feet, but its sufficient to impact your tactics in a dogfight. In fact the use of clouds has on occasion meant the difference between life and death for the pilots engaged in action in both world wars.

This ability to use clouds to hide or to approach unseen will add both realism and challenge and will help to balance out the abilities of two combatants, and it will impact tactical mission planning. Thankfully, padlock views will factor obscured vision and will not be able to magically see through the clouds.

The environment as a whole is impressive, with the CK world being built upon the graphics engine that powers SIMIS Team Apache. While not everyone will agree, the SIMIS engine is considered by some to be the best simulation graphics engine to date.

You may prefer the feel of Longbow 2 or the look of F22: ADF, but for raw effects and immersion (right down to the weather), the Team Apache environment is impressive indeed! Like Team Apache, frame rate in the Confirmed Kill beta is smooth, fast and steady on a PII 233 with Voodoo1, around 30-50 fps. On a PII 300 with voodoo 2 it will run at 100fps.

In fact Mike Gilmartin says that Eidos has continued to work with the SIMIS engine and has actually improved it! Expect to see great effects, and resolution will likely be available at 1024x768 or even higher. Both Direct3D and Glide will be supported.

Physics and damage modeling have been high priorities. Bullet "splash" effects on the water or impact effects on land and objects are currently unparalleled in the sim world. You can walk bullets up to a target - a common practice among WWII aviators - or you can use your guns as you would spray water from a garden hose, again a common practice among fighter pilots.

Ballistics modeling necessitates accurate physics and and trajectories. I did some experimenting by climbing to ten thousand feet and loosed my guns at the water below while diving at a 45 degree angle. I fired a burst then for the impact. A few seconds later I saw a series of small splashes in the water below. I calculated that my distance to the water was around 3 miles at the time of firing and about 2 miles at time of impact. The timing and impact position was accurate with real world physics.

CK will have more than twenty airframes available on release, with nine more added later. Altogether twenty-seven ac will be modeled, eventually including five Soviet ac such as the La-7. Here is the current list:

British

• Spitfire Mk V
• Beaufighter-4
• Beaufighter-6
• Hurricane

• F4F Wildcat
• F4U Corsair
• F6F Hellcat
• P38 Lightning
• P40 Warhawk
• P51 Mustang
• SBD-02
• SBD-03
• TBD Devastator
• C-47

Japanese: A6M5 Zero, D3a Val, B5n Kate. German: Bf-109E, Bf-109G, FW-190A, JU87B Stuka, JU87G Stuka, Ju-88A-4, BF-110C, BF-110G, Hs-129B. Russian: Sturmovik, La-7, Yak-3, La-5Fn, IL-2m3. Now THAT is a list of aircraft!!

Allied ac to be added later include the P51H, P47N Thunderbolt, Spitfire MK.XVI, and TBM Avenger.

Each of these aircraft is modeled uniquely for damage right down to the armor. It will be much easier to shoot down the Spitfire MK V than the F6F Wildcat. In fact, every projectile in Confirmed Kill has its own rating along three dimensions: penetration, heat, and volatility. Meanwhile the defender object has his own ratings: for flammability, volatitly, and hardness. When the immovable aircraft meets the moving projective, the round says to the object (say the fuel tank): "My hardness is five, whats yours?"

The first check is volatility. In the case of a fuel tank the rating could be 99%. A modifier applies to the projectile if it is an incendiary round. The next rating checked is the fire rating. Every building and object is similarly rated, and once a building catches fire (for example) damage is rated on a per minute basis.

Team Apache's environment is unbeatable, with wind and weather effects, and smoke drifting in accordance with wind patterns. The goals in Confirmed Kill are similary high, and we will see both wind and turbulence modeled. Wind is random at the beginning of a scenario unless the scenario has a historical determining factor (like the wind at Midway prevailing westerly). The wind will affect the movement of smoke, haze and clouds, and we may even see spot rain modeled beneath storm clouds.

Will we see training missions? Yes. There are eleven training missions that cover everything from torpedo bombing to air combat. The downloadable version of Confirmed Kill won't include narrated training, but the boxed version will.

Player Interface and Mission Planner

No more milling around an area wondering what to do, scenarios will be designed around clear-cut objectives. The mission planner is being designed to allow the player to design and save their own created scenarios, and the planner will allow a high degree of tactical planning and organization. Dedicated squadron areas will enhance the comaraderie.

Arranging flights should be a simple matter, even for newcomers. A Player Lobby has been developed which will allow players to meet and sort allies and opponents by Name, Squadron, Rank, and Connection quality. Players will be able to choose from dozens of historically accurate and play balanced scenarios.

Maybe even better, given that most sims are released these days with undiscovered bugs, CK will include an auto-update feature similar to the patch system that was released for F22:ADF. There will also be a bug record system which will be used to output problems even while in-flight so that Eidos can make fixes if you have an abnormal program termination. You will simply input what you were doing into a pop up form and it will be sent to the Eidos server.

Following the current trends, CK will come with the standard virtual cockpit. Correctly implemented, this is a great addition to Situational Awareness. A padlock mode that realistically mirrors human limitations of movement and visibility (as in clouds) will also be present. There will be some special touches to the padlock view, like adding peripheral vision. If a bandit appears where you would see him, your view will slew onto the bandit momentarily so that you know he is there.

As for difficulty, flight models, damage, models, gunnery models, red outs/blackouts, sun blind spots, mid-air collisions, ammunition loads, and fuel consumption are just a few of the parameters that can be adjusted for each scenario. (The scoring system makes adjustments for the difficulty settings, so killing everything in sight with all the settings on their easiest level won't make anyone King...)

Much of CKs design is dedicated to attack aircraft, so surface units will have realistic behaviors, including self-defense and avoidance tactics! Not only does this add an entirely new dimension for a sim, it also contributes to realism. When you are dealing with moving and offensive ground targets, you are in an environment that keeps you moving!

The ground war will be integral with the air war in the sense that if you as a pilot take out a tank, it will make it easier for your own tanks and troops to advance. There are over 250 fighting objects modeled on the ground (including jeeps), with the appropriate AI for each.

CK Online

In the multiplayer environment players will be required to agree on terms of engagement before the fight begins. Not only will such changes mean that skill will count for more, it will mean less counting from the bank account too! With CK available on the Total Entertainment Network for a flat monthly fee of $19.95 for unlimited air time, it promises to be a great additon to the simulation world.

Confirmed Kill will be released in a variety of scenarios for online competition. The first scenario will be the Battle of Midway, starting in the air from the point where the Japanese bandits are seen. Immediate objectives will be to defend your base and its resources while taking out the competition and their resources, including the usual ammo depots, factories, command centers, runways etc. Eidos also plan to offer new aircraft and new battles as often as possible.

Eidos has announced two other campaigns: the Battle of Kursk and Battle of Britain. Add to this the initial Battle of Midway and CK covers three different time periods: 1940-41, 1942, and 1943-44. Each of these will contain four theatres of operation: Pacific, European, Russian and N. African. Eidos is even considering setting up separate servers for each theatre.

All scenarios will include between 6 and 7 missions and support up to 16 players. The integration of computer controlled pilots works like this: in the Battle of midway the Japanese have a 4/1 advantage against americans. Putting seventy aircraft in the sky in this sim would not be possible, so with a maximum of sixteen human players (8 per side) the Japanese are given eight human players and 24 aircraft under AI control. AI pilots will use a toned down flight model, but essential characteristics are present and AI pilots will vary in their skill level.

Control over wingmen will be modeled at four levels: Group leader, section leader, flight leader and wing leader. The group leader can issue orders to anyone below him. The interface involves a pop up map view, so that the Group Leader would only have to click on TASK then click on an incoming flight and then click on a section leader to issue an engage command.

Intelligence is also modeled via the pop up map. Imagine that a Wing leader is flying a patrol northwest of Midway and spots incoming Japanese warships. The warships will also then appear on the group leaders map, just as if the Wing leader had made a radio report. The Group Leader could then decide which course of action to take. When the allied flight loses visual contact with the ships they will remain as a marker on location on the map until someone else reports a new location. Ground radar will also be modeled in the sim.