E3 is the ultimate of the crazy trade shows, and it gets a little wackier every year. Last year just wasn't that great for PC sim fans at E3 - In truth, the console wars stole the show. It's a heck of a trip to cross the entire country to see what's cooking this year, but the news we've brought back should make it more than worthwhile. We went into the heart of Atlanta, learning about new sims amidst the settings of the last Olympic games.

Let's make one thing perfectly clear. Start saving your money now! There are a tremendous number of sims in the works and they all look absolutely incredible. If you don't have a 3dfx card or other superhot 3d accelerator plan for that as well. Companies have been really taking the requests of game players to heart and it shows. Once again, the overall level of quality of the '97-'98 sims is going to be absolutely amazing, and you really are going to be happier if your hardware will allow it to play at its best.

Since there is so much information to cover in regards to E3, we'll divide the reports up a few sims at a time. This way you can get the hardcore information quickly and in bite-sized pieces. Anyhow, on with the good stuff:

First off is Longbow 2. At Combat Simulations, the staff has been hypothesizing that whatever Longbow stuff Andy Hollis has been working on will have the Longbow, the Blackhawk, and the Kiowa Warrior in an environment similar to Ultima Online (Or Warbirds, if you prefer). As it turns out, we were about two-thirds right. Instead of being an expansion, they're cracking out a sequel. Longbow 2 looks absolutely incredible, and it's feature list literally reads like a sim fan's fantasy wish-list.

LB2 supports the aforementioned three helicopters (technically four if you count the original non-Longbow Apache). The Apache and Longbow basically return unchanged. The development team has stated that they will tweak the flight model more and make some minor adjustments to the avionics, but basically it will retain the same flavor and balance that Jane's mastered in last year's killer sim. The Blackhawk makes its first playable sim appearance since Gunship 2000, and it is a welcome sight indeed. The Blackhawk's purpose will basically be for troop transport and infantry fire support.

Additionally, one of the developers commented that it will probably follow the AirLand Battle 2000 doctrine and also be a potential command ship for the tactical commander. If implemented, this means that from the Blackhawk you could place movement and attack orders much like the proposed AWACS commander position mentioned for TFX3. The Blackhawk has no weapons, save for at least a right-side doorgunner position. Unfortunately, it seems there are no plans to include the ESSS hardpoint winglets on the Blackhawk (external stores support system).

We spoke recently with the pilot of a Blackhawk who had this to say:

"At Fort Bragg, the 82nd Airborne division and the 159th Aviation Regiment and Fort Campbell, with the 101st Airborne and 160th Special Operations unit, they combine to total over 300 UH-60's and all, I repeat ALL of them use their ESSS wings on their missions. I do realize that we don't carry weapons, but please acknowledge the fact that we are a just as capable platform as the AH-64. I have test data on film showing the UH-60 carrying a full load of hellfires and test firing. The advantage we have over the 64's is the fact that we don't have to go home to reload."

To date plans for Longbow 2 allow the Hawk to behave as a "slick" able to provide good covering fire for ground troops and as a commander's station.

The Kiowa Warrior wasn't implemented in time for E3, but a little questioning brought forth the basic concept. Basically the Kiowa will literally function as a scout helo. Its large MMS "beachball" sight will allow TADS acquisition and designation while fully masked and allows visual imaging at very long ranges compared to the Apache with it's less powerful, chin-mounted TADS suite. Supposedly it will carry a light weapons load as well, but it's basic purpose will be to make positive target ID at distance and under cover before the Longbow exposes itself and moves in.

Longbow 2 will also have a virtual cockpit. This was totally unexpected but is indeed a welcome sight. From the pilot's seat, you can actually see the copilot's helmet bob and turn in the front seat as you manuever for position and he tries to put ordinance on target. Seing the airframe swinging around in your frame of reference also gives a kind of "seat-of-your-pants" feeling as to what the helicopter is doing. Finally the virtual cockpit view is also slewable, allows padlocking onto targeted units and also viewing incoming missiles. For the bitmap purists there is no cause for alarm. LB2 will still support the traditional views as before. It previously seemed that Jane's was being too conservative to try something as potentially radical as a virtual cockpit, but this is clearly not the case.

Another totally unexpected thrust is that LB2 will have a dynamic campaign. Andy Hollis seemed to have considerable reservations against making a fully dynamic campaign, so much so that many of us were not expecting a truly dynamic campaign from Jane's for at least another year or two. However he did mention that once dynamic campaigns become feasible without their typical drawbacks he would do it. He has held true to his word - just much faster than we expected. No wonder they call it the Origin Skunkworks!!

The LB2 dynamic campaign will hold true to the vision of Falcon 3's dynamic campaign. In LB2's case it is very likely that they will actually pull it off successfully. Starting conditions will be somewhat randomized to make each campaign play a little differently from the last. Ground and air assets will commence fighting each other in a strategic system. From this, the computer will assign several possible missions. You choose the mission you want and have at it.

The beauty of this is that the way the system is designed it is not overly score-dependent. EF2000's campaign progress, for example, depends heavily on what score you achieve in destroying your target and so on. In LB2, what happens simply depends on what happens in the war. So if you can't nail your intended target and instead decide to raid the enemies' front lines in a tank-busting mission you might still succeed because you may have damaged some of their front-line power. Now going after opportunity targets has a whole new meaning because you will be destroying units that will have a direct effect on the progress of the campaign. To help prevent dynamic missions from being overly repetitive, many scripted missions are also included within the dynamic structure. In these missions, you may get orders to insert a ranger team deep into the enemy's rear, scout positions, or so forth, so that you're not always doing the same kind of thing endlessly. This is a novel solution to Andy's dynamic campaign concerns, and it sounds like a winner!

Finally, multiplayer should be a total blast. The word is that the game will support internet, network, and modem play. You can fly in any of the helicopters. In the Apache/Longbow you can play Front Seat/Back Seat multiplayer (You might also be able to play pilot/doorgunner in the BlackHawk, but this is not clear yet.) Typical deathmatch play is supported as well as cooperative campaign play. Here's where you can really wring the multi-platform design to it's best use and try to make the teamwork synergy happen. It's early to say for sure, but odds are LB2 is going to be the Falcon 3 of helicopter sims this Fall, as early as September.

Now we'll shift gears to a sim you almost definitely weren't expecting. If you're a hard core gamer and a reader of Next Generation magazine, you may have heard of a small team of programmers called "Innerloop". They guys are basically a "demo group" from the Norway scene where they had invented a new way of drawing detailed terrain at long distances and high speeds. They were known for a little demo of a snowboarding girl on amazing terrain and were investigating some kind of flying game.

As it turns out, they ended up getting very serious about that flying game and got picked up by Eidos to make JSF: Joint Strike Fighter. JSF is basically the Innerloop equivalent of Jetfighter II. It's purpose is to let the player fly either the Lockheed Martin or the Boeing Joint Attack Strike Fighter (JAST) proposed aircraft for the upcoming competitive flyoff. You will get to fly both jets yourself and see which one you like the most across three campaign scenarios.

The game looks extremely promising. You have detailed, light-sourced graphics that look amazing even without a 3d card. The terrain has much more physical shape detail than you would expect in a non-accelerated game. Additionally, first impressions of the game's physics modeling and ground-landing gear physics make it appear to be approaching that of A-10 Cuba!

Maybe it has to do with InnerLoop's physical proximity to Britain, but the game has some remarkable resemblances to a next generation TFX2:EF2000. The whole cockpit/MFD interface feels very similar, with a persistent virtual cockpit and familiar looking MFD screens. A really great touch is that when you look down at your hands and feet, they all mimic your movements on the controls in a very natural-looking fashion. Even your knees can be seen moving as you work the rudder pedals. Hopefully we'll get to see more like this in the future.

There's many more sims we have yet to cover from E3, so keep tuned to Combat Simulations as we continue to preview more of the upcoming products of this fantastic season.

FLASH!!

This spotted on the newsgroup:

Please please please ! with the Internet play allow both positions to be manned in 1 ship, But allow this to be done without 2 Internet connections, In other words I have 2 comps. LANed together with an Win95 LAN, and 1 machine has a modem and I have 1 Internet account. Will LB2 allow my 2 LANed machines to man both positions AND fly against (or with) others over the Internet ??

Andy's response:

I ran this by the team and...

In short, yes. But it ain't easy. You have to set up all of this in a Win95 network, then within LB2, use TCP. Win95 doesn't care whether the TCP addresses are local or remote. Some things about Win95 are pretty cool...--Andy

In other words, WIN95 has the features that allow this already in place!