Microsoft has come out of the WW2 flight sim hangar before Jane's WW2 Fighters,
Screaming Demon Over Europe, European Air War, or Confirmed Kill. To be honest, it was hard
for me like MS-CFS because I was so impressed with the beta of WW2 Fighters. But before I
knew it, I was at the local game store and this sim was in my hands.
With Flight98 being
such a success, and with a good flight model, I wanted to see what kind of combat sim Billy
could come out with. My first impression of MS-CFS after installing was that this is a serious contender.
The graphics are excellent. On a P2 333 with Voodoo2, I was getting frame rates
between 12 to 40 depending upon how much detail was on the screen. The good news is that
when I tried a 4 player multiplayer session over Kali/IPX, the frame rates were smooth. Not
glassy, but not enough slowing for me to notice any effect on the game play.
As you can
see from the pictures, the ground terrain is simply beautiful, much like Falcon4's ground
terrain. You can select from the single missions and campaigns, and fly over realistic scenery and
elevation in many of the historic air battles from the Battle of Britain and Battle of
Europe theaters.
Aircraft detail is once again, great. In my opinion, MS-CFS has surpassed Warbirds
level of graphics details, both exterior and interior-cockit art. Whether this is a result
of the difference between Online sims (mega-multiplayer like WB, AW) and sims online (boxed
sims with limited online capacity, usually 4 - 16); I'm not certain.
The special FX like
gun muzzle flashes, whirling propellers, fully functional avionics, wispy clouds, smoke,
haze, aircraft damage and more comes together to make a very immersive package. We've all
seen the many WW2 aerial combat flicks on TV where the fighter is hammering away at the
victim in his sights. You see the tracers, fuselage hit flashes, puffs of smoke, and
pieces falling away.
Microsoft recreates all this very well, as they should since the
programmers watched many hours of gun camera footage in order to attain
this accuracy. In my opinion, this is where
MS-CFS stands head and shoulders above all other sims to date.
Another area of greatness in this sim is in the sound effects. Start the engine, and
it coughs, sputters and then comes to a smooth idle. Every plane is distinctive in its
throaty sounds. Get into a dogfight and you will fall in love with the fly by sounds as
the enemy roars by you. The cannon and machine guns are as realistic as I've heard
yet. If you are unfortunate enough to get your engine hit, the engine will miss and
sputter. Smoke will come around the cowl, and even the windshield will have bullet holes ripped across it.
The virtual cockpit padlocking is excellent. What you get is a simplified avionics
suite that is functional, but allows for greater frame rate which is usually the first
victim to fall in padlocking. There are even some functional gadgets for the pilot's mouse to manipulate.
To compensate,
there is a very full set of keyboard commands that allow you to do very
detailed things; like hand pumping the gear should your hydraulics be
damaged. You can even bring up a kneeboard checklist for takeoff,
cruise, descent or landing. Situational awareness cheats also abound,
like the tactical display you can see top left in the third shot in
this column. Here is a larger view:
Padlock View.
Unfortunately, Microsoft
provides no stick files, and assumes you are using a MS-Sidewinder. Big
Bad Billy at it again. 8^P Never fear, you can build on ours: MS CFS Thrustmaster config.
The following status display comes on when you use the no cockpit view.
Its logical and informative, but you can also turn it off. Check it
out:
As if this weren't enough, Microsoft has offered a full set of
narrated training missions! For those who are unfamiliar, Janes
pioneered this route in Longbow. You will find yourself in the seat of
a particular aircraft, with the instructor speaking to you as if he is
in the seat behind you. The instructor guides you as you make the
manouver, from a manouver as simple as landing to the complexities of
air combat moves.
Another area of detail is the flight model. It has a 0-100% realism setting
mechanism. If you go directly to HARD (100%), even take off will challenge you.
Dogfighting is tough. Its going to take some stick time to get proficient with
your turns, rolls, and loops.
I noticed that if you aren't careful low on the deck, you will side slip right into the
ground if you try a last minute pullout or stay in a 90 degree bank for too long. Spins
and flips are easily incurred if you aren't watching your airspeed and nose angle.
I've
flown my share of Warbirds full model, and this seems on par with that
level of
difficulty. It does however have a different "feel" than do the models
of Warbirds. In
my opinion, the AXIS planes are under modeled. I've seen many a WINGS
show where American pilots who have flown both the Me109F and the FW190
comment on the feel. What they usually say is that they
both are excellent fighters with comparable flight characteristics to
the P51 and
Spitfire. The only complaint they had was the cockpit visibility.
Multiplayer with MS-CFS was good over Kali/IPX LAN emulation. I didn't have time to
try TCP/IP. I was involved with a 2v2 Kali session and it was really smooth and fun.
What really stuck out was that it has a join/leave use model that is awesome. The host can
choose to admit or deny others from jumping into the game while it is ongoing. If you don't
like the interruption, you can preset the number of players and teams allowed before you
start the engagement.
Whether or not you can get more than 4 players will probably be a
function of the connection rates of the host, primarily, and the players secondarily. What
was missing was any provision for a mission editor or even cooperative game play. So
unfortunately, this sim only sports dog fighting. I believe this is where Jane's WW2
Fighters, and others, will blow past this otherwise very good sim.
I tried to connect to
the online gaming arena hosted by Microsoft, The Internet Gaming Zone.
It works fine, IF
you're willing to wade through a maze of windows, forms and 3 separate
file downloads to get
it running. Even then I had to reboot my computer 3 times before it all
worked. Microsoft has a long way to go before it will be simple and
easy like NovaLogic's NOVAWORLD.
In summary, I really enjoyed MS-CFS. It scores very high in the areas of graphical and
sound effects. The avionics and cockpit art are excellent, and the padlocking and virtual
cockpit are all well thought out and implemented. The flight model allows for the beginner
to the very advanced. On the hard realism setting, you will have to fly the plane as well
as fight. (One of the things I preach as a MUST for a great sim).
Where it's soft is that the Allied planes seem to be more
accurate than do the Axis planes. This may be remedied
by the fact that the plane graphics and flight models can be user
defined. While I like this for the ability to add planes and improve on
FM accuracy, I don't
like this at all for multiplayer dog fighting. This is what killed
fairness in Jane's ATF engagements, making it much less attractive for
serious competitors.
Only having 8 planes is also a limitation: 2 Spits, 2 Me209s,
P51 and P47, FW190 and a Sopwith Camel? It's a good thing that we will see third party add-ons soon!
As for multiplayer, if you like dog fighting, you'll love this
sim. If you want to do bomber escort, ground strikes, cooperative
missions - forget it. CFS completely lacks the ability to command
wingmen.
The single play and training missions give you a feel of what
this sim could have been if they would have made cooperative missions in multiplayer.
On the bright side, MS-CFS came with a manual this time!
Overall, we still have something to look for in the coming wave
of other WW2 flight sims. I give CFS a mediocre rating because the
potential greatness is dragged down by a lack of completeness.
