What a year for prop-heads! With about five titles on the block its going to be a veritable smorgasbord. Luckily for us, the choices WON'T be easy as the overall quality of these new simulations is extremely high. The real serious simulation fans may find themselves with empty pocketbooks this Christmas: who would want to be without EAW, MS CFS, MiG Alley, Fighter Squadron and WWII Fighters?

Nations: Fighter Command won't hit the stands until early in 1999, along with Fighter Duel II. Nations is Psygnosis first foray into the WWII prop genre for serious simulation fans. The title itself stands out, and the choice was made because the player may select one of three nations from which to fight the war: Germany, England, or the USA.

As befits a serious simulation, flight characteristics are individually modeled for each of the 12 flyable aircraft. Choose to fly as a German and you may fly the Me-163, Me-262 or FW-190. American pilots have the P-38, P-47 or the P-51. British aircraft include the Typhoon, Hurricane or Spitfire.

One of the impressive features of most of the new entries in this genre is a very atmospheric interface, dressed up by vintage film clips. Nations is no different, and footage from period newsreels will have you feeling nostalgic and contribute to that sense of being there. Clips are also used as news items to reflect your progress in the war.

Some great Nations wallpaper...

As an object oriented design damage modeling, including the graphical modeling of damage, is a high priority and you will see bullet holes, torn wings, broken tails, etc. Attention to detail in objects extends to physics and avionics, and as I was watching a sudden throttle cut on a 109 in the alpha I saw the puff of smoke from the exhaust port on the left front side of the aircraft as the suddenly rich mixture went only partially burned. Wow!

In Nations, as in FD 2.0, FSSD and Fighter Legends you will see spent shell casings falling to earth as you fire your guns. Detail to the max!

Nations may have set the highest goals for environment detail in the present crop of coming sims. Cities are modeled beyond anything yet seen, perhaps even exceeding what we are seeing in screen shots from Apache-Havoc. For maximum enjoyment a PII 300 or higher with AGP is recommended. Psygnosis is aiming to even model crowds on the ground where appropriate, who will scatter when you dive low to strage them or when a shot up aircraft falls out of control. Likewise cloud layers and weather effects will be fully modeled, including turbulence.

The question that could be in your mind now regards AGP. Up to now I haven't taken this question very seriously. First, there was no software that mattered to me where AGP was critical. Second, I wasn't convinced that this was not just another Intel marketing ploy. However, my time in San Francisco viewing Nations: Fighter Command and speaking with one of the artists working on the sim has changed my mind.

Does AGP Really Improve Performance? You can read this article at Tom's Hardware site. It's the response of Real3D, co-developer of the Intel i740 3D graphics chip to Bert McComas' article 'Does AGP Really Improve Performance?', first pubished on Tom's Hardware Guide a few weeks ago. Tom has included his own comments as well. Its not always a crystal clear discussion, but it does illumine the issues.

Let me share some impressions of the Nations alpha. First, the AGP version is significantly richer graphically than the PCI version. I watched Nations on both V2 systems (8 meg board) and on an AGP system (The V2 system was a PII 300 and the AGP system a PII 400).

I was told that the 2 meg of texture memory per texture unit on the 8 meg Voodoo 2 board was completely inadequate, requiring texture compression that affected image quality and also limited detail levels. The 4 meg of a 12 meg V2 board is an improvement, but still very limiting compared to the AGP option. Textures in Nations can be as large as 12 meg, therefore the need for AGP. Texture compression is used if your board has access to 4 meg of texture memory or less, and the effects do degrade the image.

What this will mean is that those who have an AGP board will get the best out of Nations. And those who have a powerful system behind the board will be able to run with maximum detail at resolutions exceeding 1024x768. If you are near the top of the rung in early 1999, say with a PII 400 or better, running a Banshee AGP, Matrox MGA G200 or Riva TNT based board like the STB V4400, you should be very pleased indeed. With support for tri-linear filtering, image quality may be the best we have seen yet.

The aircraft themselves are very pleasing to the eye, with accurate paint schemes and markings. I watched the demonstrator advance the time of day from an outside view of the Spit, and the sunset was beautifully modeled. Terrain can be extremely detailed, and landscapes are converted from 30m height maps of Europe and optimized into polygons. Buildings, rivers and roads were then added based on 1940s maps, and there are some cities where every single building actually appears, not just grey patches to represent them.

In the same way, clouds are modeled volumetrically. You can fly around them and through them without any distortion. The dynamic lighting affects the clouds dynamically: time of day, angle of sun and the colors being generated by atmospheric effects are all reflected in the clouds, just as in real life. In may of the screen shots here you get a sense of the realism this creates.

Campaign missions will be based on historical records, with fifteen missions per nation. 10 instant-action missions, and 3 separate multiplayer missions are also planned, and a detailed custom mission creator should add even more life to the sim. The mission designer is slated for release after the sim, but will be available as a free add-on via the Internet.

Goals for flight modeling should make the devoted prop heads happy. A six point force model is being used, and an RAF test pilot with experience in many WW2 fighters is acting as consultant.

I couldn't fit all the beautiful screens into this preview... ;-D Here is an Me262 riding into the sunset. And here is an Me109 taking on a P51. Finally, a gorgeous night shot of an FW200 and a shot of a P51 that looks like a painting... Watch for more soon!