Microsoft released their public beta of Fighter Ace II last week. FAII is the long-awaited sequel to the original Fighter Ace - a massively multiplayer WWII air combat simulation which debuted on the MSN Gaming Zone nearly two years ago.

Rather than just patching or updating the current version of FA, VR-1 chose to start from scratch when creating FAII. New to this version are a force-based physics model, 3D accelerated graphics, improved terrain and ground objects, and more aircraft - including Japanese aircraft and flyable bombers.

Your choice of rides

Players have a choice of flying 34 different aircraft among the five countries represented in FAII. Each country has four fighters or fighter-bombers, a light bomber, and a heavy bomber (except for Japan, which only has three fighters for some reason). They are:

United States:

• P-40B Warhawk
• P-47D Thunderbolt
• P-51D Mustang
• P-38L Lightning
• F4U-4 Corsair
• B-25J Mitchell
• B-17G Flying Fortress

Great Britain:

• Hurricane IIc
• Spitfire Vb
• Spitfire IXc
• Spitfire XIVe
• Typhoon Ib
• Mosquito IV
• Lancaster Ib

Germany:

• Bf-109E-4 Emil
• Bf-109G-10 Gustav
• Bf-109K-4 Kurfurst
• Fw-190A-8
• Fw-190D-9
• Ju-87D-3 Stuka
• Ju-88A-4

Russia:

• Polikarpov I-16/24 Ishak
• Yak-3
• Yak-9U
• La-5FN
• La-7
• Tu-2
• Pe-8

Japan:

• A6M5c "Zero"
• Ki-61-KAIc Hein ("Tony")
• Ki-100-I-otsu
• J2M3 Raiden ("Jack")
• D3A1 "Val"
• Ki-67 Hiryu ("Peggy")

While players can fly the bombers, they can not man any of the gunner positions. The gunners are all AI controlled, and their accuracy is adjusted via server-side arena settings. Though the player does control any fixed forward firing guns, and has access to a "bombardier view" for dropping bombs. More aircraft might be added later.

Audio and Video

Graphically, the aircraft are well-rendered. Any external ordnance is visible, and control surfaces can be seen to move. Even the canopy opens when the throttle is chopped! Damage is not visible unless it is catastrophic, like a missing wing or tail section.

Game sounds are pretty good also. Radial engines have a different sound than inline engines. Gun firing, rocket launch, and bomb explosion sounds are well done. FAII employs a 3D sound scheme - for instance, while in the cockpit and looking to left, the engine sounds appear to be coming from the right. When another aircraft flys up along side of you, you can hear which side it's on without having to look.

Options, options, options

FAII has lots of user-configurable options. Firstly, the player will select what 3D graphics mode they want to use: D3D, Glide, or Software. Available resolutions are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. In the game, each country has a particular color assigned to it, which is used when displaying aircraft tags and map symbols. The user can change these colors to whatever suits them - good news for colorblind or color-impaired players! For slower machines, the level of graphics detail of the terrain and ground objects can be adjusted via a slider to improve performance.

For offline play, the user has a myriad of options concerning flight physics and combat difficulty. The flight model can be adjusted from "arcade" to "realistic". Stalls, spins, engine torque, wind, and gun forces are just some of the flight options that can be enabled or disabled. Ammo and fuel can be limited or unlimited.

Views can be set to allow fullscreen and external views, or restricted to cockpit-only. Aircraft tags can be disabled, or customized to show any combination of player squad tags, name tags, ranks, and/or range tags. The beta has a couple of offline practice missions that can be flown with AI controlled enemy and friendly aircraft, so you can get the feel of flying and gunnery without going online.

For online play, all of the above settings are configured on the server, by arena. Though not available at the time of this writing, private arenas will made available, where the player hosting can set all of these options, plus put a password on his arena. The host will also be able to set what aircraft are available and any country alliances. These private arenas promise to be excellent environments for squad vs. squad challenges, among other things.

Arena Settings

The Zone now supports squadrons. The CO will establish the squad, and pilots petition for membership. A single pilot may be a member of more than one squad. When flying FAII on the Zone, the player will select which squad he is flying for (or none). Scores are kept for individual pilots as well as squadrons.

The scoring scheme is still is still undergoing modifications, but it basically works like this: You score points for shooting down aircraft and destroying ground targets. The number of points depends on the aircraft involved. Scoring a kill while flying a Hurricane is worth more points than if you were flying a Spit XIV. Shooting down a B-17 is worth more points than a P-40.

The relative ranks of the pilots involved also matters. A general that shoots down a cadet won't score many points, but that cadet shooting down a general will! You lose points for getting shot down. The same aircraft and rank considerations apply. You'll lose more points for getting killed rather than bailing out. You'll also lose more points if you come down in enemy territory.

Taking it up for a spin

As FAII is still in beta, the flight models are undergoing adjustments based on the players' feedback. Currently, the model has an EAW feel to it. There are basically three different difficulty levels presented: arcade, intermediate, and realistic. These range from very simple to fly, to quite difficult, and there are separate arenas for each.

The arcade model is just that - planes never depart controlled flight, and there are no torque effects or adverse yaw. If you point your aircraft straight up, it will eventually run out of airspeed and just flop over; however, slips and skids are possible.

The realistic model has all of the difficulty options enabled: accelerated stalls, spins, and the need to make trim adjustments among other things. The realistic arenas also limit players to cockpit views only - meaning no full screen or external views are available.

One neat feature, however, is that the players are allowed full screen and external views while taxiing around the airfield and taking off. This is very useful for keeping your plane on the runway, and avoiding collisions with other planes and buildings on the field. The intermediate arena is a middle ground between arcade and realistic physics.

Fighter Ace II is attractive, in that it offers an 'upgrade path' for novice flight simmers. Rather than having to dive headfirst into complex and difficult flight models, the player can start out in the arcade arenas. As the player's experience and skill grows, he can move up through the intermediate and eventually into the advanced physics arenas.

Before jumping into your favorite aircraft and hitting the unfriendly skies, you are given the option of selecting your ordnance loadout (if applicable). Most of the aircraft are capable of carrying bombs and/or rockets. All of the rockets have a timed fusing, meaning if they don't hit anything after a certain time they will explode in mid-air. This isn't very realistic (except for certain German and Russian models) but they are great fun for air to air work (and for nipping those extending Runstangs in the butt).

You can also set machine gun and cannon convergence, although you don't have the ability to set convergence for pairs of guns - i.e. all 6 guns of the P-51D will converge at the same distance. You can also choose how much gas to take on if the arena has fuel limits. This can be very important when you're trying to get that fully loaded B-17 airborne from a 5000ft ASL field!

In flight, the player has a number of views available. There are the standard 8-way views, with 'up' modifiers, and a straight up view. These can be either fullscreen or cockpit obscured (which can be restricted via arena settings, as mentioned above). There is also a fully pannable virtual-cockpit view mode. This can be panned with the mouse and/or keyboard.

In addition to these 'from the pilot's seat' views, there are a few external views available (also arena restricted). There are no 'enemy' views available - that would be too unfair in that they would allow you to see what the bad guys were flying and what bombs/rockets they might have strapped on.

While in the fullscreen view, a textual readout of altitude, airspeed, throttle, gear and flap settings can be displayed at the top of the screen. The player can also configure any or all of six instrument gauges to appear at the bottom of the screen. These are: altimeter, ASI, VSI, dive/bank indicator, and compass. Personally, I fly with only the VSI and dive/bank indicator displayed, as you can see by most of my screenshots.

And then there's the padlock view mode. To padlock, you must first use the conventional views to look in the direction of your target, then hit the padlock key. There is a key to let you choose the nearest target, and keys to cycle through the targets in that direction. There are separate padlock keys for friendly and enemy, and your selected target is 'saved' so that you may switch back and forth from padlock to other views without losing lock on your target.

Padlock Implementation

Fighter Ace II has the best padlock implementation of any flight sim - online or off - that I've ever flown. Rather than the targeted aircraft being centered in the view, it's offset slightly to the side that you would need to 'pull' to bring your nose on them. If you are wings level and have a bogie to the left of you padlocked, he will appear to the left of center in padlock view. If you then roll 90 left, his position in padlock will slide around to high of center. Getting 'lost in padlock' isn't as much of a problem in FAII as it is in other sims.

To help you find someone to kill, there is a map display which shows the positions of every aircraft within a certain radius of you. The map symbols are color coded so you will know which country's aircraft are where, though not which types they are. Ground installations and the background grid of the map are also color coded to show which country owns what territory.

FAII does not have built-in voice comms, but with most players these days using Battlecomm or Roger Wilco, this isn't really an issue. It does have a pretty sophisticated radio however.

The radio sports thirteen channels, which the player can independently set to receive-only, transmit/receive, or off. There are channels for 'global team-only', 'global enemy-only', and 'squadron'. The remaining ten channels are team-only. The radio range is linked to the map range, so if a plane is outside your 'map sphere', it's also outside your radio range.

Parts is Parts

FAII's damage model has also been reworked from the ground up. Aircraft are broken down into literally dozens of systems, each of which can take damage, and in doing so, may affect other systems. The damage modeling is really complex, but this makes it a lot of fun also. Control surfaces can be damaged or destroyed (or get stuck!), which can make for a very exciting ride.

Lancaster with Clipped Wings

Furthermore, wings and tails can get blown off, engines can get destroyed, and even the pilot can be wounded or killed. Under the realistic flight model, wings can get sheered off when exceeding G limits, and flaps and landing gear can get damaged if overspeeded.

There is a degree of randomness built in also. Any shot fired might be that Golden BB that takes out your engine or causes your elevators to get stuck in the 'down' position (can you say, "uncommanded outside loop?") The player can press a key to bring up on screen a textual list of the more important systems and their damage states. This is very useful, you might find that one flap has been destroyed so you will want to make a flaps-up landing (lowering one flap while low and slow can ruin your whole day).

If your damaged plane isn't going to get you back to base, you have the option of bailing out or crash landing. If you can nurse your kite back to friendly territory before abandoning it, your score will not suffer as much as it will if you become a pedestrian in enemy territory. Similarly, crash landing is preferable to bailing, if possible.

The parachutes in FAII are 100% reliable as long as you have sufficient altitude when you pull the ripcord. You can, however, be shot hanging in your chute, so you will want to freefall as long as possible before deploying the parachute. If you bailout over enemy territory you might want to pull higher because the parachutes are also steerable - well, as steerable as round parachutes get - and you may be able to steer your way back to friendly territory before hitting the ground.

Get ready to rumble

FAII sports the same basic "furballs R us" online arenas as its predecessor, plus one great new addition: the Territorial Combat arena. In this arena, ground acquisition is the goal. Each country has limited resources, based on ground installations held (and not destroyed), referred to as "scenes". AI controlled tanks roll across the landscape to attack or defend scenes, triggered by the players' air to mud attacks. Tanks are the only ground vehicles active in the beta, but trains are trucks are scheduled to be added later.

This is an exciting new addition to Fighter Ace. Team coordination is the key to victory here, and tank busting becomes an important new skill. The server can set various victory conditions, and the game will run continuously until those conditions are met - perhaps for days or even weeks.

FAII also promises to be a great sim for historical scenarios. We're told that the developers can create new maps rather easily. Plans are in the works for running a historical scenario during the beta already.

Conclusion

Fighter Ace II is leaps and bounds ahead of the original FA. If you were turned off by the simplicity of the old version, you might want to take a look at FAII. The physics model is more believable, and the damage model is highly entertaining. It's quite a visual experience to park your 109 behind a B-17 and slowly disassemble it - after taking out the tailgunner of course!

The Fighter Ace II beta can be downloaded from the Zone. Participation in the beta is not free; it requires a current, active Fighter Ace subscription. However, there is a free three day trial period for new subscribers, and this should get you into the beta also. Of course, you can play FAII's offline practice missions for free.