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ECTS 2000
By Kurt "Froglips" Giesselman
COMBATSIM.COM European Bureau ChiefMonday Day 2
Hasbro Interactive:
My first stop was Hasbro Interactive, home of the famous Flying 8th, B-17 II. Iain Howe, producer, started out by starting up B-17 II and asking what resolution he was running in the simulation. I knew it was a trick question so dropped my guess by one resolution setting. My belief that he was in 1024 x 768 was miles off. My guess of 800 x 600 just brought a chuckle. Incredibly Iain had booted in 640 x 480 resolution. My jaw dropped. We checked to prove that no FSAA was engaged. I was impressed with the interior and exterior views of the aircraft at this resolution. My only solid evidence of the low resolution was looking at the pilot and co-pilot’s cockpit controls. The graphics are completely scalable with tons of adjustments. Iain confided that he has played B-17 II on a Pentium 333. At the end of the interview Iain restarted the simulation in the highest resolution available with his monitor at the show (1280 x 960 x 32bit). We slid all the graphics options to maximum for a truly stunning view of a flight of 18 B-17s ingressing at 25,000’ with their fighter escort.
The animation is the cockpit is pretty fun to watch. I have continued to enjoy this feature in other sims. The controls in the cockpit are quite complex with most controls clickable. The difficulty adjustments in the game are really just remarkable.
Iain told me that they had modeled the entire western theater using satellite maps overlaid with period ordinance survey maps. The are two campaign modes, historical and editable. The historical campaign requires the standard twenty-five flights before you can return to the U.S. of A. for your ticker tape parade. You can fly the historical campaign from any of the six squadrons. The editable campaigns may be flown from the position of squadron commander for a more strategy oriented game or as a bomber commander for a more tactical experience. As a squadron commander you will be responsible for everything from assigning recon flights (three for each mission) to crew assignments, to repair orders for the aircraft and R&R for the crews. The crews capabilities are based on the fatigue, morale, and training. As the squadron commander you can effect all of these factors by your orders to the squad. The complexity of the strategy portion of the game leads me to label B-17 II as the first of a new genre of flight sim, the Role Playing Combat Simulation. Several simulations in the past have tried to combine the intellectual challenge of a Role Playing Game with the real time excitement of a Combat Simulation. The real time strategy games do not make me feel like I am ‘in’ the battle. Several other flight sims have made a stab at the squadron commander role. B-17 II appears to have gotten the balance. The involvement even at the crew level, with the very complex damage model, fire to be extinguished, crew to be given first aid, and even guns that must be unjammed should get everyone immersed in this WWII simulation.
The amount of data available to the player is somewhat staggering. All mission histories for all aircraft are tracked for an entire campaign. All crew data is tracked. Gunners and bombardiers improve with experience and get worse with fatigue or fear. The enemy AI learns from experience, will pick off stragglers, and change tactics through the war.
With all this complexity just how hard is B-17 II going to be to learn? Wayward has designed a full set of training mission to help the ‘green’ pilot through many of the complex tasks (like starting the engines!) required to qualify in the B-17. Most of the extremely detailed systems can be set to automatic (if you do not want to go through the realistic engine startup procedure for instance). All menus in the game have pop-up text to make for easy navigation through the user interface. The keyboard is completely remappable.