One of 1998’s most highly anticipated military flight simulations has finally hit the virtual European geography with a big impact. Jane’s WW2 Fighters is here, but does it fulfill the high expectations set for it?

Jane’s WW2 Fighters comes at ya with spectacular FX

With one more major WW2 era sim left to be released this year, (SSI's Luftwaffe Commander), the picture is getting clearer on who will be the king of the skies over 1945’s Europe - and on our hard drives.

The short of it is that Jane’s WW2 Fighters pushes special effects to the next level of heights, but falls short in some of the features most important to the serious (a.k.a. hard-core) simmer. Let’s first examine the expectations that were set by the following to be found on Jane’s website (http://www.janes.ea.com):

"I have been playing the WWII Fighters game for about six months now. The graphics are incredible, and I find the dogfighting to be as close as you can get to realism on a computer screen, and it still allows the novice to have fun, too! WWII fans will love this one for its historical content, as well as the game play." -- Col. C.E. 'Bud' Anderson, Triple Ace, flew 116 Combat Missions in WWII.

" No other simulation -- in fact, no other computer game -- has so accurately simulated the appearance of a real-world combat environment." -- Denny Atkin, Computer Gaming World

..."more than merely a feast, its a canvas. It brims with atmosphere, and it shows the artists touch at every pause. Sometimes it borders on surrealism, but mostly it is simply beautiful... the best description of the game is that you are flying in a WW2 movie." Len Hjalmarson, www.combatsim.com

So much for the opinions of others, let's embark now into what this reviewer experienced, and we will sum up at the end if the expectations set were met by what we received, as well as how this sim rates in my estimation.

WW2 Fighter’s Museum motif graphical user interface

After a flawless installation and going through all the very well laid out options and preferences screens, (which were all done in a nice radio button and switches motif, apropos for the 1945 era), we enter the Jane’s Museum. Talk about a work of art! This graphical user interface (GUI) is a perfect example of form meets function.

What’s more, you get to hear splendid Glen Miller big band music - another nice shift from jet sim rockin’ and rollin’ tunes. You start out by entering the foyer of the fighter’s museum, and then have the choices of: immediately going to instant action fur-ball, go behind the kiosk and review European theater details, turn left to study and test fly the 7 planes, or turn right into the war room where the solo, multiplayer, campaign and mission editor await you.

The War Room, both artistic and functional

The hangar room is where you can select any of the 7 fighters and view the plane, cockpit, engine, test fly, view camera footage, and even listen to aces that flew them describe their opinions of these wonderful planes (P-51 Mustang, BF 109-G, P-47D Thunderbolt, FW 190A-8, P-38J Lightning, Me 262A-1 jet, and the Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX).

What I liked was the ability to get the information on each plane and even test fly it un-molested before going on to combat. Jane’s has certainly added historical context as well as aircraft specification details to the military flight simming experience just as it has for Fighter’s Anthology, but this time with a real touch of class.

The Hangar GUI - more than good looking

So let’s leave the museum rendered GUI behind and move on to the flight dynamics, damage modeling, mission offerings and multiplayer aspects of WW2 Fighters. Suffice it to say that Jane’s GUI talents are top gun based upon what we have seen from Longbow2, F15E and now WW2 Fighters. Now we get to the heart of the matter.

With Jane’s penchant for hitting the non hard-core market (as with Fighter’s Anthology and Israeli Air Force), as well as the serious (Longbow2 and F15E) the question arises: is this a light/mid-range or hard-core/serious sophistication flight sim? My finding is that it's a curious mixture of each, both a strength and a weakness.

P-51 in action (note uphill running streams)

First let’s examine the special effects nature of WW2 Fighters. The pictures within this review should speak for themselves.

I have never seen any released sim as close to photo-realistic as this one. Painstaking attention to detail was obviously put into both the interior cockpits and exterior texturing of these birds. The colors are clear and vibrant, the propeller whirls realistically, the cultural and theater markings are akin to what I see in my collection of WW2 books. Fire the weapons and bombs whine as they are released, primary and secondary explosions are very believable.

This angry yellow jacket bares its sting

If you haven’t invested in a sub-woofer and PCI sound card, this is a good excuse to do so. The F9 fly by view is one of my favorite in this sim. Each plane screams by you with its own distinctive engine roar with the full Doppler effect. Shell casings can be seen dropping from beneath out of their exit ports, gun/cannon flashes and muzzle smoke puffs as you squeeze out the rounds. So when others say that the special effects realism is the best yet, I have to agree full heartedly.

A Spit 9 sports its classic curves

What is really unique about the special effects are the voluminous clouds and flak. Fly low and you will see very good looking low level graphics much akin to Jane’s F15-E. What you won't see is the shimmering satellite accurate terrain (like IAF or iF18), nor the highly detailed repeating tiles of MS-CFS or Falcon4.

The terrain WW2 Fighters has is a good compromise between these two extremes that I believe helps the frame rate. Take a look and see the next few shots and see what I think is Jane’s best foot forward and contribution to the immersive feel of "being there".

Bf 109-G runs the flak gauntlet

B-24 medium bombers (not player flyable) over Germany

Detailed cockpit with reflections and adjustable seat

FX galore: sun glare, glistening skin, clouds, flames and smoke

The Me 262 Stormbird with frame rate counter

OK already, enough of the hot graphics you say. So what is all this going to cost me to run this on my rig? Well, the box recommends a P2 300 or better, 64 MB RAM, 300 MB HDD, X8+ CDROM, and a 3DFX based 3D graphics card.

It requires at least a P200 CPU, 32 MB RAM, 200 MB HDD plus 50 MB Windows swap file, and a Glide, D3D or OpenGL graphics accelerator card. Face it, this sim is not going to look and run great on technology more than a full year old (I recommend EAW if you are on older hardware).

On my P2 300 rig with a 12 MB Voodoo2 card, I was getting 18 FPS over terrain and upwards of 58 FPS with all blue sky around the plane. That was with all the details and options turned all the way to max. So mileage will vary upon what you do with the settings. Yes, WW2 Fighters is a special effects wonder, but you will have to have the hardware to get the full bang for your buck.

A FW 190 goes down after a head on with a stubborn Tommy

The next major areas of interest to me are flight modeling (FM) and its kissing cousins: damage modeling and object physics. Apart from multiplayer aspects, this is the heart and soul of what defines a flight sim to be of what genre of sophistication (i.e. easy, mid-level or hard-core). For the sake of being complete, I will define my terms and state my rule of thumb for characteristics of these three ratings.

An "easy level" sim is one where the learning curve is very short for even the novice simmer, basically a yankem and bankem arcade styles sim. Some examples would be: Jane’s USNF, Lucas Arts Xwing vs. Tie Fighter, F22 Raptor.

A "mid-level" sim goes deeper into the flight modeling, on line features, avionics, mission editing, and campaigning. This level of sophistication usually requires the simmer to actually crack the manual open and do some homework. Energy tactics are now coming into play, and the flight model makes you take notice of spins, stalls, weapon envelopes, etc. Some good examples would be: Nova Logic’s recent F-16 MRF and MiG-29 pair, Hornet Korea, EF2000, Total Air War, RedBaron2 and Jane’s IAF.

Finally, a "hard-core" sim (where my tastes lie) are everything that mid-level sims have plus a higher level of detail in the flight modeling, object physics, viewing/padlock system, mission editing and generation, detailed campaign engine and pilot statistics, AI modeling and very good multiplayer support - both H2H and COOP. Fine examples would be: SSI’s Su27 Flanker, WarBirds, Jane’s F15E and LongBow2, iF-18, EAW, FC-Gold, MS-CFS, Falcon3 (for it's day) and Falcon4.

Note the leading edge flaperons and split flaps on this 262

Now you may disagree with my classifying some of these games into one of these categories, but the fact is that it's just my opinion and a lot of these are fence sitters that could easily go either way.

For example, is TAW closer to being hard-core with its very broad product features, or does it belong in mid-range due to its rather easy flight model? For me, the flight model is the major component in what is hard-core or not. I’m sure we all will draw that fine line differently, but for argument’s sake this is how I rate sims. Now back to rating WW2 Fighters along this scale.

Emergency landings are hell on the gear, note the twisted strut.

When it comes to flight model, WW2 Fighters falls short of being truly hard-core. This came to be a real disappointment to me personally for two reasons.

First I’ve looked up to Jane’s to be THE hard-core sim developer lately. With products like Longbow2 and F15-E, I had hoped for a top notched flight model following these other releases.

Secondly, with the media and marketing hype as I previously quoted, my expectations were set high. They mention a high level of realism. If that means graphics and sounds, OK, I agree. But if this was meant to imply realistic flight dynamics; then I have to say that WW2 Fighters does NOT deliver. Why?

While the feel of flight is very good, the hard-core simmer looks for flight behavior at the edge of control. That is to say, departure characteristics: flight dynamics such as spins, stalls, compressibility, and faithfulness to known flight specifications.

A bad day at the office, note the cockpit damage

I confess that I am not an aeronautical engineer. But I am an engineer who has flown and studied WW2 era planes as well as spent many hundreds of hours in Fighter Duel and Warbirds - what I consider to be the benchmarks for WW2 flight sim modeling. What I noticed with WW2 Fighters is that the stalls are good, requiring energy management as I would expect. But the spin nature is very weak.

While set to the HARD setting for flight model (note that I dislike any variable flight model option; if it has to exist, it better be globally set by the multiplayer host), I would do MAX-G turns at low speeds and could not get into a hard spin. Easy spins, yes, but hard to recover spins were not to be had. Even high AOA were easily obtained with little effect on performance.

Both Warbirds and EAW have very believable spin and AOA modeling - as such I rated these two sims as hard-core. I hope Jane’s reads this review and patches this HARD setting to be what it should be… HARD. Else why bother with a variable model feature?

I also dislike the auto pilot feature that lets you sit back and let the computer dogfight and mud strike without your assistance. I would much rather see an auto pilot that kicks out when you’re within a certain radius of combat or tactical triggers. Rowan’s WW1 Flying Corps Gold did this very nicely. It is for these reasons that I rate Jane’s WW2 Fighters FM as mid-level. Now let's talk about what I LIKE about this sim...

Red light at night, a pilots delight: P-38 cockpit with legible gauges

Jane’s has some of the very best artificial intelligence (AI) modeling I’ve seen, on par with Su27 Flanker and TAW. You have to really be watching your six at all times, whether in solo or multiplayer with AI bogeys in the vicinity.

You will see bandits use both the horizontal and vertical axis to gain the advantage. Not just a predictable turn fight like I see with MS-CFS and EAW (probably EAW’s biggest flaw). If you don’t watch out, you will end up either hitting the silk or as dead meat from a head-on collision.

And talk about details. All the avionics are superbly detailed, including the movable flight stick or yoke. The wing control surfaces all work, including leading and trailing edge flaps. Damage modeling has been taken to the next level of refinement. Landing too hard or on soggy ground will end up with sheared or tweaked struts.

Gun and cannon hits will not only be heard, but also seen externally. And you gotta love the catastrophic damage. You can see the anodized frame, bent props, shot up cockpit and even gory blood splats. The ground objects are very realistic, including running deer and soldiers that scramble from stricken vehicles. Gun and ballistics and bomb explosions are spectacular.

Virtual cockpit with excellent padlocking and optional targeting window

Another critical feature is the object/target selection and viewing/padlock system. As the Top Gun fighter’s axiom goes: "Lose sight, lose the fight." Maintaining situational awareness (SA) is absolutely critical when surviving in a hostile 3 dimensional environment view with a very small and focused 2-D perspective.

When it comes to te WW2 genre of sims, there’s always the debate on whether or not padlocking is appropriate. My take on it is this: I don’t want magical targeting and padlock like EF2000/TAW, but I do want a padlocking system to aid me in SA. However, make it limited in its scope. That is to say, allow target lock and padlocking within what is considered to be realistic eye resolution and head range of motion. Su27, Falcon, and MS-CFS and EAW do this nicely.

As you can see for yourself in the pictures, WW2 Fighters does an excellent job as far as snap, fixed, scrolling, padlocking view systems. In fact, you can even adjust your virtual pilot’s head within the cockpit to give you the amount of field of view (FOV) that you want.

The only problem I see is that the range at which you can padlock a target is much farther than what is realistic. Also you can "cheat" by having a secondary target/object window give you much more detail than what is realistic. This is another indicator of not being purely hard-core.

Another questionable feature is the pop-up instruments when not using the cockpit artwork. Some really hated this with Jane’s FA, but I don’t have a problem with it. No, it's not "realistic," but it's a great way to increase the visibility and at the same time increase frame rate. Only turn on the pop-ups when you need them.

Mission editor for single, campaign, and multiplayer creation and briefing

WW2 Fighters supports single and campaign missions for offline or solo gameplay. It uses a mission selector with 40 canned single missions that you can edit and pre-flight brief via its mission editor. This means that you can either use the canned missions or make your own. This is a feature that will ensure a longer shelf and hard disk life when compared to its WW2 competitors (CFS on release lacked a mission editor, and EAW still does not have one).

What’s more, any of these missions can be flown in multiplayer. Thus both dogfighting (H2H) and cooperative (COOP) missions are supported for both solo or online simming.

What was disappointing was that for both single and campaign missions, the debrief summary and statistics are very basic. Worse, mission objectives are too easy and can be had by simply turning on the auto pilot. Simple solution, however: don't use the feature if you want more realism!
Cooperative multiplayer STRIKE mission with enemy CAP

If you get tired of H2H dogfighting, you can either use the canned COOP missions or create your own. The good news is that the mission editor is fairly sophisticated and can have air and ground forces that are controlled by a logical trigger mechanism. This can make up for the rather lack- luster campaigning and stats system.

Note that you can also go to the Jane’s website and down or up load mission files (send us your best missions by clicking HERE). Here is an example of a strike mission similar to one I just read in a recent true story posted here on CSIM a week or so ago: an Me262 strike on a forward Allied airstrip (note the attention to details for the special effects).

The sun sets on the aftermath of your STRIKE.

This COOP mission leads me on to the last section I want to touch on, that being my favorite topic, multiplayer (MP) support. One of the ways that I go about testing a sim for MP support is to try it on both IPX/Kali FLIGHT server (http://www.kali.net), and over direct connection via TCP/IP. Finally, I try a dedicated arena like Jane’s Combat Net (http://www.janescombat.net). What I got after hours of testing, was mixed results and reports.

First of all, Jane’s for whatever reason either did not test or chose purposefully to not support Kali/IPX. This is most disturbing, because nowhere can there be found a more dedicated and helpful cast of characters. The multiplayer code simply does not recognize Kali’s IPX emulation. Both MS-CFS and EAW do, as will upcoming SDOE.

For TCP/IP connectivity, I have seen very bad warping where the planes literally jump hundreds of yards at a time, making dogfighting impossible. At other times I’ve been able to fly in tight formation and even within a plane’s length away before the warp was noticeable. This would indicate to me that if you have a decent ping latency (400 ms or less), you will probably have a good multiplayer experience.

But even still, your success is dependent on a few more factors (other than the alignment of Jupiter and Mars). That being how many players are also connected, their connect rates (and ping values), and how many objects and AI air and ground targets are involved. So you see, while the superior graphics of Jane’s WW2 Fighters is its strength, its also its Achilles’ heel. This is where EAW’s 256 color graphics allows for far more active objects in multiplayer.

It’s a trade off of game complexity versus available bandwidth and CPU cycles. As technology continues to race forward, we will be getting more complexity over our faster connectivity technologies. Needless to say, having ISDN, IDSL, Cable modems or a local area network (LAN) are going to give you the best experience online.

Flying formation over internet TCP/IP

Below is an example of flying upclose and personal with a pilot from the Kali flight server. We were dogfighting over TCP/IP. I have a cable modem, he has a 56K modem running at 31kbs (due to his ISP’s limitations). Our ping value was near 350 ms with 0 to 10% packet transmission loss.

What this gave us was about 45 minutes of fantastic gun battles until the packet loss finally caught up to us. What happened was when he flew under a few hundred feet from the ground, he would appear on my screen as flying half buried under ground. Obviously positional data was being lost over time. To solve this we just restarted the mission.

Note too, that we used ROGER WILCO (http://www.resounding.com) for voice comms the whole time. (If you haven’t experienced live verbal communications while dogfighting or COOP missions, you’re missing the 7th dimension in the flight simming experience: 3D visual, 3D aural, and now voice).

If you can’t do voice comms, text chat is well supported in multiplayer. The remaining option is to fly on Jane’s own dedicated flight server called JCN. They have a lot of problems with their login database, but once you get in to their system which is TCP/IP based, it is a smooth flying connection.

Janes has a fast server that hosts the missions, helping reduce the peer to peer connection loading effects. The best part is that usually there is someone 24-7 (24 hours, 7 days per week available). Apart from lack of IPX/Kali support, I give Jane’s a thumbs up on their multiplayer support.

Lining up a victim who failed to check six - good multiplayer stability

SUMMARY

So we come full circle and have to sum up WW2 Fighters and try to answer that hard question: which WW2 sim do I get?

On the down side, WW2 Fighters is plagued with both minor bugs (i.e. cannot start a MP COOP on the tarmac without a hideous repetitive crash bug), to serious hard-core rating stoppers like the flight modeling (spin, compressibility) short falls, and the magical auto pilot and targeting. Also the manual was a ¼ inch, 90 page deal, targeting only the bare basics.

What I would have liked to have seen coming from Jane’s is details on each avionics instrument and how it is to be employed. Energy management (E-M) tables for a/c comparison would have been useful. Granted, much of the historical and pictorial details are embedded in the Museum GUI, so that detail was not left out. I did notice that the cockpit instrumentation from the museum did not match those in the cockpit art while flying (specifically the placement of the gas temp and pressure gauges are swapped).

I also experienced a few lock ups when I shot all my R4M rockets on auto fire when up close to my target. But the lack of wingman commands is also a big area of neglect. When you fly solo or COOP, wingman commands make or break a mission. EAW does a much better job of this. It seems to me that Jane’s left the hangar door open for SDOE to surpass them. We will have to wait and see as to what SDOE delivers.

Single Mission Selection.

On the plus side of the coin, WW2 Fighters is the most graphically and sound pleasing (engines, weapons, explosions and that wonderful big band music) sim ever crafted to date. The enemy AI is splendid. The damage modeling is unparalleled.

The attention to detail on both the cockpit interior and exterior accuracy and flight control surfaces is very good. The multiplayer support continues to be an area of strength for most all of Jane’s sims.

Mission Builder and Quick Missions access screen.

The mission editor gives user created missions for both solo or MP game play, making WW2 Fighters unique (this area could have also been covered better in the manual). This is where Jane’s F15E failed us, and where LongBow2 delighted us. The viewing and padlocking systems provide good SA, almost too good as I mentioned earlier, due to the targeting range and target pop-up window.

Jane’s WW2 Fighters tries to be all things to all people, and we know this is a very precarious path to follow. I would rather they make some sims targeted just for the larger easy to mid-level market, and other signature sims targeted primarily for the bleeding edge hard-core simming community, and then identify the target market on their website and on the box to that effect.

I regrettably report that IMHO Jane’s WW2 Fighters is not what it could have been, but still could be. If serious attention is paid to the many bugs and short falls, and a patch released within a reasonable time, then this could be the classic hard-core WW2 sim. With SDOE, Falcon4, and Su27 V2 coming out soon, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Life spans for non- classic sims are measured in months, and for classics, in years (EF2000, Flanker, Falcon3 and WarBirds).

So do I recommend this sim? Absolutely! Under the proviso that you have the right hardware and online connection bandwidth, AND that if you are a hard-core simmer, you are aware of the short falls and are willing to gamble on Jane’s dealing with those serious flaws outlined in this review. If you are an easy to mid-level weekend warrior, I know you will love this sim.

I think its the best of the bunch thus far with Screamin’ Demons Over Europe (SDOE) yet to be released, reportedly in February or March of '99. There is far too much good in WW2 Fighters for it not to be in your simulation hangar, especially if you have high end hardware. But, as always, one has to keep his/her expectations in check.

Till we meet in the skies, Check Six.

AV8R

P.S. Special thanks to the many hard-core simmers on Kali FLIGHT who unselfishly spend their time with me online to test MP for this review.