 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator Kicking a Gift Horse in The Mouth Graham Lawrence |
I have been playing with Microsoft Combat
Flight Simulator, WWII - Europe Series.
When my brother-in-law presented me with this attractively packaged product to
say I was delighted would be to seriously understate the matter. I am a flight
simulator nut from way back. I grab every opportunity to try a new one, and as
the eternal optimist I always think this one will provide a really accurate
flight model. Well, the blurbs on the boxes make such big claims; but alas, one
can easily be fooled.
This Microsoft box is no exception. "The closest you can get to being a
WWII fighter pilot," it claims in bold type. What they call in sporting
circles a Big Statement. Such copywriter's puffery could be seen as insulting to
the memory of the young men who were physically sick with terror at the call to
scramble, but nevertheless climbed into their Spitfire or Hurricane and were so
gallant in combat. But this is not the place for such musings, back to the game.
"Fly the real thing," it goes on, next to a nice picture of a P51
Mustang. "The realistic flight models ... will challenge pilots to learn
the different characteristics of each airplane. The performance of each aircraft
has been tested and validated by WWII aces."
Naturally, one of the first things I checked on the box were the system
requirements. I wish my computer was of such power that I could ignore these
things, but alas it teeters on the brink of pathetic. Okay, it says a P133 and I
have a P150. 16 MB RAM which is all I have is said to be enough, though 32 MB is
recommended. Danger signs there. All the other things like video card and CD ROM
speed seemed to be well covered so I ripped open the shrink wrap and ran the
install procedure which, although slow, provided no drama.
Drama with the controls though. To properly fly a fighter aircraft of the WWII
you need to have a joystick and rudder pedals. With older versions of MS Flight
Simulator a second joystick could be assigned to handle the rudder. I have
constructed a set of rudder pedals using an analogue joystick bought for $10 at
a swap meet, and a few odds and ends from my scrap bin. It works well with
Flight Unlimited, F22 and MS Flight Simulator V5.1, but not with Combat Flight
Simulator. Rudder control for that is only possible with a joystick which has a
twist handle or a Flight Yoke/pedal combination. Neither of those are what I
would call "realistic" for these aircraft.
Grumpily I configured my weapon of choice, the Spitfire MK IX, with auto rudder;
a hideous arrangement that links rudder and ailerons together in a way that
usually defeats all attempts at fine control.
I elected to use Free Flight mode for my initial foray into these particular
cyber skies because there were a few things I wanted to try without being
hassled by hostile aircraft. A nicely detailed cockpit image presents itself and
after some whining from the starter motor the engine grumbles into life. This
game does not recognise the throttle control on my joystick so again I find
myself in the bad old days of keyboard control.
The flight, when we lifted from the grass runway, proceeded in a series of jerks
that reminded me vividly of the chase view you have the choice of eight
viewpoints. prehistoric days of flight simulators on the Commodore C64. When we
had lurched to a reasonable height over the picturesque terrain of Interlarken
it was time to put this allegedly realistic, verified and tested flight model to
the test. I rolled the Spitfire over, held it inverted and waited. In a real
aircraft of this type the engine would stop, but this one bellowed on happily. I
pushed the stick forward and the Microsoft Spitfire performed a graceful outside
loop. No real Spitty ever did that.
I was also interested in the stalling characteristics so I put the thing in a
nose high attitude and cut the power. The stall came at about the right airspeed
but did not come with the expected sharp downwards pitch. It seems unlikely a
Spitfire would mush gently like that.
In Quick Combat mode the extra processing power needed to render the enemy
aircraft meant that the ground texture needed to be turned off otherwise the
"jerks" became intolerable. This has a side benefit of making the
opposing aircraft more easily seen, but further enhances the "Commodore C64
emulation" look and feel.
With this game many combinations of opponents can be selected but when you get
one of them in your sights and press the firing button another weirdness
presents itself. The guns take about half a second to fire and seem to go on for
a full second after the button is released. After a while you learn to
compensate for this, but it detracts from the play quality of the game. A well
aimed burst of fire causes visible damage to the target. Smoke streams, wings
break away, tails are shot off, and explosions occur in a very satisfying way.
Because of the unfortunate limitations imposed by my slow computer I have not
explored this game fully. That will have to wait for the upgrade I hope to do
soon. But it shouldn't have to. My computer meets or exceeds the system
requirements for this product and therefore it should run smoothly. Now I
realize Microsoft would say that it does run well on high spec. equipment, but I
maintain that if that's what it needs, that's what it should say on the box. I
mean, how would you feel if you bought a domestic appliance labeled to run on
standard 240 volts only to find that to use it for its intended purpose it
needed industrial strength 3-phase power. Grumpy? Me too!
Summary
Could be lots of fun but if you wish to buy this game and enjoy it, make sure
your equipment substantially exceeds the recommendations.
Price and Availability
Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, WWII - Europe Series RRP $89.00 Street prices
vary from about $76.00 onwards.
System Requirements
Multimedia PC, P133 or faster processor, Windows 95, 98 or NT Workstation ver
4.0 SP3, 16 MB RAM for Win95 or 98, 32 MB rec.: 32 MB RAM for NT 4.0, 200 MB
disk space, 230 MB rec., 30 MB for swap file, Double speed CD-ROM drive; Quad
speed rec. Super VGA 256-colour monitor; 16-bit colour monitor rec. Microsoft
mouse or comparable pointing device; joystick or flight yoke rec. DirectSound
6.0 API-compatible sound card with speakers or headphones (with Win95/NT).
Optional: 3-D graphics accelerator card or chip compatible with Microsoft
Direct3D version 6-0 API, MMX processor, Force feedback peripherals compatible
with Microsoft DirectX version 6.0 API.
The following article
was published in the subsequent issue of PC Update
Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator Taking that
Gift Horse for a Canter
By Graham Lawrence
My somewhat critical review of this game in PC Update, April 2000 stressed two
factors. Firstly the sloppy flight modelling and secondly the program ran so
poorly on a computer that exceeded the listed system requirements.
Nothing can be done about the first, but the second can been addressed by a
system upgrade and since writing that review I have upgraded my machine. A
J-7BXAS motherboard, PII 400 MMX, 3D Blaster Voodoo2 and Matrox Millennium 6200
are now toiling away with 128 MB of PC100 RAM
Running a Norton speed check under DOS shows the new system clocks 1003.7
relative to the old P150's reading of 475.8.
It was a little disappointing to discover that this was still not sufficient to
run the program smoothly with the highest settings selected. However, by turning
off some of the least important features and opting for "normal"
rather than "very dense" ground texture, the game still looks good and
plays smoothly in most situations. The new hardware has also fixed the gun
firing delay problem and the new graphical ability portrays aircraft fragments
flying in all directions as the bullets and shells do their work.
It's really quite good, but I still think it needs a PIII 500 and one of the
latest graphics cards to get it out of a canter and into a full gallop.
Reprinted from the April 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
