Eagle3
11-15-02, 07:19 AM
No, it doesn't have any Bagdad campaigns ;) , but it's still a very sweet military flight sim. You need some major hardware to run this. A fast 3D card with at least 64mb or RAM, lots of system RAM, and decent CPU. My system has a 1ghz Athlon Tbird, ATI Radeon 7200 video card and 256MB of RAM. I'm able to run it with plenty of eye candy turned on and with a reasonable frame rate.
The scene is set towards the end of the war in Europe. In addition to front line fighters and light to medium bombers of the time you also get to fly some "what if" aircraft. Had the war continued for another year you would have a chance to fly the P-80 Shooting Star and P-55 Ascender. If you were a Brit you might get a jet powered Vampire and fighting for the fatherland you might get to scoot in the the Go229 jet powered flying wing. There are twin engine bombers you can fly but no big four engine jobs. Missions lean towards tactical and not strategic. You're attacking airfields, tank columns, etc....
You can fly in simple free flight, without a care in the world, or single combat missions to career campaigns. There's also multiplayer which includes for the first time coop missions. Either fly with someone as wingmen or man a bomber as pilot, gunners, or bombardier. You can also fly head-to-head.
Changes/Improvements. Top of the list for changes is the graphics engine. It's similar (or the same) as the one for Flight Sim 2002. You really notice the difference with clouds and flying low to the deck. Flying nap of the earth is really cool and gives you the closest sense of really flying that I've seen in a flight sim. There is rolling terrain and a lot of trees/buildings. The clouds are amazing too. Again, a very close rendition of the real thing. Clouds and dense terrain settings really tax your system so depending on hardware you may need to turn the detail down.
The best improvement I've seen so far is the enemy AI. They appear to finally be following the same laws of physics that we have too. That doesn't necessarily mean they're easier to shoot down though. ;)
Here's a report I sent to Bucko the other night. It'll give you an impression of the game play.
"I had some time last night so I flew a little CFS3 to kinda wring the thing out. Picked a training flight, ground attack, Brit Typhoon, 65% gas, guns only, hard flight model, all graphic options on, and sliders to 50% or more. I also picked unlimited ammo and invinciblity. I didn't want a lesson on getting shot down, I wanted to play in the arena and see what/how/where/why everything worked.
I picked an area with an airfield and two colunms of vehicles to wreck havoc on. The airfield contained hangars, planes parked near the hangars, fuel tanks, tower, 88mm flak guns, other asundry vehicles and buildings. The vehicle columns were about 3 miles away. One consisted of tanks, mobile AAA, and a few staff cars. The other was mostly trucks.
Strafing the airfield is a blast. Hangars and buildings are easy prey and blow up way too easy if you ask me. Planes and flak guns are different. I'm lucky to get one plus damage on others per pass. Your sense of flying nap of the earth is really good. It's even better when I went after the vehicle columns. Here I come about 100' off the deck, dodging trees and hills trying to line up on these vehicles. Talk about a shitload of fun! I mean, if you want to stay low it takes a lot of work. The vehicles were making their way to a bridge and one Panzer got across before I took the bridge out. The rest were stuck there (they apparently don't try to get out of the way or head back the way they came) so they were pretty easy targets. NOTE: Vehicle AI could use a little work ;)
I did a little Air2Air in the Do335, Ho229, P-80, P-55, and P-51B. The planes crash/blow up in several different ways. In one case I shot a plane up pretty good , but over shot him before I could finish him off. I selected pad-lock view and watched him trailing smoke and slowly descend until he impacted. I got credit for the kill. Other times they'll explode in nice fireballs with many smoking pieces falling to the ground. It's awesome to fly through the explosion and debris. I wondered if I could get damaged that way. :scary:
I also tooled around in a B-26 trying out the different postions, gunnery and bombadier duties. Gunnery is next to impossible with the aircraft surroundings in view. Turn that off and it's a lot easier. I also fly the plane without the cockpit but with the translucent instruments along the bottom of the display. Much easier that way."
Besides the hefty hardware requirements the other negative is it's not as easy to add aircraft. With prior versions of CFS and FS you could add 100's of different aircraft that are available free on the net in most cases by simply dragging a folder into the aircraft folder for the program. With the new graphics engine that doesn't work. An aircraft/vehicle SDK was just released so it is yet to be seen how easy new aircraft can be added and if any of the existing addons can be converted for CFS3.
Overall I really like it. There's been a lot of pissing and moaning on the net about the sys requirements and how it doesn't run well on a 300mhz machine and a 2mb video card. Well, nothing is going to run well on those machines except maybe Doom II. If people expect the games to get better, they need to make their PC's better as well.
;)
The scene is set towards the end of the war in Europe. In addition to front line fighters and light to medium bombers of the time you also get to fly some "what if" aircraft. Had the war continued for another year you would have a chance to fly the P-80 Shooting Star and P-55 Ascender. If you were a Brit you might get a jet powered Vampire and fighting for the fatherland you might get to scoot in the the Go229 jet powered flying wing. There are twin engine bombers you can fly but no big four engine jobs. Missions lean towards tactical and not strategic. You're attacking airfields, tank columns, etc....
You can fly in simple free flight, without a care in the world, or single combat missions to career campaigns. There's also multiplayer which includes for the first time coop missions. Either fly with someone as wingmen or man a bomber as pilot, gunners, or bombardier. You can also fly head-to-head.
Changes/Improvements. Top of the list for changes is the graphics engine. It's similar (or the same) as the one for Flight Sim 2002. You really notice the difference with clouds and flying low to the deck. Flying nap of the earth is really cool and gives you the closest sense of really flying that I've seen in a flight sim. There is rolling terrain and a lot of trees/buildings. The clouds are amazing too. Again, a very close rendition of the real thing. Clouds and dense terrain settings really tax your system so depending on hardware you may need to turn the detail down.
The best improvement I've seen so far is the enemy AI. They appear to finally be following the same laws of physics that we have too. That doesn't necessarily mean they're easier to shoot down though. ;)
Here's a report I sent to Bucko the other night. It'll give you an impression of the game play.
"I had some time last night so I flew a little CFS3 to kinda wring the thing out. Picked a training flight, ground attack, Brit Typhoon, 65% gas, guns only, hard flight model, all graphic options on, and sliders to 50% or more. I also picked unlimited ammo and invinciblity. I didn't want a lesson on getting shot down, I wanted to play in the arena and see what/how/where/why everything worked.
I picked an area with an airfield and two colunms of vehicles to wreck havoc on. The airfield contained hangars, planes parked near the hangars, fuel tanks, tower, 88mm flak guns, other asundry vehicles and buildings. The vehicle columns were about 3 miles away. One consisted of tanks, mobile AAA, and a few staff cars. The other was mostly trucks.
Strafing the airfield is a blast. Hangars and buildings are easy prey and blow up way too easy if you ask me. Planes and flak guns are different. I'm lucky to get one plus damage on others per pass. Your sense of flying nap of the earth is really good. It's even better when I went after the vehicle columns. Here I come about 100' off the deck, dodging trees and hills trying to line up on these vehicles. Talk about a shitload of fun! I mean, if you want to stay low it takes a lot of work. The vehicles were making their way to a bridge and one Panzer got across before I took the bridge out. The rest were stuck there (they apparently don't try to get out of the way or head back the way they came) so they were pretty easy targets. NOTE: Vehicle AI could use a little work ;)
I did a little Air2Air in the Do335, Ho229, P-80, P-55, and P-51B. The planes crash/blow up in several different ways. In one case I shot a plane up pretty good , but over shot him before I could finish him off. I selected pad-lock view and watched him trailing smoke and slowly descend until he impacted. I got credit for the kill. Other times they'll explode in nice fireballs with many smoking pieces falling to the ground. It's awesome to fly through the explosion and debris. I wondered if I could get damaged that way. :scary:
I also tooled around in a B-26 trying out the different postions, gunnery and bombadier duties. Gunnery is next to impossible with the aircraft surroundings in view. Turn that off and it's a lot easier. I also fly the plane without the cockpit but with the translucent instruments along the bottom of the display. Much easier that way."
Besides the hefty hardware requirements the other negative is it's not as easy to add aircraft. With prior versions of CFS and FS you could add 100's of different aircraft that are available free on the net in most cases by simply dragging a folder into the aircraft folder for the program. With the new graphics engine that doesn't work. An aircraft/vehicle SDK was just released so it is yet to be seen how easy new aircraft can be added and if any of the existing addons can be converted for CFS3.
Overall I really like it. There's been a lot of pissing and moaning on the net about the sys requirements and how it doesn't run well on a 300mhz machine and a 2mb video card. Well, nothing is going to run well on those machines except maybe Doom II. If people expect the games to get better, they need to make their PC's better as well.
;)