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Reviewed by: Craig Strachan
----------------------------------T--------------------------------м
| Author: Flying Legends | Price: Retail: L44.99 UK, |
| | Street: L34.99 UK |
| Category: Detailed fly 'em up | Released: December 1995 (WIN95|
| | Version) |
| Platform: DOS, also on WIN95 | Version: 1.1 |
| Multiplayer: Up to 2 via IPX. | |
L---------------------------------+---------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------м
| Graphic modes: 640x480x256 |
| Controls: Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick highly recommended |
| Sound devices: Most popular cards |
L-------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------T--------------T--------T-------------T-------------м
| | Computer | Memory | HD space | CD speed |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Minimum | 486-66 | 8M | 8M | x2 |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Reviewed on | 486-66 | 10M | 8M | x2 |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Recommended | P100 | 8M | 8M | x2 |
L--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+--------------
Reviewer's Hardware: 486 dx2/66, 10M RAM, 2x CD-ROM Drive, CH
Flightstick Pro
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
These days, when I hear about some great new flight sim under
development, I tend to stifle a yawn and reply "Oh really?" in that
reserved British way for I know full well that the said flight sim
will have as much chance of running well on my 486 as I have of being
elected Pope and Prime Minister of Great Britain in the same day.
I must admit though that I started getting pretty excited when news
first started leaking out from the mysterious east about a new flight
sim based on the SU27 Flanker. The sim, written by Russian programmers
was said to be very realistic and even better was being written to run
well on the hardware available to the programmers, namely 386s with
EGA graphics.
It was a sickening disappointment therefore when the sim emerged in
its final form, now under the auspices of SSI. In a complete
turnaround, it was now a Windows 95 only product running in SVGA mode
and requiring a minimum of a DX2/66.
Big Bill's spawn has not tainted my machine, nor will it until I can
invest in some new hard disk acreage (and don't tell me hard disks are
really cheap these days because they're still not cheap enough for me,
buying Flanker wiped out the Strachan computing budget for the next
six months) so I had to swallow my disappointment and hope that the
rumours of a DOS version would bear fruit.
Finally, SSI have come good and the DOS version is with us. Early
reports suggest that this could be the game to unthrone the Sultan of
Sims itself (I refer of course to the sublimely terrific Tornado).
Will it live up to the hype or will it flame out on its take off run?
Strap on your bone dome with the red star on it and practice your Mr.
Checkov impressions as we find out.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Nature Of The Beast
Flanker is a sim which puts the emphasis back on flying. The rookie
Flanker pilot will search in vain for ways of creating a new pilot or
customising their tail art. What Flanker boils down to is an extremely
detailed mission creating package and a simulation module which lets
you fly missions created in the mission creator. There is no campaign
option and no quick start option or the like. Similarly, there is no
choice of flight model, the only one available is one which is as
accurate as the programmers can make it. The only concessions
available to those of us whose reactions do not permit us to snap
flies out of the air as they pass is the option to make our Flanker
more bulletproof than the real thing and to set the skill level of the
enemies.
In short, this is a simulation, not a game and the player looking for
a chance to leap aboard a kite and pole about for 10 minutes should
look elsewhere.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Interface
As soon as Flanker starts up, it reveals its Windows origins. The
programmers having had to design an interface for the windows version
obviously decided that it would be pointless to redesign it for the
DOS version and instead have produced something that has an uncanny
resemblance to Windows 95. I hope the Microsoft 'look and feel'
lawyers aren't feeling a bit slack at the moment. When the game first
starts up, it presents the player with an open file dialog box to
select a mission from. Just like all those business applications that
dull people use their computers for. The similarities do not stop
there. On the left hand side there is a tool bar and moving the mouse
to the top of the screen reveals a menu bar packed full of goodies. In
fact playing Flanker is pretty good practise for using a program like
Word and if your boss objects to you playing during working hours, you
can tell them I said so. I found that the interface worked well apart
from a couple of early problems getting the hang of the map
manipulation function, caused no doubt by my impending senile.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Background
For a wonder, this sim does not take place in Korea, Iraq/Kuwait or
any of the worlds other hot spots so beloved of flight sim writers
everywhere. Flanker has as its sphere of operations the Crimea, an
area which in the sim's near future scenario is claimed by both Russia
and the Ukraine. One result of this is that both sides tend to use
pretty much the same equipment meaning that the pilot has to be very
sure of the identity of their target before they let fly. The choice
of the Crimea is a good one because it provides a compact area of
operations with plenty of variety in the terrain.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation
Strachan's fifth rule of computer games states that "The chances of a
flight sim being any good improve dramatically if a decent map is
provided in the documentation". For justification, I merely need to
point out that Tornado came with no less than 5 maps printed on glossy
paper which allowed the truly sad to plot their course on them with
whiteboard pens. Flanker scores well in this respect coming as it does
with a large scale map of the Crimea region printed on shiney paper.
Another good point is that the map has been drawn especially for the
game meaning that if a road or railway appears on the map, there is
every likelihood that it will also appear in the game.
Then there is the manual. Once again, Flanker is up against pretty
tough opposition because it has to try and better the Tornado manual,
a truly magnificent tome. In the end, it doesn't make it but it comes
very close. At just over 200 pages, it is perhaps slimmer than might
be hoped for but those 200 pages are packed with the kind of stuff the
ardent flight simmer needs to know. The manual scorns the chaff lesser
flight sims seek to pad their pages with such as a history of flight
from the Wright brothers onwards and buckles straight down to the job
of flying and fighting one of the most technically sophisticated sims
going and it does a very good job with clear concise text and helpful
illustrations. As we will see, the manual needs to be good because the
Flanker will take more than the normal amount of time to get to grip
with. If I have a quibble with the manual, it is perhaps that it is
sometimes just a wee bit too technical. Try making sense of a sentence
like
`When using the EOS, all contacts are displayed in an ``azimuth angle
- elevation angle''frame of reference'
when you've got a Mig 29 locked up right in front of you. The other
problem I have with the manual is that it doesn't have an index. By
and large the sections of the manual are sufficiently well organised
so that hunting for the exact procedure for letting fly with your
weapon of destruction of choice isn't too bad. By way of consolation,
Flanker also comes with a separate key reference card which saves
having to thumb frantically through the manual at the most
inconvenient of times (i.e. with several kilos of flaming rocket
propelled death homing onto one's tailpipe) to find out how to turn on
the ECM system. If you are running the Windows 95 version of Flanker,
the entire manual is also online in the shape of a Windows help file.
DOS users will have to exit Flanker and start up Windows (3.1 or 95)
to have a look at this file.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics
Flanker caused a bit of an uproar when it first came out because it
bucked the trend in flight sims. There wasn't a bitmap in sight.
Instead, what we got were crisp SVGA polygons. In fact, the style of
the graphics were eerily similar to (you guessed it) Tornado though of
course in higher resolution. (May I just beg the readers indulgence at
this point to say that in my opinion, if Digital Integration were to
dig out the Tornado code, bolt on a SVGA graphics engine (the one from
Apache would do nicely) and release it onto an unsuspecting world,
they would sell millions. Perhaps their new (sigh) F16 sim will come
up to scratch).
Other ground details are a strange mixture. The various SAMs, ships
and airfields in the sim are some of the most finely detailed I have
encountered in my simulated career. Radar scanners rotate and missile
launchers swivel. in a highly authentic looking manner. On the other
hand, civilian buildings all look as if they belong to the early Lego
school of architecture. It's as if some giant has strewn a bag of
Liquorice Allsorts across the Crimean landscape.
There are three levels of graphical detail available. The differences
between the three aren't immediately obvious (for instance the
difference between the most detailed setup and the next one down is
that roads have street lights, railway lines have pylons to hold up
the overhead power lines and electricity pylons criss-cross the
landscape, something that is easy to miss when doing Mach 1 at a
height of 50 Metres). Frame rate demon though I am, I've found myself
playing the sim at full detail on my lowly DX2/66 and accepting the
inevitable hit on frame rate. Actually, the difference in frame rates
between the graphics options is not so great and I certainly found
that the sim ran acceptable on my setup.
How does it all looks when it is moving? Approaching Sevastipol
through its surrounding valleys desperately trying to hug the earth at
0 meters (slightly lower than 0 feet) to evade the searching radars,
the player gets a real sensation of speed. Unfortunately, the player
will probably be too busy trying to keep their kite in the air to
notice how the roads beneath are full of traffic, the shunting yards
are hives of activity and the SAM site that has just volleyed off a
swarm of missiles at them is modelled in exquisite detail. Until of
course they are hanging beneath their parachute when they'll have
plenty of time to notice these things.
Inside the cockpit, things look great too. Most of the Flankers
instruments are of the mechanical variety and the use of SVGA allows
them to be portrayed in razor sharp detail.
Many will regard Flanker's graphics as being irretrievable out of date
because of the lack of bitmaps but I for one have never been entirely
convinced that bitmaps are altogether a good thing and Flanker
provides a superb example of what can be done with nary a bitmap in
sight.
There I Was, Upside Down, Nothing On The Clock But The Manufacturer's
Name...
People who have played as many flight sims as I have can expect to
have some points of reference when we first load up a new sim. We know
that a Sidewinder is a short range heat seeking air to air missile and
a Durandle is a runway piercing unguided bomb. We also have a fair
notion of what the HUD symbols means even though there may be minor
differences between various types of aircraft.
The Flanker comes as a nasty shock to this warm complacency. Firstly,
the death dealing ordinance hung onto your Flanker is all of Soviet
origin complete with Soviet designations. Knocking down three Mig 29s
in a furball is difficult enough without the added problem of trying
to remember if a R27TE is a radar or heat guided missile.
Even the HUD cues are all in Cyrillic script and you haven't
experienced panic until you've desperately tried to find the correct
bomb dropping mode one and a half Km. out from your primary target.
Thoughtfully the manual provides a translation table between Cyrillic
and Roman lettering.
There's another problem with the HUD. Your speed is given in
Kilometres per hour and your height in metres. There are few things
more annoying than realising on your final approach that you are only
going half as fast as though you were although in fairness, you may
also find that your altitude is three times as great.
The writers of the sim have extended its realism to the use of
weapons. The missile lock key may have to be depressed for several
seconds before a missile will lock, and the trigger may have to be
squeezed for an appreciable amount of time before a missile will come
off its rail, both delays apparently being faithful recreations of
those encountered with the real aircraft. Similarly, the Soviet
equivalent to the Maverick will not magically lock onto a target as it
will in lesser sims. No, it has to be aimed using the cockpit MFD and
then manually locked onto the target. Loose off an anti-ship missile
and stand by to be amazed at the flurry of chaff and defensive fire
that will come from your target. No sinking a carrier with a single
missile here, defences have to be overwhelmed for an attack to be
successful.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dreams of Flight
Most flight sim manuals when they get onto the subject of landings
will tell you that in the final stages of an approach, the controls
for speed and altitude are reversed i.e. the stick is used to control
speed and the throttle is used to alter the rate of climb or descent.
There are sound aerodynamic reasons for this which I won't go into now
(as the teacher says when he doesn't know the answer). Try out this
approach (ha ha) in most flight sims and you will end up sitting in a
smoking wreck a couple of miles short of the runway threshold because
the flight model simply isn't good enough to reproduce these effects
in a flight condition which only lasts for a couple of minutes at the
end of the flight.
In Flanker though, it all works exactly as it should. Similarly,
though some sims may pay lip service to the concept of trimming the
aircraft, Flanker is one sim where it is absolutely vital to trim
correctly if you don't want your joystick arm falling off through
fatigue at the end of the mission. It's not enough to just press a
couple of buttons at the start of the flight either. Flanker's trim
varies with altitude, speed and aircraft weight, just like it should.
Despite the sophistication of the flight model, the Flanker is a
relatively easy aircraft to fly until the ragged edges of its flight
envelope are reached whereupon things can go pear shaped very quickly
indeed. Fortunately two training missions which covers recovery from
normal and inverted spins are included with the sim.
Although designed as a fighter, the Flanker can also put on a pretty
fair show as a ground attack aircraft and this aspect is not ignored
in the sim. There is a large selection of air-to-ground ordinance
available ranging from dumb bombs to the latest in missiles. I must
admit to having some doubts as to whether the radar in the real
Flanker can produce as detailed a map of the ground as the sim version
does but I'm not complaining. Ground attack missions are hard enough
as it is. The Flanker's real purpose in life though is to shoot down
other aircraft and here the hard pressed pilot finds even more high
tech kit to either assist or baffle them according to experience. The
flanker has two systems for detecting aircraft, a sophisticated radar
and an Infra Red system. The radar has a longer range but the IR
system has the advantage of being undetectable by other aircraft.
Up close, both these systems can be switched off and another two used.
Firstly a missiles seeker can be locked directly onto a target in
front of the Flanker without any input from the search systems, handy
if these systems have been damaged. Finally, the helmet mounted sight
can be used for off bore sight targeting. Simply look at the target
and if the target is within the field of view of the missile seeker,
you can lock it up. Some of the missiles the Flanker carries can
practically shoot off at ninety degrees to the direction of flight so
this is a very useful ability. There's just one drawback. Remember I
said that the opposition you would be going up against used much the
same equipment as yourself? that's right, they've got Flankers too and
they all come equipped with the same kit. As old Chuck Yeager says,
"Remember, it's the man, not the machine".
----------------------------------------------------------------
Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept it...
As mentioned before, Flanker comes with a full blown mission creator
which also serves as a mission planner, albeit with a couple of
buttons greyed out. A floating tool bar on the left hand side of the
screen gives access to most of the planning tools and the rest can be
accessed from the pull down menus. The interface soon feels natural to
use and most of the hard work is done via pop up dialog boxes. For
example, to place a new aircraft in the mission, you would first click
the aircraft button on the tool bar then click on the map where you
wish the aircraft to appear. On doing this, two dialog boxes will
appear, the aircraft's property box and a waypoint box. In the
property box the type, nationality and mission of the aircraft can be
set. The skill of the pilot of this plane can also be set. There are
two special settings in the pilot skill box. Choosing 'me' designates
this aircraft as being the one the player will fly during this
mission. Choosing 'remote' designates the aircraft as one that will be
flown by another human in a network mission. Up to three wingmen of
varying skills can also be attached to an aircraft.
Each flight can have up to 31 waypoints attached to it, and a variety
of actions can be associated with each one. Flight planning for other
aircraft both friendly and hostile is done in exactly the same way.
As well as aircraft, a wide range of ground objects can be placed on
the map. Placing these is not nearly so complicated a task because in
the Flanker world at present, the only thing that moves are aircraft.
Ships, tanks, radars, they're all there but none of them will budge
one millimetre from their starting position. This makes war in Flanker
a somewhat static affair.
The attention to detail is as great here as else where in the program.
Placing say a Kub SAM system on the map is not just a question of
clicking the mouse at the right place on the map. Each component of
the missile system (the control vehicle, the search radar and up to
four missile launchers) have to be placed individually and they have
to be placed in the correct position otherwise that missile site will
simply not function. After placing the vehicles, the facing of the
site and its skill must be chosen. This can include a random chance
that the site will not appear at all.
There is some scope for the Flanker mission planner to add some kind
of plot to their missions. Each mission starts at a set time and
objects can appear at any time after the start of the mission. This
includes the player's Flanker so it is quite possibly that the player
may have to sit twiddling his thumbs fore some time watching the
mission proceed before it's time to jump into the cockpit.
Another way of bringing some excitment into the jaded Flanker Pilot's
life is to make use of the system failures menu. Many of the Flanker's
systems can be assigned a time of failure. This can be either a fixed
time or a period during which the system will fail. Want to make
things hard for the poor sods flying your missions? How about making
their port engine fail just as they start their attack run or
knackering their radar just as they meet up with those three enemy Mig
29s? Just to show the devious cunning of the Flanker community, there
was a debate raging on the Flanker mailing list when I was first
getting to grips with Flanker over whether it was fair to start a
mission with the Aircraft Control System (ACS) already out of action.
This makes the plane harder to fly but also increases its capabilities
since it permits maneuvers which the ACS would normally prevent.
----------------------------------------------------------------
You Are Not Alone
A sure sign of Flankers quality is that it has a large following on
the Internet. There is a thriving mail list with a varied and
knowledgeable readership, email campaigns and competitions and several
web pages devoted to the sim. The best place to start is probably the
Su 27 Flanker On-line page which is a good introduction to the
Internet support for Flanker. There is also an American mirror for the
site.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bugs and Moans
Flanker is up to version 1.1 now and most of the bugs and missing
features of the original release have been dealt with. Nothing is
perfect though and Flanker does have one rather large skeleton in its
cupboard, the dreaded 'stutter'. A unique feature of Flanker which can
in certain cases cause a 486 DX2/66 to run the game more smoothly than
a P133, it is caused by an interaction between the graphics and the
flight model maths routines which adversely effects the smoothness of
Flanker's framerate. The faster the machine, the more noticeable it
will be although its severity also seems to vary with machines' setups
and even the perception of the user. At time of writing (early
October), SSI have just announced that a patch for this problem will
be entering beta testing within the next couple of weeks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
There is no doubt in my mind that Flanker is a true classic worthy of
every accolade the Games Domain Review can throw at it. When I first
started this review, my feelings were that Flanker, though very good
was still not quite good enough to displace Tornado from my personal
number 1 spot but as I have played it more and more, doubts have
entered my mind.
Just the other night, I was playing a mission I had hastily lashed
together where I attempted to shoot down several aircraft using only
the cannon. I quickly got onto the tail of a SU25 and for the next
five minutes chased him all over the sky trying for a sure shot so as
not to waste precious cannon shells. Within seconds, flying the
Flanker felt as natural as breathing. No matter the maneuver I wanted
to perform, it was executed almost as if the sim were taking commands
from my brain, rather than through the medium of a sweaty paw clasped
round a CH Flightstick Pro. I cannot possibly describe the elation
that gripped me when I finally managed to send a 30mm wake-up call up
the foe's jet pipe. Watching chunks fly off the enemy machine, the
canopy flying off and finally the ejector seat rocketing away from the
wreck of the Frogfoot had me howling with glee and my cats running for
cover. Then I went and spoilt it all by getting nailed by a TU 95's
tail gunner after an overconfident approach. No, I think that Flanker
may even be better than Tornado. There, I've said it.
Is Flanker for you? I think the key to this lies in the category you
place the game in. Do not compare it to sims such as EF2000 and US
Navy Fighters. Instead put it in the company of Flight Simulator 5.1
and Flight Unlimited, sims where the experience of flying is more
important than any surrounding decoration. Did you find Flight
Simulator 5 and Flight Unlimited boring after half an hour? Then give
Flanker a miss. If on the other hand, you spent countless hours flying
across the States from airport to airport or trying to perfect your
hammerhead turn and the idea of shooting something appeals, then rush
off to your favourite software emporium, trampling the old and slow
underfoot, and snatch the box out of your dealer's (the word seems not
inappropriate because to the right mind, Flanker is as addictive as
Crack) hand. You will not regret it.
-------------------------------------------------------м
| Pros: |
| + Superb Flight Model |
| + Excellent (if somewhat dated) Graphics |
| + Comprehensive Manual |
| + Detailed Mission Planner |
| Cons: |
| + May have too steep a learning curve for some |
| + The dreaded stutter |
L-------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES
Appeal: Die hard propellor heads
Originality & The subject of the sim is an original one, as
Storyline: is the location in which it is set.
Graphics & Video: I love them, others may think them old
fashioned
Audio: Usual engine noises and bangs
Longevity: If it's your kind of game, you'll be riveting
the CD drive door shut. If it's not, you'll be
bored in half an hour.
Presentation: Fine, mission planner is clear and
uncluttered.
Packaging & Docs: A comprehensive manual and a map on shiny
paper. What more could you want?
Bugs & Problems: The dreaded "stutter"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------T--------------------------------м
| Author: Flying Legends | Price: Retail: L44.99 UK, |
| | Street: L34.99 UK |
| Category: Detailed fly 'em up | Released: December 1995 (WIN95|
| | Version) |
| Platform: DOS, also on WIN95 | Version: 1.1 |
| Multiplayer: Up to 2 via IPX. | |
L---------------------------------+---------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------м
| Graphic modes: 640x480x256 |
| Controls: Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick highly recommended |
| Sound devices: Most popular cards |
L-------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------T--------------T--------T-------------T-------------м
| | Computer | Memory | HD space | CD speed |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Minimum | 486-66 | 8M | 8M | x2 |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Reviewed on | 486-66 | 10M | 8M | x2 |
+--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+-------------+
| Recommended | P100 | 8M | 8M | x2 |
L--------------+--------------+--------+-------------+--------------
Reviewer's Hardware: 486 dx2/66, 10M RAM, 2x CD-ROM Drive, CH
Flightstick Pro
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
These days, when I hear about some great new flight sim under
development, I tend to stifle a yawn and reply "Oh really?" in that
reserved British way for I know full well that the said flight sim
will have as much chance of running well on my 486 as I have of being
elected Pope and Prime Minister of Great Britain in the same day.
I must admit though that I started getting pretty excited when news
first started leaking out from the mysterious east about a new flight
sim based on the SU27 Flanker. The sim, written by Russian programmers
was said to be very realistic and even better was being written to run
well on the hardware available to the programmers, namely 386s with
EGA graphics.
It was a sickening disappointment therefore when the sim emerged in
its final form, now under the auspices of SSI. In a complete
turnaround, it was now a Windows 95 only product running in SVGA mode
and requiring a minimum of a DX2/66.
Big Bill's spawn has not tainted my machine, nor will it until I can
invest in some new hard disk acreage (and don't tell me hard disks are
really cheap these days because they're still not cheap enough for me,
buying Flanker wiped out the Strachan computing budget for the next
six months) so I had to swallow my disappointment and hope that the
rumours of a DOS version would bear fruit.
Finally, SSI have come good and the DOS version is with us. Early
reports suggest that this could be the game to unthrone the Sultan of
Sims itself (I refer of course to the sublimely terrific Tornado).
Will it live up to the hype or will it flame out on its take off run?
Strap on your bone dome with the red star on it and practice your Mr.
Checkov impressions as we find out.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Nature Of The Beast
Flanker is a sim which puts the emphasis back on flying. The rookie
Flanker pilot will search in vain for ways of creating a new pilot or
customising their tail art. What Flanker boils down to is an extremely
detailed mission creating package and a simulation module which lets
you fly missions created in the mission creator. There is no campaign
option and no quick start option or the like. Similarly, there is no
choice of flight model, the only one available is one which is as
accurate as the programmers can make it. The only concessions
available to those of us whose reactions do not permit us to snap
flies out of the air as they pass is the option to make our Flanker
more bulletproof than the real thing and to set the skill level of the
enemies.
In short, this is a simulation, not a game and the player looking for
a chance to leap aboard a kite and pole about for 10 minutes should
look elsewhere.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Interface
As soon as Flanker starts up, it reveals its Windows origins. The
programmers having had to design an interface for the windows version
obviously decided that it would be pointless to redesign it for the
DOS version and instead have produced something that has an uncanny
resemblance to Windows 95. I hope the Microsoft 'look and feel'
lawyers aren't feeling a bit slack at the moment. When the game first
starts up, it presents the player with an open file dialog box to
select a mission from. Just like all those business applications that
dull people use their computers for. The similarities do not stop
there. On the left hand side there is a tool bar and moving the mouse
to the top of the screen reveals a menu bar packed full of goodies. In
fact playing Flanker is pretty good practise for using a program like
Word and if your boss objects to you playing during working hours, you
can tell them I said so. I found that the interface worked well apart
from a couple of early problems getting the hang of the map
manipulation function, caused no doubt by my impending senile.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Background
For a wonder, this sim does not take place in Korea, Iraq/Kuwait or
any of the worlds other hot spots so beloved of flight sim writers
everywhere. Flanker has as its sphere of operations the Crimea, an
area which in the sim's near future scenario is claimed by both Russia
and the Ukraine. One result of this is that both sides tend to use
pretty much the same equipment meaning that the pilot has to be very
sure of the identity of their target before they let fly. The choice
of the Crimea is a good one because it provides a compact area of
operations with plenty of variety in the terrain.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation
Strachan's fifth rule of computer games states that "The chances of a
flight sim being any good improve dramatically if a decent map is
provided in the documentation". For justification, I merely need to
point out that Tornado came with no less than 5 maps printed on glossy
paper which allowed the truly sad to plot their course on them with
whiteboard pens. Flanker scores well in this respect coming as it does
with a large scale map of the Crimea region printed on shiney paper.
Another good point is that the map has been drawn especially for the
game meaning that if a road or railway appears on the map, there is
every likelihood that it will also appear in the game.
Then there is the manual. Once again, Flanker is up against pretty
tough opposition because it has to try and better the Tornado manual,
a truly magnificent tome. In the end, it doesn't make it but it comes
very close. At just over 200 pages, it is perhaps slimmer than might
be hoped for but those 200 pages are packed with the kind of stuff the
ardent flight simmer needs to know. The manual scorns the chaff lesser
flight sims seek to pad their pages with such as a history of flight
from the Wright brothers onwards and buckles straight down to the job
of flying and fighting one of the most technically sophisticated sims
going and it does a very good job with clear concise text and helpful
illustrations. As we will see, the manual needs to be good because the
Flanker will take more than the normal amount of time to get to grip
with. If I have a quibble with the manual, it is perhaps that it is
sometimes just a wee bit too technical. Try making sense of a sentence
like
`When using the EOS, all contacts are displayed in an ``azimuth angle
- elevation angle''frame of reference'
when you've got a Mig 29 locked up right in front of you. The other
problem I have with the manual is that it doesn't have an index. By
and large the sections of the manual are sufficiently well organised
so that hunting for the exact procedure for letting fly with your
weapon of destruction of choice isn't too bad. By way of consolation,
Flanker also comes with a separate key reference card which saves
having to thumb frantically through the manual at the most
inconvenient of times (i.e. with several kilos of flaming rocket
propelled death homing onto one's tailpipe) to find out how to turn on
the ECM system. If you are running the Windows 95 version of Flanker,
the entire manual is also online in the shape of a Windows help file.
DOS users will have to exit Flanker and start up Windows (3.1 or 95)
to have a look at this file.
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Graphics
Flanker caused a bit of an uproar when it first came out because it
bucked the trend in flight sims. There wasn't a bitmap in sight.
Instead, what we got were crisp SVGA polygons. In fact, the style of
the graphics were eerily similar to (you guessed it) Tornado though of
course in higher resolution. (May I just beg the readers indulgence at
this point to say that in my opinion, if Digital Integration were to
dig out the Tornado code, bolt on a SVGA graphics engine (the one from
Apache would do nicely) and release it onto an unsuspecting world,
they would sell millions. Perhaps their new (sigh) F16 sim will come
up to scratch).
Other ground details are a strange mixture. The various SAMs, ships
and airfields in the sim are some of the most finely detailed I have
encountered in my simulated career. Radar scanners rotate and missile
launchers swivel. in a highly authentic looking manner. On the other
hand, civilian buildings all look as if they belong to the early Lego
school of architecture. It's as if some giant has strewn a bag of
Liquorice Allsorts across the Crimean landscape.
There are three levels of graphical detail available. The differences
between the three aren't immediately obvious (for instance the
difference between the most detailed setup and the next one down is
that roads have street lights, railway lines have pylons to hold up
the overhead power lines and electricity pylons criss-cross the
landscape, something that is easy to miss when doing Mach 1 at a
height of 50 Metres). Frame rate demon though I am, I've found myself
playing the sim at full detail on my lowly DX2/66 and accepting the
inevitable hit on frame rate. Actually, the difference in frame rates
between the graphics options is not so great and I certainly found
that the sim ran acceptable on my setup.
How does it all looks when it is moving? Approaching Sevastipol
through its surrounding valleys desperately trying to hug the earth at
0 meters (slightly lower than 0 feet) to evade the searching radars,
the player gets a real sensation of speed. Unfortunately, the player
will probably be too busy trying to keep their kite in the air to
notice how the roads beneath are full of traffic, the shunting yards
are hives of activity and the SAM site that has just volleyed off a
swarm of missiles at them is modelled in exquisite detail. Until of
course they are hanging beneath their parachute when they'll have
plenty of time to notice these things.
Inside the cockpit, things look great too. Most of the Flankers
instruments are of the mechanical variety and the use of SVGA allows
them to be portrayed in razor sharp detail.
Many will regard Flanker's graphics as being irretrievable out of date
because of the lack of bitmaps but I for one have never been entirely
convinced that bitmaps are altogether a good thing and Flanker
provides a superb example of what can be done with nary a bitmap in
sight.
There I Was, Upside Down, Nothing On The Clock But The Manufacturer's
Name...
People who have played as many flight sims as I have can expect to
have some points of reference when we first load up a new sim. We know
that a Sidewinder is a short range heat seeking air to air missile and
a Durandle is a runway piercing unguided bomb. We also have a fair
notion of what the HUD symbols means even though there may be minor
differences between various types of aircraft.
The Flanker comes as a nasty shock to this warm complacency. Firstly,
the death dealing ordinance hung onto your Flanker is all of Soviet
origin complete with Soviet designations. Knocking down three Mig 29s
in a furball is difficult enough without the added problem of trying
to remember if a R27TE is a radar or heat guided missile.
Even the HUD cues are all in Cyrillic script and you haven't
experienced panic until you've desperately tried to find the correct
bomb dropping mode one and a half Km. out from your primary target.
Thoughtfully the manual provides a translation table between Cyrillic
and Roman lettering.
There's another problem with the HUD. Your speed is given in
Kilometres per hour and your height in metres. There are few things
more annoying than realising on your final approach that you are only
going half as fast as though you were although in fairness, you may
also find that your altitude is three times as great.
The writers of the sim have extended its realism to the use of
weapons. The missile lock key may have to be depressed for several
seconds before a missile will lock, and the trigger may have to be
squeezed for an appreciable amount of time before a missile will come
off its rail, both delays apparently being faithful recreations of
those encountered with the real aircraft. Similarly, the Soviet
equivalent to the Maverick will not magically lock onto a target as it
will in lesser sims. No, it has to be aimed using the cockpit MFD and
then manually locked onto the target. Loose off an anti-ship missile
and stand by to be amazed at the flurry of chaff and defensive fire
that will come from your target. No sinking a carrier with a single
missile here, defences have to be overwhelmed for an attack to be
successful.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dreams of Flight
Most flight sim manuals when they get onto the subject of landings
will tell you that in the final stages of an approach, the controls
for speed and altitude are reversed i.e. the stick is used to control
speed and the throttle is used to alter the rate of climb or descent.
There are sound aerodynamic reasons for this which I won't go into now
(as the teacher says when he doesn't know the answer). Try out this
approach (ha ha) in most flight sims and you will end up sitting in a
smoking wreck a couple of miles short of the runway threshold because
the flight model simply isn't good enough to reproduce these effects
in a flight condition which only lasts for a couple of minutes at the
end of the flight.
In Flanker though, it all works exactly as it should. Similarly,
though some sims may pay lip service to the concept of trimming the
aircraft, Flanker is one sim where it is absolutely vital to trim
correctly if you don't want your joystick arm falling off through
fatigue at the end of the mission. It's not enough to just press a
couple of buttons at the start of the flight either. Flanker's trim
varies with altitude, speed and aircraft weight, just like it should.
Despite the sophistication of the flight model, the Flanker is a
relatively easy aircraft to fly until the ragged edges of its flight
envelope are reached whereupon things can go pear shaped very quickly
indeed. Fortunately two training missions which covers recovery from
normal and inverted spins are included with the sim.
Although designed as a fighter, the Flanker can also put on a pretty
fair show as a ground attack aircraft and this aspect is not ignored
in the sim. There is a large selection of air-to-ground ordinance
available ranging from dumb bombs to the latest in missiles. I must
admit to having some doubts as to whether the radar in the real
Flanker can produce as detailed a map of the ground as the sim version
does but I'm not complaining. Ground attack missions are hard enough
as it is. The Flanker's real purpose in life though is to shoot down
other aircraft and here the hard pressed pilot finds even more high
tech kit to either assist or baffle them according to experience. The
flanker has two systems for detecting aircraft, a sophisticated radar
and an Infra Red system. The radar has a longer range but the IR
system has the advantage of being undetectable by other aircraft.
Up close, both these systems can be switched off and another two used.
Firstly a missiles seeker can be locked directly onto a target in
front of the Flanker without any input from the search systems, handy
if these systems have been damaged. Finally, the helmet mounted sight
can be used for off bore sight targeting. Simply look at the target
and if the target is within the field of view of the missile seeker,
you can lock it up. Some of the missiles the Flanker carries can
practically shoot off at ninety degrees to the direction of flight so
this is a very useful ability. There's just one drawback. Remember I
said that the opposition you would be going up against used much the
same equipment as yourself? that's right, they've got Flankers too and
they all come equipped with the same kit. As old Chuck Yeager says,
"Remember, it's the man, not the machine".
----------------------------------------------------------------
Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept it...
As mentioned before, Flanker comes with a full blown mission creator
which also serves as a mission planner, albeit with a couple of
buttons greyed out. A floating tool bar on the left hand side of the
screen gives access to most of the planning tools and the rest can be
accessed from the pull down menus. The interface soon feels natural to
use and most of the hard work is done via pop up dialog boxes. For
example, to place a new aircraft in the mission, you would first click
the aircraft button on the tool bar then click on the map where you
wish the aircraft to appear. On doing this, two dialog boxes will
appear, the aircraft's property box and a waypoint box. In the
property box the type, nationality and mission of the aircraft can be
set. The skill of the pilot of this plane can also be set. There are
two special settings in the pilot skill box. Choosing 'me' designates
this aircraft as being the one the player will fly during this
mission. Choosing 'remote' designates the aircraft as one that will be
flown by another human in a network mission. Up to three wingmen of
varying skills can also be attached to an aircraft.
Each flight can have up to 31 waypoints attached to it, and a variety
of actions can be associated with each one. Flight planning for other
aircraft both friendly and hostile is done in exactly the same way.
As well as aircraft, a wide range of ground objects can be placed on
the map. Placing these is not nearly so complicated a task because in
the Flanker world at present, the only thing that moves are aircraft.
Ships, tanks, radars, they're all there but none of them will budge
one millimetre from their starting position. This makes war in Flanker
a somewhat static affair.
The attention to detail is as great here as else where in the program.
Placing say a Kub SAM system on the map is not just a question of
clicking the mouse at the right place on the map. Each component of
the missile system (the control vehicle, the search radar and up to
four missile launchers) have to be placed individually and they have
to be placed in the correct position otherwise that missile site will
simply not function. After placing the vehicles, the facing of the
site and its skill must be chosen. This can include a random chance
that the site will not appear at all.
There is some scope for the Flanker mission planner to add some kind
of plot to their missions. Each mission starts at a set time and
objects can appear at any time after the start of the mission. This
includes the player's Flanker so it is quite possibly that the player
may have to sit twiddling his thumbs fore some time watching the
mission proceed before it's time to jump into the cockpit.
Another way of bringing some excitment into the jaded Flanker Pilot's
life is to make use of the system failures menu. Many of the Flanker's
systems can be assigned a time of failure. This can be either a fixed
time or a period during which the system will fail. Want to make
things hard for the poor sods flying your missions? How about making
their port engine fail just as they start their attack run or
knackering their radar just as they meet up with those three enemy Mig
29s? Just to show the devious cunning of the Flanker community, there
was a debate raging on the Flanker mailing list when I was first
getting to grips with Flanker over whether it was fair to start a
mission with the Aircraft Control System (ACS) already out of action.
This makes the plane harder to fly but also increases its capabilities
since it permits maneuvers which the ACS would normally prevent.
----------------------------------------------------------------
You Are Not Alone
A sure sign of Flankers quality is that it has a large following on
the Internet. There is a thriving mail list with a varied and
knowledgeable readership, email campaigns and competitions and several
web pages devoted to the sim. The best place to start is probably the
Su 27 Flanker On-line page which is a good introduction to the
Internet support for Flanker. There is also an American mirror for the
site.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bugs and Moans
Flanker is up to version 1.1 now and most of the bugs and missing
features of the original release have been dealt with. Nothing is
perfect though and Flanker does have one rather large skeleton in its
cupboard, the dreaded 'stutter'. A unique feature of Flanker which can
in certain cases cause a 486 DX2/66 to run the game more smoothly than
a P133, it is caused by an interaction between the graphics and the
flight model maths routines which adversely effects the smoothness of
Flanker's framerate. The faster the machine, the more noticeable it
will be although its severity also seems to vary with machines' setups
and even the perception of the user. At time of writing (early
October), SSI have just announced that a patch for this problem will
be entering beta testing within the next couple of weeks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
There is no doubt in my mind that Flanker is a true classic worthy of
every accolade the Games Domain Review can throw at it. When I first
started this review, my feelings were that Flanker, though very good
was still not quite good enough to displace Tornado from my personal
number 1 spot but as I have played it more and more, doubts have
entered my mind.
Just the other night, I was playing a mission I had hastily lashed
together where I attempted to shoot down several aircraft using only
the cannon. I quickly got onto the tail of a SU25 and for the next
five minutes chased him all over the sky trying for a sure shot so as
not to waste precious cannon shells. Within seconds, flying the
Flanker felt as natural as breathing. No matter the maneuver I wanted
to perform, it was executed almost as if the sim were taking commands
from my brain, rather than through the medium of a sweaty paw clasped
round a CH Flightstick Pro. I cannot possibly describe the elation
that gripped me when I finally managed to send a 30mm wake-up call up
the foe's jet pipe. Watching chunks fly off the enemy machine, the
canopy flying off and finally the ejector seat rocketing away from the
wreck of the Frogfoot had me howling with glee and my cats running for
cover. Then I went and spoilt it all by getting nailed by a TU 95's
tail gunner after an overconfident approach. No, I think that Flanker
may even be better than Tornado. There, I've said it.
Is Flanker for you? I think the key to this lies in the category you
place the game in. Do not compare it to sims such as EF2000 and US
Navy Fighters. Instead put it in the company of Flight Simulator 5.1
and Flight Unlimited, sims where the experience of flying is more
important than any surrounding decoration. Did you find Flight
Simulator 5 and Flight Unlimited boring after half an hour? Then give
Flanker a miss. If on the other hand, you spent countless hours flying
across the States from airport to airport or trying to perfect your
hammerhead turn and the idea of shooting something appeals, then rush
off to your favourite software emporium, trampling the old and slow
underfoot, and snatch the box out of your dealer's (the word seems not
inappropriate because to the right mind, Flanker is as addictive as
Crack) hand. You will not regret it.
-------------------------------------------------------м
| Pros: |
| + Superb Flight Model |
| + Excellent (if somewhat dated) Graphics |
| + Comprehensive Manual |
| + Detailed Mission Planner |
| Cons: |
| + May have too steep a learning curve for some |
| + The dreaded stutter |
L-------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES
Appeal: Die hard propellor heads
Originality & The subject of the sim is an original one, as
Storyline: is the location in which it is set.
Graphics & Video: I love them, others may think them old
fashioned
Audio: Usual engine noises and bangs
Longevity: If it's your kind of game, you'll be riveting
the CD drive door shut. If it's not, you'll be
bored in half an hour.
Presentation: Fine, mission planner is clear and
uncluttered.
Packaging & Docs: A comprehensive manual and a map on shiny
paper. What more could you want?
Bugs & Problems: The dreaded "stutter"
----------------------------------------------------------------------