SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Strike Fighters: Project 1, Patched

Lets Dive in! The sim comes in an attractive blue box with a cool picture of a fighter pilot riding his trusty throne. It's one of those dinky boxes which all games come in these days and I really like the smaller format but it means one thing to me.....more than likely a disappointing manual. Every time I see a new simulation come out, I hold out hope for that spiral bound thing of beauty I know will see many hours of ...ahem...bathroom reading. Admit it, I know I'm not the only one. Falcon 4.0 set the gold standard when it comes to manuals, a true work of art, and what I now consider a collector's item.

SFP-1 comes with the obligatory CD case and a small but not necessarily bad manual. Its all of 52 pages long and includes what I would call slightly more than adequate verbiage and instruction in order to get the most out of the sim. The installation went very smoothly and I had no problems with the set-up and configuration of the game.

I settled back to enjoy my new sim as I clicked on the desktop icon. Most of us have come to expect some sort of opening movie, either rendered or generated from in game. It helps to set the mood and get you pumped up to play the game. Not in this case. Just a quick jump to a rather bland screen of options. I thought I missed something or didn't select a particular option for install at this point. Nope. No movie at all. Ok I thought, no big deal right? It's a flight sim , I'm not here to watch movies! The game install works out to right at 478mb on my system which is pretty good considering a lot of other sims eat up over 1 Gig of precious hard drive space. Once I got over the movie thing I decided to fire up instant action. A few quick tweaks of some fairly easy setup options and I was plunked right into the business office of the F4E Phatom. Flyable jets include the F4 Phantom, The F-100 Super Sabre, F-104 Starfighter, and the A-4 Skyhawk. Several models of the F4 are included and you can fly for the Navy, Air Force and the Marines. Same is true for the Skyhawk or "Scooter". The F-104 includes schemes for several air arms which flew her in Europe and throughout its cold war era service.

On my 1.4ghz Athlon gameplay is smooth and the frame rates are not an issue. I'm using a GF4 Ti4200 with 128mb ram (det 30.82) and a SB Live with WIN 98SE. I have had no real problems running the game other than a few CTD's which I consider not to be a big problem as most games will do this every now and then. Its very stable on my system and I'm running it at 1024 x 768 with 32 bit textures. Pre patch there were some significant CTD problems but this appears to have been fixed . I do have the cockpit mirrors turned off but most other options on the graphics tweaking page are on.

Gameplay includes several modes including instant action, single mission, Campaign and Multiplayer. Instant action throws you right into the fray with MiG's close at hand in your trusty Rhino (that's an F-4 for you neophytes). The single missions allow some flexibility in mission type and aircraft and are the place to go for those wanting a bit more control over what you get to do in the sim. Campaign includes a standard

series of dynamic missions and an interesting "mercenary" mode where you complete missions and recieve money for it. You then use your resources to upgrade and buy weapons. You pile up cash for completed objectives. It reminded me a bit of the old Strike Commander sim where you got to do something very similar. At least its something a bit different than what everyone else is doing.

One of the things I look really hard at right away, before I do any real combat in a new sim, is the flight model behavior. While most of you know I'm a real pilot I don't expect perfection on my PC, at least not with the hardware most of us posess. I do want things to work like they should, and display at least believable and physically correct characteristics for particular aircraft. After a few hours in this sim post patch, I'm not convinced this goal has been achieved. Most of the time FM behavior is straight forward. The F-4 behaves a lot like I think an F-4 should. The A-4 also does a decent job in most regimes and I do have quite a few hours in the real Skyhawk during my Navy training days. The F-100 seems to be much too sluggish in all regimes, low and high speed, and doesn't jibe with folks I know who actually flew the "Hun". The F-104 suffers from some almost show-stopping FM problems in pitch and rudder control. Pitch oscillations are huge and some ridiculous attitudes and angles of attack can be generated resembling nothing of reality. I think some of this can be attributed to my system and control inputs, but I'm sure the FM is very suspect as I have few problems with other sims and my hardware. I use a CH F-16 Combatstick and a programmable CH Pro throttle. A good many issues were resolved with the patch as far as performance is concerned and overall dissimilar air combat is much better now. This is particularly true with what was obviously an overpowered MiG 17 and with the patch has been corrected.

There is one issue with the flight model in all aircraft that for me is a definite showstopper. It concerns the roll performance and the modeling of roll inertia when using ailerons. Part of this is likely a bit of my bias due to the fact that i'm a real pilot and know how it should be in reality. I also have some deeply rooted intuition about how an aircraft should behave due to my real world experience. At the same time I temper this with the fact that this is a simulation and I know it wont be 100% like the real thing, but it should be at least close. In this sim its grossly in error. Lets take an example, and this is with the worst offender, the A-4.

I'm flying along at about 350-400 knots in my trusty scooter. In the real world lets say I want to make an aggressive turn to change my heading. I would displace the stick to the left or right and begin the roll, which in the A-4 at these speeds is quite crisp. While doing this I start a pull aft on the stick to compensate for the change in my lift vector to maintain level flight. Shortly after that I reach 60-80 degrees angle of bank and I then STOP the roll with an aggressive but smooth input in the OPPOSITE direction and neutralize the controls to hold that angle of bank. This results in a crisp snap to a particular attitude followed by some moderate G loads and I then reverse the process to roll out on my desired heading. Nothing approaching this can be accomplished in the sim. The inertia from the initial roll input is so large that it takes far too long to stop the roll and you end up in a gross overshoot of your intended angle of bank or you actually end up doing an aileron roll or two stopping the wings from rolling about the longitudinal axis. The first time I saw this I laughed. It was weird, just downright weird. I quickly realized it was evident in all the aircraft but is most pronounced in the Skyhawk. This is a huge flaw in any kind of air combat or weapons delivery. Attempting any sort of aggressive maneuvering at low altitude will quickly result in a ridiculous PIO (pilot induced oscillation) and collision with the ground. If your lucky you can recover by pushing forward on the stick as your inverted and hope to stop the role in an upright position and recover. During ACM you have to consciously think far too much about this roll sensitivity and can easily screw up any kind of rolling advantage you might have had against an opponent in this aspect. Not my idea of a pleasant flight model and one of the reasons Its hard for me to spend any time at all with this sim now. Trying to live with it is just too big a concession destroying my enjoyment of the sim. If you can get by this then more power to ya!

Moving right along we come to the graphics department. SFP-1 is an interesting set of obvious compromises in design. For the most part, graphics are what I would term adequate. When I look out the window I see a believable picture. It looks like the planet I'm used to flying over. What strikes me more than anything is the missing features of what is considered a modern simulation. Clouds are here and don't look bad, but why not at least some moderately decent looking 3D effects? The 2D painting works fine for shooters like Battlefield 1942, but I was hoping for a bit more in this regard. Terrain is what I would call bland at best. The terrain while convincing, is far too uniform and cities have a distinctively square outline. That's fine for one or two cities but not every one. There are a few areas of elevated terrain but not enough to enhance the gameplay. Airbases are strikingly empty. Nothing is more fun than swooping in on your enemies airbase and plastering aircraft on the ramps and runways. Here there is virtually nothing at an airbase except the runways and taxiways along with the airfield buildings. There is rarely any AI activity other than your flight. Darkness is extremely dark and while mostly realistic, makes night missions a bit too difficult to accomplish for the average simmer.

One area where this sim stands out is the aircraft models. These have to be the best aircraft of their type in ANY sim. The F-4 is a true work of art, and my favorite, the A-4, is lovingly and accurately rendered. One of the nicer little touches are the moving pilot heads, looking left and right as they scan the sky for bogey's. Cockpits are spartan yet functional and they have that slightly retro look which adds to the realism. For the most part the cockpits are very accurate in layout but tend to be a bit on the generic side when it comes to flight instrumentation and function. There's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't detract from gameplay. A HUD system for targeting and your aircraft is used and is very reminiscent of EAW. Most folks will be right at home with it. The view system could be better and out of the box my HAT switch didn't do what I thought it should. The views are configurable though and I had no problems setting it up like I wanted it with my hardware. You can zoom in and out but it still feels a bit claustrophobic while your sitting in your office.

Effects are sparse and since the patch there are definite improvements, but there are still some areas that need to be addressed. Weapons craters, smoke from damaged vehicles and buildings and explosion effects are not what I would call eye candy. Again the word adequate comes to mind. In fairness the new napalm effect post patch is rather impressive to watch. Afterburner effects are quite nice, and weapons effects are pretty good too. The depiction of damage is shown with bullet hits, fire, and parts being shed by damaged aircraft or when your taking hits. Explosions look good and when an aircraft explodes there's a nice trail of flaming debris. Sometimes the damage is a bit simplistic when you lose a wing or a tail, but for the most part its nicely done. The ground war is shown as tanks and artillery slug it out below and this actually can be pretty entertaining and you can watch it with the object views nicely. Effects from bombs are weak and definitely could be improved.

Gameplay

Overall I have not been impressed with the gameplay. Instant action is actually quite good and one of the more "fun" aspects of the sim. Your placed in a close in fight with multiple bogies and lots if immersive radio calls. A good bit of the time though its hard to tell if your being given advisory calls or its for someone else. I found myself checking my six a whole lot and it probably wasn't even for me. Single missions are ok but it feels like your doing the same thing all the time, even though your actually flying different types of missions. There is not a whole lot of detail provided and you have no control over the mission once its set up. I found it a big disappointment that there is no mission builder included. Yeah that's right , no mission builder. In all fairness I have been reading some posts about tools getting released to do this so I have my fingers crossed.

The Campaign is nothing to write home about. One of the problems for me with the campaign has to do with the setting. The conflict is between two fictional countries, Dhimar and Paran somewhere in the Middle East. The time frame is the late 50's and early 60's. Now pardon me but how long has it been since Viet Nam? What pray tell is not "politically correct" about portraying the Vietnam war? Why is it ok to simulate just about any other war you can think of but not this one? This conflict is ripe territory for a simulation. The varied nature of missions, the frustrating rules of engagement lend themselves beautifully to what could easily be one of the best campaigns ever seen in simulation history. Its also one of the better documented conflicts in recent times providing an open architecture sim with unlimited possibilities. Not using Viet Nam as the centerpiece of this simulation is a big mistake in my opinion. While it can be successful in its present form I feel this is a huge missed opportunity. My guess is within a short time frame we see the modders figure out how to do it anyway. I'm behind them all the way.

The campaign provided while being fictional does have a plausible scenario related to oil rights and who has the strength to keep them or take them for their own. I felt as if it was the same mission over and over again while flying a Navy A-4 pilot campaign. The dates were changing but I kept checking to see if it was the same mission like I was in the twilight zone or something. Mission composition is uninspired and targets and briefings seem to all flow together. Briefings are short and information is at a premium. Intelligence is almost non existent and the maps leave much to be desired. You can select to start at your base or near the target, and the skip to next action feature works as advertised now. It was broken in the pre-patched version. The AI is a strange mix of good and bad. A lot of the time wingman will do what you ask, but every now and then they wander around aimlessly and fail to engage ground targets forcing you to endure some pretty accurate and seemingly uber AAA. They do drop bombs and shoot at stuff now which is an improvement over pre patch behavior. AI opponents seem to possess some good skill and appear to use the strengths of their aircraft but this is also inconsistent. You'll see IL-28's flying around in tight turns with fighters when they are around. Sometimes the AI is strangely blind and you can run right up on them and just pound them with little or no reaction. I found this true of the SU-7's a good bit of the time and sometimes the IL-28 too. Information form Red Crown, the AWACS of that era is regularly wrong or inaccurate and its tough to count on anything but your old mark one mod 0 eyeball. One of the bigger omissions was AAA and lack of SAM activity pre-patch. AAA is working right now and you had better honor the threat. Even at medium settings you probably won't survive anything but a brief encounter with the ground based guns. One thing I noted about AAA was that it seemed to me to be very accurate when I was in range of it, but watching wingmen and bad guys showed them able to happily fly around AAA sites for minutes without getting hit. They were getting shot at to be sure, just not hit very often. SAM activity does exist but its placement makes it hard to predict when and where you will see them. It doesn't really become a factor until later in the campaigns and I have not seen more than a few SA-2's shot at my aircraft yet. If you don't maneuver your likely going to get hit. If you jink hard and try to beam the missile you stand a good chance of defeating it. It is unnerving to hear the SAM calls from your flight and really adds to the immersion.

Your progress through the Campaign gets tracked and you get medals and promotions for your deeds of bravery. There is a big bug right now with upgrading aircraft in campaigns that was not fixed on my system with the patch. Others in your unit will get updated aircraft but your stuck most of the time all the way through with what you started with. Makes it kind of hard to keep up with Phantoms in your trusty Super Sabre.

I have slogged my way through about 45 missions in a Navy A-4 pilot campaign and in all honesty I have more fun just doing single missions or instant action at this point. I find the campaign just can't hold my interest. I particularly like dogfighting in instant action and its most of what I do right now until a bunch of things get fixed with the campaign.

One of the bigger problems I have with this sim right now is air to ground weapons delivery. See my point above about my real world experience, it applies here as well. I flew the A-7E and did a lot of non computer weapon delivery with just an iron bombsite and a mil setting. In this sim there really is no tool for weapons delivery, other than trial and error. There should be something like a gunsight pipper and a mil setting for it which allows a standard type delivery. This results in the ability to hit or get close to a target.

In reality you have a setup for each type of delivery at preset speeds and dive angles, which coupled with a certain pipper setting (mil depression) result in a fairly accurate hit. Each type of weapon uses an appropriate setting for its ballistic characteristics. With a bit of practice you get pretty decent hits. Right now you just drop on intuition and hope for the best. The damage model is pretty good and requires a close hit, but its near impossible, especially with iron bombs. I'm not happy with this at all and think it should be a priority for improvement, especially in a sim where I get to drop bombs from A-4's, F-4's, and F-100's

One area of weapons modeling I find quite good is missile behavior. The F-4's radar (and all others for that matter) seem refreshingly simple and unreliable. Pretty true to life actually. Radar was finicky and hard to use and resulted in a lot of wasted missiles. If anything the radar guided missiles are too reliable and accurate in the sim if your disciplined about taking shots. They do go astray though and it simulates well the frustration that must have been felt by the pilots using this equipment. The sidewinder is also nice, if a bit over-modeled. The early versions of the sidewinder were poor missiles and I don't have the numbers offhand, but I am sure the miss rate was very high. Here again, in the sim, if you make sure you have a good tone, your rewarded regularly with a nice flaming fireball. Bullet modeling is ok, but occasionally I get surprised by the one hit kills at what seems like a difficult or max range shot. If your chased by any MiG's beware of that big cannon they carry, it only takes one to ruin your day.

Multiplayer

Currently multiplayer is a mess. I haven't had any luck yet getting into a multiplayer session. It seems there are those who can do it but right now browsing the forums it seems like they are in the minority. There seem to be issues with add-ons if you have them and better luck is being had by those without mods at this point as far as I can tell. I really don't mind about multiplayer that much, but at this stage I would say it has a long way to go and this isn't good for a product that stated it on the box.

Conclusion

So where do we stand after several months and the first patch? That's a tough question. I'm not going to hash over all the bugs because there are still many at this point. Just check out the Strike Fighters forum right here at SimHQ to read about that first hand. Third Wire obviously was pressured to get something out the door and I think the product has suffered. TK is working hard and his presence on the forums is a very good sign. There is a lot of talent focused on this sim right now and rightly so. There is more than enough interest in the period and the aircraft to keep it moving in the right direction. This brings up my last point, and points to this sims true core strength. The community already has numerous add-ons developed which really enhance the sim. New aircraft, vehicles, skins, terrains, night lighting fixes etc. The open nature of the sims architecture assures it will be around for quite some time to come. I got involved with Microsoft's latest civilian sim last year and I am amazed at the quality and complexity of the user made add-ons for that sim. It appears SFP-1 is on the same track. This ability for users to create what amount to real works of art, will assure continued interest. This is where this sim will shine.

Sadly as a combat simulation I think its hollow. I don't give it high marks for that. There is just too much broken or just not up to what most of us consider current standards for graphics, gameplay, and functionality to recommend it for those who want a good combat jet sim. What it does do well is model the period aircraft in very nice detail and allow the ability for users to add thier own aircraft of choice along with many other things. It reminds me a lot of SDOE. A small core group still mess around with that sim and have done some very nice work, but as a mainstream simulation it never really amounted to anything. Support for this sim is key. How long will Strategy fist support this sim? Will there be another patch? All good questions, but the answers are unclear at best. If recent history in this industry is any indicator, I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

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