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Graphics
Aircraft: The
quality of graphics in CFS3 varies from fair to outstanding.
The aircraft exterior graphics are what I would call industry
standard. Not significantly better than other current flight
Sims, but overall pretty darn good. When I finally got my
computer ‘ CFS3 tuned’ I really enjoyed just watching
some of these aircraft drone to the target from the exterior
view. They look exceptionally realistic when FSAA is implemented,
but then you begin to compromise frame rates (and invite virtual
1960’s graphics) unless other graphic parameters are
reduced. The only major error I identified on external aircraft
graphics is the omission of working leading edge slats on
the Bf-109 and ME-262. LE Slats are modeled on every other
contemporary World War 2 flight simulation; in fact it is
even in ‘legacy’ games like Jane’s WW2 Fighters
and Rowans Battle of Britain.
The Cockpit
graphics are more controversial. The 2D cockpit option available
in CFS2 has been eliminated and all of CFS3’s cockpits
are ‘virtual’. This is a good thing, but unfortunately
it seem that’s where the improvements ceased. CFS3’s
Cockpits are more ‘representative’ than historically
accurate and the quality varies significantly from one aircraft
type to the next. The failure to historically portray the
‘feel’, function, and look of World War 2 era combat
planes significantly detracts from CFS3’s immersion factor,
especially since most of your game time is spent in the cockpit!
The best ways to describe CFS3’s cockpit graphics are
technically inaccurate, oddly painted, and overly simplistic.
In fact, a few Cessna-type light aircraft instruments have
found their way into CFS3’s ‘military’ cockpits..
instruments like the stall warning idiot light. This is an
area where Microsoft could have scored major quality ‘points’
had they spent the extra effort required to deliver industry-leading
technically/historically accurate virtual cockpits. Ironically,
I think that the virtual cockpits in CFS2 look as good, and
possibly better, than CFS3. Take a look at a few of the comparative
screen shots of CFS3, Jane’s WW2 Fighters, and IL-2;
specifically compare the Spitfire and P-47 cockpits from Jane’s
WW2 Fighters to CFS3’s versions and you will see exactly
what I mean.
Note:
Each cockpit thumbnail below will open a new window with the
enlarged image.
BF-109
FW-190
P-38
P-47
P-51
Spitfire
 The
terrain, despite being responsible for using a significant
percent of your computer’s resources, is best described
as ‘fair’ to ‘good’. It really depends
on what you are looking at and where you are viewing it from.
The terrain, when viewed from medium to high altitudes, looks
about as real as it could. At low altitudes it loses someof
its beauty and areas like land/water transitions are particularly
bad. The water graphics when over open ocean have a realistic
and attractive appearance, but those same water tiles in a
land-locked lake with poor edge transitions looks absolutely
awful! In fact I would say lakes and water/land transitions
are the poorest quality graphics in the whole game.
CFS3
models all kinds of weather.. and the weather effects are
simply outstanding! I can confidently state that the clouds
are the most realistic I have ever seen in a PC flight sim.
There are a few inaccuracies included, like thunder and lightning
during every single snowstorm that I encountered, but that’s
a minor detraction when all things are considered. If the
CFS3 weather effects have downside it is the hardware requirements
to run them at maximum settings.
Flight
Model(s): I
have seen several articles and online discussions concerning
the easy and forgiving flight models (FM) found in CFS3. The
most common complaint tends to be that they are very unrealistic
and border on being ‘arcade style’ FM’s. I
have to agree! It is true that each type of CFS3 aircraft
does have it’s own distinct flight model, and they are
noticeably different, but they are definitely not a high fidelity
representation of combat aircraft. Real WW II aircraft were
overpowered, high performance military machines designed to
accomplish a specific wartime mission. Docile handling was
not high on the Military’s priority list and nasty characteristics
were often overlooked when performance or mission capability
could be enhanced. CFS3’s aircraft do not appropriately
exhibit these negative characteristics; in fact they behave
more like a light civilian trainer than an overpowered military
warplane. An obvious example of this is evident on ‘takeoff’..
CFS3 aircraft experience only a mild and easily corrected
torque effect when the throttle is rapidly advanced to MIL
power. In the real fighter type aircraft rapid application
of power on takeoff would result in an uncontrollable yaw
in the opposite direction of propeller rotation. The high
AOA and departure characteristics are even less accurate,
they are so mild as to be fool proof. Pull too hard and you
get to see a nice red Cessna stall warning light flicker at
you, instead of more realistic nasty departure and spin! I
tried to get several aircraft into intentional spins; few
were willing to oblige me. The few that did depart and spin
recovered far too easily. This ‘light’ FM removes
an important part of the challenge of BFM.. That challenge
is to fly closer to the edge of the envelope, and remain in
control, than your opponent can. Overall I am very disappointed
with CFS3 FM’s, they even seemed a bit too mild for a
light civilian aircraft, and at least I have been able to
intentionally spin a Cessna 150!
Sounds,
AI, Ambiance and Other Notes Of Interest
Sound Effects:
CFS3 sound effects generally are ok, even if a bit bland
in some cases. The big exception is the engine sounds.. most
of them are downright awful. I was ‘flying’ along
in a Spitfire and the distinctive low rumble and moan of a
Rolls Royce Merlin was missing. The sound I heard was difficult
to describe exactly.. It was a familiar sound, somewhat like
an airplane, but I couldn’t positively identify it. I
was about to call it a Cessna 172 engine, but my 17-year-old
daughter unwittingly provided a better answer. She was in
the back yard raking our 3 acres of leaves and she drove our
John Deere Garden Tractor past my computer room window.. BINGO
.. That’s where I heard that sound before! The CFS3 Spitfire
sounds like a garden tractor/lawn mower! I have a fair amount
of real life experience with Merlins and other World War 2
era airplane engines. I know what they sound like, both inside
and outside of the cockpit… CFS3 missed this mark by
a mile. . Good, accurate, realistic, and robust sound effects
add considerably to the immersion factor of a PC game. Improper/incorrect
engine sound effects have been a trend in the Microsoft Combat
Flight sim series. They would have done better to have Meatwater,
or somebody with similar experience, provide the audio files.
View System:
I am not a Track IR user (Yet!), but for those of you
that are please realize that I don’t think it will work
in CFS3. There is no mouse pan mode to ‘slew’ it
to. (Rumor is that a CFS3 user designed utility may be available
in the near future) The snap views are mutually exclusive,
only one key press is recognized at a time. This means you
can’t modify a view with an additional key press to ‘look’
up or ‘down’. The pan mode and the snap mode are
also mutually exclusive.. you have to select between the two
with the ‘Scroll Lock’ key. I find this irritating
when engaged in an offensive fight, I like to ‘snap’
view back every so often in order to check six. CFS3’s
view system is very limited and awkward by today’s simulation
standards.
Mission/Campaign
Builder Utility: There
is no indigenous mission builder capability in CFS3. Unlike
CFS2 it was NOT included in the release of CFS3, but rumor
once again indicates that one will be available eventually.
A Mission builder utility is something that would provide
CFS3 customers with a way to correct some of Microsoft’s
historical omissions. It would also improve the value of multiplayer
by allowing users to create and fly their own personal missions
for use in the CFS3 cooperative Multiplayer mode. There is
strong indication that one will be available in the near future…
but I don’t ‘count chickens before they hatch!’
Artificial
Intelligence (AI): Dumb
as a box of rocks… and that is probably a generous characterization!
Wingmen who rejoin in the middle of a fight, bandits that
ALL keep their external tanks in an engagement, AI BFM skills
that are only slightly better than an autopilot, the bombers
all dive bomb, they do not level bomb.. The list goes on..
and on. Your wingmen may or may not do what you want them
to. Tell your wingie to attack your target and once that target
is destroyed they will rejoin no matter how many other enemy
entities are present. The formations are best described as
a gaggle… there is no option to control formation specifics
to maximize your tactical advantage (except ‘manually’
in multiplayer with human wingman). What you see is what you
get. The wingman commands are too few (only six!) and simplistic..
they are generally inconclusive anyway so I guess more would
not help matters. CFS3 AI is about the worst seen to date
in a modern flight sim.
Ambiance
and Immersion Factor: Every
time I play this game I get the nagging feeling that something
is missing. I finally realized what it was.. CFS3 just does
not feel ‘military’ to me. The atmosphere this game
creates is more like a comic book version of war, very interesting
‘environment’ but of little real substance. Another
way to describe it would be a Hollywood movie ‘interpretation’
of air combat rather than a ‘real as it gets’ simulation.
Why? That is hard to explain exactly, it is not any one specific
thing. It is the combination of historic/technical inaccuracies,
poor flight models, fictitious campaigns, really stupid AI,
goofy formations, ‘corny’/nonsensical radio calls,
and the ‘fluffy’ way some of the documentation is
written. This is not necessarily a bad thing, depending what
you want/expect from a combat simulation… but it does
significantly reduce the immersion factor for me. This is
something of a trend for Microsoft. I have noticed it to some
degree in all three versions of the Microsoft’s Combat
Flight Simulator series. I wonder how many people involved
in making these games have any real-life military experience?
Conclusions
and Recommendations
The shortcomings
that I have noted do not necessarily mean CFS3 is not worth
your time. CFS3 does contain some pretty impressive features;
it is definitely a step forward in PC flight simulations even
with its flaws. If improved campaigns and flight models ever
become available, the true capability of CFS3 will be realized.
Until then what you see is what you get! This leads me to
the most difficult part of this article; trying to answer
the important question most of our readers have.. "Should
I purchase this game?" The answer is… that depends
on what you like, what you want, and what you expect from
CFS3.
If you’re
a hardcore flight sim pilot, and a stickler for technical/historical
accuracy with a preference for games like Falcon 4.0, Rowan’s
Battle of Britain, and Jane’s F/A-18… I don’t
think you will be happy spending $50.00 -$55.00 US on this
product in its current condition. I would recommend you wait
until the rumored patch becomes available and reevaluate the
purchase then. A caveat to this recommendation is if you can
find CFS3 cheap, grab it and hope the dedicated CFS community
will provide improvements in the near future. This is not
as impossible as it sounds.. I found it on sale at a major
office supply store for $29.99. A big discount like that soon
after a product’s release may not be good news for Microsoft…
I wonder if sales are meeting expectations?
If your
tastes include ‘soft’ or arcade style flight simulations,
like Crimson Skies and NovaLogic’s F-16, I think you
will enjoy CFS3. The graphics are great and it has a fair
amount of fun factor as is; just make sure you have a powerful
enough computer to run it before you drop the cash. I have
read several complaints on our forums from folks that really
thought they could get away with the minimum hardware requirements
printed on the box. I personally would recommend a minimum
of a 1.0 GHz CPU and GF2/VooDoo 5 5500. A computer with anything
less is going to have a very hard time with CFS3.
Hardware
used for this Review:
Computer
1:
AMD 1.2
GHz T-Bird
ASUS A7V133
512 Meg PC133
Visiontek GF 4 4400
Creative Audigy 1 Sound
Windows 98 SE
DX 9
I had
to play with CFS3’s configuration quite a bit in order
to get it to run properly. I had to do it a second time after
I updated my video card drivers. Once I got it properly configured
the game ran great with no abnormal problems.
Computer
2:
AMD 1.0
GHz T-Bird
ECS K7S5A V3.0
256 Meg PC2100 DDR
VooDoo 5 5500
AC 97 Onboard Sound
Windows 98 SE
DX 8
Just
like my 1.2 GHz T-Bird I had to do a lot of CFS3 tweaking
in order to get it to run smoothly and stutter free. After
I found the ‘sweet spot’ this machine ran the game
just fine. I noticed a very interesting FSAA phenomenon while
tweaking; I had better performance with FSAA on than with
it off! CFS3 actually ran better with 2X/4X FSAA than ‘Fastest
performance’/FSAA Off’ selected on my old VooDoo
5! And boy did that old 3DFX card provide some fine graphics!
(3DFX cards, in my opinion, always looked better than Nvidia
cards). I had good frame rates all the way up to 1200x1024
in 2X FSAA, and all the way up to 1024x768 in 4X FSAA! I don’t
have any idea what my actual frame rates are but it is smooth
and stutter free.. and that what counts in a flight sim.
An interesting
problem I had with the Voodoo card was the ‘paint’
function did not work. I could select it but when I got into
the game the default paint scheme was still on the aircraft…
a bug?
Computer
3:
AMD K-6
550 MHz
DFI K6BV3 +66
256 Meg PC100
TNT 2 32 Meg
El-Cheapo no name Sound Card
Windows 98 SE
DX 8
CFS3
installed and ran… but I could literally count the frames.
No amount of tweaking would help… if this is all you
have don’t even bother buying this game until you get
a new computer!
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