David Slavens, Lead Reviewer for Combat Sim Reviews, just concluded this interview with CFS3's Tucker Hatfield (ACES is the in-house studio where Microsoft's flight sims are made). As other, more general interviews have appeared at Gamespot and SimHQ sites (as previously reported, see Combat Flight Simulator 3 Interview by SimHQ.com), we opted to seek out Microsoft's responses to more specific questions from David. We think everyone anticipating the new release will find both insights and answers in Tucker's most gracious responses—and we present quite a few new screenshots (exclusive to Avsim).
AVSIM: Let's begin with what we think is perhaps one of the most desired capabilities in a combat sim, the ability for multi-players to fly in a mission together—so can all participants while in CFS3's multi-player mode fly a given mission?
Tucker: There will be an "arena combat" mode and cooperative missions in multiplayer which function pretty much like Combat Flight Simulator 2 does. A number of people simply join the game they want to play — and play.
The goal for campaigns was to avoid the unstructured environment you have in the large online combat environments, so we've concentrated on having mission goals that are clear and balance to the missions which remains relatively constant.
To do that, our campaign will have multiple missions being flown simultaneously. Each mission will have a limited number of "slots" for players, and each player will replace an AI pilot when he joins. This way, the each side will always have the same number of aircraft, regardless of whether two or ten human beings are in the game. So, in a big campaign game not all players will be able to fly simultaneously in the same mission, but they all will be flying in the same campaign and influencing the flow of the war.
AVSIM: That's great news! As a follow-up, how scalable will the difficulty be? Can it be geared for the novice as well as the hard core combat flight simmer?
Tucker: Single missions, Quick Combat, and single-player Campaigns will all be scalable enough to make them accessible to players of various skill levels. There will also be the familiar "cheats" such as the tactical display, target indicators, padlock view, etc., which can be toggled on or off.
In multiplayer missions and campaigns, however, the host will have control over realism settings, so players will need to find multiplayer games that suit their level of play or host their own. Of course, the skill level of the "enemy" player isn't really something we can control, so players will want to be aware of the skill of the pilots they are up against.
AVSIM: The campaign structure is said "active" rather than dynamic. How will this affect replayablilty? Will objects destroyed in previous missions remain destroyed?
Tucker: Okay, I'll be frank here: The only reason I don't refer to the campaign as "dynamic" is that I've been on too many forums where someone says such-and-such campaign is dynamic and people jump on him because it doesn't fit their definition of dynamic. I may be being a bit jumpy, but I prefer to stay away from a word that causes so many knee-jerk responses, whether I think it fits or not. So let's not worry about "active" versus "dynamic," and concentrate on the rest of your question.
Think of the campaign theater map as a meta-game where the position of the front, the state of the squadrons (AI and player), and the strategic and tactical strength of both sides is tracked.
The user picks an HQ as a base and looks at the areas near him on the map and selects a sector to fly missions in. There is a list of missions available for that sector that has been generated based on the various values I mentioned above. Since these values vary in response to the how the player's side is doing in that sector, the missions available will change based on what the player's side has done in the past and the type of aircraft he is flying. He picks a mission, based either on what he believes will have the biggest positive effect or just what he prefers to fly.
While he is flying his mission, other missions are being flown simultaneously from other HQs. In single-player campaigns, all of the other missions are being simulated using AI squadrons, but in multiplayer campaigns some of these missions are being flown by other human players.
After the missions are flown, the results are figured into the values represented on the map, things are updated, and new missions become available, based on the current state in that sector. The player can change sectors to fly in or even what HQ to be based from, which also influences what missions will be available. Once the player is in the mission itself, there are also elements that react to your behavior, as well. In other words, there will be great replayability.
As to items staying destroyed, big facilities will stay destroyed for multiple missions, but small items are either replaced or repaired between missions.
AVSIM: Will the Mission Builder be retained and if so will it be more user friendly?
Tucker: The Mission Builder is being retained and enhanced to support the new features in CFS3.
Remember that the Mission Builder is the complete tool that we use to build our missions. It isn't hobbled or simplified in any way, which gives the user extreme flexibility. It also means that it is complex enough that it's never going to be the ideal tool for a casual user. We are making some changes to improve its operation, but it is still going to have some learning curve associated with it.
AVSIM: In regards to the Quick Combat will it be made easier to add 3rd party planes to it?
Tucker: Yes. In fact, it will be easier all around. For instance, we can now read the files directly out of a ZIP, so you will be able to distribute aircraft in a ZIP file, and the users will be able to simply drop the file in the appropriate directory and go. The user interface is designed to accommodate the new aircraft more seamlessly, as well.
AVSIM: Will the AI be improved for the wingman? Will they actually be able to carry out missions and not crash into each other?
Tucker: For CFS2, we were using the same core game engine we had in CFS1, and that limited how much we could alter AI behavior. Since our engine is new and we've built the support for combat AI into the engine, we have a lot more latitude in crafting the way AI works, and a lot of work is going into AI.
It's no longer a matter of "fix this or that." Instead, we're starting over and doing it right. When you see how much we managed to improve the AI between CFS1 and CFS2 while constrained by the engine, you get a good idea of how much we expect to improve when we are designing the system we want.
In addition to general improvement in the "smartness" of the AI, the wingmen will have some of the qualities your pilot has, such as varying G-tolerance, vision, and fatigue. This means that the behavior of your wingmen will be more complex and that really good wingmen will become much more valuable assets.
AVSIM: Will there be real-time voice-communication included?
Tucker: We won't have a dedicated voice coms system built into the game itself, but we are committed to making sure we work well with existing systems like Game Voice, Roger Wilco, etc.
AVSIM: Long distance hits (spray and pray) caused too much damage for armor relative to distance in CFS2. Will this be addressed or no?
Tucker: We did several things to try to minimize this in CFS2. The main thing we did is that we added some variation in the "spread" of bullets. There were some minor variances in trajectory that made it less likely that you would put a bunch of bullets into the aircraft from a distance—and that if you did, it would be unlikely that they would hit the same damage area. We also made the bullet damage lessen, relative to distance traveled. Both of these made gunnery more realistic than in CFS1, but neither was enough to completely address the problem.
This time around we've got a whole new damage system. It shares a lot conceptually with CFS2's damage model, but we have addressed some of the deficiencies in the old system. We have more opportunities to tweak the system, and I'm confident that we'll be able to come up with the best damage system yet.
AVSIM: CFS2 planes performed poorly in respect to their real data at high altitudes. Will this be addressed?
Tucker: I'm going to turn this question over to CFS3's flight model developer, Michael Zyskowski. Mike, or "Z" as he is usually referred to, is an aerospace engineer (one of our many team members who came to us from Boeing) who is working to fine-tune the flight engine for CFS3 and to implement the flight models for our aircraft.
[ Mike Z ] We appreciate your concern. As our motto is "As Real As It Gets," we want to provide a flight model of the highest quality. By visiting the national archives in Washington D.C., military bases and historical archives, and other Smithsonian affiliate aircraft restoration/preservation museums, we've managed to assemble what I think is a premier collection of World War II-era combat aircraft engineering flight data.
With a continually improving in-house tool (FSEDIT), ace quality assurance flight test team, and long hours in the office making sure we "match all the curves," the play balancing of the flight models that result will no doubt provide a fantastic sense of what is was really like for a Spitfire to take on a Focke-Wulf 190—from sea level on up. Our firm belief is to make it as real as theoretical physics will allow, including performance at high altitude.
If you are able to spot-check some data points and put together an engineering story for us, we'd love to take a look and compare it against our information. As military records of that age can sometimes only be found in the bottom of someone's basement, any authentic WWII-era flight data is a welcome submission, and we're always looking for ways to improve our processes.
We hope to get more involved with the Combat Flight Simulator community this year, including web articles explaining the aircraft flight model design process: from research on the aircraft, to development of the flight model, to a discussion of how we match real-world flight test data. Hopefully, this will address any concerns in the Combat Flight Sim community as to the quality of our flight models and aircraft behavior.
AVSIM: Moving right along, what role will ships play? Will we have the carriers and other warships back?
Tucker: You'll be able to fly anti-shipping missions, and there will be quite a bit of shipping to target. Since this version centers on tactical combat, shipping and support ships can be very important, but hunting for strategic military shipping isn't really on your dance card.
Neither side will be using carrier-based aircraft.
AVSIM: Will Microsoft address any problems that may arise after release or is going to be "as is" like CFS2?
Tucker: Since CFS3 has a heavy emphasis on multiplayer, we recognize that it is possible, perhaps even likely, that we'll need to do some patching, if for no other reason than to plug security loopholes. Of course, the plan is not to need one, so we'll have to make the final decision when the time comes, but we have made sure that we're all mentally prepared for it, should a patch be necessary.
AVSIM: What are the targeted minimum system specs?
Tucker: We're not really far enough along to be publishing the system requirements yet. Our goal is to run well on the widest variety of machines but not to set our system requirement unrealistically low. One thing I can say for sure is that we will be requiring a 3D accelerator card for CFS3. We've reached the point where it is impossible to achieve the quality we want on unaccelerated video cards.
AVSIM: Thanks for this most interesting glimpse into your development plans. When can you tell us more?
Tucker: If you have any questions or have a specific item you'd like to see addressed in these articles, please send your comments in this regard to our submit site, and we'll do our best to get them addressed. (Comments can be sent to CFS mail.) We always enjoy your feedback, and hope to keep all of our customers thoroughly satisfied.
Now here's the screenshots Tucker sent along exclusively to AVSIM Online for your enjoyment!
