AVSIM Combat Simulation Review COMBAT ACES Air War Over the Western Front 1914-1918

World War I was called "the war to ends all wars." To that point in world history no one had seen such tragic loss of life more than in World War I. Weapons such as tanks, mustard gas, and Dreadnought battleships changed the way wars are fought. But there is one weapon that changed the face of warfare forever – the airplane. If Orville and Wilbur Wright could have foreseen what a terrible weapon their lovely flying machine would be turned into they probably would not have invented it. As it came to pass though it was integrated into military of all sides. Some saw the potential in it before others. Others thought of it as a toy. Subsequently Gen. Billy Mitchell was court marshaled because of his belief that the airplane can decide wars of the future. Progress changed all that and now there is no country that fights without the airplane.

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The early pilots of World War I were chivalrous; they had honor and respect for each other as professionals, as pilots, no matter what side they flew on. What was it like to be a Knight in the sky? What was it like to fly these early aircraft of wood and fabric? Just Flight and Alpha Simulations have teamed up once again to bring you another fantastic add-on to CFS2. How does it stack up? Shall we take a look? Well grab your scarf and goggles and lets proceed to the field.

What's in the box? How does it install?

First of the all, the box is what catches my eye. It is well designed and has painting of a scene depicting combat over the skies of Europe during World War I. To me box art is very important. It can sometimes give you a small inkling of the quality of the product. Inside the box was the CD and the manual. The manual is done in both English and German. The manual gives you the install instructions and the rest of it is dedicated to the 20 aircraft that are modeled in the sim. Each plane gets a page to itself with a history of its use during the war and a table of technical attributes. It also has a picture of the plane and its 2 D cockpit. I also received one of 2 expansion CD's for Combat Aces. It has 10 additional planes and each plane has 2 missions each.

Installation went off without a hitch. I just put in the CD and off it went. After confirming where your CFS 2 directory is, let it do its thing. Once installed Combat Aces (CA for now on) has it own executable to start it. There you have the choice to run either summer or winter textures. What is that you say? Winter textures? What about my Pacific Islands? Now they have snow. Negative, once you exit the sim everything returns to normal. Convenient eh? Simplicity is always best in my book.

Support for the product is top notch. Alpha Simulations has a patch that addresses a landing gear/collision problem and also poor frame rates around airfields. It is 1.16 MB and it does help with the frames rate issue. Other than that I have yet to find any other bugs with it.

The Planes: Here is what you get

Airco DH2	Fokker DVII	Nieuport 17	Spad VII
Airco DH4	Fokker DVIII	Pfalz DIIIA	S-S DIII
Albatros DVa	Fokker DR1	RAF BE2C	Zeppelin Airship
Avro 504C	Fokker DR1 Red Baron	RAF RE.8	Zeppelin Staaken R6
Avro 504K	Fokker Eindecker	Halberstadt CLII	SE5A
Bristol F2B	Sopwith Camel	HPO 400
Junkers D1	Sopwith Triplane

You cannot complain about all the aircraft you get. As you can see there are more aircraft than you can shake a stick at. And with the 2nd expansion CD coming you will get 5 more aircraft and some World War I float planes! What a collection of aircraft.

Test System PIII 1GHz 265 MB 133 MHz SDRAM Windows Me 32 MB GeForce 2 MX with 12.00 drivers 12X DVD/32x CD-ROM Creative Audio PCI Sound Card Microsoft Precision Pro 2 17" Monitor Flying Time: 7 hours over 3 days BE.2c BE.2c cockpit DH 4 DG 4 cockpit "Red Baron" Fokker Triplane "Red Baron" cockpit Halberstadt CL.II Halberstadt cockpit Nieuport 17 Nieuport 17 cockpit Zeppelin Staaken R6

Let's talk about something really important – the flight models. This makes or breaks a sim. If your flight models are not accurate your sim is going to go down the tubes. No matter how pretty she looks. Look what happen to Jane's USAF for example. Looked good but the bobbing aircraft ruined it for everyone. The flight models here are very well done indeed. In fact they're some of the best I have seen. Here is a prime example. I was flying the Sopwith Camel when I noticed that when I turned left it was slower than turning right. Ah a bug I thought, but before I went off the deep end I emailed Phil Perrott at Alpha Simulations with that question. He emailed me back. This is what he said:

"That effect was carefully programmed in to simulate the gyroscopic effect of the rotary engine. You will find that the in-line engines have this effect greatly reduced, as there is not the same rotating mass to cause it. In fact on aircraft like the Camel it should be a lot worse and some complained that it is too mild, but it is the best we can do. The aircraft (Camel) in reality required the stick to be held slightly to the left to maintain level flight and were therefore very tiring on long flights. A sudden blip of the throttle at low speeds could spell death to the unwary pilot and many pilots lost their lives as the aircraft flipped over on landing or take-off."

Be sure to see David's exclusive interview with Alpha Simulations CEO Phil Perrott.