Over the top at 11,000 ft.—but then Stead Airport, in Reno, Nevada is already at 5,000 ft—watching the wing tips describe a perfect circle during the loop, then snapping into a roll—wow, look at all those mountains straight up through the canopy! My 30 minute flight in that Navy SNJ was terrific (but I have to admit Warbird Rides' Kevin Keenan was doing most of the flying)! But then I did get some practical experience piloting this real-world fighter trainer (more trim, more trim!). What's going on here?
Sending a gaggle of editors and journalists up for 30 minute spins (well, not actually spins!) this past Monday in this '40s advanced trainer—the Army Air Corps at the time called it the AT-6 "Texan"; both versions were built by then North American Aviation—was Microsoft's Simulations Product Unit Product Manager Darryl Saunders' inspiration to, might I say viscerally, demonstrate how close their new Combat Flight Simulator 3 – Battle for Europe comes to replicating the real thing. And I have to say it was convincing. To our collective credit no one felt sick; to the contrary everyone was thrilled with rolls and loops and one heroic journalist claims he actually enjoyed doing Split-S and Immelmann maneuvers during his turn. We have proof: each of us came home with a video from a camera mounted on the windshield frame—I can be seen whooping with joy as we came out of the loops.
So how does it feel with CFS3? The "visceral" part is missing of course (though you'll be subjected to 'black outs' and 'red outs' if you pull too many G's), but otherwise the sim gives you the same sensation of flight. The Microsoft crew, including lead CFS3 designer Rob Brown and interface guru Mike Ammerlaan, treated us to eight stations flying the 'gold' CD so we could see for ourselves. We've already commented on the new version's almost photo-real aircraft exterior views, the sensational 3-D virtual cockpit with its convincing panels, the volumetric clouds and the rush of flying over highly-detailed scenery skimming the trees in our AVSIM 2002 Conference Report.
But this event afforded us the time to fly some combat missions, and wring it out we did! While we'll be describing CFS3 in depth in our forthcoming multi-part review, I can say for now that the sim is fluid, the flight dynamics are realistic, and the multiplayer implementation is flawless. And I'll tease you a little; the CFS3 team truly went out of their way with attention to detail, with touches such as these: jet flame colors change as thrust increases (especially convincing is the ME 262 belching fire as it starts up), moving trucks kick up dust as they move along roads, gun bursts flash from tanks engaged in battle with one-another as you fly over them, naval ships return fire during aerial attacks (beware!); also authentic details like the German Do 335 first blowing its explosive bolts to get the tail assembly out of the way as the pilot bails out, and of another pilot climbing into his life raft after ditching in water—you'll even see sparks spraying from under a hapless plane as it scrapes the runway in a wheels-up landing.
Did I mention 'whooping with joy' earlier? You should have seen the smiles on the team's faces as they showed off these scenes, each anxious to be sure we didn't miss anything!
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