Saturday, July 15, 2006 02:06 AM

Flanker 2.0 Next Year In Jerusalem!  

Kick the tires and Light that Bad Boy up…Flanker takes off…!!!

Let me say that this sim is without a doubt one of the most beautiful and incredible graphic experiences you can have with a Military Flight Simulator on a Home PC. All objections about bad graphics in the earlier series have been absolutely banished, especially if you have a TNT2/Matrox G400 or better, or if you have a 3dfx and you fix the graphics yourself. (waiting for SSI might be a long wait as I don't think they get it) Flying thru the clouds in this sim is an amazing experience that brings back memories of doing it in a real aircraft, it’s that good. If there is another sim around that looks better I haven’t seen it. The cities are amazing with extremely fine levels of detail that promise to give a workout to any Chip out now. Consider that Landmarks are exactly where they are in Real Life tm, hell they even have Beach Umbrellas on the shorelines in places...stunning graphics.  Also consider that it will still be a mesmerizing graphical experience 2 years from now when you have a puter that can finally run it full details with 60 to 80 active objects. This sim’s graphics are not gonna be obsolete anytime soon which bodes well for the rest of the series that are following on next year.

The flip side of this is don't expect your 32mb P-2 300 to make much of a dent in the demands of this sim. And make damn sure you have a strong video card. If I were buying a video card for Flanker right now I would be buying the GeForce DDR not because Flanker supports T & L (I don't think it does) but because that's currently the fastest card and best looking.  Flanker 2.0 puts a heavy demand on your computer and you need lots of RAM, 128minimum, 256 better, more even better...<VBG> I understand that the addition of RAM cures a nasty bug that causes the sim to pause and chug when entering any mission....its a bug that's mentioned in the readme so its been around for awhile. I found the bug to happen each time I entered a mission, not only when I entered the first mission, I have 128mb. Course its probably because I have been flying lots of low level 1vs4 fights. The really weird thing is the bug happens even when I have the details turned down to the lowest settings.

A worrisome problem is the drop in Frames a second when a normal mission is put together with the kinds of numbers you might expect to be participating in a war. In Flanker 1.5 I used to run a mission where I would fly into 80+ planes dog-fighting with ships and SAMS. Basically a large shitstorm....so crowded that Mid Air's were a distinct possibility, it ran well that's how amazing the 1.xx series was. Now I'm not saying that 80 planes is required but I would bet that Flanker 2 would need something along the lines of a 1ghz 530mb-RAM puter to have good frame rates. This is one area where I will compare Falcon 4 to Flanker. I believe that if a mission were set up to have as many objects in it as my Falcon Benchmark mission (I have almost 100 active moving tanks, planes and helicopter objects in the benchmark mission) that you would see that the demands of loading up unique land textures, object textures and all those lovely polys for the hills would make Flanker much slower. Frame rates in Falcon commonly in TE go above 50 frames a second, the highest I have seen in Flanker inside the cockpit is 30 and that was exceptional with no one else up. I believe after looking at the models and land at the lowest detail settings with no textures that the problem is that both the ground and models even at low detail settings have an enormous amount of polygons. See how the hills are so nice and round...that's done with lots of polys that means you need a ton of fill rate provided by both extremely strong video cards (Can you say 3dfx Napalm with over 1billion pixels per second thru-put oh me) and CPU's with an overwhelmingly powerful Floating Point Power...can you say AMD Athlon. The unfortunate part is I would love an option to have lower poly count models so that I could run higher amounts of active objects (planes, trains and automobiles you know stuff to shoot at) in a mission. Because currently as the below chart shows frame rate depends primarily on the amounts of objects in a mission. Even at the absolute lowest detail settings the frame rate was never very high even with only myself up...which is probably on account of the high poly count in the landmass.

Now its important to understand that Flanker has dramatically upped the ante in details on the ground. Flanker 1.5 was fairly detailed but Flanker 2 is absolutely incredible and if you have the puter to run it I recommend going immediately to free flight over Sevastopol at the highest graphics settings, if that doesn't blow your mind, flying low over the city missing the unique buildings by flying knife edge, then you haven't been paying attention. Understand as well that my comments about the frame rate are not really critical, I fully realize that this engine will give them room to grow, I just wish we had a better option to adjust our frame rates. But hey sure is nice flying over round hills and absolutely detailed scenery...hehe. After all AMD has announced that the 1ghz processor is gonna be released in January...and no you cannot have my spot in line for that bad boy.

In the table below I have included some frame rates.

My how familiar it all seems<VBG>Most of the effort seems to have gone into the graphics because the rest of the sim is a slightly tweaked, judging from the bug reports tweaked the wrong way oopsy,  version of 1.5. It’s pretty funny to consider how upset that makes some people (mostly cheerleaders and developers), I guess because some (mostly cheerleaders and developers) are trying to say that this sim is all new. Well sorry gang its not. The good part is that means that all the stuff that made Flanker 1.5 great are still there; well ok the gunzo AI was broken in the transition to 2.0, and yes I saw a report from Rich Sorochak from Ironhand Tutorial saying that the SAMS were broken as well bummer. To see what I mean go 1vs4 Su-27 Excellent guns and instead of going after the one who breaks go after the three that don’t…aren’t they smart flying formation while you shoot them down. (Here is some trks zipped up showing an example of the gunzo misbehavior, PAPADOCvsTheWorld_hehe.zip) This behavior extends to missile fights where instead of working as a team only one attacks and is a bug/feature brought over from 1.5. Though in 1.5 the gunzo AI was much better. In 2.0 I have been shot down maybe 4 times in over 100 fights against 4 excellent Su-27’s and even 8 of the AI challenged pilots did not put a shell into me. And I'm a rusty bastard…<VBG> and humble too.

For the SAMS we have taken a huge step backwards. Now instead of launching after considering many different factors in regards to their target they launch as if on a tripwire. And the Tracking Radars will not lose lock on you thru mountains or molehills....very bad. Let me say that again, very bad...that was one of the items that made 1.5 such a wonderful sim, you could create LOS problems for the SAM site to defeat it. Well bud the search radar you can defeat but once the missiles launch the Tracking Radar can not be defeated by ducking behind a hill. And to top off this wonderful development, SAM missiles seem to have unlimited potential for tracking you down. Evade one and it just might without the engine being on climb up to 45,000 feet and come back down to clobber you for being so clever the first time. Grab this TRK (Patriot_test.trk) to see that problem in action, sent to me by Rich Sorochak the author of the Ironhand Tutorial. And that's not the end of the cleverness they also are completely able to execute 180's and other really neat tricks. Sort of takes the fun right out of the day doesn't it....?  In Falcon 4 I forgave the ability of the SAM systems to track you thru mountains because after all it was attempting to create an entire war with comms, extensive wingman controls and such. Flanker attempts nothing even remotely as similar and managed to break something that wasn't broken in the last version. Very bad. 

But other terrific features that still haven’t been done as well in other sims made it over. Stuff like the recorder that records not only single player but online fights as well, you know how cool it is to be able to record someone's humiliation.  Or the amazing visual details of the different weapons systems, and that terrific flight model that used to be such a singular achievement. The AWACS view is so very cool....nice to be able to watch the entire theatre.

Two new and welcome features (I don't count the campaign, cause its not trying hard enough to count) are the Instant Action Module and the Training module. Of the two the Training module is the more valuable as it is well done and should be of tremendous value to Rookie Targe....oops pilots. <VBG> The Training module has sections divided into the general categories a rookie targ...oops pilot might want to know about. Such as how to avoid the slings and arrows of Pink Planes behind...nah not really. But it does have sections dealing with takeoff, landing, both again on the carrier, finding ground targets with radar, firing missile A2G, A2A and each of these categories displays a subcategory if availible when clicked on. Also the user himself can add training missions to the training module. All in all the training module was extremely well done. Besides the graphics its the only item in the sim that feels fresh and actually new. While the Instant Action module is nice its really just a mission launcher.

Next Page Carrier Ops...oooh boy ooh boy...hehe.