CFS1 was a start, CFS2 was better, but Combat Flight Simulator 3 (CFS3) is a contender for the crown. Featuring an enduring electronic battlefield and an online campaign mode similar to Falcon 4.0, CFS3 takes virtual WWII combat to new heights. In this first of three articles, Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson interviews Tucker Hatfield of the new ACES Studios.

I wonder what G-max features they're going to incorperate in this version...

Biggs

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Stephen

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For me personally, the best news about CFS3 is that more design time is going into the ground details. Can't wait to be zooming along at 50 feet AGL in my Tempest V, with trees, houses, and vehicles rushing by...
BRING IT ON )
Hey, are they going to model 'people'?

It sounds as is Mr. Hatfield and company are working to remedy the multitude of issues that made CFS & CFS2 such complete and utter yawnware.

FS2002 was a vast improvement over the previous version or two of FS, so there is hope. Here's crossing my fingers and hoping that MS has some arc to their learning curve...

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Our Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson talks some more with Tucker Hatfield about wingmen and comms, improvements to AI, new cockpits and views and the eighteen new aircraft of Combat Flight Simulator 3.

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Originally posted by Viking1:
Wait til you hear the rest. There is plenty of good news here

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My personal faves on this beauti-mous edition...

Clouds,
but if you have AI on your tail…you are in trouble because they can see you and you can’t see them!

Viewing system...
We’re also adding some new external views so that our compliment of views is more similar to other combat sims.

SWOTL Lives!?!? Campaign & aircraft sound very similiar! Man, I played that thing on
the Amiga for a LONG time.

If they are doing never produced wonder planes like the Go229 and never saw service aircraft like the Do335 it seems silly to limit the Spitfires to 1943. The MkXIV, or even the F.21, should be included.

Is the Mosquito going to be a Series 1 with the much less powerful Merlin 21s or 23s, or is it going to be the much more common Series 2 with Merlin 25s?

-Karnak

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Nice read in the first place.

At least we know for sure now, that the first installments of the CFS series have been reruns of their respective MS-FS contemporaries packed differently to sell them to a slightly different audience.
The thing beeing based on unlocking some features that had been around in the original FS, just beeing protected by a 50 buck password. Nice.

Now, to my limited understanding air war in europe was stategic in essence in the 43-45 time frame, with hundreds of AC participating in a single raid. So, how many planes will CFS3 support flying and graphically represent at the same time ? 10, 20, 100 ? More?
The answer to that woud clue us to the very nature of its gameplay. Dynamic campaign ot not.

How about coops - humans and drones in an online environment at the same time ? Nothing said about a mission editor coming with the game ? Its capabilities for online flying ?

Just wondering.

That's it. Oleg got it right first time, (IL-2 imperfections ARE being addressed) It's taken MS 3 attempts and all this time. No support for CFS 2 really pissed me off. Like why should it be left to the gamers to fix a product?

Screw them, they've screwed me once! NOT again.

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"Thingmies? We don't need no stinking Thingmies"

It's easy to slag off MS (rightly or wrongly) for what's come before, but with CFS3 they really are trying something new. Most of CFS3 isn't based on FS2002 and that is going to have implications on what is possible.

On their contacts with the 'outside world' there's already been a lot of contact with the developer community (I know because I've been part of it) and I expect to see a lot more information flowing in the future. It may not be widely apparent yet, but there is a very different attitude (and exciting) associated with CFS3.

To someone who enjoys building and painting planes CFS2 and FS2002 (and soon CFS3) are a real joy. Offline play in CFS2 I found so-so and online play was a joke. I really like online co-op play in IL2, offline in IL2 is better than CFS2 but still nothing amazing and the designing side is a total dead-duck. The reason given for this is to prevent cheating, which is a perfectly valid reason. But with the extreme attitude taken I fear they may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. *If* CFS3 can tackle the cheating issues and deliver on everything that's been promised then it has the potential to expand in both breadth and depth far quicker than IL2 can. Of course not every CFS add-on will be great, or even good - but some are and so far that is what makes the CFS series unique. MS's ambitious plans for CFS3 mean that the potential of all the great artists and programmers out there may finally be fully utilised.

Huh? The single trees standing around look nothing like a european forrest. In the high altitude screenie, I would have prefered it if the trees had been absent and forrests simply shown by the colour of the ground.

I fear MS will not care what europe looks like, they just want to do something easy that will please many people (a realistic terrain can even put people off that do not know what the real terrain looks like).

I agree on the trees though, IL2 really has the tree canopy perfectly. Also the ground fogging is very realistic. It's too early to say what these will look like in CFS3. Whatever the case, the objects that the scenery tiles spawn (and the tiles themselves) may end up being editable when the appropriate SDK info is released. Time will tell...

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Originally posted by FinnN:
It's easy to slag off MS (rightly or wrongly) for what's come before, but with CFS3 they really are trying something new. Most of CFS3 isn't based on FS2002 and that is going to have implications on what is possible.

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Indeed it is easy to slag them off, they sort of helped themselves there Every episode of CFS has boasted of "something new"

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On their contacts with the 'outside world' there's already been a lot of contact with the developer community (I know because I've been part of it) and I expect to see a lot more information flowing in the future. It may not be widely apparent yet, but there is a very different attitude (and exciting) associated with CFS3.

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Well it's no use just having contact with developers, what about the general flight sim gamers out there?

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To someone who enjoys building and painting planes CFS2 and FS2002 (and soon CFS3) are a real joy. Offline play in CFS2 I found so-so and online play was a joke. I really like online co-op play in IL2, offline in IL2 is better than CFS2 but still nothing amazing and the designing side is a total dead-duck. The reason given for this is to prevent cheating, which is a perfectly valid reason. But with the extreme attitude taken I fear they may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. *If* CFS3 can tackle the cheating issues and deliver on everything that's been promised then it has the potential to expand in both breadth and depth far quicker than IL2 can. Of course not every CFS add-on will be great, or even good - but some are and so far that is what makes the CFS series unique.

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"the designing side is a total dead-duck" isn't true, there's a whole load of planes waiting to be built for IL-2. Granted it's not the same process as CFS, but total dead duck it aint.

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MS's ambitious plans for CFS3 mean that the potential of all the great artists and programmers out there may finally be fully utilised.

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Will the potential for the "ordinary" Virtual pilots?

Not this one

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"Thingmies? We don't need no stinking Thingmies"

quote:

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Originally posted by Rodger Bilko:

...Well it's no use just having contact with developers, what about the general flight sim gamers out there?

[/QB]

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Yes, they've been in contact with general simmers too.

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"the designing side is a total dead-duck" isn't true, there's a whole load of planes waiting to be built for IL-2. Granted it's not the same process as CFS, but total dead duck it aint.

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Well, seeing as I'd have to either resort to software piracy or shell out several thousand pounds for 3DS Max to make add-ons - I'd say that making add-ons for IL2 is most definitely a dead duck for me. "there's a whole load of planes waiting to be built for IL-2" probably indicates something too...

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Will the potential for the "ordinary" Virtual pilots?

Not this one

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Maybe not, but it's a bit early to write it off. Otherwise we'd all be still playing Red Baron. I think IL2, for example, is a much better game to play than CFS2. Does this mean that CFS3 can't possibly be better again?

Firstly, I'm not writing it off, I shouldn't and I couldn't. I'm sure in parts it'll be a super sim. It just doesn't fill my teapot so to speak.

Secondly, granted the software is expensive, I was slightly surprised at the price hehehe

And lastly, up until it's recent announcement I hadn't heard a peep about CFS3. Nobody had mentioned a thing. When IL-2 was in production you saw for yourself the updates by Oleg. So you could maybe forgive me for thinking that the simming public weren't approached.

I hope CFS3 does serve the flight sim community well, good games create good competition. The gaming Community cetainly needed IL-2.

BTW dig you're link.
I remember your site from the beginning of my CFS2 times.

You have fun too

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"Thingmies? We don't need no stinking Thingmies"

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On their contacts with the 'outside world' there's already been a lot of contact with the developer community (I know because I've been part of it) and I expect to see a lot more information flowing in the future.

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I understand where you come from, but I disagree. MS knows that making too much info available a) costs money and b) is dangerous since it allows non-MS sims to use the many, many planes created by the MSFS/CFS modding community. Why should more information flow than on MSFS 98, MSFS 2000, MSFS 2002, CFS 1, CFS 2?

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It may not be widely apparent yet, but there is a very different attitude (and exciting) associated with CFS3.

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I am waiting for the sim where they say "Oh, this is just like the last sim we wrote, there is nothing exciting new in here, just a few clean ups"

I will wait for the finished product, especially with Microsoft's record of hype and reality.

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To someone who enjoys building and painting planes CFS2 and FS2002 (and soon CFS3) are a real joy.

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That is true. I think other companies are stupid not to create a community of modders like the community that happend for MSFS/CFS.

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the designing side is a total dead-duck. The reason given for this is to prevent cheating, which is a perfectly valid reason.

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Really? IMHO, not at all. With Olegs ingenuity, he should come up with a way to prevent cheating and have masses of user created planes, should he not? I would not be surprised if this is just something they say and that many people think they understand and if it will be different for Oleg's next sim.

For example, lets say Olegs enables import of several 3D format (or just one current one - you can convert) for offline play and say that for online everyone would have to use the same planes. So, if the host enables some obscure plane and you join, then its your own beer. Off course, you would
be able to see the planes flown beforehand. Also, Oleg could "sign" the planes so they could not alter them and there would be a central website where users could argue or vote for planes. So, you would know that hammerd (just to say a name :-)) has done a plane everyone likes and XYZ has done a plane that can fly supersonic and that got really bad votes on the "realism front". So, you would use hosts that use hammerd's plane, but not hosts that use XYZ's plane.
You say this can be hacked? Yes, but can Il-2 not be hacked? I don't see why electronically signed planes would be easier to hack than the current airplanes in Il-2.

This is just an example. All the security experts say "security by obscurity" does not work. So, using an obscure format instead of a known secure one *may* buy you a little time, if it helps at all.

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But with the extreme attitude taken I fear they may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. *If* CFS3 can tackle the cheating issues and deliver on everything that's
been promised then it has the potential to expand in both breadth and depth far
quicker than IL2 can. Of course not every CFS add-on will be great, or even good - but some are and so far that is what makes the CFS series unique.

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there's a whole load of planes waiting to be built for IL-2.

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On the SDK front I know enough about what's going on behind the scenes to be satisfied that that will be available, probably sooner rather than later. However that does have a somewhat ominous side to it (keynote address from the recent MS press show at Vegas):
http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/depart/mar02/igf/index.html

I wonder if this is why the interest in the broader community has increased so much so (relatively, it's been going on behind the scenes for quite a while now) rapidly? I haven't decided yet whether I think this is good or bad. At the moment I think it's good, but I can easily imagine changing my mind!

Glad you remember my site! I haven't updated it for a while, but I have been up to stuff. There's a beta of Greg's Condor that finally came out recently (which has been offered for conversion to IL2 as an AI plane, but no-one's picked it up yet). Also I'm finding gMax much easier for me to use than FSDS, so I'm working on some FS2002 (later for CFS3) WW1 planes, the 3D model of the first one is almost finished. When it's textured I'll probably post a couple of screenshots.

For the record there's only one game I've bought over the last year or two that's fully lived up to it's promises: Combat Mission!

viking1@shaw.ca

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Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson finishes up his three-part interview with Microsoft's Tucker Hatfield. Today's discussion centers on the heart of Combat Flight Simulator 3: an enduring electronic battlefield.

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If you aren't excited by the details of CFS3, chances are you aren't a real WWII combat flight sim fan anyway

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YOU CHEEKY GIT!

Oh so it's like CFS3 or be damned eh?

What's up, you on a promise with Bill Gates or what?

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"Thingmies? We don't need no stinking Thingmies"

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YOU CHEEKY GIT

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LOL! While I was editing the article I thought of you when I read that line (...you aren't a real WWII combat flight sim fan anyway.).

I knew Viking1 was going to get a response from you on that one!

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"Thingmies? We don't need no stinking Thingmies"

Donster

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Well it has been awhile since I have been here. I was just a struggling guy trying to make money. Now I can afford to come back and contribute to this site.

Boy I guess I'm kinda nostalgic being back here. I was here in 1997. Then became one of the EAW group here. I was just like any other flight sim fan and was one of the first to come here when you and Douglas got started. I am a designer now... I will be releasing some ships here in the next week.... 8 to be exact for use in CFS2.
CV Saratoga
BB Washington
CA San Francisco
CVA Oriskany
CVL Shoho
BB Prince of Wales
BC Repulse
CA Houston

I see some of my CFS2 brethren are here (Finn ) I will post here as well to let your CFS2 fans know when the downloads are ready.

Some of the ideas that Brainwash Bill's boys are talking sound good. Personally, though, I have my doubts that they'll be able to deliver. And these aren't earthshaking concepts, anyway. As you mention in your second installment, SWOTL had most of these features back in 1990. What the Microbrains are proposing sounds more like SWOTL with padlock view and eye candy. IL-2, on the other hand, broke new ground where it counted, in AI and flight modeling.

And let's be honest: real WWII flight sim fans don't fly Microsh*t!

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Stephen

The number of quality designers for CFS2 and FS series out there read like an all-star list and are numerous. Not to say that other designers are not out there.... see the EAW and Falcon 4 guys. They are just limited in what they can do.

Thing is... MS gives us the ability to create on a wide level.. these add-on designers bring the sim to another level. Also it becomes quite a hobby.

MS has kept the flight sim business going and brought us some recognition. Without them... I doubt we would have found any new sim followers. We would just be a bunch of hard core simmers and the software giants would be ignoring us saying we are not a profitable market. Without the designers...yes MS is just another game... but don't take the add-on designers efforts to task. Try looking into the add-on's.

So lets recognize MS for keeping the flight sim torch out there. If the new followers who they bring in decide they want more ... then see IL-2,EAW,Falcon 4, FA-18 or others. However I see MS rapidly closing the gap with this release.

Oh and when other sims allow me to add warships and carriers... let me know... I can start building them up too.

Many of us suspect that MS doesnt' give its designers the same artistic and intellectual freedom as smaller game companies. MS is known for being ruthless and short-sighted when it comes to the bottom line. MS would never have let Oleg Maddox delay IL-2 to get the details right, and I don't think they would have been as responsive in patching the product, either.

Has MS really "carried the torch," BTW? Dunno about that. If CFS hadn't come along, many new simmers might have tried EAW instead, and Microprose might still be in business. Then again, you are right, MS does have plenty of marketing muscle, and a running tide does raise every ship in the harbor. But if the combat flight sim market gets big enough, you can bet that Gates will try to find a way to muscle all the smaller shops out, and that won't be good for the hobby at all.

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I suppose I do come on a bit strong. But I am honestly representing my optimism about this third in the series.

But don't forget that I am drawing on some experience that few posters share: I've met Tucker and the team. I have history with the CFS series, including interviews back to the first one.

I also think you are making a mistake by simply writing off CFS3 because of earlier versions. The game ain't the same, chaps, no matter how much you think it is.

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Many of us suspect that MS doesnt' give its designers the same artistic and intellectual freedom as smaller game companies. MS is known for being ruthless and short-sighted when it comes to the bottom line. MS would never have let Oleg Maddox delay IL-2 to get the details right

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Well, interesting point. But I've visited the MS Game studios. The creative atmosphere is tangible. Futhermore, Tucker and the team have paid their dues. This is the one they've been waiting for.

Whatever you think of MICROSOFT, this ain't MICROSOFT. Bill ain't in charge of this one, even if he does pay for it.

So, chocks away... you may like it or you may hate it, but some of us are rather excited about it.

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And this is my first 3D model, normally I only do the textures. gMax is ushering a new level of detail into the MS games, I've seen a few in development and they're starting to look like rendering models from a few years ago. Before you ask, the framerates are still good too.

Did I mention they're free too?

Now, eye candy is all well and good, but tell me something about add-on campaigns, AI, and flight models. That's where CFS failed me the first time I tried it. I'd love to learn what sort of progress has been made in these areas.

For instance, is there anything available for CFS that approximates the gameplay of EAW's latest user mod, Desert Air War?

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