Jane’s has some of the very best artificial intelligence (AI) modeling I’ve seen, on par with Su27 Flanker and TAW. You have to really be watching your six at all times, whether in solo or multiplayer with AI bogeys in the vicinity.

You will see bandits use both the horizontal and vertical axis to gain the advantage. Not just a predictable turn fight like I see with MS-CFS and EAW (probably EAW’s biggest flaw). If you don’t watch out, you will end up either hitting the silk or as dead meat from a head-on collision.

And talk about details. All the avionics are superbly detailed, including the movable flight stick or yoke. The wing control surfaces all work, including leading and trailing edge flaps. Damage modeling has been taken to the next level of refinement. Landing too hard or on soggy ground will end up with sheared or tweaked struts.

Gun and cannon hits will not only be heard, but also seen externally. And you gotta love the catastrophic damage. You can see the anodized frame, bent props, shot up cockpit and even gory blood splats. The ground objects are very realistic, including running deer and soldiers that scramble from stricken vehicles. Gun and ballistics and bomb explosions are spectacular.

Virtual cockpit with excellent padlocking and optional targeting window

Another critical feature is the object/target selection and viewing/padlock system. As the Top Gun fighter’s axiom goes: "Lose sight, lose the fight." Maintaining situational awareness (SA) is absolutely critical when surviving in a hostile 3 dimensional environment view with a very small and focused 2-D perspective.

When it comes to te WW2 genre of sims, there’s always the debate on whether or not padlocking is appropriate. My take on it is this: I don’t want magical targeting and padlock like EF2000/TAW, but I do want a padlocking system to aid me in SA. However, make it limited in its scope. That is to say, allow target lock and padlocking within what is considered to be realistic eye resolution and head range of motion. Su27, Falcon, and MS-CFS and EAW do this nicely.

As you can see for yourself in the pictures, WW2 Fighters does an excellent job as far as snap, fixed, scrolling, padlocking view systems. In fact, you can even adjust your virtual pilot’s head within the cockpit to give you the amount of field of view (FOV) that you want.

The only problem I see is that the range at which you can padlock a target is much farther than what is realistic. Also you can "cheat" by having a secondary target/object window give you much more detail than what is realistic. This is another indicator of not being purely hard-core.

Another questionable feature is the pop-up instruments when not using the cockpit artwork. Some really hated this with Jane’s FA, but I don’t have a problem with it. No, it's not "realistic," but it's a great way to increase the visibility and at the same time increase frame rate. Only turn on the pop-ups when you need them.

Mission editor for single, campaign, and multiplayer creation and briefing

WW2 Fighters supports single and campaign missions for offline or solo gameplay. It uses a mission selector with 40 canned single missions that you can edit and pre-flight brief via its mission editor. This means that you can either use the canned missions or make your own. This is a feature that will ensure a longer shelf and hard disk life when compared to its WW2 competitors (CFS on release lacked a mission editor, and EAW still does not have one).

Click to continue . . .

What’s more, any of these missions can be flown in multiplayer. Thus both dogfighting (H2H) and cooperative (COOP) missions are supported for both solo or online simming.

What was disappointing was that for both single and campaign missions, the debrief summary and statistics are very basic. Worse, mission objectives are too easy and can be had by simply turning on the auto pilot. Simple solution, however: don't use the feature if you want more realism!
Cooperative multiplayer STRIKE mission with enemy CAP

If you get tired of H2H dogfighting, you can either use the canned COOP missions or create your own. The good news is that the mission editor is fairly sophisticated and can have air and ground forces that are controlled by a logical trigger mechanism. This can make up for the rather lack- luster campaigning and stats system.

Note that you can also go to the Jane’s website and down or up load mission files (send us your best missions by clicking HERE). Here is an example of a strike mission similar to one I just read in a recent true story posted here on CSIM a week or so ago: an Me262 strike on a forward Allied airstrip (note the attention to details for the special effects).

The sun sets on the aftermath of your STRIKE.

This COOP mission leads me on to the last section I want to touch on, that being my favorite topic, multiplayer (MP) support. One of the ways that I go about testing a sim for MP support is to try it on both IPX/Kali FLIGHT server (http://www.kali.net), and over direct connection via TCP/IP. Finally, I try a dedicated arena like Jane’s Combat Net (http://www.janescombat.net). What I got after hours of testing, was mixed results and reports.

First of all, Jane’s for whatever reason either did not test or chose purposefully to not support Kali/IPX. This is most disturbing, because nowhere can there be found a more dedicated and helpful cast of characters. The multiplayer code simply does not recognize Kali’s IPX emulation. Both MS-CFS and EAW do, as will upcoming SDOE.

For TCP/IP connectivity, I have seen very bad warping where the planes literally jump hundreds of yards at a time, making dogfighting impossible. At other times I’ve been able to fly in tight formation and even within a plane’s length away before the warp was noticeable. This would indicate to me that if you have a decent ping latency (400 ms or less), you will probably have a good multiplayer experience.

But even still, your success is dependent on a few more factors (other than the alignment of Jupiter and Mars). That being how many players are also connected, their connect rates (and ping values), and how many objects and AI air and ground targets are involved. So you see, while the superior graphics of Jane’s WW2 Fighters is its strength, its also its Achilles’ heel. This is where EAW’s 256 color graphics allows for far more active objects in multiplayer.

Go to Part IV