Rage Software's Eurofighter Typhoon is just the latest installment in one of the most storied air combat simulations of all time. Originally authored by Digital Image Design (DiD) Part One of the story was TFX: Tactical Fighter Experiment, Part Two was EF2000 (and its variants Super and TACTCOM), Part Three was actually two titles—F22: Air Dominance Fighter and F22: Total Air War, and now that DiD has become part of Rage Software, Eurofighter Typhoon is Part Four.

There's a lot of history here and with the planned release of Eurofighter Typhoon about one month away, it seems fitting that one of the most qualified experts on the subject of DiD titles, Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson, give us some background on how we came from the original TFX in 1993 to EF Typhoon in 2001.

These titles were some of the best simulations ever created. I have, within
the last six months, fired up TAW just to play around with the UFO missions.

I hope the tradition continues with Rage, and look very forward to this title. I
envy you your position of being one of the first to check this out...

As far as I'm concerned, EF2000 v2.0 remains the definitive and near-perfect jet sim. Even though I have a GEForce video card, I still regularly play the unaccelerated Win95 version. I never get tired of it.

TAW runs a close second to EF2000. The drawbacks (for me) are that I'm not particularly interested in flying the F22, and the geopolitical context of the campaigns are pretty uninteresting (the context of the EF2000 campaign was much more involving, IMHO). If only DiD had upgraded EF2000 to the graphics standards, updated WARGEN, and AWACS mode of TAW, it would still be the only jet sim on my hard drive.

I'm seriously hoping that EF:Typhoon will live up to my expectations!!!!

Zhukov

I had finally my GeForce 2 video in and out working last night, and I have some good news for all.
2 years ago, before moving here to the states, I saw the best air show ever, and it's all on tape

The air show was in occasion of the AI ( Italian Air Force) commemoration and comprehends:

On display:

F15, F18, Tornado, F4Phantom, and others.

In flight

EF2000, MiG29, F16, Mirage2000, TornadoADS, Saab Draken, Saab Viggen, Harrier

Patrols from:

UK , 8 elements

FR 6 elements

SP 6 elements

CH 5 elements

ITA 10 elements (Awesome display)

I will be putting some .mov files on my web site soon, but if anybody has the possibility to easily duplicate VHS tapes, or convert from Hi8 PAL format to NTSC VHS format please let me know, I would like to give copies of the tape to anybody in the messageboard and I don't have a 2nd VCR.

Hope you'll like it !