Game News April 26th, 1999
	The cockpit is made of double-walled steel armour, able to protect the crew from hits by 20mm and 23mm gunfire down to ranges as close as 100 m. The interior is black-painted for use with Night Vision Goggles. Cockpit lighting is blue-green to reduce IR signature. Dual controls allow either crew member to fly the aircraft. The pilot sits to Port, the weapons officer to Starboard. There are two Zveda K-37-800 emergency escape systems. In the event of an emergency, the rotor blades explosively separate and the crew seats are simultaneously extracted from the cockpit by large rockets. The Ka-52’s main armament is the single-barrelled 2A42 gun on the starboard side of the fuselage, with up to 470 AP or HE rounds. This gun can be trained hydraulically. The gun is kept on target in azimuth by a tracker which turns the helicopter in its axis. The cannon may be fired in mobile (using the Shkval-V system) or fixed mode (using the HUD). The wings have four BD3-UV pylons, capable of carrying S-8 80mm rockets in B8V20A pods; S-13 122mm rockets in BBL5 pods; 9A4172 Vikhr-M ATGMs on trainable UPP-800 mounts which can be depressed to -12°. Additional weapons such as UPK-23-250 gun pods, Igla AAMs, R-73 AAMs, Kh-25ML ASMs and 500 kg bombs can be carried. Following the pattern set in Team Apache, Team Alligator emphasizes teamwork and squadron management. Successful military operations depend on joint actions. As the group commander, players must assume the responsibility for other pilots in the formation as well as flying their own aircraft. Ka-52 Team Alligator allows for control up to 16 helicopters in real-time via individual and group commands, as well as the ability to interact with air and land forces. Ka-52 Team Alligator will use Simis' latest 3D engine 'Daedalus'. This new engine has been developed over the last 12 months with very high polygon scenes and geometry acceleration as part of the requirement. An early test on Daedalus placed a real time 3D model on the screen (one of the 10,000 polygon pre-rendered models from Team Apache's introduction video.) Ka52 Team Alligator Gamers have been wondering whether any simulations released this year would utilize some of the latest abilities incorporated into 3d accelerators like TNT2 and the Matrox G400. In fact, Ka-52 Team Alligator will use bump mapping, multi-texturing, AGP and texture compression as well as being optimised for Intel's streaming SIMD extensions and AMD 3DNow!. Team Alligators Daedalus engine will allow for moving real-time shadows and bump mapping of snow and water effects. A more detailed and variable terrain system allows for more realistic features such as gullies, rivers, cliffs, crags and realistic tree lines. Mesh deforming animations provide the game with realistic terrain scarring as a result of bomb craters, and dynamic textures indicate movement on water, grass and cornfields. Ka-52 Team Alligator is scheduled for release this fall. Click to continue . . .		Click for 1152x864. MiG Alley I just received a late alpha of this one, and it does indeed look to rival Falcon4 in scope. Rowan's production of Flying Corps last year set a standard, and this time Rowan will add a dynamic campaign, wind and weather, and terrain that surpasses Falcon4. If Rowan can put it all together it will be a winner. For more info see our interview from spring, 1998. Flight Combat Weather effects, a dynamic battlefield, an air and ground and sea war... sounds like the sites are set very high for Looking Glass Technologies coming simulation. Flight Combat will duke it out for air supremacy with Nations: Fighter Command later this year. It should be a great match. One of the unique features will be the ability to occupy a single aircraft (like a B17) with other online players. Your buddies can take the gunner positions and drop the bombs while you pilot the bird through hostile skies. This one is slated for the fall. F4 1.07 Update We published the letter from Steve Blankenship on Saturday. Since that time there has been a storm of reaction, primarily to the fact that multiplayer has taken priority for 1.07 rather than general AI issues which impact ALL players. This is a good point, but it's not entirely correct. The list in Steve's letter makes reference to a fairly wide area of concern, and in fact the list is preliminary and incomplete. By the time 1.07 is released it will address more issues than are mentioned in the letter. It's been a long wait, but progress is being made. I could wish for monthly patches, but let's hope for the best.
Copyright © 1997 - 2000 COMBATSIM.COM, INC. All Rights Reserved. Last Updated April 19th, 1999