"The things you can count on after attending E3 are ringing ears and sore feet." - Snackoism
The 1999 E3 conference in Los Angeles was my second opportunity to rub
shoulders with industry insiders and knowledgeable military simulation
enthusiasts. On a professional level it was a great opportunity to
learn more about what's going on in the industry and communicate it
back to the readers.
On a personal level, it was a good place to hook up with friends and
talk seriously about our collective personal passions for military
simulations. Over the course of three days I was able to get my fill on
both levels.
I must say, while E3 is a great place to get a look-see at sims
that are currently in development, it's a bad place if your intention
is to wring the software inside and out. The loud, often obnoxious,
roar of voices and music often drowns out your questions.
Last year was better: we seemed to have access to more "behind the
scenes" rooms that if nothing else were a way of sitting down and
asking questions without straining your voice. Several people I spoke
with on Saturday (the last day) had already lost their voice, or were
quickly heading in that direction.
Although my Mark One Eyeball is always on the lookout for the
next killer sim, I have to constantly remind myself that we are viewing
products that are in different states of completion. Most were in a
high-alpha code state, which means that we could only observe small
sections of the sim that were "working." Unfortunately, "working" can
be a very subjective term.
When conducting my interviews, certain patterns start to
emerge: you can ask the person showing the sim about a certain feature,
and the response is about 95% of the time "yes, it will be in there."
Kudos to all the developers for trying to be aggressive with their
feature set.
But unfortunately the realities of business sometimes get in
the way, and some of the features will get axed as delivery time nears.
After seeing this pattern several times you learn to adopt a "wait and
see" approach.
"The feature set of any given sim will be the one decided upon about a month before it's released to manufacturing." - Snackoism
Following are detailed previews of most of the popular sims, but for
the moment let's take a look at our whirlwind tour of the E3 floor.
Armored Fist III
First on our stop was Novalogic. We hooked up with Dan Bennett who has
taken up shop as Novalogic's PR Manager in-residence. We got a look at
several sims: F-22 Lightning 3, Delta Force 2, and Armored Fist 3.
Several sims in development were also noted: Maximum Overkill, Wolfpack
2, Joint Strike Fighter, and Commanche 4. Whew - Novalogic is going to
be quite busy!
The best look at a sim I received at the Novalogic booth was Armored
Fist 3. Nigel Mills, Associate Producer on the product, walked me
through the sim.
Scheduled for an early fall release, AF3 emphasizes team-play more than
any other tank sim to-date. Their interest is to allow up to 3 human
players to play inside an M1A2 tank. Also emphasized is the commander
function, which allows a person to coordinate the movements and actions
of the 4 tanks in their platoon, and up to 8 platoons.
Shadows, weather effects, smoke, fog, and grass will all be
resident in the sim, but the sim continues to use the Voxel engine to
render it's graphics. Voxel is great from a low-to-mid system where
frame rates are a concern, but to me the engine has never been visually
pleasing.
Next stop was to speak with Carl Schnurr, producer of Rainbow Six:
Rouge Spear from RedStorm Entertainment. While not a revolutionary
upgrade from its predecessors, Rouge Spear represents continuation and
improvement on what was already a great sim.
Most improved in Rogue Spear are the motion capture aspects.
The range of motions has been greatly enhanced: if a terrorist/friendly
gets wounded, you will see the limp. You will also see the terrorists
nodding off.
The AI and graphics have been heavily reworked as well:
improved special effects and character models have all seen a dramatic
enhancement. The flash bang effect now affects your retinas for a 30-60
second window. There are several new weapons including 3 new sniper
rifles. There will also be an "encumbrance" model included that better
simulates being weighted down by dress, equipment, and wounds.
MiG Alley
Andrei Nadin was kind enough to walk us through Mig Alley. I
think this sim has a good chance of giving Falcon 4.0 a run for its
money because of the depth of campaign play and the sense of
environment.
Multiplayer includes support up to 8 players and they can work in opposition or cooperation.
The modeling of the terrain and objects in the Mig Alley world was
nice, but it's not up to the standard that sims are demonstrating.
While "eye candy" is not what it's all about, in my opinion it really
helps with the suspension of disbelief and it contributes to the
overall enjoyment of the experience.
The use of a Forward Air Controller (FAC) really sets Mig Alley
apart from other sims. You will be given the ability to interact with a
pilot who's sole purpose is to ID and communicate enemy activity. The
FAC will fire Willie Pete (White Phosphorus) rockets at your intended
target and you are to follow the rockets in with an explosives strike.
You will then be scored as to how accurate your strike was.
Hidden and Dangerous was an interesting sim. Set in Europe during WW2,
this first person shooter gives you the ability to perform commando
operations behind enemy lines.
While the motion capture of the soldiers could stand some
improvement, the mission selection, ordnance, and general atmosphere
are incredible.
SSI: Naval Heaven
For the grognards, SSI had the most going on. Between Flanker
2.0, Harpoon IV, Destroyer Commander, Silent Hunter 2, and Fighting
Steel, the hard-core fanatics should be satiated for some time to come.
Carl Norman, Rick Martinez, Sean Decker, and Joel Billings were all kind enough to step us through their products.
Flanker 2.0 - A lot has
been written about this already, so I won't attempt to repeat the
details. Suffice to say that multi-player will be robust and allow
cooperative missions. The number of players allowed by the multiplayer
missions will be determined by the available bandwidth. As the comms
code has yet to be tweaked, the maximum number of on-line players has
yet to be determined.
Harpoon IV - This will be the one that
the naval hard-core fans relish. Early prototypes of the user interface
look to be clean and useful. Add in a fair amount of 3D graphics to
view the action and this one should cause many sleepless nights and
broken relationships.
HIV Notifs
Destroyer Commander - I'm looking
forward to this one very much. Naval combat is one of my favorites and
having the ability to conduct surface operations anywhere in the world
during WW2 will be a real kick. Add in the ability to multi-play with
Silent Hunter 2 and you will get one robust environment.
In Destroyer Commander you will have the ability to control one ship or
a squadron of up to eight. According to Rick Martinez, the producer of
Destroyer Command, every station aboard ship will be modeled - all
except the head.
Unfortunately there wasn't much to see at this point and we
should look for Destroyer Commander to hit the shelves sometime during
the 2nd quarter of 2000(?).
Deck Gun
Silent Hunter 2 - This time you have the opportunity to become a U-boat commander during WW2 (Ed. See our Military History
Index.) We got a look at some alpha code during E3 and we've been given
some information that the 3D engine will be undergoing a major
improvement. Information on this is forthcoming from the developer.
Look for Silent Hunter 2 sometime this summer.
Fighting Steel - SSI showed Fighting Steel during the 1998 E3 show, and
from what I saw of the sim this time around it was almost complete.
Joel Billings, the producer of Fighting Steel walked us through it. For
the most part, Fighting Steel looks very similar what was shown last
year, at least on the surface. I've recently received a preview build
of Fighting Steel and I will be sharing an advanced look at this
incredible sim in the near future.
F/A-18 Super Hornet - This sim from Digital Integration/Titus
was one of my biggest surprises at this year's E3. I was expecting a
nice sim, but what I saw will keep me watching anxiously for the day
that it hits the store shelves.
I will be conducting a more in-depth review of F/A-18 Super Hornet
in the near future, but suffice to say this sim is truly unique. Not
only has it retained the famous Digital Integration mission planner,
but it also has carrier ops!
Not only do the carrier ops have little "yellow shirts" and "green
shirts", but the jet blast deflectors (JBDs) and catapults are fully
articulated with motion and steam. In one scene I observed all four
cats launching aircraft simultaneously. Imagine four aircraft being
queued for launch while the carrier desk personnel run around
performing their tasks. Too cool.
Jane's F/A-18 - Jane's is at it again, and their "Project X" has came
to light as an F/A-18. In this sim they model the forthcoming Super
Hornet, but just the E model - the now infamous front-seat/back-seat
doesn't look to make it into this version. Even so, what I saw was
incredible.
Multiplayer will include cooperative play, and the sim does include
ACMI functionality. The F/A-18 object itself is truly amazing and the
cockpit it very nice. The flight model displayed is undergoing some
work right now, as one would expect for a product so early in the
development process. The sim makes use of the best facets of F-15 and
should give us something to look forward to.
Fly! - Terminal Reality set up across the street from the main hall an
actual fuselage of an old Cessna. Inside the fuselage they had
installed all of the controllers necessary to fly the sim. I had a
great time with the realistic yoke and pedals. This set up gave me a
good feel as to how the flight model performed. They really weren't set
up in this display to explore the other options of the sim, but
according to recent press releases, this sim is almost ready for
prime-time. From what I saw, this sim will give Microsoft and Looking
Glass a run for their money.
MS Flight Simulator 2000 - Well, I tried to give this one an
honest look-see, but the versions they had set up at the booth were
quite rough. Frame rates were very poor and I had a lot of trouble in
getting my booth to work at all.
Granted this is probably early in the development cycle, but a working
prototype should have been on display. What I did see didn't look that
different than MSFS '98, so I think we'll come back to this one when
it's had a little more time to simmer.
Jane's USAF - Although it might be easy to dismiss this survey
sim as just another soft-to-medium core game, Jane's/EA has put
together something more than what might look to be on the surface as an
improvement to IAF.
There looks to be voice activation for wingman commands as well
as mission recording and playback. High-res fanatics should be please
as screen resolutions should go as high as 1280x1024. And yes, the
shimmering terrain has been fixed. USAF also includes virtual as well
as 2D cockpits. When you hook this into Jane's World War, we may have a
winner here.
Let's take a look at some of my highlights:
Best Jet Sim
Finalists: Digital Integration/Titus Super Hornet, Empire/Rowan
- MiG Alley, EA/Jane's F/A-18, and SSI's Flanker 2 - Winner: Tie -
Super Hornet and MiG Alley
Finalists: Game Commander, Matrox G400Max, Turtle Beach Montego II - Winner: Game Commander
My "winners" really reflect being able to bring something new to the
table. I probably will be playing all of these sims when they arrive
and I'm sure I will enjoy each and every one of them. It's just nice to
see some developers/publishers concentrating on new environments,
technology, situations, and gameplay.
"The amount of time I have is inversely proportional to the number of new sims released to the market." - Snackoism
With respect to Gene Siskel, here are some of
my 1999 E3 highlights:
Thumbs Down to the many sim developers/publishers that did not include
adequate HOTAS setups with their displays. All too often we were asked
to get the feel of simulations while using Microsoft gaming sticks.
Yikes.
Double Thumbs Down to Psygnosis for displaying Nations with NO STICK what so ever. What gives?
Thumbs Up to SSI and Digital Integration for giving us good HOTAS to fly their sims with. Hoo-ah.
Thumbs Down to Jane's for not showing any of A-10 or Fleet Command.
Jane's reasoning for not showing Fleet Command was because it was a
released product. Well, it did release, but only days before E3 and we
did not have access to preview versions. I'm still wondering why they
didn't show A-10.
Thumbs Up to the many gaming companies that included "show babes" with their displays.
Thumbs Down to the babes for not inviting me home.
Thumbs Down to the sim companies as a whole because they didn't.
Thumbs Up to EA/Jane's who got pictures of Xena, Warrior Princess flying F/A-18. Ok CJ, where are the pics?
Thumbs Up to ME for remembering to bring sturdy walking shoes and my knapsack to carry my E3 literature in.
Our intrepid Editor at SSI
Thumbs Down to ME for forgetting to set my voice tape recorder
properly and loosing some valuable "question and answer" time. Damn
this new fangled technology.
Thumbs Down to Dan "Crash" Crenshaw for forgetting his camera
on one particular day, and not allowing us to take pictures of Bubba
Wolford in front of the "Bubba's Hunting Lodge" display and the entire
COMBATSIM crew in front of the Mattel Barbie display. Damn, lost
opportunities. (By-gones)
Well, there's always next year!
Left - The COMBATSIM.COM™ crew at the Jane's display.
