Flight Simulators Reach New Heights

By AARON CURTISS

April 26, 1999 12 AM PT

Flight simulators have long been a staple in any well-balanced video game diet. They provide a welcome break from the screeching and belching of most games and actually teach players something about the physics of flight. They demand patience and finesse just to keep the digital planes in the air.

Problem is, a lot of the traditional flight sims were pretty boring. Sure, aspiring pilots could tool over the cities of the world and buzz landmarks. But about the only thing they could blow up was themselves.

The games that did feature aerial combat skimped on the flight physics and often featured unrealistic graphics on the order of green equals ground, blue equals sky.

But with today’s PCs able to handle better graphics and process data faster, a whole new crop of combat flight sims can deliver the best of both worlds: realistic dogfights alongside faithful aeronautics and aerodynamics. And in the best of the games, players finish smarter than they were when they began. Now there’s a switch.

Microsoft’s “Combat Flight Simulator” is perhaps the best available combat flight sim, combining the company’s top-rated “Flight Simulator” franchise with historic missions from the Allied air campaigns over World War II Europe. The beauty of “Combat Flight Simulator” lies in its attention to detail and its variety of play settings that allow even rank amateurs to start knocking Nazis out of the sky.

With dozens of missions at various times and locations in the European theater, pilots can work their way through campaigns or pick a single challenge. The game defaults to simpler flight controls, but those who want technical challenges can enable all the same functions as in “Flight Simulator.”

In the air, pilots can sustain damage from enemy planes that affects flight performance. The trick is compensating and understanding the rules of flight sufficiently to prevent spinning out of control. It’s tricky business, but the instruction manual does a great job of covering the basics and then spends dozens upon dozens of pages discussing various Allied and enemy aircraft and detailing campaigns. For an instruction manual, it’s surprisingly good reading.

“Combat Flight Simulator” requires a Pentium 133 with at least 16 megabytes of RAM and 200mb of free hard disk space. For best graphic results, players should have an accelerator card.

Although I preferred “Combat Flight Simulator,” Activision’s “Fighter Squadron” offers very good flight and combat action--again in the skies over Europe. Players can choose from 10 planes, each with its own flight characteristics, and take off on 30 distinct missions. By switching allegiances, players can take on as many as 90 challenges.

For players who prefer to make up their own missions, the level editor permits alterations to existing missions and allows players to upload them to the Internet. Network or Internet play allows up to 16 pilots to fight one another.

“Fighter Squadron” boasts great physics, and enemy pilots fly in crazy patterns that can be tough to lock on to. As with “Combat Flight Simulator,” players can elect to dumb down the controls or stick with technical flying.

“Fighter Squadron” requires a Pentium 266 with 64mb of RAM without a video card and a Pentium 200 with 32mb of RAM with a video card. The game gobbles up 400mb of hard disk space.

Players who tire of knocking Messerschmitts out of the Normandy sky can fire up their own 109 in “Luftwaffe Commander,” a sim that puts players on the side of the Nazis.

Although there is plenty of technical flying and fighting in “Luftwaffe Commander,” it seemed much more difficult to learn than either “Fighter Squadron” or “Combat Flight Simulator.” And the payoff wasn’t that great. I ended up switching off most of the technical elements and even then I wasn’t having a very good time.

“Luftwaffe Commander” requires a Pentium 166 with 32mb of RAM and 195mb of available hard drive space.

While it may be difficult to measure the realism of flight in “X-Wing Alliance,” I would say it qualifies as a combat flight simulator. And what a combat flight simulator it is.

Set in the “Star Wars” universe, “X-Wing Alliance” follows the transformation of Ace Azzameen from novice freighter pilot to galactic protector.

The latest in a series that began with “X-Wing” in 1993, “X-Wing Alliance” remains faithful both to the history of the games and the movies that inspired them. Players pilot everything from Corellian freighters to A-Wings to Y-Wings.

Control is like butter, and the heads-up display keeps perfect track of mission objectives, enemy locations and ship status, as well as chatter from other characters. That chatter helps drive the story line and keeps cumbersome plot devices to a minimum.

“X-Wing Alliance” is all play.

It requires a Pentium 200 with at least 32mb of RAM. The game requires graphics hardware.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every Monday in The Cutting Edge. To suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

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Essentials

Fighter Squadron

* Platform: PC

* Publisher: Activision

* ESRB* rating: Everyone

* Price: $39.95

* Bottom line: Quite good

Luftwaffe Commander

* Platform: PC

* Publisher: Strategic Simulations

* ESRB rating: Everyone