Combat Flight Simulator 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jump to: navigation, search

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2006)Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater
Developer(s)Microsoft Game StudiosPublisher(s)MicrosoftSeriesCombat Flight SimulatorPlatform(s)PCRelease date(s)2000Genre(s)Flight simulationMode(s)Single Player, MultiplayerRating(s)EveryoneMediaCDROMSystem requirementsMinimum Windows 95,98,ME,2000 32MB RAM (64MB for Windows 2000), Quad speed CDROM or faster, Processor 266 MHz or Higher, Hard Drive Space 350 MB,Super VGA(800X600)16bit,DirectX 7.0 and compatible Sound Card.
Input methodsKeyboard, Joystick and MouseMicrosoft Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater is the successor to the highly successful Combat Flight Simulator WWII Europe Series, the first combat conversion of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. The gameplay takes place in the Pacific War and includes campaigns loosely based on historical air battles, from both the American and Japanese perspectives.
Because of the open-ended architecture of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, the platform for this simulator, many enthusiasts have created massive amounts of extra scenery, aircraft, missions and campaigns.
Contents




[hide]
1 Strategy and air combat software
2 The Combat Flight Simulator 2 (CFS2) as a Strategy simulator
3 CFS2 Main features
4 CFS2 Wingmen capabilities
4.1 Themes and Scenery
4.2 Types of aircraft performance
4.3 Aircraft liveries - Textures or ‘skins’
4.4 Views and sounds
4.5 Combat Scenarios from the original package
5 CFS2 Mission Builder
6 Add-ons
[edit] Strategy and air combat software

Combat flight simulators, although derived from standard aircraft flight simulators, are not simply aimed at leisure flying in a nicely simulated environment. They deal mainly with aircraft performance, maneuvering, strategy and tactics, opponent behavior, extra visual effects (like weapons, explosions , target damage) and are often inspired from historical air combat data. As such, not all related software on the market, should be called 'combat flight simulators,' as many focus only on graphics, while others rely on ‘shoot’em up’ features with no importance placed on strategy or mission variety.
In the early 90s, the first ever such combat simulator with rich strategy features and its own mission building possibilities was the ’trilogy’ package by LucasArts, known as the "Air Combat Classics." It consisted of "Battle Hawks 1942," "Their Finest Hour," and "SWOTL". In this software, the opponent developed strategies on attack and defense that you had to compete and there were facilities for building your own missions and/or campaigns and even recording and filming some duration of your own fighting scene and then rewinding to look around in free view to assess the results. Additionally you could fly all the types included, that contained fighters and bombers. In bombers one could play all the roles in them, like pilot, gunner, bombardier etc. Due to their exteme popularity, there are still websites hosting guidelines, free mission files and other add-ons open for free downloads compatible to the games.
Designed, however, in the days of poorer PC performance it was limited to VGA 16 color graphics and was suitable rather for the slower CPUs below some 150 MHz. For unknown reasons, LucasArts decided not to update this product on PCs, despite the demand, but eventually promoted another similar version for the PS2 platform (‘Secret Weapons Over Normandy’) that came rather closer to a shoot’em up version. A number of others was passed fairly unnoticed by the strategy enthusiasts who appreciated the mental factor more than the graphics.

[edit] The Combat Flight Simulator 2 (CFS2) as a Strategy simulator

Ever since, the main product that appeared on the market combining sound flight simulator characteristics with a ‘strategy philosophy’ in air combat was the Microsoft (MS)-CFS2. Actually most of LucasArts ‘tactics’ re-appeared with it. One cannot comment about any possible ‘co-ordination’ between the two software but for those ‘veterans’ who used to design missions with both programs some obvious relations can be detected. However , since Microsoft has maintained all its good characteristics from its previous ‘know-how’ with flight simulators and its modern graphics, the CFS2 program stays always well above the typical shoot’em-up mentality and has been praised a lot by the users who also like its creativity and add-on features. This makes the CFS2 a very important program that is used as a kind of ‘platform’ for the many air combat enthusiasts. An additional factor to it is that a number of users were able to create historically extremely correct missions and fly them in CFS2 so that, in a sense, the program becomes a history 'animator' or 'viewer'.
Although there has been previously a CFS1 and then a CFS3 version by MS, there have been serious changes between these versions where continuity was not always a given fact. On this ground many blogging site fans expressed the feeling that CFS2 is still unsurpassed and will so stay for at least a decade more.

[edit] CFS2 Main features

The program is offered in a set of 2 CDs and you have to keep one of them in the PC drive while running. That was a solution for those PCs who were not having yet a vast memory capability

[edit] CFS2 Wingmen capabilities

Although in the original Combat Flight Simulator users were accompanied in the air by AI Wingmen, they suffered from being poor shots, lack of commands e.g. Attack my Target, Engage the Enemy, and in some cases were not able to survive a lot of Battle Damage and collided with the player. In Combat Flight Simulator 2 however the whole Wingmen capability was expanded including: Ability to change positions of Wingmen in the player's section e.g. Ability to click and drag wingman from Second Flight Leader Position to Number Two position of Second Flight, Wingmen gained skill as the player progressed through the Campaign, however the AI Wingmen did not actively seek to engage the enemy and in most cases the player would have to direct them to engage the enemy. However Microsoft addressed this as being purposefully set, so that the player would have to carry out the bulk of the mission objectives. Wingmen also have full names e.g. Jason Fomichev, Frank Sutherland. In the original Combat Flight Simulator wingmen had one word names e.g. Old, Garth, Sutherland. Overall the wingmen capability in Combat Flight Simulator 2 is greatly improved from the previous version. However they still suffer from some very serious flaws the most notable being - following out-of control damaged enemy aircraft (such as those that lost a whole wing) and crashing with them (while attempting to deliver an unnecessary coup de grace) and totally disregarding the terrain when ordered to strafe ground targets (i.e. flying into mountains while approaching their strafing target). They still occasionally collide with each other (notably while circling above the carrier while waiting for the player to take-off) or when chasing enemy aircraft in pairs. All of this happens regardless of whether they are damaged or being under any kind of attack at all. Since the campaign fails if you lose more than ten wingmen and fail in a mission, this can lead to some serious frustrations, or the need to start some missions over and over again, even though you survived and carried out your mission, each time hoping that the wingmen won't ruin the game with their poor performance.

[edit] Themes and Scenery

The themes come from the Pacific War air fighting between 1941-44 but MS did very well to stick to the real stories of aces who fought on those days so that all scenarios for exercising and competing were designed after some real historic events and you are asked to take part in scenarios really flown by US Navy and Marine Aces. (Check the : http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs2/)
The scenery around which you may put your fighting experiences is coming from the same one that fit to the Pacific Islands in those days. You may add extra weather conditions selecting between clear sky, light or heavy cloud coverage and day or night conditions
The term scenery CFS2 also describes any special graphics that refer to additional components , weapons, special visual effects - like explosions and smoke - , or even particular instrument effects
A vast library of scenery features exist in CFS2 to create the battle environment. They can be static or animated. Most of the static ones are buildings, trees, bridges, aerodromes, harbors, barrage balloons, tents, barracks etc. The ones that may become moving objects are vehicles, tanks, destroyers, carriers, submarines and planes. All of them can become targets and most of them have a damage animation as well , eg : a ship is hit , you see explosions and flames and you will eventually see it sinking and disappearing below the waves. Tents , buildings and barracks are exploding , collapsing and then become rubbles and dust leaving holes on the ground.
Although not part of the scenery as such , the enemy planes appear in the sky with tags, containing their unit identity (if assigned one) and distance , in red characters. This is a very basic feature of CFS2 and has become a kind of part of the standard scenery. In the previous installment of the Combat Flight Simulator Series only the enemy aircraft's aircraft type and distance from the player were listed. However the Player's wingmen had tags with their 'name' and distance from the player. This does not differ much in Combat Flight Simulator 2 except that the Wingmen have 'proper' names.
Another new addition to Combat Flight Simulator 2 is that individual bullet holes appear where bullets have hit the plane, rather than pieces flying off the plane and random puffs of smoke and preset damage textures for specific parts of an object.

An F4F (set to be the Joe Foss plane) taking-off from Guadalcanal Henderson’s field, is trying to intercept the Japanese attackers coming from the north. The names of the Japanese units appear on the sky in red followed by their distance ( example : Aoshima 5719)

[edit] Types of aircraft performance

There are two category of planes you may select from : the flyable and the non-flyable ones. The first category comprises types you may pilot yourself in combat, the other types you may only use as escorts or enemies in a fighting scenario. The main flyable fighting types for the CFS2 are the F4F Wildcat, the Japanese Zero and the F6F Hellcat. These are by far the best performing types with an extreme resemblance to the real battle performance. They can act as fighters , bombers or rocket launching ground attack fighters and can be used in all Pacific War scenarios in the program. If missions are designed with accurate historical data they do produce almost the same results as with the actual air battles themselves! There are a number of historical dogfights in the Pacific that one may faithfully reproduce with CFS2.
This is not, however, the case with other types. Notably , the famous for their speed and power F4U-1 Corsair and P-38 Lighting are by far less performing than the others , whom they were supposed to exceed both in speed and power. Most of the other non-flyable types are behaving almost well. However, their effectiveness is greatly affected by position and altitude settings on a mission design ; for example most of the torpedo planes fail to hit ships if not set to attack at a very low level. Bombers are usually more effective but even so you have to assign ace skill for their pilots if you need to heavily damage the enemy. Some of the additional types available from amateur designers appear to have a number of additional problems. Occasi

For combat objects (aircraft, planes, vehicles, guns…) the selection involves :
- nationality (which defines the attitude of the other objects. For example if an object is a plane of Japanese nationality it will fire at you if you are a USN pilot)
- name of group/unit and number of planes in it (8 planes is the limit for one unit/group but many other groups can be created. Pilot names in the same unit appear with numbers after the same unit name , ie : in the Aoshima group pilots appear as Aoshima (leader) , Aoshima-1, Aoshima-2 etc)
- position or tracks and waypoints to follow
- speed and altitude at waypoints
- operational task (strike, anti-ship, defend, intercept…) at waypoints
- ability of the pilot or ship captain (rookie, average, veteran , ace)
- payload ( arms carried . This option is variable according to the type )
- unit aggressiveness during battle



- group activation time and/or when to reappear
Triggering Events
On the purpose of creating some Events in the mission first the Triggering conditions have to be established. There is a variety of triggers that refer to number of kills , status of aircraft , object health (damage etc.) , position ( in – out of an area ) , time elapsed in mission and so on.
Events
Once the triggers have been defined then the Events are created to be activated after the predefined triggering conditions occur. For example you may congratulate a pilot for having scored 5 kills or announce to a pilot that his target was annihilated or that new enemy planes are approaching from a direction.


On editing these events one may combine a number of triggers that finally create a response as a result of this event. For example you may create a text to be displayed in front of a pilot to announce his 5 kills , and/or create a report that will appear at the end of the mission during the debriefing and/or a voice message. These voice messages must be voice files that are either existing in the program under the folder \SOUNDS or you created them by recording your own voice telling anything you want and saving this as a voice file in the folder \SOUNDS . An event can be also a restriction on a flight or maybe the mission termination itself. Many events can be created in one event and may also be sequenced in time. You may also assign an event as a task to be achieved which contributes to your final score and/or create a repetitive warning while it is still valid. Imagination only can be a limit, as everything depends on the user her/himself. The only point to pay attention to is that some events need special triggers and will not occur unless the triggers are successfully defined.



These data are compiled automatically upon saving under a scrip given the file name + the .dyn extension (filename.dyn) and is saved in the \MISSIONS folder of CFS2.
extra mission builder highlights
The experienced user may also edit the text of the *.mis and *.dyn files in order to achieve some other features not immediately controllable from the Mission Builder. One may assign:
- individual names to pilots in the same unit
- different aircraft types in the same group
- individual names to ship units other than the simple code numbers offered for , say , destroyers. Ie : one may rename the DD-245 as , say, USS Mahan
By editing some other files of the original CFS2 version one may :
- add more names for pilots and units to choose from in the mission builder
- more nationalities and allocation to sides as Allies or Axis

[edit] Add-ons

The myriads of CFS2 fans and the software knowledge and effort spent have produced miracles. At present CFS2 is used to simulate combats anywhere on earth and any aircraft type one may imagine. Europe itself , both during WW1 and 2 and even the Spanish Civil War air battles have become common place for a simulator initially made to be good only for the Pacific. Add-ons are even commercially produced and sold comprising new sceneries, types of aircraft, effects etc. Many more others are available free from various sites and even simply exchanged between fans, such as special skins and modified performance types. Their success is variable depending on the creators , at times the abilities of certain types are intentionally overstressed or others fail to perform according to the historical data. Yet , with the abundance encountered all over, few users only can be disappointed.
In the two above screenshots apart from the basic world scenery everything else is an add-on element. This mission is based historically on the first day of the Greek-Italian air war on 28.10.1940 over Ioannina NW Greece. The Greek Gladiator biplane, the shot down Italian Canti1007Z bomber , the damage effects, the Ioannina airfield and the mission scenario were all created by CFS2 fans
Yet there exist disadvantages. Add-ons present some difficulties for the average user :
- There is a complexity in file organization. There are folders that host the various components and one should be very familiar with where exactly every element should be placed. Usually any absence of a single element may render the particular aircraft or scenario unusable. Occasionally some designers offer an automatic installation facility but even then the user may find problems with missing parts or components’ incompatibility.
- Various downloaded types need a number of other co-operating add-ons to activate all the various effects and components. Some of them have to be downloaded from different sites. At times the files are not followed by any information of what other add-ons are necessary for a downloaded type to function
- Mission files especially need to be followed by all aircraft types and objects included in them , extra gauges, sceneries, effects etc. One component missing will end up in a ‘Data Base corrupted’ error message halting any further running.
- However, if one restricts her/himself to the types and effects existing in the original disks , any mission in the Pacific may run without a problem and add-ons are not really needed. One may find many free add-ons in the links http://www.simviation.com/, http://www.sim-outhouse.com/index.php and by reading this post http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1117604819/all
- A very active CFS 2 community is located at the Sim-Outhouse flight simulation web site. New aeroplanes, missions; campaigns, ships; vehicles, tanks; land class, buildings and airfields are constantly under construction and offered as free downloads to CFS 2 aficionados. You can met with and join in on an active forum here: Sim-Outhouse.com
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Flight_Simulator_2"
Categories: World War II flight simulation video games | Windows games | 2000 video games | Video game sequels
Hidden categories: Cleanup from December 2006 | All pages needing cleanup



Views

Article
Discussion
Edit this page
History
Personal tools

Log in / create account
Navigation

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search

This post was not written by I. It was posted for the benefit of the community.
     

A lot of it reads like an advertisement;

you spend too much time explaining words you don't think the reader will understand.

There is too much opinion written in instead of simple indisputable facts about the game. What may be satisfactory to you may not be to someone else. Things you say are "most important" or "very important" may not be important at all to someone else.

This article could be half as long as what it is now. It doesn't read as an unbiased perspective.

yep. now that i've seen your writing, i can definitely tell you did not pen the article.