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Combat Flight Simulator II
by Jim "Twitch" Tittle

Don't look for too many long-range kills without plenty of experience or Easy settings. That Betty with the 20mm tail gun will get hits on you at 500 feet too! You'll be seeing the nicely done bail out depiction as you egress your crate and open your chute. Lead deflection seems about right but initially you will get your kills up close from six o'clock. At the end of your mission you will see the appropriate screen depicting the mood of the mission. If you bailed out you'll see your crashed plane, you parachuting and such in illustration panels. When you are successful you'll see the plane landing and you in the cockpit, relieved to be back. When you make ace you get a commendation document recognizing the fact. Medals and promotions are earned from positive actions. A scoreboard screen of missions and victories of you and your group is viewed.

Microsoft's SDK

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I don't know why sim developers always seem to put a plane like the P-39 or similar with a big cannon unless it's a freebee for modifiers to experiment with. Why not put the P-40 in the sim since it was more widespread in use? AOTP had the 37mm that was applicable in AOE. EAW has the 57mm. Tucker Hatfield knows as well as anyone about the wants of mod makers. With the weapons array in the files you can build about any plane you want.

Over Sawu Island

There is an "addon" folder in the directory for good reason and parts of mods will mostly drop in there when they come. Wish the sim had the F4U-1C with the four 20mms? With Microsoft's open file structure I was able to make the switch in minutes without even hex editing! Aircraft FMs and shapes seem almost as comprehensible at first glance.

Best I can tell, there is a full assortment of texture files in .BMP format that looks like all the planes from CFS plus objects and buildings and all the planes and things in CFS II for easy skin painting. It's going to be a modifier's paradise! I'll be looking forward to the completed release, you should be too.

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