Fighter Squadron: Screamin Demons Over Europe is one of the most awaited simulations of 1998, and for good reason! The pedigree of this WWII sim is impeccable, growing out of earlier efforts with the likes of Eric "Hellcats" Parker behind them. If you have played Activisions' A10 Cuba, you have to know we are in for a treat!

Recently we fielded an interview to some of the principles behind FS:SDOE, and we received these responses from Trevor Snowden: Producer for Activision, Eric "Hellcats" Parker of Parsoft Interactive, and John Lemberger: Project manager for FS:SDOE. Not only is the interview exclusive, but some of these screen shots have not appeared elsewhere in any media. Enjoy!

Csim: Thanks for your time, men! As you know, interest in Fighter Squadron Screamin Demons is intense. Can you tell us a bit about your history and how you came to be involved in this project?

Trev: I've always had an enormous interest in simulations, ever since my early gaming days. I've played just about every flight sim over the past 10 years, and have formed a sort of addiction to the modern and WWII flight sims. Activision recognized my experience and heavy interest in flight simulations, and hired me from Interplay, where I had worked on Starfleet Academy and Descent.

Csim: Another history question: tell us about Parsoft Interactive. Was Parsoft involved with Hellcats Over the Pacific? What prompted that direction?

Eric: Flight simulators had always fascinated me, but the reason I started writing one was I had one of those rare Ah-Ha! experiences. The company I had been contracting for received a shipment of Sun SparcStations (this was back when they first came out). I was playing with one one night, and started decrying the low performance of its bus. The CPU was capable of 12 million instructions per second, and the screen displayed 256 colors at 1152x900 resolution, but the bus could only transfer 5 Megabytes per second. That worked out to about five frames per second - even if you were just clearing the screen to a constant color. How stupid, I thought; the CPU is just sitting idle 90% of the time.

Then it hit me - instead of using simple brute force to render the graphics, I could use that idle time to run a compression algorithm that would minimize the amount of data transferred over the bus. It would take more work by the CPU, but throughput should be better.

Boy was it better! Eight hours later I had a cube spinning at over 150 frames per second - at full resolution. The algorithm was linear with screen size. I knew no one else had this capability, so I made plans to produce a product with it. Since the SparcStation was a tiny market, I had to choose between the PC and the Macintosh. I chose the Mac because at the time, it ran at 640x480 while the PC only ran at 320x240, and my algorithm was much better at higher resolutions. 2 years later, Hellcats was released.

Csim: Parsoft has also been involved in Mac games. What are the key differences between these platforms for modern sim developers?

Eric: The differences are really unimportant. I write only a tiny amount of assembly language code anymore because today's CPUs are so fast. Most of my C++ code compiles without changes on both platforms. The advantages that the Mac had years ago have mostly disappeared since DirectX hit the PC market. Today both platforms are excellent game hosts.

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Physics UNBELIEVABLE... That was the only thought I had when I fired up the Fighter Squadron beta for the first time. If the graphics don't cause your jaw to fall through your desk, the physics, sound and damage modelling will.. The strobe effect on props (feather and watch the apparent reversal of direction), attention to detail in damage modelling (crash lightly and bend your prop or your gear, crash hard and watch a prop break or pieces of your airframe go flying, wheels break off and go rolling or bouncing away), the flames and smoke that erupt as you score more hits on your adversary (watch the flames spread rearward as they are fanned in the wind). If thats not enough, cast your eyes over your wing and watch your wing flex and your flaps shake in the turbulence, watch from an outside view and see your gear compress when you land. The sounds ARE awesome, from starting to idle to full throttle. Drop to an idle and the aircraft starts to shake. Ignition off and it revs as it leans out then dies. If you have a subwoofer the roar of the engines WILL be transmitted to your body via vibration. As for combat, the padlock is fairly standard, with scrolling or fixed views as you choose. Click for 800x600 FW-109 in action. I changed resolution to 800x600. Just for fun I put my gear down on the P38 and watched it unfold from the external view. Slow.. very realistic. Then I came in over the beach.. incidentally, the most realistic transition graphics from sand and salt to land and water I have seen anywhere. I came down gently on the sand, slowed, and started to sink! But then I rolled out to the hard ground. Unfortunately once my momentum was gone I was on a slope and I rolled backward and sank in the sand! FSSD will have semi-dynamic campaigns and also allow us to FLY bombers! Nuff for now, more in part 2!

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Csim: A10 Cuba was ground breaking in its simulating real-world physics, both in flight models and even in such esoteria as landing-gear and belly landing physics. How will this experience be reflected and surpassed in Fighter Squadron?

Trev: FS:SDOE will have a much more extensive flight physics model than A-10 Cuba. This time around, we have focused on all aspects of the aircraft. Wings bend and break, gears bend and snap off, tires come off and roll away, propellers curl back and break off, etc. There are so many factors involved, such as whether you land on grass or pavement, or which side of the aircraft is taking most of the stress and whether it's going to break away or not. And this is only what can happen if you hit the ground! There are just as many factors acting upon the plane in the air as well.

Csim: In a recent interview with the developers of Fighter Duel 2.0 I was pleased to find that ballistics modeling is another growth area for prop sims. Is this also the case with Fighter Squadron?

Eric: I don't really understand what the term ballistics modeling means. If it means doing dynamics, then I've been doing it for years. FSSD will be no different, but now each component of a vehicle will compute its own forces, so you'll see wings flexing (and sometimes shearing off), propellers twisting to maintain the RPM setting, the nose pitching down due to flaps deployment, excess drag due to combat damage etc.

Csim: When the first screen shots from FSSD were released last summer it was obvious that a new graphics engine had been done. I recall reading something about "rivets on the cockpit!" Tell us about this new G3 engine and the artwork we'll see.

Eric: G3 is my attempt to keep up with the fast moving 3D graphics environment on the PC. We can customize G3 to render with Direct3D, OpenGL, Glide, or anything else that comes down the pike. A new engine can be added to G3 in just a few days. Of course the quality of the art depends on the artists, and we have some of the best in the industry.

Csim: How main stream does Parsoft consider 3d hardware? Are you still concerned to make FSSD playble on non 3d accelerated systems?

Trev: We believe 3D cards are playing a very big roll in flight sims, and plan on taking as much advantage them as possible. But we are also working hard on the software version, since there is a significant percentage of users who don't use or have access to hardware acceleration.

Csim: What kind of frame rate can we expect on a P200MMX under 3dfx hardware Voodoo 1, and at what resolutions?

Trev: We are targeting 15-20fps (or higher) with full detail at 640x480 by the time of release.

The inside view of the B-17. Click for a larger image.

Csim: Tell us about other aspects of the graphical environment. Will we see fog patches, cloud layers, dynamic lighting?

JohnL: The most noticeable graphical improvement over previous Parsoft simulations is the fully textured environment in FS:SDOE. This combined with the outstanding smoke & fire effects make for truly stunning visuals. We do have plans to add cloud layers before ship, and we expect the clouds will be true three dimensional objects.

Csim: A-10 Cuba! and A10 Attack also had some truly impressive sound effects. The authentic sound of the high-bypass turbofans and the "ripping cloth" sound of the 30mm Gatling cannon stand out in particular. What are some of the highlights we can expect in the sound effects department for FS:SDOE? Will each aircraft type have its own engine sounds? Are different guns sampled uniquely?

Trev: We want everything to sound as real as the rest of the game feels, so we've built an extensive library of actual sound effects of the actual planes, guns, engines, stalls, explosions and tension/stress. And yes, different engines will sound different, as well as different guns.

To hear the sound of an FW 109 click FW 109

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Go to Part II