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State of the Art in Combat Flight Sims

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: October 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I know I'm dating myself, but my first flight simulator really was the old wireframe flight simulator you could play on an 8086 processor back in 1987. It even had a rinky dink little combat mode where you could go head to head with another biplane in a WWI dogfight. Simple stuff, but a blast.

Since then I progressed to Red Baron on the 286 (one of the best flight sims ever made), Aces Over Europe, Falcon, Red Baron II (one of the buggiest games ever), Stealth Fighter, and so on. But the modern jet fighter sims with their fly-by-wire feel and shoot-from-ten-miles-away combat left me cold. So I've returned to my roots in the great wars of the 20th century by purchasing CFS3. And I haven't found much to dissapoint me yet.

First, the graphics are simply gorgeous. The planes are incredibly well modeled and half the time I find myself forgetting to shoot and simply starring at the screen. The ground is well done, too, especially from altitude, and still looks remarkably good close up (certainly much better then most, although I have yet to try IL2 which I hear is pretty damn good as well).

18 flyable plane models, with a total of 34 variants, makes for alot of flexibility and replayability, and alot to learn. So far I've flown several from each of the major represented powers (the US, Germany and Britain) and found each plane acted in accordance to my expectations. The Spitfire is remarkably agile and graceful, easy to fly and hard to stall. The BF109 is fast and maneuverable, almost TOO damn fast at times it seems. The mustang is a bit more difficult to handle then either of those two, but still a potent weapon and damnably fast. The Crusader is one heck of a tough, fast tank in the air, and with it's multiple stations you can switch between (5 machine gun locations, a pilot's station AND a bombadier site) you can have an awful lot of fun in it do anything BUT piloting (but the pilot also gets access to four fuselage mounted MG's for straffing attacks which is astoundingly fun).

Ground attacks are well modeled and have a general authentic feel to them. While trucks and jeeps and trains aren't as graphically beautiful as the airplanes you fly, all are recognizable and distinguishable from a distance. Shoot up the first truck in a convoy to block the rest, then cruise back and forth to take the rest out. The explosions could look a little nicer, but are still quite satisfying.

Damage models are fantastic. I overshot an enemy BF109 and rammed into his tail causing a catestrophic failure of my poor Spitfire's airframe. Switching to an external view, I saw the wreckage of my plane plummeting nose first towards the ground, both wings ripped off and tangled metal struts jutting from the frame where flames spewed back along the fuselage. I've torn off landing gear, bent props by flying too low, damaged flaps, and of course gotten shot up. The variety of damage is amazing, and the flight model accurate reflects what happens to your rig.

I've only just begun the career mode, but the thought of having an effect on the ground war is wetting my desire to play. I'll perhaps write more about that in the future.

Negatives so far have been: lack of radio chatter in the game making the war seem a bit emptier then it should. Game crashes when attempting to change video resolutions. Slow load times. No other major bugs yet.

Overall this is an incredible game. Now excuse me, it's almost time to load up, I have a critical attack on an enemy airbase at dawn that I have to get ready for....

Combat Flight Simulator 3

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: December 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have been a flight simulator fan since the old DOS versions. Since then, Microsoft had steadily improved their simulators to an astonishing level. That is, until Combat Flight Sim 3. This simulator is terrible. It is full of bugs and unless you have "tomorrow's" cutting edge computer, you probably won't be able to enjoy the advertised graphics. I have a 2 year old Dell system Pentium III with 512 MB Ram and 15 GB of hard drive operating on Windows 98 SE and a video card that was fine with Flight Simulator 2002. The game wouldn't even work on my computer until I found a driver that even Dell didn't have. Even after that I had to turn off all the special graphics to get the game to operate at a useable speed. Even then it would, at times, become very choppy for no apparent reason. Save your money and time until they fix the bugs.

Terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have been buying Flight Sim since v. 1.0 on my IBM XT. All have been significant improvements except for this one. It is, in a word, terrible. Graphics are rough, gunsite sits directly on glare shield, so you cannot see the target under G loading. It's movement is notchy. I can't get Best Buy to take it back.

Save your bucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: June 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Having been a big fan of CFS2, I was excited about buying this new simulator. I like to think that I have a pretty good system, graphics package, etc. But this thing is so buggy it causes my computer to crash everytime I try to play it. What a major disappointment. I know people who have had success with it.........but several more that have had the same problem as I have. Save your money!

CFS 3 Best sim ever?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 49
Date: October 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm a big sim fan I have all the combat flight sims so far and a few of the flight sims (combatfs 1,2 fs2000,2002) from what i have seen and read about this game its every cobat fligt simulators dream. 34 flyable aircraft bombers fighters torpedeo bombers and jet fighters! it has 3D sencery and alot of special features. Tail Gunner 2 if you have combatfs 1 you'll know what im talking about. Tail gunner 2 was a programe for cfs1 which let you use the rear,waist,tailand frontal guns on a bomber but it stopped you from using rockets. so what steveiy did (the guy who made tg2) was ask microsft to include tailgunner in the latest version of combat fs and there is a virtual gunner cockpit for it. Take it from me it looks stunning.Forget of the panel as we know it today because evrything is a virtual cockpit. No more 2D panels. You heard me mention fighter jets thats right they've been so knid to include fighter jets they are: Me262 A, Gloster Meteor, P-80 and the De Halivand Vampire they also included a little thing called role playing which i think is fun. You create a pilot give him a name a background and how he got into the aviation industry. He can be killed. Thats about all i can tell you for im running out of sapce and i could go on forever.But if you enjoyed 1and2 you will love 3. buy it!!!!

Some Good Features but Not Really a Simulator

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: February 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I think CFS3 has some truly innovative ideas but I think that it was lacking in other areas. I've had no software or hardware related problems with this game and personally I do not believe that those problems are a basis for a poor review. Those problems can be corrected with a little time and effort and people have to expect that with software capabilities outstripping hardware for the last 15 years, the trend is likely to continue. Flight sims tend to be the games that push the development of hardware due to the fast paced action and constantly improving eye-candy involved in the games.

I liked the fact that CFS3 rates your pilot and the capabilities of your pilot (eyesight, g-tolerance etc) are improved with performance. This gives the sim an RPG type feel to it and you feel as though you are accomplishing something with your pilot. This feature also gives you an edge against others. With most sims, your rank and 100 air to air kills means little and your are never rewarded for you prowess in terms of a tangeable asset. This changes in CFS3 with the upgradeable abilities. As a pilot, I know that the more experience you have flying formation and aerobatics, the better your judgement becomes and the higher your ability to withstand g's. As this is the first sim I've seen with this feature, I think it's appropriate to highlight and encourage this as a step forward in flight sim creation.

The ability to fly Gotha 229s against P-80s is also a great addition unseen since Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (Lucasarts). Also I enjoyed flying the Vampire jet as it is often forgotten in history and there was an ex-Rhodesian Airforce Vampire being given a life-enhancement at West Sale Airport in Victoria, Australia where I used to clean aeroplanes and learn to fly after school during my teen years. I've always thought they are a beautiful jet.

As far as a flight sim goes I think IL2:FB is better than CFS3 as the aircraft perform more realistically and I love flying nap of the earth down Russian river valleys and ramming my bombs down the throats of unassuming Nazis. I also love the fact that in IL2:FB if you choose to it is possible to trim your control surfaces and manipulate propellor pitch and other engine controls in order to optimise your aircraft's performance. The only thing I found myself doing in CFS3 was open my cockpit canopy to let me bail-out quicker (One shot from an enemy and everything was broken, hydraulics, elevators, the lot).

With CFS3 the terrain just isn't as visually splendid as IL2:FB. I also got the sneaking suspicion that the campaign wasn't quite as affectable as suggested. During one mission I destroyed the assigned supply depot and then proceded to cut a swathe out of the German front line 20 miles across. After returning to base and looking at the map, the corridor I'd created hadn't been taken advantage of and it seemed as though only the assigned target had been rewarded to the campaign. Maybe if I'd continued on this track I'd have made a difference but as a sim it just can't hold my attention long enough and I move back to IL2.

Overall I think CFS3 is worth having and I will always turn to it on hung-over Sunday mornings but don't buy it expecting an amazing sim. I just hope that CFS3's good features are copied by UBI-Soft in order to create an excellent Korean War 1950's era jet sim.

What Happened?!?!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: November 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've bought both previous versions of CFS and greatly enjoyed them both. This however has little in common with CFS 1 or 2. The cockpits are terrible. They look more like something out of Fighter Ace. In fact the whole game (not really a "sim" anymore) is more like the arcade-ish Fighter Ace than any previous CFS. The key commands are different than either previous CFS and it is a laborious process reassigning them. The ground textures, flight models, AI, sound, maps and campaign structures are either no better or noticeably worse than CFS2. There is also no compatiblity with CFS1 or 2 aircraft. Oh yes, almost unbeliveably my Microsoft Force Feedback joystick doesn't work at all well with this game! I think I'm going to go buy IL2 now and take CFS3 off my hard drive!

Note: my system is a 2.8 P4 /128 meg ATI Radeon 9700 /512 meg RAM. After installing the OLDER ATI driver (yes you read that right) the game does run alright with a fairly decent frame rate but I think that anything too much slower would have some difficulty.

Don't Buy cfs3 or you will wish you didn't.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: October 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have cfs1 & cfs2 already and my hopes were high that Microsoft would deliver in cfs3, the improvement they boasted of. But other than the nice clouds cfs3 is not nearly as nice as either cfs2 or even cfs1. The cities in cfs1 have better graphics. In multiplayer there is no lobby anymore, you can't land to repair your plane. The planes fly-ability have taken a step or two backwards. You can not open a second window like you could in cfs2 to watch your back. I am sad that Microsoft thinks so little of its loyal cfs gamers. The instrument panel is weak and the instruments look less real than in cf1 which did a pretty good job on their airspeed indicators, altimeters, compasses and so on.

I hope they fix it fast.

Great Expectations; Poor Delivery

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: October 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If I had only played CSF1, I would have given this a higher review. But I have been playing IL-2 and now know that IL-2 is the superior combat flight simulator, bar none! CFS3 does have interresting ground vehicles to attack. Aircraft flight dynamics appear unrealistic, too simple. Scenery is FLAT, tree & object detail is very nice but where is all the raised mesh detail I would have expected? MicroSoft did ok, not good and definately not great. I'll give CFS3 2 stars and go back to playing UbiSoft's IL-2. "C ya in the clouds" Mtn.

Combat Flight Simulator 3

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

After all of the hype that was going on about CFS 3 before it came out I was realy surprised and disapionted how it actually did turn out. One, it is a real frame sucker way worse than IL-2 Sturmovik. Two, the planes do look nice but some of the sounds are way off, some sound like lawnmowers like the Messerschmitt 109 and the Focke Wulf 190 :(. Three, it seems to have a dark look to it..almost kind of muddy. Four, the flight models are a joke, on the hardest settings you can still yank your stick way back and you dont have to worry about stalling...not to cool :(. This sim would be alright for people who want to learn how to fly and fight in a WWII aircraft in a few short hrs. But because of the bad flight models (way too eazy to fly) lame sound bad frame rates and dark look I cant give it a thumbs up. If you are a hardcore "WWll Sim Fighter Pilot" IL-2 Sturmovik is still the best thing out there for you, especialy for online play at "Hyperlobby". Salute :)

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