by Tuncer Deniz
Taking on Goliath on his own turf can always be a tricky proposition, especially when Goliath is in the form of the biggest and baddest software company in the world, Microsoft. Terminal Reality, aka David, seems bent on taking on the giant with a "flight simulator" of its own. And from the looks of it, it seems to be far superior than Microsoft's aging Flight Simulator '98.
Not only is Fly! one of the most gorgeous games ever created, it also features outstanding physics, dynamic cockpits, 3D terrain, and realistic weather. But wait, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I forgot the best feature of them all. It's coming to the Mac!
While Microsoft in the past year or so has improved its Mac support with offerings such as Office 98 on the Mac, the company has pretty much ignored publishing games on the Mac. What's worse, Flight Simulator 4.0 came out on the Mac some ten years ago and there have been no updates or new releases for the Mac version since. Foowee!
Enter Terminal Reality and their hot new title, Fly! Often called the "Flight Simulator killer", TR is set to release Fly! at the end of June or early July. Let's check it out.
Lessons Learned
When I began doing research on Fly!, I was amazed to find that Terminal Reality has had close ties to Microsoft in the past. The company developed Microsoft's Fury3, Monster Truck Madness, CART Precision Racing, and Hellbender. What's more, Mark Randel, TR's president was a co-designer and programmer on the team that help build Flight Simulator 5.0.
Despite the affiliation with Microsoft and Flight Simulator, it's obvious the developers of Fly! are out to challenge Flight Simulator in nearly every facet. But why challenge the behemoth that is Microsoft, especially in an area that has been dominated by Flight Simulator for more than a decade? According to Project Lead Richard Harvery, "Although Flight Simulator continues to be a best seller, the technology at the core of that product is extremely dated, and Microsoft has had trouble advancing the foundation of this product since Flight Simulator 5.0. We would not have even started FLY! if we did not think we could deliver an extremely solid feature set to advance the genre."
No Boundaries
The world in which you fly in is simply huge. There are no physical boundaries, which means you can fly around the world given the right aircraft and fuel. Fly! has over 9,000 airports and five high-detail areas including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Dallas/Fort Worth (representing over 50,000 square miles of satellite scenery). The other parts of the world are modeled based on a digital elevation map and terrain type. In order to incorporate such a huge number of airports, the game builds each runway and lighting systems on the fly from a database. Using TR's proprietary tools, accurate taxiways are also generated by importing them from diagrams. So, for example, if a runway has centerline lights in the real world, the same runway in Fly! will also have it. This is useful for not only drawing taxiway surfaces, but allows Air Traffic Control systems to do path finding logic for computer controlled aircraft.
Terminal Reality has also designed Fly! so that add-on scenery packs can easily be plugged in. In addition, the data files have been created so that any scenery and airplane packs that work on the PC will also work on the Mac.
The initial release of Fly will offer five types of aircraft. They include the Cessna Skyhawk 172R, the Piper Malibu Mirage, the dual prop Piper Navajo, the Beechcraft King Air 200, and the business Cessna Citation X jet. From the original factory equipment to the avionics, each plane in Fly! is fully equipped and functional. The games also uses a six-degree of freedom, linear physics model making the game perform extremely lifelike, making it seem less like a game and more like the real thing. Luckily, novices will be able to adjust realism settings like battery drain, icing, gyro drift, and spin to make it easier for them to fly.
One of the more impressive in the game are cockpits for each of the planes. Unlike other flight sims out in the market that shrink or leave out features of the cockpit in order to fit it onto the screen, Fly!'s cockpits are fully modeled, which means you'll have to move the mouse to the borders of the screen to auto-scroll the cockpit. What's more, every switch, knob, dial, and lever is fully functional on the cockpit, all available at a click of the mouse. Pop-up windows will appear over hot spots and will display the instruments name and reading, making it easier for beginners to learn the instrumentation. In addition to the front view, some cockpits in the simulation have floor, side, and overhead panels, just like in the real thing.
Airborne
OK, enough babble about the realism. How does it fly? Are the graphics awesome? Yes, and yes, and yes. This is one beautiful game. Once you're up and flying, you'll begin to see what all the hoopla is about. From the ground to the skies, the game comes alive with truly impressive graphics. Fly! offers a number of weather related items that bring realism to the environment. Clouds are 3D alpha blended allowing you to actually fly into a cloud. But more on weather later.
In its foundation, Fly! uses a spherical latitude and longitude ground system for that allows for true world navigation. On top of that, the graphics engine uses a flexible texture and elevation system which allows the game to use satellite imagery at different resolutions. This graphics system allows increased ground resolution at low flying altitudes by swapping satellite images as necessary. The results? Outstanding graphics whether you're five miles up or 200 feet from the ground.
The attention to graphic detail is outstanding. Taking a peak outside you'll notice specular highlights on the surface of the plane, based on the position of the sun. You'll also notice real time environment mapping of the sky and scenery on the surface of the body. Come night time you can see 400 of the brightest stars in their correct right ascension and declination based on the current date and time settings.
Another impressive feature is what TR has dubbed their "range finder". If you point at the ground using your mouse, a popup will tell you the distance to that point in nautical miles. If you point at a scenery object, you'll be given the height of the object and by how many feet you are clearing the object. For major landmarks such as airports, the objects name will appear and other crucial details like ATC frequencies and runway localizer frequencies. In fact, you can even use this feature on the sun, moon, and stars.
Fly! will also feature air traffic control with full voice support. Not only will the ATC interact with you, but also the computer controlled aircraft in order to keep the skies friendly. Just imagine flying out of O'Hare in Chicago with a 747 in front of you, planes landing and taking off, all being controlled by the sophisticated ATC. The radio chatter is incredibly believable and immerses you in the sensation of the game.
While Fly! is a sophisticated simulation, the developers have put in features to make the game accessible to everyone. A typical example are the online maps provided in the game. At a click of a button you can access a sectional chart of your current flight area that shows your current position and relative heading directly on the chart. The game also features a digital vector map which you can zoom in and out to view up to 300 miles of coverage area.
Other Cool Features
As mentioned before, weather plays an important role in Fly! You can either let the game generate weather for you, or you can customize it by setting visibility, temperature, wind speed and direction, and cloud layers. But if you really want to get as real as possible, you can import digital METAR weather reports from the web right into Fly! So, for example, if you import all the U.S. reporting stations, you can fly coast to coast and the game will automatically interpolate the weather conditions on the way.
Another cool feature in Fly! is the game's distance compression. In most games you can increase the time compression to accelerate time to move from one place to another quickly. This usually makes the game (or in this case, the plane) uncontrollable. Fly! instead compresses the distance, not the time. This way, you can travel more distance, but still fly as you normally would. Pretty ingenious!
The game will also ship with multi-player. You along with 7 of your buddies will be able to take to the skies over the Internet. Players will be able to chat with each other using a microphone or headset.
Set to Fly!
Overall I was incredibly impressed with Fly! While feature laden, the game is customizable enough so that novices will be able to enjoy it. This, to me, was an important factor. While I'm not a novice at flight sims, I'm weary of games that are too difficult off the bat. Fly! seems to have the perfect combination of sophistication, realism, and playability.
I was also impressed with Terminal Reality's enthusiasm and openness. They know they have an uphill battle going up against the marketing arm of Microsoft. Terminal Reality, however, is taking a grass roots approach to marketing Fly! Their hope is that the online community will get involved and foster interest in making tools, planes, scenery, you name it.
It's pretty obvious that Fly! beats the pants out of Flight Simulator, but in the end it'll be up to the customer whether Fly! takes off. We'll find out shortly, once Fly! lands on stores shelves in late June. Alright, enough with the puns. Be sure to also check out our interview with Project Lead Richard Harvey and the beautiful screenshots below.
