"From Russia with love," that's what SSI says about it's new Soviet developed flight sim, SU-27 Flanker. Written in the U.S.S.R by Russian Aerospace professionals, then coded and put together in England by the Mindscape/SSI European Division, and distributed in the U.S. by SSI, this is truly an international project.
Accuracy is the keyword in this title. Anatoly Kvotchur, Russia's SU-27 top test and demo pilot says, "this is the closest you will ever get without actually flying the SU-27, this is an accurate simulation." This sim's accuracy and eye for detail goes well beyond the flight model. You will notice that weapons, gauges and flight management are all modeled, and react like the real thing...like it or not. You see, sometimes you must sacrifice a bit of gameplay in order to be true to real-life features and functions of the Flanker.
First things first, we reviewed this sim on an Intel 486dx4-100 machine with 16 megs of ram and a two meg VLB video card. We ran it at full detail in SVGA mode and felt that the frame rate was adequate and that the sim was very playable. However, when we found ourselves in a real furball, especially a knifefight, a noticeable drop in frame rates would occur. A Pentium would probably handle these situations with little problem. The graphics are plain polygons, not unlike that of Falcon 3.0. Since we have all been subjected to the texture mapped 3D graphic design for the last few years, the graphics in SU-27 may appear a bit dated, but when you see the fine detail and smooth frame rates, you will understand that the decision was the right one. Any sim flyer worth his wings will tell you that frame rate is more important than eye candy!
Modeling accuracy has become a burden in SU-27 when it comes to sound. According to actual fighter pilots, there is very little noise that you hear in the cockpit above the engines and warning buzzers and alarms. This means that the bombs that whistle as they fall, and the sound of other aircraft and their weapons are all taken out of SU-27. We have been given these sounds as part of our flight sims for such a long time that their absence is quite noticeable. The biggest gripe we have with the sound is that you do not hear the wingmen resport and respond during the flight. How the hell do Soviet pilots communicate? I'd like a little less realism and a bit more gaming technology when it comes to SU-27's sound files.
The gameplay consists of a group of forty eight missions and the most detailed mission editor to come since Tornado's offering a few years back. The missions are divided into the following categories:
Demo missions - These are recorded examples that show you how to correctly perform various maneuvers and aerobatic routines as well as the deployment and deliverance of weapons. You'll be able to watch the demo from any angle, stop it, and even jump into the aircraft at anytime and fly it to completion.
Training missions - The idea behind these missions is that you are allowed to change any aspect of a specific sortie. You can change the routes, the weapon load, or the enemy. The training missions have a recorded flight available to allow the pilot an opportunity to see how a mission should be completed.
Pilot Missions - These are missions designed to be a progressive and logical set of sorties that occur during several weeks of a war between Russia and the Ukrainian forces in the Crimean region. These missions use the Classification feature of the mission editor that prevents the user from being able to view the enemy situation.
Squad Leader Missions - These are the same as Pilot missions except that you can control one or more wingmen.
General Missions - You can operate these missions with or without being in the cockpit. You can control all facets of the conflict. General Missions are very much like a strategy game, with the added feature of being able to jump into the action whenever you want.
The important concept to remember about SU-27 Flanker is that it's a sim, plain and simple sim. It has no campaign as we have come to know it, no struggle of good versus evil. It simulates missions and the SU-27 Flanker aircraft as realistically as possible. For many gamers this will not be a positive feature. The idea is not unlike that of Microsoft's Flight Simulator or Looking Glass's Flight Unlimited -- you fly a simulated mission, that's it.
All in all, SU-27 Flanker will be a mainstay for accurate flight sims as long as SSI follows through in their promise to finish what they started. Until we see an upgrade that gives us the features that are missing from the current release, I'd suggest that only the true flight sim fanatic should spend the bucks to buy Flanker.
