SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Feature: Total Air War: A Brief Retrospective

TAW models what started out to many as a disappointing theater, but since that time I have come to know and love East Africa. The TAW Theater stretches over the Horn of Africa, from Egypt down to Somalia. The Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, Djibouti, and across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia and Yemen are your playground. The dev team modeled things like the pyramids at Luxor, Egypt and the Sphinx, as well as the Aswan High Dam. Flight distances are fairly close to realistic, and the major airfields and cities are where you expect them to be. The graphics are 3d accelerated and take advantage of DirectX 6 features. These are not perfect, though, so don't expect it to look like Lock On: Modern Air Combat. For one thing, anisotropic filtering and antialiasing can cause graphic artifacts. FSAA in particular causes the 3d models and the scenery tiles to fragment, and I highly advise that you do not try to use them. Even with things set to normal, though, you will be able to see joins in the scenery tiles. Also, 3d clouds and weather effects are largely nonexistent, though TAW did sport what was, in 1998, an industry first in its representation of volumetric clouds. There will be a layer of haze, like Falcon 4.0 used to have, at medium altitude. When you fly through the layer you suddenly find the white stuff all around you! It can be disconcerting. Night lighting is pretty, though, and pilot night vision goggles are well implemented. One thing I have noticed is that the artists have somehow managed to make their renderings of the terrain, in combination with the very broken and rocky terrain features, look almost 3d in spots! I've never seen this in any other sim, and the effect is neat, particularly at altitude. You can fly by the silvery light of a full moon, and it gives me the *feel* of moonlit nights. Water textures are pretty bad, in these days of transparent 3d water, but you can suspend disbelief for the overland flying. There are enough 3d structures to blow up and to hide behind in low level flight, and they work with the bitmapped textures to give the illusion of built-up areas at all but extreme low altitude. Of course, no trees are present, and if TAW were a current sim many would find this a problem. But the texturing does a lot to allow one to suspend disbelief and fly.

The world is alive with other aircraft flying missions. You can hear all sorts of radio chatter. The only problem is that only about four voices were used in the game, and it can thus get a little confusing to hear sixteen aircraft chattering back and forth and all of them are the same vaguely Middle Eastern guy! But as with the terrain, once you're into flying the missions, these problems disappear as you're consumed with trying to fly and live to tell the tale. Various aircraft can be easily recognized, even though they lack detail by current standards. All of them have their distinctive national insignia depending on which air force they belong to. An interesting thing is that all aircraft, even the AI aircraft, all have visible external weaponry. That was not something seen often in 1998, and it was one thing I greatly enjoyed and still do. Lens flare, a DID first, is present and the SmartViews camera system lets you ease the boredom of a long cruise to your initial waypoint by watching other nearby combats in action while your aircraft buzzes along on one of the most detailed autopilots in sim-dom. One word of warning, however: TAW's SmartViews system does not like later NVIDIA drivers and will crash if you try to use it. I got an ATI x800 video card specifically because of this problem, so NVIDIA, take note! There are plenty of things on the ground to shoot at as well, though like the aircraft, they're lacking in detail. One thing that bugs me is the lack of parachutes on BSU-49 bombs — I and several others pointed that one out in 1998 to DID's QA folks to no avail. Also, the SAM vehicles all have built-in radars, and that is annoying when we all know that the SA6 is blind without its Straight Flush tracking vehicle. A lot of weapons are provided you, including the innovative, and speculative, ramjet-long range version of the AIM-120 and an early take on the GBU-30 JDAM, years before it was taken into service. The JDAM can't be retargeted in-game, though, leading most TAW players to rely on the AGM-65G Maverick for most missions. Its higher payload makes it ideal for almost every mission requiring stealth and ability to target on the fly. Avionics include a take on LANTIRN that allows you to target the Maverick and the larger laser-guided Paveway bomb accurately. Sadly, you can't carry Paveways in your weapons bay, so you give up stealth if you want big bombs or rockets. I usually pack two Mavericks, two AIM-120R missiles, and the Sidewinder X missiles in their separate bays for most pinpoint strike missions, so I don't have to give up stealth.

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