Hi Folks

I'm going to be moderating this board...so what does that mean??!!

What it means is that I hope to keep the questions and answers in the fairway!

Right up front...I'm associated with the sim in a manner of speaking. Leon Smith and I are working on a writing deal with Rage. So far, nothing is in concrete, but this has given us access to the game. But...I do have confidentiality agreements to stick to, and so my ability to give specific answers is pretty limited right now.

But I think I can talk about generalities. I'm playing the latest beta now, and so far, it is looking very nice.

I think most folks will like Typhoon, but as Rage has already said (and I agree with), some hard core folks that are heavy into MFD button pushing may feel differently. So be it!

With that as an introduction, let's have some fun!

Andy

Thanks Andy. I've heard there's not much button pushing in Typhoon also. Might not be a bad thing, at least for fighters like the Hornet or Falcon but the MFDs in EF2000 and TAW were not bad at all. Easy to use. Is there anything functional is the Typhoon cockpit at all? Does it look real? I've seen pics of everything but the cockpit. Even if it's not functional I'm still interested as long as the info I need comes from somewhere. Thanks, William

any new shots buddy ?! we need to c more (enjoy more)

A good mid-range sim is sorely needed. I wouldn't want them to be the ONLY category, but recently everything has been arcade or hardcore. Kudos to Rage for at least trying.
The Jedi Master

Hey Andy, how much can you tell us about the game? Can you tell us how the FM feels, and what weapons are featured?

How's the graphics? And what machine does the game require?

Hope I'm not asking what I shouldn't be asking.

Hi Andy.

Reckon DMX will find us ?

Miao (giggle),
Cat

Thanks Everyone for a good start!

I know you all would like some specifics...it's hard for me to get into detail. For one, I'm prevented from doing too much of that because of my agreement with Rage. But, more important...the sim is not final yet. It's not fair for anyone to make a judgement on a beta...not to Rage and not to you!

Here are some thoughts. The FM, to me, is much like F-22ADF, minus the vectored thrust. Now...I liked the DID F-22 FM. It compared favorably to how RL jets fly, at least the ones that I've flown. I remember some complaints about the ADF FM...for the most part, I discounted those since they were coming from people who had no RL experience. I respect those folk's input on what seemed OK to them...but I draw the line when they start making pronouncements about RL matters. If they don't like something...then fine. But, with no actual experience in their background, they should refrain from trying to tell others how to think.

How about the MFDs...the avionics? Yes, Typhoon is less complicated in this regard. If someone is looking for a weapons systems simulator, then they may find Typhoon lacking some depth. On the other hand, those players that want to spend minimal time on weapons switchology and instead want to get right into the action...then Typhoon will be just fine.

How about the dogfighting? From what I've seen so far, it's much like F-22ADF/TAW. Good action supported by good views.

Graphics? I'm using a V5 5500 and the sim is absolutley beautiful! But a note of caution. Typhoon, like most of the newers sims, may come out with potential graphics glitches. I think these will be driver problems for the most part. A word to the wise. Get a newer video card...one of the better brands...and make sure you have the latest drivers.

Andy

Shahab and William

I've asked Rage for permission to be more specific...this will include answers to your questions and new screenshots, if I can. When I get the OK from Rage, I'll do my best!

Cat

That turned into a bucket of worms! I assure you that such posts will be unwelcome here. BTW...is your site affiliated with SimHQ? Maybe we could help each other out!

Andy

For everyone....

I just had a thought. Typhoon reminds me of when I was nearing the end of my AF career. I had progressed far enough in rank and responsibility such that I had to not only fly a good jet...I also had to run a good squadron.

It was the best of two worlds. I still had to maintain my own proficiency, and then I had to come up with a plan to make sure that the squadron's goals were met. I had to manage the other pilots in the squadron so that we met our objectives.

This, in a nutshell, is Typhoon. You want to go fly the jet...fine. Go do that! But, the game is much more than that. You have a war to win, and you can't do it by yourself. You will have to manage your resources...planes, weapons, and pilots...to win.

It was nifty in RL to win...and it will be the same in Typhoon.

Andy

Wasn't EF2K sort of like that, too? Where you could be in command of more than just your plane? Or am I totally stoned or something??
That DMX thing was quite unfortunate, but I'll have you know Reebok has a line of shoes by that name.
The Jedi Master

Hey everyone - Im happy to find such good alternative to combatsim forums here.

Im looking forward to everything here.

amp

Thanks Andy. Sounds like something I can live with. William

Hi again, Andy-

I asked Atari and Circe to get with Crash here about affiliating us a couple months ago, and I have not the vaguest where that went. WG's a mainstream site, and that makes me our resident hardcore flight simmer I'm not actual "staff"-more of a freelancer who works for free. I do carry a bit of weight with the management though-they like their resident hardcore flight simmer-and if you e me (cat91@members.womengamers.com) I'd be happy to do what I can for you.

Thanks for the offer. I've had zippo success, other than with Blue Byte and Shrapnel Games (who ROCK!!), in getting anywhere with sim developers as far as advance looks. I even had Ian Howe go to bat with MicroProse for me on B-17 II and STILL couldn't get an advance look at that game (Wayward couldn't slip me a beta because of the marketing agreement) for our readers. I HAD my foot in the door at SSI on Flanker 2.5 until Carl Norman got kicked upstairs, and now Tim Goodlett won't return emails et al. just like the rest (and I supported Gunship! Picture that). Beats me why they take that attitude. Women're half the market for games in general, and a lot of us fly online.

I do have a serious question re Typhoon, avionics aside. I'll be the first to admit that a lot of my readers might be interested given that it will certainly be easy to get into. Thus, one of the first things I look at when I do a review are immersion issues. For women, Immersion Killer Number One is no option to select a female lead pilot voice or character. Falcon 4.0 and Jane's F/A-18 are the only sims I know of that allow this out of the box. I have it on good authority that IL-2 will include a utility allowing user modification of the radio chatter for the same reason.

The $64,000 question is this: Given that the R.A.F. has women flying Tornadoes and Harriers, will Typhoon allow the female virtual pilot in, or does it force us to take on a male alter-ego? I may have to reconsider my hard-line stance on this game if it includes women in.

Miao, Cat

[This message has been edited by Cat (edited December 31, 2000).]

Cat

>>The $64,000 question is this: Given that the R.A.F. has women flying Tornadoes and Harriers, will Typhoon allow the female virtual pilot in, or does it force us to take on a male alter-ego? I may have to reconsider my hard-line stance on this game if it includes women in.<<

There are ten pilots to choose from, each with their own highly individualistic strengths and weaknesses. Two of these are females. The player will choose six pilots...so you ladies may have up to 1/3 of your group as female pilots!

Andy

Andy,

Thanks for the replies. Kinda makes my other thread useless. Anyhow, comparing this to F22-ADF is pretty fair. I really didn't get into F22 because of its campaign structure. In the beginning, I was turned off by its avionics until I found out via Discovery Wings that the avionics were actually that simplified! Hey, and I can't even lase my targets in F4. That's a luxury for F15 and F18. I think I can live with Typhoon as long as the campaign is much improved from F22-ADF and from all signs it is.

More questions: Can you talk about the campaign a little? How does it begin? What do you do to enter a campaign? What I mean is are there parameters that can be set a la F4? Do you pick if you want to manage pilots or just fly missions? Can you task other flights to support you?

If you can't answer these I understand, just curious.

Overkill

The campaign in Typhoon is the whole point of the sim.

Hardcore sims in the past have emphasized a 'one pilot-one plane' approach to gameplay. The sim player had lots of button pushing to do on specific, weapons oriented missions with little 'feel' for everything else going on in the war. Nothing wrong with that, but others wanted a little less involvement with the instrument panel and consoles, and more involvement with what was going on all around them to give them a better sense of 'immersion' in the battle.

This is what Typhoon does. It is a battle sim, not necessarily an airplane sim, although flying the Typhoon is obviously the major feature of the action.

The Typhoon player must select six pilots from a group of ten (eight males, two females). Each of these pilots has very well defined strengths and weaknesses in flying skills, leadership abilities, survival skills, you name it. The player must allocate these pilots to take advantage of their skills to offset the attackers. The player will assign missions and tasks for these pilots...the AI will then send them off on their merry way. HOWEVER...the player may take over from any pilot at any time and begin flying that mission...and then will be able to leave that plane and go on to another pilot's mission.

This is much more of a 'thinking' sim than what we have been used to. For those that want a dynamic campaign, it should be a feast!

Andy

I normally describe flight models in terms of three things. Firstly the model itself, which covers the aerodynamics model, degrees of freedom, cross coupling, departures etc. Secondly, the data used in the model, does it perform as you would expect, does it match the speed, climb rate, and maneuverability characteristics you would expect from the real aircraft? Lastly the feel, do things like inertia and rate derivatives give it the sort of feel you would would anticipate if you were throwing a 20,000lb jet around the sky, allowing of course of the effect of the control laws which tend to damp out many of the inertia effects that we intuitively expect to see.

So, what can I tell you about the Typhoon flight model? To answer your question, the "feel" is very good, with many big improvements over EF2000, which means that the issues many people had with the EF2000 flight model have now been resolved. When I first flew it felt good.

Leon "Badboy" Smith

Okay, then. Perhaps I was rushing to judgment. One must, after all, give credit where credit is due. Allowing women to fly AS women, in my mind, gives a dimension to the game that few flight sims have, and makes it worthy of a closer look despite the avionics lack. Please pass on my thanks, as a woman who likes to fly sims, to Mr. Whiteford and crew for including women in the game.

Miao, Cat

The femal pilots also issue wingman commands in an appropriate female voice. Just checked

Leon "Badboy" Smith

Badboy,

nice to see you at SimHQ I remember reading your stuff on ELO! ...... where I also came across some guy called Andy Bush

Anyway, my question: What I loved most about EF2000 was the atmosphere. The combination of landscape, music, voice acting and planning made it THE most immersive sim IMO. Does the new game have the same feel?

Apparently Iceland is going to be a much smaller conflict area than the first EF2000 game. So not more flying over huge fyords and glaciers and iceburgs...

All well, at least we're closer to the action, and I can wait to bust some tanks with those brimstones!

Hi Andy,

Good to see someone mature is moderating the Typhoon discussions after the fiasco at CS. Good to see you here as well Cat, and all the other familiar faces.

Last week I decided to fire up some of my old sims, and installed Jane's Fighters Anthology. Spending most of my time with Falcon 4.0 and Flanker 2, this old sim brought back some good memories, and reminded me of some very good times, various campaigns in different theaters; it was great fun seeing it again.

Afterwards I installed USAF and flew around with the F-4 Phantom, flying some single missions. USAF and IAF by Pixel introduced or forced a multiple flight approach where the player HAD to manipulate different flights at the correct times in order to achieve mission success. Some people liked the idea, I for one didn't.

It sounds like Typhoon has the right idea here, to give the player the option to jump to one of his/her other pilots should they feel so, or one can fly an entire mission in one airframe, which I would normally prefer.

Long ingress and egress flights is probably something that keeps a lot of people from flying serious sims, and if one could jump to a different flight where the action is during a boring cruising session, it would surely lighten things up.

I firmly believe there are some minor things that Rage should try and include in Typhoon to satisfy the hard-core crowd, but I think I'm starting to live with their decisions, and made peace with the fact that it'll be a fun sim.

Andy, if at all possible, are you allowed to make any comments on the dynamic campaign?

[This message has been edited by -Hotdog- (edited January 02, 2001).]

Hi Viceroy,

Yep, hope you enjoyed that stuff, shame about ELO. Looks as though I'll be spending a lot more time at SimHQ because it is likely that I will soon be using it as my main outlet.



Not the same feel, different and in many ways better. The moody graphics of EF2000 helped create atmosphere for me, but the new graphics are stunning, and the clarity and detail create an atmosphere of its own.

One thing I do like very much, is the incredible way the music in the sim enhances the feeling of immersion. For example, I was just flying a mission as a female pilot to test the wingman commands for Cat, and I noticed something very subtle, and it had a very powerful effect. Have you every been watching a film, say a thriller, and realized that as the scene changed you become tense, move to the edge of your seat and actually begin to become involved... More often than not, nothing that is happening in that scene could warrant your reaction, it is actually the music doing that to you. Well, when I was testing the wingman commands I noticed that when I ordered a battle formation, the music changed, it became tense and menacing... I actually responded subconsciously by sitting up straight and adjusting my grip on the stick, ready for action... I was there, totally involved!! If it hadn't been for the fact that I issued several erroneous commands one after the other, I would have never noticed what actually happened. I was impressed. If not for the fact that I'm working at it, I could easily lose myself in this sim.

Also, certain aspects of the campaign enhance that effect, its real time nature, the news reports, the intensity of the action, the pressure as you begin losing ground when the invasion begins... Those are some of the things that create atmosphere in Typhoon and so far I couldn't help being sucked in. But that's just me

Hope that helps.

Leon "Badboy" Smith


[This message has been edited by Badboy (edited January 02, 2001).]

Excellent! Yes, this is my Number One Issue. I can forgive everything else.

Miao, Cat

Hello Andy,

Perhaps I have misunderstood what you said but ... The feature you are describing (switching from one pilot to another) is really nothing new: it was introduced for the first time in "Flight of the Intruder" (Rowan), then reappeared in Falcon 3.0 (Microprose) and even with F-22 TAW/ADF you could switch from pilot to pilot when playing as AWACS commander.

Cheers,
Shodan