Korean Combat Pilot
By Bill Womack (23 May 2001)
here
are several words that spring immediately to mind when describing
Korean Combat Pilot, the new CFS2 add-on from Blue Arrow:
ambitious... varied... challenging... and yes, flawed. But more on that
last part later.
The subject matter of this add-on is no less than the span of the entire Korean conflict. It covers the forces of three nations, with twelve aircraft represented among them. For perspective, remember that Microsoft only included seven aircraft representing two nations in the stock CFS2! In total, there are twenty missions included with a wide variety of objectives and varying degrees of difficulty. In fact, it seems that what the authors set out to do is simply time warp CFS into the 1950's. The add-on is billed as "a total upgrade for Combat Flight Simulator 2." Were they successful? Sometimes very much, and sometimes less so. Read on...
The Planes
One of the outstanding features of this sim is, expectedly, the broad assortment of aircraft. You want a mix? They’ve put it all in here. For the Allies, there are workhorse WWII relics, like the F-51
Mustang, Corsair, and if you want to try your hand at some heavy
iron, a B-29. Of course, it wouldn't be Korea without a crop of
upstart jets, notably the F-80 Shooting Star, F-86 Sabre and Grumman
F9F-5 Panther. And let's admit it, you’ve been thinking about
M*A*S*H every since you started reading this—they've been kind
enough to give you a Bell H13-B Sioux helicopter, and a mission in
which you use it to transport wounded comrades! The British
contribute two interesting craft; the Hawker Sea Fury and the Fairey
Firefly.The communist side is a bit less varied, and is represented by old Soviet standbys the Yak-9 and IL-10 Stormovik. But there is also the newcomer MiG-15 in three different nationalities: Chinese, Soviet and North Korean.
So what are these birds like to fly? Well, as you might expect from
such a varied group, the results are mixed. I loved the throaty
rumble of the Firefly’s Rolls Royce Griffon and I thought it
handled suitably like the large beast it was. The Panther was the
most intriguing of the jets in my opinion. I like the look of the
model, and it seemed more forgiving than I was expecting to fly.
Stalls are difficult to induce, and although it isn't the most
powerful of the group by far, it feels nimble, turns well, and
behaves when landing. In combat I was dusted several times by a
friend in a MiG, but that’s pretty accurate given the latter’s
superior power and maneuverability. The most success I had by far in
dogfights was the F-86. It climbs like a dream, is very agile, and
the airbrakes help keep it under control in a dive. In fact, my
dogfighting partner discovered that it's virtually impossible to
black out under extreme G-forces in this plane. Early pressure suit,
maybe? Dunno.
Maybe it was because I was expecting so much, but I felt a bit let
down by the MiG-15's performance. It was finicky in climbs; stalling
easily if even a touch too much backpressure was applied to the
stick. And the speed just never reached what I thought it should for
such a legend. Nonetheless, I loved looking at it in flight, and
though I'm a cockpit potato, I switched to spot plane often just to
admire the view. One note on the flight model for this and all the
other jets, however; I just couldn't reach the published top-end
speeds for any of the jets, even in a dive. I'm not sure if it's the
fault of the add-on authors or a CFS2 limitation. The .air file for
the MiG states that its max speed is Mach 1 (?), but I never got it
above about 350 knots no matter how hard I pushed it. Sorry, you
speed junkies. You're not gonna get there in these planes.
The only plane that left me completely cold was the B-29. I was dubious about this addition from the start, just because it’s such a complex subject—much more so than the fighters. And, as expected, I felt the rendition was just too simplistic. The cockpit view shows a simple, generic looking panel, which unfortunately obscures the view of the runway almost completely. I've obviously never flown the real thing, but common sense tells me the flight modeling is way off the mark. I was able to pick up speed much too quickly before takeoff. And while I'm sure the crews back then wished it could ascend stall-free at a 60-degree angle on lift-off, I'd bet a lot that it couldn't. At the risk of sounding like I'm picking on it, I'll also throw in that the textures are exceedingly blurry, and really wreck looking at it from the outside. Can't have it all, I guess. One bright spot here is the sound. I flew with the speakers up on "11" and the sub-woofer really got a workout. I could feel all 8,800 horsepower of those Wright engines shaking me to the bone!
The Missions
I flew a number of missions in the course of my research. I'm particularly fond of ground-attack jobs, and there's no shortage of them here. I started out with "KCP Able Dog," which has you leaving from the deck of the carrier Leyte en route to take out bridges over the Yalu river, thus cutting off the route of Chinese troops. The terrain is up to CFS2 standards, and the various target objects are well rendered, with enough detail to make them interesting but not enough to cause a frame rate hit. But watch out for that flak! The mission briefing said it would be fierce, and they weren’t kidding! I had to really hug the deck to avoid the worst of it, and even then I left a couple of Corsair-shaped oil slicks at the scene during my numerous attempts.
Flying for the other guys, I tried my hand at air-to-air combat with
"KCP B-29 Takedown." The objective was to find a flight of
well-escorted B-29s and take out as many as I could in my MiG-15.
Hey, this'll be a blast, thought I. However, there's a little
wrinkle; it's a night mission! I found the bombers all right (or at
least, that's what my tactical display said) but where were they? I
couldn't see a thing. I buzzed around for a while trying to find
something, anything, to shoot at. Finally I went home in disgust.
Could there be such a thing as too much reality?
I'll say that from the KCP missions that I've flown, and that includes most of them, the quality is generally very high. I'd call myself an advanced rookie in the combat arena, and I was sufficiently challenged in each. Oh sure, once I couldn’t see a ground target below me even when flying at 100'. My wingman was screaming, "ground targets below!" and I saw precisely squat. I still don't know what happened there. And at the start of every mission I've flown, I've done a walk-around of the plane and noticed the somewhat comical sight of my squadron mates floating in mid-air behind me, ready for takeoff. The height and angles of their planes are correct, but where is their gear? Forget Korea, this is staring to look more like Star Wars!
The Verdict
I've got to hand it to the pros at Blue Arrow. Like I said at the start of this article, they bit off a large chunk with this add-on, and overall they did a great job. The problems I found didn't stop me from enjoying the planes and the missions, and I'm sure I'm going to be flying this one for quite some time to come. Here's the quick run-down:
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