F/A-18E Super Hornet Gold Edition

By Derrick C. Miller (28 April 2001)

This time the magic was there. Digital Integration (DI) managed to produce a genuine advanced fighter-bomber simulation with all the resources needed to migrate into state-of-the art air warfare. The visual model is stunning. The manual is comprehensive yet accessible to the rookie jet-sim pilot. The avionics? Addicting. The weapons list is detailed and complete. And the missions both intrigue and challenge all players, regardless of skill level brought to the game.

With a tip of the flight helmet to Bud Anderson's venerable P-51 I set aside my PTO handle, "OldCrow", turned in my Mae West for a pressurized flight suit, and signed up my online persona "Duke Miller" as an ensign in the U.S. Navy, call sign "Slammer".

The Super Hornet Gold Edition

• The scenery graphics were disappointing
• The Mission Planner was not able to create missions
• Only Death Match was available in on-line play
• The was no Campaign, only mission sets
• Hopefully, the Gold Edition would remedy these problems

Well, it didn't. The Gold Edition comes with a new mission collection set in the Balkans. The opening movie was remastered to strengthen the action production values. Some cockpit warning sounds were updated. And the printed manual in the initial release was conspicuously absent from the Gold Edition review copy I received. In my opinion, the only thing keeping this sim from being in the same league as the classic Falcon 4.0 was the lack of game modules and set up options. As it comes in the box, though, it remains a demanding and rewarding sim.

I should also add that none of these missing improvements hindered my enjoyment of the game. It has remained challenging and rewarding throughout my inspection. I was a little ticked to find that the marketing folks gilded the package in promising a fully functional mission planner and dynamic campaign when all that materialized in this release was a twist on semantics. But, I remember when I believed that FS2000 was so named because of its year of release and not because of the money I would have to spend on a system to run it. Someday, I will learn.

F/A-18E Super Hornet: The U. S. Navy's 21st Century Multi-role Combat Fighter

Regarding combat performance, the Super Hornet can fly 40% farther than her older sisters on interdiction missions and can stay on station 80% longer in a CAP. Mission radius is also increased by 40%. When the job is finished she can bring back 3 times the ordinance of earlier models to the ship. And if that isn't enough, she improves on the Hornet's legendary ability to take damage and make it home. (In the Gulf War an F/A-18 took a direct missile hit, returned safely home and was fighting again the next day.) The Super Hornet is "harder to find, and if found, harder to hit, and if hit, harder to disable" (Quote from Boeing)

The Digital Integration Super Hornet Model

The visual models of the Super Hornet itself rival anything seen in FS2000. You fly a snappy red and white paint scheme in training and then switch to a beautifully detailed combat gray texture set in mission play. The Super Hornet has 14 different control surface, all of which are animated in the DI project. The wheels roll and the undercarriage retracts. And all of the weapons are given the same detail oriented treatment.

Your training base is an airfield near the Indian Ocean, well populated with buildings, static vehicles, and dynamic fuel trucks, helicopters, AWACS and fighters busying themselves with the virtual day's activities. The "mother ship" is the USS Ronald Reagan with an animated flight crew, working elevators, and an interactive flight deck. These objects are on par with their counterparts in FS2000. The carrier ops may be the second most important feature of the sim. DI understood that getting to know the Super Hornet simply could not be accomplished without getting to know the real-world workings of the carrier. This is just another example of their commitment to making all of the subsystems of the game support the simulation of the plane.

The flight model is fast and sometimes seems a little too stable. However, if you let the speed drop below 350 knots in a sustained turn you will soon hear the despairing (and annoying) cries of the pilot as you litter the surface with little pieces of your 75 million dollar mistake. In a dive you need to apply speed brakes (she uses a computerized combination of various control surfaces for this) or you will not pull out in time. You can put her into a stall as well, and will find recovery difficult if you have insufficient altitude. But keep your speed above 450 knots and the aircraft is pretty much trouble free. The need to keep going fast, no matter what, presented the most difficult aspect of my transition from props to jets. Optimum corner speed at max g is 450 to 550 knots, a full 100 knots faster than the F-16C.

The stability of the Super Hornet (both real and virtual model) comes from the employment of fly-by-wire technology. The input devices in the real bird are not directly connected to control surfaces and actually have tension devices installed to give the pilot feedback. The computer will override input that will put the plane in danger by pilot error, such as pulling so many g's that the airframe would be damaged. In level flight the computer constantly trims the aircraft making it seem a little too easy to fly, although this is authentic to the real plane. You will find that your joystick is closer to the real thing in this sim than you might expect. The aircraft responds to controller input more quickly than the F-16C in Falcon 4.0, although the Super Hornet is a bigger aircraft. Even so, the F-16C is still more agile in a dogfight and seems better suited to the MiG 29 opponents.

The other outstanding feature of the flight model balances these characteristics out, however. Inertia is well represented in the DI F/A-18E. With appropriate thrust you have to point the nose of the jet to make it move. But bank into a turn and you will see the airspeed and altitude drop. With 15 degrees pitch up and full afterburners she still feels like a plane, not a rocket. Landings require constant attention to the throttle, as the plane tends to sink rather than glide under 250 knots. The jet engines have the characteristic lag in transfer of power when you throttle up (as opposed to the almost immediate power jump in prop planes). You will always need to be thinking ahead in managing the energy state of the aircraft. The flight model is stable and complex at the same time rather than being simplistic and overly optimistic.

Training

The manual I received was in electronic form. The package includes Adobe Acrobat Reader. Do yourself a favor and discard it. Get the free Adobe eBook Reader from their home site. The manual in .pdf format has no table of contents and is useless in the Acrobat Reader. The eBook Reader, however, will place bookmarks in each chapter heading and subheading. It also allows you to highlight and annotate text. Once opened in this utility the manual provides a logical sequence of topics and combined with the other documentation takes you step by step through the necessary phases of learning the F/A 18E Super Hornet.

The life of the sim is in the cockpit, which is beautifully rendered. Three multifunction displays dominate the cockpit view. Each has enough sub modes and buttons to make you dizzy. Add to that the HUD in each of its weapons specific modes and a color navigational MFD you have to pan down to see, which features a full-color moving map. All the switches and buttons work with mouse clicks but the keyboard is faster. Master this cockpit and you will master any jet-sim hands down.

DI also took a very constructive approach to helping the beginner wade into the thick of mastering these screens. Most jet-sims offer a choice of easy, simple, and realistic avionics and related procedures. This forces you to relearn the system as you advance. DI's approach was to keep the screens in place, instead of dumbing them down. To ease the task load they automated many procedures but kept them intact. I still have most of them automated, unchecking them one at a time in the configuration screen as I learn.

I spent my first ten days with the sim in the training missions alone and enjoyed most of it. I developed my method: first I would fly the mission and isolate the items I did not understand. Second, I would go to the manual and read the respective chapter. Third, I would open the checklist and shortcut guide while flying, pausing the game if necessary to double-check something. Then, I would start over with the next aspect of the sub-system in question for that mission.

Understanding the avionics was the first big task. Eleven of the radar modes in the real aircraft are modeled. The same displays that house the radar also provide video feedback for some of the guided weapons systems so you can watch the ordinance approach and take out the target on the monitor in the cockpit. Gaining the basic skills to operate these systems was not overwhelming. I hit the wall, however, when I tried to translate these skills into situational awareness. No fault of the sim caused this. I just had to learn to think differently about the combat environment of jet fighters.

The Combat Pilot's Career

The achievement/reward system is not tied to the completion of any specific operation or mission set. Instead, it is organized around a pilot's career with chance for promotion every ten missions and a suite of Navy medals for your chest. I actually like this better than the chronological campaign because it reflects the current nature of a pilot's career. In an eighteen-month period a pilot could find him/herself flying in all three theatres given today's geo-political environment. And it is much more likely that one will fly in a limited operation these days than a full-blown war. (Let's hope it stays that way!)

Combat is not easy in this sim, even if you set the difficulty level to the lowest. I vividly remember the session I spent with four Fulcrum drivers stacked up on my six like I was the Pied Piper of MiG 29s. With prop fighters one or two moves will get you the advantage and patience is rewarded. But there is a multitude of air-to-air missiles in Super Hornet and patience will get you a very unpleasant sensation up your afterburner nozzles! You can't padlock a missile either so only the tone from the Threat Warning System lets you know you have been bugged. In fact, the padlock view is limited to the pilot's visual range of motion. You can't lock it onto someone that is normally out of view. You cannot simply target a bogey and fire, either. You have to designate, wait for tone, fire and often reset the radar to a different scan pattern to get the next guy. And while you are doing all of this guess what the next guy has been doing? He's been locking you up, that's what.

Add surface-to-air defenses to this mix and stir vigorously with stated mission objectives to get the full effect. I have flown ten or so missions and have only successfully completed one (after six tries). I will take out a bogey only to be fragged by a SAM or I will survive damage but have to ditch before the carrier landing because she won't fly straight or I make it back using the auto-carrier landing feature (modeled after the system in the real bird) and find I didn't destroy enough targets. And my poor wingman must be named Lazarus. I will command him to follow me only to find that he is dead and needs to be resurrected for another try at the mission. Of course, my favorite feature of the missions is the "retry" button.

Conclusion

Derrick C. Miller
derrick@semo.net