I recently uploaded a 1 minute video to YouTube of an amazingly gruesome CFS3 crash while flying an old Lockheed P80 Shooting Star. I decided to install CFS3 again the other day mainly because the last 2 pages of my book, Sim Samurai’s Ultimate Guide To Advanced Flight Simulation talks about the ”it just won’t die” attitude of Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3. This is because CFS3, like its larger siblings MSFS 2004 and FSX, has enough open-ended architecture that since its 2003 release has allowed it to live on in infamy due to many 3rd party developers and aircraft model designers. You can even build new instrument panels for its aircraft in FS Panel Studio which can futher expand its realism. As I sit here and watch an amazing 2 hour episode entitled “Kamikaze” from the incredible show “Dogfights” on the History Channel I am feeling the burn for trigger time!
While CFS-3 is a true grit and grime “dogfighter” with only guns and bombs, (no advanced weaponry or guided missle abilities) it is still a really great software title and is running at max settings on my Windows 7 x64 system. I attemppted to install IL2 Sturmov Gold and IL2 Pacific fighters into Windows 7 but both would not install at all. CFS3 on the other hand is rock steady and combined with my GTS 250 video card I am displaying it at 1680 x 1050 resolution with 32-bit color. All graphics and detail sliders in the sim are set to 100% and I am still getting well over 60FPS while yanking and banking for dear life! With this kind of performance and flexibility CFS3, in my opinion, is a must have stress reliever! For what can be a very low cost invesment in software you can add on a large variety of freeware which will take CFS3 to new unimagined heights of aircraft combat.
I used to fly combat flight simulators back in my younger days (windows 95 / 98 ) mainly Janes ATF and Janes F-A18. While my college cohorts would play EA Madden football or some other thoggish game I was always busy sweating it out against some Mig 29′s. I had shot down so many bogeys by the time I was 24 that I had given up combat sims entirely until CFS-3 was born some 10 years later. I had only played CFS-2 with a friend once or twice in 2002 but never really explored it and once I had finally bought CFS-3 I only played it a few times too. By this point in my life real world aviation training had already placed a firm grip on my neck.
Now 7 years later, there are only a small handful of combat flight simulators on the market. These are the recent Eagle Dynamics / DCS KA-50 BlackShark and the infamous A-10 of Ubisoft’s Lock-On Modern Air Combat (LOMAC) Flaming Cliffs 2. There are some older war era sims such as the new Rise of Flight and Warplanes but to date I have not flown any of these new titles. However, I may soon check out LOMAC only because as of last month in May 2010 the KA-50 can now square off against the A-10 in multiplayer mode! Hmmm… advanced Russian attack helicopter against the USA tank killer…where do I sign up!?
To get back to the meat of this story a good friend, George, and I have occasionally boxed it out in the cold dense air over North Alaska while in VATSIM. George typically prefers an F-18 over my agile F-20 TigerShark and we usually get a good laugh as we go tit for tat calling out “Guns Guns Guns” while on 122.80 unicom. (however also to the anger of some other pilots on channel too) Needless to say our joy quickly sours as no bullets are ever able to truly fulfill our hard efforts of zeroing in on each others “six”. Because of this George and I have always maintained an occasional yearly discussion of how we may next attempt to feverishly lay waste to one another in some other combat flight simulator scenario as again, FS2004 and FSX has it limits which stops at blood lust.
In 2007 I had turned George onto LOMAC which he quickly beat to death for a solid month or two but he said that he found it overly complex to master as it is riddled with many necessary keystrokes to manage all of the advanced radar and weaponry. He stated that LOMAC ”will often feel more like a memorizational workout than simple recreation or arcade like kill joy”.
Over the past few years, while beefing up our military fighter arsenal in Flight Simulator 2004, we also took it a step further and installed the incredible Section 8 F-86 Sabre. We quickly followed the modding directions for adding in realistic gun fire effects and chased each other around for a week. George, as is typical with his ADHD, quickly set out to performing some weekly (ok daily) border patrols across the southern US in this stout old gunship. I can’t say I blame him though, afterall it’s the most amazing freeware, ever, and could be used as a real F-86 Sabre trainer because of the incredibly realistic detail. I’m reminded here of my first wanton “check out patrol” with George in the F-86. As we were somewhere over Alaska my engine flamed out (repeatedly) simply because of a fuel pressure valve I was not paying attention to! ( its by your left elbow!) You see, when the fuel pylons empty out…you have to switch to your internal tank and (duh!) There are many subtle things you must remain aware of in this aircraft. The Section 8 F-86 Sabre is without a doubt a real man’s lesson into vintage fighters. Ok, as a personal note I will also throw down my own self-recreated panel for Alphasim’s RA-5C Vigilante. I am in fact the first person to set that old albatross down on a virtual carrier deck!(See my YouTube videos for proof!) Even though my panel is good…the Section 8 F-86 is simply beyond words. (and its FREE!)
After the polish of George’s daily F-86 ”Florida to San Diego” patrol regimen wore off I again set him out on another brave quest and this time it was for exploring the reinvention of CFS3. At first he laughed but again, as is typical with George, he spent a few weeks fully diving into this archaic title which included many nights of joining small private multiplayer sessions which are occasionally hosted on the main CFS3 fan website called Sim-OutHouse. I would’ve joined him as wingman but was busy writitng the UGTAFS at the time. (Ok, I’ll admit that I also knew all these old CFS3 salts would’ve quickly handed me my behind too!) The only other downside to these hosted battles is that most die hards only fly the Spitfire. I guess it gets the job done, but I’d prefer the P-51 or P-38!
To our excitement we discovered that in the past few years there have been alot of great new add-ons that have kept CFS-3 alive and well, (at least for those few thousand pilots who realize its great value in combat flight simulation software). Aside from the 3.1 and 3.1A patch which fixed basic issues there was a 2005 add-on tittle for CFS-3 called Firepower which then progressed into the current Shockwave title called “Aircraft Powerpack”. This CD rom disk includes the advanced goodies and pyrotechnics of Firepower but also adds 26 new fighter and bomber aircraft to CFS-3. A huge bonus is that it has the option to install all of these great warbirds into FS 2004 and or FSX too! (without guns/bombs of course) and as a final bonus includes a highly detailed P-51 Mustang.
To add to the extended enjoyment of CFS-3 there are additional mission packs that can still be found, the main one of these being the European Theater ETO v1.2 expansion pack which adds another gig of gameplay with many missions and more complex scenery. There is also several other expansions, one of which is a Pacific Theater pack which will help give CFS-3 the added qualities of CFS-2. Next, a design group called DogPatch created a Korean war expansion pack and finally there is a final off shoot of the CFS3 kernel called Over Flanders Field which contains World War 1 aircraft combat. Both the Korean war and WWI era expansions are actually considered as “stand-alone” titles mainly because of the differences in scenery areas but require that CFS-3 be installed first. Crazy cool! I have yet to check out either but plan to do so.
George and I have long wanted to beat each other senseless while piloting those epic shiny aluminum darts of post World War Two. Yes, my comrades the breif era between 1946 and 1955 was filled with many short lived nosebleeder style Mach 1 aircraft and are those that Chuck Yeager typically gave the thumbs up or thumbs down to …but only after nearly losing his life to do so. Most of these aged beasts have gauges of World War Two combined with the speeds of an F-16 and were therefore things only gods could fly. The men who tamed these monsters had tight jaws, cold stares, and cool heads, …some of which would later land us on the moon.
Because our trigger fingers have itched once more I recently set out to dig deep into cyberspace and find these rare birds of days gone by that we are so desperately wanting to fill with bullet holes. After a little perseverance I hit the motherload. Aside from being able to download practically every paint scheme for the entire Luftwaffe I was able to find my first two CFS3 keepers (albeit twin prop bombers) found on Simviation which are the German Heinkel and the famous Douglas A-26 Invader named “Flakbait”. The real treat however, which will soon have George and I grinning ear to ear, is an incredible collection of eight (8) highly detailed Korean War era aircraft from the development team mentioned earlier who’s name is now only spoken in soft hurried whispers in back corners of dingy beer soaked bars in the Phillipeans…they are the infamous ”DogPatch Crew”. Each vintage jet offered as freeware from the DPC is roughly a 30mb download (a good sign of high detail) and includes…drum roll please… The North American F-86 Sabre, the Mig-15, the Grumman F9F Panther, the Douglas Skyraider, (Dieter Dengler would be proud) and a few others I may get to fly long after George and I have logged a months worth of epic victories and defeats in the first two! As a bonus this grouping also includes a few Vought F4-U Corsairs one of which is Pappy Boyington’s bird from the “Bah-Bah” Blacksheep Squadron! With this final expansion of roughly 10 – 12 aircraft my CFS3 warbird collection will be wholly and holy complete. I can hear the angels!
As a final salute to the continued validity and vitality of CFS3 I ran across very recent mention that famed Beech D18 sim-craft designer Milton Schupe is in the process of recreating the vintage post WWII US Navy F7F TigerCat which was the first twin propeller aircraft to ever land on an aircraft carrier. I can only hope Milton will do us all justice by offering freeware versions for both FS2004 and FSX too. Here’s the real bird; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Bows8TP0Q
For the next one Milton…I do hope you’ll consider the P-61 Black Widow for CFS3! …Please Milton…ohh please!) http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=Lo-f2x8T7d8&feature=channel
P.S. — The Noobs CFS-3 Checklist;
(#1) Pick up used copy of CFS3 on eBay for $10 …CHECK (#2) Download and install 3.1 patch, restart, then apply 3.1 A patch. CHECK (#3) Then buy and install Shockwave Aircraft Powerpack! Start it up and confirm you are running with “Firepower v 1.08″…CHECK!!!(#4) Then install ETO v1.2 (if desired), Then install the DogPatch Korean War pack (if desired) then buy / install Flanders Field (if desired) CHECK!!! …then install add-on aircraft as desired.
(#5) My UGTAFS book contains more detail on the subject of combat flight simulation including great detail on aircraft carrier operations for FS. It also contains a full chapter on networking PC’s for flight simulation and details advanced internet configuring which can be very handy for hosting or joining private combat sessions with your friends. Basically, make sure your firewall(s) are off before installing these titles as they will typically need two ports available and free in your home router to operate. Lastly all involved combatants should have the exact same software, add ons, and same aircraft and liveries installed…CHECK!!
(#6) Lay bloody waste to everyone in your LAN party! ahh…gack-gack-gack-gack!! ..gack! .. uh guh-gack!
You can read all about the growth and continued worthiness of CFS-3 on the Wikipedia link here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_flight_simulator_3
See you on your six!
