I want to tell you why I think that SU-27 Flanker, the flight simulator sold by Mindscape and written by Eagle Dynamics in Russia, is the best flight combat simulation for the PC market today. It is not just one simple factor that earns this sim that place, rather a whole combination of things.

Flanker uses the Crimea as the theatre of operations. As Eagle Dynamics themselves say, this is an ideal place for a simulation, bounded mainly by sea, but with a combination of flat landscape and mountains to enable a diversity of operations to take place. For me, an important consideration is the time it takes to fly a mission - action normally happens very fast when it does take place, so I really don't want to spend an hour and a half of my evening flying a dull flight with nothing to do just to reach the target and be immediately shot down. At least with flanker, mission times are constrained by the extent of the map - but it is still far enough to allow a balance between the build up, action and retreat from operations to exist and have meaning.

This is primarily a Windows 95 program. For a lot of enthusiasts DOS is the only environment in which to run games. Indeed, version 1.1 of flanker (Windows 95 users have moved ahead to release 1.5) is a dual Windows 95 and DOS package for those that insist on DOS. But I have to say, the convenience of switching to the program, changing to different missions and doing other things at the same time (especially network head to head - see below) means that for me Windows 95 support is crucial.

The Windows 95 versions of Flanker uses the standard windows APIs not DirectX. This is remarkable since frame rate performance was still very acceptable on my low end 75Mhz Pentium - and I believe even 486/66 users find it possible to get enjoyment from the game. The main reason this is possible is because the program uses simple flat shaded polygons for all drawing which puts it at a visual disadvantage to those that make use of texture mapping. Flanker 2.0 due out early 1998 should make up for these deficiencies, but correspondingly more processor power or a 3D graphics accelerator will be required. Of course these things are always a trade-off, and this case its one I am happy to live with - I had to abandon my other texture map sims because of poor frame rates until I had upgraded my machine to 150Mhz speed, whereas with Flanker I have continued to enjoy it. The current release (v1.5 - an add on mssion disk to existing versions and which has to be paid for) uses Open GL to provide Gourand shading for polygons in external views only - not really any use although some drivers to support this on 3D accelerated hardware are expected to be available soon. My suspicion is that this was more an excercise to learn about the capability for v2.0.

As a long time Windows 95 user, I have learnt of the convenience of organising my data in a clearly named set of directories, and accessing it by double clicking on the data file icon. I hardly ever start an application any other way. With Su-27 Flanker it is the same. In Flanker the basic unit of operation of the program is a mission. This defines location of all static objects in the theatre of operation, the flight paths of the computer controlled planes, and your own flights waypoints. My missions are stored in my own data area of the disk, organised into hierarchical folders with sensible names to understand its place in the hierarchy. To start flanker, I always find the mission I am interested and double click on it.

When you start Flanker you are launched in to the mission editor. This is where you define each aircraft and their routei n an operation, using waypoints. Each waypoint defines the speed and height of the aircraft at that point and the action to be taken (e.g begin and end loop, or bombing run). You can also define for each aircraft their overall mission objective and the weapons package that they will carry in order to meet the objective. The mission editor also allows the disposition of ground and naval objects (radar, SAM missile launchers, ships etc) so that defences can be built. This mission editor has one particular subtlety which to my mind has driven the long term success of the sim. It has been designed so that a mission creator can create an overall mission, hide some of the details, place a password on the file ("classify" it), and hand it over to a second person to fly the mission. This in itself is not remarkable - what is more interesting is that you can classify the mission into different categories. At the simplest level a pilot mission gives the second person little flexibility. His flight plan and weapons load are predetermined and all he can do is study these, check the mission briefing (another useful facility - Flanker allows you to give a briefing to the pilot about his objectives for the mission by incorporating an area where text - I have seen missions with complete stories in the briefing, so a considerable amount - is entered that can be seen by the person flying the mission). At the next level a squadron leader mission allows you to pick your flight (up to a total of 4 aircraft), the weapons load and the way points for the flight. During the mission you can give commands to your wingman. At the top level, is the general mission in which you can control a whole range of resources to meet mission objectives - you may also decide not to designate yourself as pilot for any of the aircraft and just allow the computer AI to fly for you.

Twins is the mission that gave me the title of Kirovskeye Master Architect. The ability to create missions in which two parties interact generated a set of competitions on the Internet. This particular competition is now closed, but the rules can be found at http://www.onthenet.com.au/~kennw/62kirov.htm . Take a look and then try and get at the target (A50 on the runway at Kirovskeye) with up to 4 aircraft. Let me know if you manage it.

When a mission is flown you have the option of recording the action in a ".trk" file. This allowed those flying these competition missions to submit their missions for review by the judges. One such competition was the 1996 Xmas Chicken run. The objective is to fly between two airfields, down a set of valleys and without going above 200m in the fastest possible time. As Winner of the Xmas 96 Chicken Run here is a zipped version of my .trk file that produced the winning time of 9 mins 50 secs. Note the tricks I had to resort to in order to get the time down:-

• Taking off round the back of the hangers
• Dumping all my cannon shells
• Dumping all my chaff and flares
• Dumping just the right amount of fuel so that the I nearly run out approaching the destination airport
• Flying as close to the edge of mountains to cut as much as possible of all the corners.
• Sharp pulls to the right and then left to bleed speed on landing.

This in part goes to illustrate the accuracy of the flight model in this sim, and another reason why I find this sim so compelling. It is so accurate that the weight of the cannon shells, the chaff and flares and the fuel all contribute to the performance of the plane. Losing them, allows slightly higher speeds.

But an accurate flight model really comes into its own in Head to Head against another human player. Flanker allows you to play with up to 16 players across a LAN or to connect either via modem (using Windows 95 dial up capability - one end needs the Plus Pack to support answering the modem) or, across the Internet. Dial up networking is by far the better and more stable of the two - the use of the Internet is hampered by the transmission delays inherent in it, although with the current version of Flanker this is normally very stable provided only a limited number of players are connected together. With the very accurate flight model you need to fly the correct tactics to outsmart your human opponent. The arcade yank the stick approach will only get you killed. So despite the limitations, there is an active web site, the Flanker Challenge Ladder with an automated challenge and scoring mechanism for a world-wide ladder.  A must for all those that wish to fly Head to Head with thanks to Adamski.

With head to head fighting "loose sight loose the fight" is the famous maxim. Flanker is the only sim where this is so frighteningly true. The padlock system in flanker is, in my opinion, one of the best that there could be. To padlock a bogey, you must have him in view. Press the grey* and he remains locked on whilst he is in the field of view. Blank spots under the aircraft and directly on your six loose the padlock if view is lost for more than 5 seconds. Whilst your head is screwed round looking at the bogey, a mini hud, showing key parameters (such as the pitch and roll of the aircraft, along with its speed and altitude) displays in a position that represents the relative position of the nose of the aircraft relative to your view. Although this needs lots of practice to get a full understanding of its meaning it really is almost ideal. I have only two areas I would like to see improved. Firstly, if view is lost for more than 5 seconds the view snaps back to the standard centre hub position - it would be much better if it stayed were you were last looking. Secondly, whilst searching for the bogey (using the hat switch on the joystick or the keypad on the keyboard), if you hit grey* sometime the view snaps back to the centre. I don't know why this is but it is most annoying.

Because of the popularity of the sim, and the following it has, there are many other sites supporting it. Some of these are

• The flanker FAQ.  An excellent document maintained by Redshift which tells you all you want to know about Flanker
• Home of the 62 Flying Falcons, where you will find rules for an e-mail campaign (as well as the Kirovskeye challenge mentioned earlier).
• The Flanker Online Web Site is a mine of useful information and files. Maintained by Headcase it has a mirror in the US for those of you located there. Amongst other things there is the Random Mission Generator by Mark Hermonat and details of how to subscribe to the Flanker Mailing List.
• Hideo Fukumori has created Campaign Shell which allows multiple missions, each one with success or fail criteria to enable you to create multiple mission campaigns. Get it.

To me, the community that has built up around this sim is in itself the reason to keep actively flying it.