Graphics

Eye Candy

It is only fitting that the graphics in Flanker 2.0 are where we begin our review. When Flanker 1.0 was released, simmers across the world screeched out to name it the best flying simulation on the market. However, it's seemingly main competition at the time, Digital Image Design's (DID) EF2000 was also very popular among the simulation crowd. EF2000 was a game that had been improved upon over the scope of a couple of years and upon its final conception, EF2000 V2, it brought to the table virtually every part of what any flight simmer could ever want. Most notably, excellent graphics, a believable flight model and great campaign design. While Flanker 1 was very remarkable, it lacked that graphical quality to bring it over the hump and appeal to those that love to see the beauty of a powerful and sleek aircraft roaring through the skies.

Su-27 Pulling G's

Dogfight!

Flanker 2.0 fixed this. The graphics are revamped, redone and are stunning. Hardware support is brought to the player via D3D. OpenGL was originally planned but was dropped during testing. Players can now run Flanker 2.0 in either 32-bit or 16-bit color. There are graphics options that allow players to tweak the graphics for a good framerate. On my P3 600 MHz machine with a Voodoo3 3000 and 128 MB of RAM, Flanker 2.0 was virtually flawless. Only the occasional hiccup was evident. Changing the video to an nVidia GeForce DDR allowed me to switch into 32-bit color but there was a noticeable framerate loss. Going to 16-bit color seemed to bring the framerate back slightly but it still seems that Voodoo3 is the best video option for flight simmers. Support for SIMD or 3Dnow! would have been nice for framerate increases but neither are offered.

Pugachev's Cobra

Going straight to the Vertical