I loaded the simulator on a Cicero (Future Shop) high-end machine with a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 chip on an Intel D845GERG2LK motherboard with 1GB of PC2100 DDR memory, a 7,200 RPM 80GB hard drive, an ATI Radeon 8500 LE video card with 128MB of DDR memory, and Windows XP. The same thing happened on a Pentium III 733 MHz machine with 512MB of RAM and a ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500 card with 64MB of video RAM.įrustrated, I pulled out all the stops. Even at lower resolutions, there were noticeable stutters in the game that often made for frustrating play - especially during dogfights.
I ran the game on a relatively low-end Windows XP machine with a 1 GHz Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM and a 128MB Matrox Parhelia video card, which I then swapped for an ATI Radeon 8500 with 64MB of RAM, and the program was sluggish in both cases.
Based on my experience, this level of machine would be agonizing to play on.
The specs say the game requires a Windows PC with at least a 400 MHz processor and a 16MB video card, and about a gigabyte of hard drive space. Like today's jet fighters, you're going to need a powerful engine to get this puppy into the air. The ancient warplanes in this $74.95 (Canadian) sim might be tiny and unsophisticated by today's standards, but the program itself is neither of those things. This game feels like it hit the market a couple of months too early in quality control process, and it needs bug fixes and streamlining to make the game engine run more smoothly. I ran into frame rate inconsistencies, sluggish performance, graphical artifacts that would pop up from time to time, and shifting textures. Right off the top, though, be warned that there are problems. For those who, like me, enjoy a dash of action along with the complexities of a realistic flight sim, Microsoft'sįlight Simulator 3: Battle for Europe is a dogfighting and dive-bombing extravaganza for the PC. I've always enjoyed flight simulators, but no matter how good the terrain, just flying around eventually gets, well, kind of boring. Hopefully Microsoft will release a patch to smooth out the kinks and let this game be played to its potential The Verdict: It's a hefty program so you'll need lots (and I mean LOTS) of computing power and it has some bugs, but when it's running it's the best-looking World War II flight sim on the market.The Bad: Needs a very fast system to run smoothly sluggish performance can make dogfighting extra difficult graphical artifacts appear from time to time menus are primitive with little in the way of pop-up help important instruments don't stay visible in normal cockpit view.The Good: Huge array of aircraft (from prop-powered fighters and bombers to early jets) and interesting though limited selection of missions to fly pilot can customize paint job, nose art on aircraft excellent terrain, complete with vehicles and enemies who shoot back realistic weather effects.
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