The first-ever sim of the new F/A-18E Super Hornet definitely catches a 3-wire in the world of combat flight simulators...

A review by JonM

     Long ago, I was fortunate enough to have purchased the 1998 award winnner Jane's F-15. It was the first combat simulator I ever had, and I expected the world from it, and believe you me, I got what I expected. The realism was unprecedented, nearly everything in the cockpit in both seats worked! The communications included nearly every aspect of radio communications, and you could do any of the roles using any of the weapons the F-15E could hold. Recently, I started to realize that much time had passed since the release of this fine sim, and that new ones were available. That's when I discovered that the same team that had created F-15 had just outdone themselves...

Enter the Super Hornet. This beast of an airplane offers better performance all-around than the previous Hornet variants, and has the ability to carry more firepower than any fighter airplane I have ever seen. With around 10 hardpoints depending on other equipment, this airplane can divide the number of airplanes needed for one job in half, and also able to

accomplish the job of most other airplanes in the fleet. Now where can you go wrong with making a sim for an airplane like that?

     Well, nowhere. Upon opening this sim I was very happy with how similar it was to the old F-15 I was used to. It's interface was very similar, and its controls, except for the newly added features and things that must be changed for a carrier capable airplane, were IDENTICAL. I did a few hops to familiarize myself with the airplane and with carrier operations, and I was catching 3-wires in no time!

The graphics of this sim are far ahead of F-15, but they're still way behind some of the other combat sims out there, such as Jane's USAF. The reason I think this is perfectly reasonable is that there is not a single feature of the F/A-18E missing from this sim. Sims like USAF have plenty of room for graphics, because they're more like arcade games than accurate simulators!      The first thing anyone notices about a flight simulator is the cockpit. It's your office as a pilot, and it's very important that it

be as accurately represented as possible, right? Well, this sim has a new concept that should definitely be more widely explored as far as the cockpit goes. There is no 2D cockpit screen in F/A-18. Instead, you are always in a virtual cockpit mode, so that you can look with your hat switch as if you were moving your head around in the cockpit. The added bonus here? ALL THE SWITCHES ARE CLICKABLE IN VIRTUAL COCKPIT!