Nirmal Jayasinghe

 Flight simulators have been some of the most prioritized programs on my PC. They can be awesome serious fun, if you know how to get it done. The love began six years ago, when I watched in awe some senior student instructors fly an IAI Kfir simulation at an Aeronautical Society event. Flight simulators are not just games. They embody the fascination always connected with flight and jets. You do not only fly them for game: mostly I fly practice missions. Just for the fun of flying. But let’s get back to the main topic ..

I have about, yes, five flight simulators on my computer. F-22 Lightning 3, my first, but incomplete. Then came the F-16 MRF, my favorite, the star player. Others are MiG-29 Fulcrum [a development release], Microsoft Flight Simulator and FlightGear. The last two are serious, but my pet thing is the F-16.

As I said, the Novalogic’s F-16 Multirole Fighter is primarily a game, and not a dedicated flight simulator. But it is too good to be so. The physics are quite decent. I’ve tried out other game type ’simulations’ but nothing came close to this. This is just great.

There are numerous missions, grouped under several ‘Tours of Duty’ set in various theaters if you play the game in Campaign mode. That is the gamer mode, and I too played it that way for a time. A decent weapon set is provided, consisting of almost every type of munition in USAF inventory, AIM-120 AMRAAM, AIM-9 Sidewinder, GBUs, HARMs etc. However, nuclear weapons aren’t included [the free-fall B61 was available in the F-22]. You’re given a designation callsign, and start as a dapper young lieutenant. You then earn your way up, earning various medals and honors as you complete the tours of duty. If you end up without getting killed, which I guess I did once, you can retire with your truckload of medals. Home!

The other mode is the one which you just fly, choosing a mission of your choice and such. There are several training missions, in which you learn to fly the jet, land it, air-to-air combat and air-to-ground attack [both guided and unguided].

The jet is quite well modeled in the simulator. I’ve never flown an actual F-16, but I think the model represents the hallmark remarkable agility of the aircraft. It has markedly different handling from heavy twin-engined fighter models such as the F-22 or MiG-29. The terrain and airfields are also very good. The most interesting factor is that almost all types of aircraft are modeled in the sim and sometime, somewhere you’ll meet them. Such exotic types as F-117s, Tu-95s, C-5s, Eurofighter Typhoons, F-7s, and even An-225s. There’s one mission where you escort a shuttle carrier Boeing 747. The type diversity is just awesome for a non-serious simulator [and on second thoughts, a serious one doesn’t need such diversity].

The autopilot is manageable. It can be set to follow a predefined set of waypoints but there is no auto land option. Needs quite a bit of practice to land, but the tutorials your instructor gives during the practice flights are great. The head up display [HUD] is very detailed, including information such as attitude, airspeed, altitude [both pressure and radar], magnetic heading, and steering and heading cues. It can be viewed in several options too, such as full screen, close-up or normal. As a hardcore simulator pilot I prefer the last. Power setting can be set linearly, or there are predefined settings at 35%, 60%, 90% , military and full afterburner. The cockpit is reasonably detailed, although the only working instruments are the HUD, power indicator and altimeter. There are two multifunction LCD displays, which can be keyed to display any one of moving map, weapons configuration, system status or LANTRIN night vision view. They’re awefully useful, especially when flying at night. But my favorite pice of gadget is the tactical situation display indicator. In air-to-air combat it sports two bugs, a nice looking bug which is you and an ugly little one which is your enemy. Also it is coupled to the navigation computer so the terrain, along with airfield positions, just ‘unfolds’ in front of you, where ever you fly. [I can remember an F-106 pilot describing a similar instrument. The description is influenced by him]
One thing I see with Novalogic simulations over stuff like the MSFS is ’self-centering’ controls. It means this. If you don’t have a joystick, you use arrow keys to control the aircraft’s control column. When you press the left arrow, the control column is tilted to the left and the jet rolls over to the left. Self centering controls mean that the instant you release the button, the column centers. Some simulations don’t do this. Although you release the arrow key, the column stays in the tilted position and you have to center it using the opposite arrow, which leads to sloppy flying and constant uttering of swear words. With heavy jets it’s somewhat acceptable since you don’t do aerobatics in them. But in a fast agile jet, simply nah, nah.

One of my favorite activities in the F-16 is formation flying. You waltz the sky within feet, or inches from another aircraft, with surgical precision in formation. Wingtip-to-wingtip. There’s a wingman provided but he’s useless. Works best in practice missions. I’ve flown hours of formations with other bombers and fighters, especially B-1Bs and F-16s from other units. Recently I flew a formation with some F-15s. To keep up with the fast jet, I had to keep the F-16 in constant afterburner [about 125% thrust setting]. In the F-22 there’s a refueling option, where you can formate with a tanker but it’s not provided with the F-16., so you can’t go alot far with the ‘burners open.
Since this is a game, aerodynamic modeling is not that much accurate. You can’t keep the aircraft in the ground effect. You cannot stall it either. Sometimes it goes into a flat spin, from which recovery is almost impossible. But handling differs according to aircraft configuration. With the landing gear extended, it is remarkably sloppy to handle: like an MSFS B737.
 

At last got OpenOffice 2.0.4 (shiny new!) installed on my Linux partition. I’ve got Red Hat 9 and til now I had that stupidly outdated OO 1.0.2 that came on the install CD-ROM media. It took almost 2+ minutes (!) to start on my 128MB system. The new version fires up under 1 minute, still slow, but great when comparing to what I had.For almost an year I had this Linux system, installed it in 2005 when I was still a dapper young freshman. We needed it at school, but I didn’t install it til the term finished. Then continuously I’ve been having fun with Linux. The distribution mostly contains old versions of software, but now I’ve got time and motivation so I’ve started downloading new version off the Internet and installing them. Read Hat 9 is fine, but I guess Linux purists eye it with a bit of suspect. But still it’s good, main downside so far it doesn’t speak USB. But it mounts my Windows partition on the fly, so I can dump whatever I got off the net there and the access it from Linux. I was considering to upgrading to something newer [ kubuntu, perhaps?], but for now I’ve decided to stick with this. It does all I want. Looks a bit old yes, but still fine.

I am a FOSS [Free & Open Source] enthusiast. Mind yeh, enthusiast, not a dedicated barnaclehead. I use both free and proprietary technologies as per requirement, but I sure have a lot soft place in my heart for that “cuddly penguin sitting down after gorging down on herron” and his clan.