Ian's FUIII Page
Ive only just bought this so there ain't much here yet. I'll try and provide links, info, etc.
First Impressions
Personally I think this sim has loads of potential. The sim maps out an area of North West Pacific sea board of the USA around Seattle with a detailed digital elevation model and 4x4m pixel resolution. There is also a dynamic weather model and some excellent built in flight lessons. The quality of the terrain far exceeds the native scenery of FS98, FLY! and ProPilot99 though forth comming sims like FS2000, Wilco's Hangsim, Jane's USAF, Waywood's B17 will give it a run for it's money. Also some third party scenery for FLY and lots of patches may yet put this sim back into contention.
The current release of FUIII prior to patches is dogged by dire frame rates around city and mountain areas. On my 400Mhz/64MB/VoodooII system the thing runs OK mostly though turns into a slide show at some points. Forums have been inundated with complaints about frame rates, so much so that Lglass closed off it's own forum in embarrassment.
To be honest though frame rates really arn't that bad most of the time and it is early days yet. It's very rare that software of this complexity will be perfect first time round, especially with familiar commercial pressures posed by Microsoft forcing an early release. I remember similar problems with Falcon4 that were addressed quickly by a responsive development team. Falcon4 turned from being a slow turkey into easily the best flight sim to date.
Lglass will patch and most of us have modems or buy PC magazines so can easily update.
It's worth noting that there are some other minor bugs like rain without clouds, shimmering of distant terrain, blue ghosties on panels, etc.
All in all I like this sim, it easily pisses on the current crop of civil sims (FS98,FLY,ProPilot99) for realism and elegance though needs to have silky smooth performance to hold a candle to some of the forthcomming combat sims. For now I will give Looking Glass the benifit of the doubt as they try to iron out the problems.
How Looking Glass responds to it's punters will be the make or break this sim.
News!
FUIII patch announcement from Lglass 6-October-99
Links
Looking Glass's FUIII site - official site
Avsim FUIII forum - your've read the hype, now read the rest
Another Forum - cut off one forum more will rear their heads like ugly hydra
Brads Flight Unlimited FBO!!! - excellent place for tips, etc
LLFLY's Flight Unlimited III
Pegasus Flight Unlimited III
Welcome to FUIII
General Flight Simulation
Sim Flight
Flight Sim Site
Micro Wings
Avsim
Combatsim
Sim Arena
My Combat Flight Simulator Page
Free Complete MP3s from Machester progrock band Space Hopper
My Email - i.drumm@salford.ac.uk