Over Flanders Fields Phase 3: Between Heaven and Hell Page 7

By SimHQ on March 4, 2009 in _air12, hide

Models, Terrain and Scenery

The models, terrain and scenery I find very pleasing and well done. From the very beautiful and detailed aircraft — exteriors are especially gorgeous, to the landscapes and ground objects that signify a living breathing world below. I find the landscapes beautiful and convincing. On a whole, I’m totally immersed in the world.

Interior of planes vary a bit. Most are as good as the exteriors; a few seem a little bare but then your cockpit in 1917 was in many instances Spartan. You’ll come across interesting little details such as a pinup photo stuck to the instruments, and a paperback lying around the cockpit of one of the aircraft.

One thing I noticed is that it is not possible to access the video settings from in-sim drop down menu and I find it a bit cumbersome that I have to start the configuration utility from the OFF Workshops menu in order to increase or decrease detail. It can be done in CFS 3, then why not in OFF? A very minor point though as once you have it dialed in you won’t need to go back very often to adjust your settings.

The reason for this is that unlike in CFS 3 where you’re not actually in the airplane when tweaking the display settings, in OFF you’re put straight into the cockpit, ready to fly. An easier way of tweaking the graphics settings is being prepared for the next update.

Performance wise my computer chugs away quite happily at 1608x1050x32, 2x AA and all detail sliders at a setting of 4 with very little occasional slight stuttering, overall delivering fairly constant frame rates at 20 – 30 fps, an entirely acceptable visual and smooth experience. The screenshots in this review were all taken with these or higher settings. Bumping the detail sliders up to 5 experimentally, confirmed that my rig won’t go quite that far, but I didn’t really expect it to either.