Flanker 2.5 (Jewel Case)

List Price: $29.95 Discount Price: $3.54

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Best Jet simulator Ever [Posted on 2003-08-13]
I am from India and IAF inducted a bunch of SU-30 MKIs in it's airforce. I wanted to get a feel for this fighter and bought the flanker 2.5 . I also own Microsoft CFS2 , CFS3 ( dont waste your money on this ) , IL2( money well spent ) , Ka-52 just to name a few.

Flanker 2.5 is not a game. It is a simulator. So there are no points flashing after you complete a mission successfully. I have been playing it for an year now and even now it keeps me intrested. There is a lot to learn. You need to learn about the plane , your enemy plane , Different missiles and their envelopes , radar range , when to track , when not to track, how to refuel, when to fire a missile and a whole lot more.

So , if you want a game that you can master in a couple of weeks , this is not the one. If you are looking fo some simulator that will teach you about different weapons systems, tactics and more importantly how hard it is to be a real fighter pilot , this is a keeper.

The graphics are excellent and very light on resources considering the vintage of the game.It is comparable to Microsoft CFS3 in the graphics quality but with 1/3 the resource usage.

Buy it if you are a serious aero or sim enthusiast...you will LOVE IT.

Poorest flying game I have ever played. [Posted on 2003-11-02]
This is definitely the poorest flying game. The quality of image is bad and the audio effect is worse.

Did not work [Posted on 2003-11-26]
I tried 2 different disks, would not run. I am well within the minimum required. Tech support is pathetic. Avoid if you cant return it.

You Need A Good Computer [Posted on 2004-12-30]
I had 10x the system requirements but it loads as slow as a slug. My computer is a well-oiled machine. The FPS wasn't very impressive on a GeForce 4 Ti4200. Yet, the minimum is a Voodoo 2?? I was a bit disappointed. However, the simulation is quite good, and if you're a flight sim fan you will enjoy it. You just gotta have some sort of super-computer. If you don't, get Flanker 1.5 It's just as good if not better. Unless you need pretty graphics to be impressed by a flight sim.

Not a Game...A Simulator!! [Posted on 2005-07-18]
I have worked for two different companies that designed and implimented real flight simulators. One of these was the F-16 (Link) and the other was the

F/A-18 (Hughes) so I can say with some authority that this simulator has one of the very best flight-models that I've ever experianced, bar none. I

noticed a comment by one individual who stated that "the graphics are bad" (or something like that) and I have to agree...the graphics, especially on a

slower systems, with all the "options" set to either "medium" or "low" (for example) are not "LOMAC" quality to be sure. However, the folks who wrote the engine for this simulator were not setting out to make a "pretty" game at all, but rather they set-out to design a true flight simulator based on the aircraft of their country of origin - the SU-27 (and its variants) designed and built on the former USSR: they excelled in this department.

Having been "up" in both Falcon's and Hornet's, I can honestly say I do know a good flight model when I run across one. However, the SU series of fighters and thier flight-envelope are much different than that of our (the United States) birds and, in many ways are much better. Not having flown a MiG or and SU does not qualify me to judge the accuracy of this FM but, after going through some recent flight data on the SU/MKI series (a plane that even the United States should consider purchasing because it is THAT good IMHO!!) and then flying a similar airframe in Flanker 2.5, I can say that its flight envelope acts very much like the "real McCoy" i.e, when you reach Corner Speed and start to time it, you should wind-up at a certain degree away from your original position within a given time-frame - and that is one of the things you get with this sim: realism of the aircraft.

There is an obvious tradeoff between the graphics here, and the realism of the aircraft and SSI chose the later and focused on it instead of the "eye candy". So, if you want both excellent graphics (i.e. buildings, landscape, VERY cool clouds, etc.) then I would purchase Lock On: Modern Air Combat over this sim any day of the week. With "LOMAC" you have one of the finest military sims in the world AND you can fly both American as well as Soviet designs - but there is one caveat that you need to heed: your system, no matter HOW "smokin" you THINK it is, is TOO SLOW for LOMAC, period!!

I digress for a moment. I'm NOT sure about the very latest "Dual-Core" Athlon 64 series and their associated motherboards (i.e. Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with a Dual-Core, AMD64 4000+ w/ dual 7800 SLI cards, for example) because these are so new that, at least I will assume, even LOMAC won't bring them to their knees...one would hope :(. So with that said: if you have a very new, very FAST system - purchase Lock On: Modern Air Combat. If your system is rather old (6-months is "old" these days I'm afraid :(!!!!), then purchase Flanker 2.5 (their is, also, a "patch" available to bring 2.5 to 2.51 as well) AND, when doing so, IF your REALLY looking into doing the "whole flight-sim thing" then it would be wise to purchase a good HOTAS setup as well (Saitek's X-52, for example) because, this way you can program all of your distracting key-strokes into the HOTAS and never take your eyes off the enemy or the ground!

YET ANOTHER good choice that is somewhere in-between Flanker and LOMAC would be "Falcon 4.0" and there are a TON of free add-ons for this sim as well!!! Graphics are good and the flight model (after updates) is second to none AND it don't require as much "horsepower" to run it either!!

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