Flight Unlimited
Encyclopedia
Flight Unlimited is a 1995 aerobatic
flight simulator
video game developed and published by Looking Glass Technologies
. It allows players to pilot reproductions of real-world aircraft
and to perform aerobatic maneuver
s. They may fly freely, race through floating rings against a timer or take lessons from a virtual flight instructor
. The instructor teaches basic and advanced techniques, ranging from rudder
turns to maneuvers such as the tailslide, Lomcevak
and Immelmann turn
.
Flight Unlimited was the first self-published game released by Looking Glass Technologies. It was intended to establish the company as a video game publisher
and to compete with flight simulator franchises such as Microsoft Flight Simulator
. Project leader Seamus Blackley
, a particle physicist
and amateur pilot, conceived the game in 1992. He felt that other flight simulators failed to convey the experience of real flight, and reacted by coding a simulated atmosphere for Flight Unlimited that generates aerodynamics
in real-time. Aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian
endorsed the game and assisted the team in making it more true to life.
Flight Unlimited received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success; its sales exceeded 780,000 copies by 2002. Reviewers lauded its realism, flight instruction, graphics and sense of flight, but some criticized its high system requirements
. The game was followed by two sequels: Flight Unlimited II
(1997) and Flight Unlimited III
(1999). The combat-oriented Flight Combat was planned as a direct follow-up to Flight Unlimited, but a string of development issues resulted in its belated 2002 release as Jane's Attack Squadron
.
(3D) flight simulator
video game: its gameplay is a simulation of piloting real-world airplanes. Players may control the Bellanca Decathlon, Extra 300S, Pitts Special S-2B
, Sukhoi Su-31
and Grob G103a Twin II sailplane. The game begins at the fixed-base operator (FBO) interface—a traversable 3D room whose contents represent menu options. For example, the player interacts with a row of scale airplane models
to select an aircraft, and with a world globe to change airfield locations. Six settings are available, including Sedona, Arizona
and Springfield, Vermont
.
The player may choose to begin flight on a runway
or taxiway
, or in the air. Aircraft are controlled via keyboard
, joystick
, head-mounted display
or specialized input devices such as pedals. During flight, several third- and first-person camera angles
may be selected. For example, the third-person Flyby View places the camera in front of the plane as it flies past, while the first-person Three-Way View displays more information about the plane's position and speed than other angles. Certain camera angles, including the Three-Way View and 3-D Cockpit view, provide the player with simulated flight instruments
such as an altimeter
, airspeed indicator
, accelerometer
, variometer
and tachometer
. The game is designed to allow players to perform aerobatic maneuver
s such as the Immelmann turn
, tailslide, Lomcevak
and Cuban Eight
. Performances may be recorded and played back, with controls that allow pausing, rewinding and fast forward
ing. At any time, the player may stop a recording and resume flight from that point.
The game contains lessons that cover basic and advanced flight techniques, ranging from rudder
turns to challenging aerobatic maneuvers. A simulated flight instructor offers real-time advice based on the player's performance. Certificates are earned by performing well during lessons. In Hoops courses, the player undertakes a time trial
through rings that float in the sky, with the option of enabling a "ghost plane" of the highest score. Four types of Hoops courses are available: Basic, Challenge, Distance and Trick. The last is intended as a highly demanding test of the player's aerobatic ability. The game's sole non-powered aircraft, the Grob G103a Twin II sailplane, features its own game mode focused on energy management. The player attempts to use the direction of the wind, thermals—which realistically occur above areas that absorb more heat, such as plains and parking lots—and the orographic lift
caused by slopes to stay airborne for as long as possible.
' discontent with contemporary flight simulator
s. Company co-founders Paul Neurath
and Ned Lerner wanted to develop an exceptional game in the genre, and Neurath considered the idea during the production of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds
. In 1992, Seamus Blackley
, who had been undertaking graduate studies in particle physics
at the Fermilab
research facility, was hired through a want advertisement
that Lerner had placed on a bulletin board. At the company, Blackley programmed the physics modeling system for a racing game and designed a large number of standalone physics demonstrations. He became fascinated by physics programming. An amateur pilot and flight devotee, Blackley asked Lerner extensive questions about his earlier game Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer
, which Blackley held in high regard. In reaction to Blackley's enthusiasm, Neurath suggested that the company develop a "traditional Cessna sim".
However, Blackley instead proposed an aerobatics
training simulation, which he had conceived while reading an aerobatics magazine on a Lexington, Massachusetts
bus. Collaborating with Ultima Underworld II programmer Greg Travis, he created a thirty page concept document that outlined the game. His core idea was to recreate the "yummy, visceral, fluid feeling that you get when flying a real airplane". He wanted it to bear more resemblance to a playground
than to a video game, and sought to give it simple controls and realistic terrain to decrease the learning curve
for beginners. Blackley assumed the role of project leader, and engaged the team in "flaming sessions" to generate ideas. According to programmer Doug Church
, Blackley's concept of the game was not fully developed, but he clearly expressed his thoughts and motivated the team. The first months of the project produced disparate prototypes that demonstrated prospective features. The company committed to full development of the game in early 1993, and production commenced in March.
s. In 1995, he said that he had never played a flight simulator with an accurate sense of flight. He later described his belief that the genre had stagnated, and that flight games were evaluated "by [their] implementation of the standard feature set", rather than by their enjoyability. Blackley researched physics programming in contemporary flight simulators, and discovered that many used large databases of wind tunnel
and plane sensory equipment information to dictate how aircraft would operate in prerecorded scenarios. Higher-end simulators used a "Newtonian
" system, in which algebra-based measurements of force vectors determine a plane's position in real-time. However, Blackley believed that neither system correctly simulated the experience of flight.
In reaction, he used his knowledge of particle physics to create a real-time computational fluid dynamics
(CFDs) model for Flight Unlimited. The result is a simulated atmosphere: air acts as a fluid that automatically reacts to the shape of any object placed within it. Blackley gave the example that a lawn chair
, if placed within the game's real-time CFDs model, would fall merely because of its shape. The game's planes fly because the interaction of their architecture with the atmosphere creates lift
, as with real-world aircraft. Changes in the plane's direction are caused by the interaction of their flight control surfaces (aileron
s, elevator
s and rudders) with the simulated atmosphere. Because the dynamics of flight are simulated in real-time, the system allows for aerobatic maneuvers that were impossible in previous flight simulators. In 1994, Blackley said that it was possibly the first flight code designed for aerobatics. In constructing the CFDs model, Blackley and the team built from the Navier–Stokes equations of fluid motion, which Blackley described as "horrible, complicated partial differential equation
s". According to Computer Gaming World
, Blackley did not seek to represent the equations with perfect accuracy, and was satisfied when the results were consistent and the sensation that they generated was correct.
After programming a basic version of the CFDs model, Blackley used several programs to examine the simulated currents of air that flowed across a model of a flat plate. He adjusted the code until the plate fell realistically, and then constructed test models for a plane wing and fuselage
. He eventually built a complete but dysfunctional plane using data from "pinhead
books". By reading aircraft design manuals, he discovered that the problems were caused by his plane's incorrect tail and center of gravity
. Following this, he created an exact three-dimensional model
of the Extra 300S over roughly three days. As he had not yet simulated the physical attributes of its propeller
, Blackley programmed the plane to be propelled from the rear. However, the accurate model performed properly in the simulated atmosphere.
Artists Mike Marsicano and Kurt Bickenbach played critical roles in the creation of the game's aircraft models, which were built in 3D Studio. As reference material, the team photographed real planes at several airfields, and received blueprint
s and datasheet
s from their manufacturers. The game's Grob G103a Twin II sailplane was based directly on the one that Blackley owned at the time. The sophistication of the real-time CFDs complicated the 3D modeling process, as the planes required accurate geometry to fly properly. While attempting to meet this goal, however, Bickenbach said that the models he created were overly detailed, which caused the team to struggle with performance issues related to the high number of polygons
. Reducing the number altered the plane's shape, which in turn reduced its flight realism; this necessitated a balance between performance and accuracy. To obtain audio for the planes, Greg LoPiccolo and Tom Streit—former bassist and road manager, respectively, of the band Tribe
—visited a Florida importer of Russian aerobatic aircraft. The two placed microphones inside the cockpits and next to the engines, and flew each plane at multiple speeds while recording with a digital audio tape
machine. Combining this material with digital recordings
of wind sounds, the team fashioned a physics-based sound system: sounds of the wind and engine are altered in real-time based on wind speed in the game.
The flight instructor
was created by programmer Andrew Grant and voiced by Tom Streit. It monitors the player's controller input during "each frame of animation". If a maneuver is attempted, the instructor "interpolates the initial control movements" and predicts which maneuver is being performed. The instructor then gives advice on how to properly complete it, offering guidance if a mistake is made. However, Grant believed that the code is sometimes "too picky", and stated that it expects players to perform maneuvers more precisely than is humanly possible. The team initially planned to include an online multiplayer component, which would have allowed 64 planes to fly in the same area—giving players the ability to compete with one another. However, the feature was not implemented into the final game. The staff members also sought to include aerobatic competitions in which the player could participate, but the idea was dropped because of difficulties with realism. Problems with artificial intelligence
-based judges were also a factor in the feature's removal.
Flight Unlimiteds terrain graphics were created with stereophotogrammetry
. The team gathered aerial photographs
from locations in France and the United States. They combined two to three images of each area to create digital reproductions roughly 11 square miles (28.5 km²) in size. Each location in the game was based on two stereoscopic
sets of photographs, which were processed for more than 72 hours by a "dedicated Pentium tucked away in a dark corner". From the contrasting images, the computer generated a terrain "data blanket" with 3D height variations. While the team had considered using satellite or surveillance aircraft
images to create the game's terrain graphics, they found that the resolution was inadequate. Material from geographic information system
s was also studied, but associate producer Paul Schaffer said that it would have been "astronomically expensive" to obtain data with the necessary resolution.
After assembling a playable demo of Flight Unlimited, the team requested assistance from then-US Aerobatic Team member Michael Goulian
, who was instructing flight at the nearby Hanscom Field
. Because of the game's flight code, Goulian was able to execute aerobatic maneuvers within less than three minutes of playing the game; he later performed his "entire basic aerobatic routine". Blackley told PC Gamer US that, while Goulian disliked flight simulators, "When he flew Flight Unlimited, he just said 'pretty cool.' I was so psyched". Goulian assisted the team during the next year of development, co-designing the game's flight lessons and advising the team on adjustments to the plane models. Aerobatic pilot Patty Wagstaff
was also consulted. At one point, the team encountered problems while testing a maneuver in the game's Sukhoi Su-31
, and Blackley was concerned that he would need to rework the game's physics code. However, Goulian phoned a colleague—a Russian pilot—who told them to compensate for the plane's abnormally large ailerons. Using his advice on flying the real-world plane, the team found that the maneuver worked correctly. Goulian endorsed Flight Unlimited, and wrote the foreword to its official strategy guide.
The graphics and physics code increased the game's system requirements
, and the team worked to optimize performance during development. Church noted the difficulty of improving the game's memory usage, saying that it took nearly as long as creating the physics model. Programmer Eric Twietmeyer ran weekly tests of the game's performance, disabling certain parts of the code—such as the physics calculations—to isolate which parts used the most memory. By 1994, Blackley's physics code took up only 1% of CPU time
, with the rest being allocated to the terrain renderer. Blackley optimized his code by converting the mathematical calculations of air from the 3D game world into a "math-friendly space", during which time the Navier-Stokes equations are applied. Afterwards, the data is returned to 3D space. According to Computer Gaming World, this method increased speed by "a factor of 100, with almost no loss in precision." The team had trouble with complex memory-related glitch
es during development. Church called them "crazy", and programmer Greg Travis noted that debugging
the terrain cache
system was a "nightmare".
While leading the team, Blackley adopted a loose style of supervision. According to Opening the Xbox author Dean Takahashi, "Blackley [was not] ultra-organized. His idea of good management was to invite someone over for a gourmet dinner and have a casual conversation about work". However, Takahashi wrote that "Blackley worked hard to inspire his team", and he described artist James Dollar's belief that, "in contrast to other Looking Glass managers, he didn't take over tasks and make others feel stupid". During the first two years of production, the team was divided into small groups that worked on the game's elements separately. For example, Blackley programmed the game's physics, while Eric Twietmeyer and Tim Day created the terrain renderer. However, Doug Church later said that, while "the team [did] a bunch of very cool stuff, the FBO, the flight model, the instructor, the renderer, so on", the result "was almost like four separate programs, with no connection". Following the completion of the concurrently-developed System Shock
, a significant part of that game's team—including Church, Marc LeBlanc
and Rob Fermier—moved to Flight Unlimited to add connective material. At the time, Church said that it was difficult to meld the game's elements, but he later stated that they largely coalesced by the end.
s, and had generated $90 million total earnings for those companies. However, Ronald Rosenberg of The Boston Globe
reported that Looking Glass was "no longer satisfied as a backroom player surviving on royalties". Doug Church later explained that the company wanted to self-publish in order to escape the "treadmill of waiting for advances", which would allow them to make long-term plans without needing to satisfy the immediate demands of a publisher. In late 1994, Looking Glass announced that venture capital
investors, including Matrix Partners
and Institutional Venture Partners
, had provided the company with $3.8 million. The sum was intended to fund the development and self-publication of Flight Unlimited. According to Michael Humphreys of Matrix Partners and Ruthann Quindlen of Institutional Venture Partners, the decision was partly influenced by the past success of the company's co-founders, Paul Neurath and Ned Lerner.
Looking Glass intended Flight Unlimited as a gateway into the video game publishing industry. According to Lerner, the idea of self-publishing had been considered when the company was founded. In 1995, Looking Glass projected that sales of Flight Unlimited would increase royalty revenues to $10 million that year, up from $1.5 million in 1994. Jeffrey A. Kalowski, the company's vice president of finance and administration, expected that the game would recoup its development costs and make a return before the end of the year. He predicted that, over the following 12 to 18 months, the company's number of employees would increase from 52 to 82. The company's executive vice president and general manager, Jerry Wolosenko, told The Boston Globe that the company hoped to publish six games each year. According to Doug Church, the pressure for Flight Unlimited to succeed meant that the concurrently-developed System Shock
, which was not self-published, received little attention from the company's management.
Flight Unlimited was placed in direct competition with several major flight simulator franchises. Before the game's release, Shelby Bateman of Next Generation Magazine
wrote, "1995 is going to be a real dogfight in the flight-sim and aerial-combat categories, and LookingGlass is betting its bankroll ... that it can capture significant market share from the likes of Microsoft Flight Simulator and the debut of Spectrum HoloByte's Falcon 4.0
, among others." Describing the situation, Johnny L. Wilson of Computer Gaming World wrote, "The games that sell big are the ones that allow you to blow stuff up, so, if anything, that could be a problem for Flight Unlimited." Doug Church explained that, because the game did not feature combat, and was not "a Microsoft Flight Simulator type [game] where you take off, fly some set course and land", the team spent "many late nights" deciding on marketing strategies. However, he noted that the game had a wide appeal among those who tested it during development, which he called "a really good sign". Talking to Bernie Yee of PC Gamer US, Paul Neurath said that he thought the game would sell well. Yee noted that Neurath "fully [expected] it to prove more popular than Microsoft Flight Simulator".
In January 1995, Looking Glass showed Flight Unlimited alongside Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show
, under their "Immersive Reality" marketing label. In March 1995, the Boston Globe reported that the team was performing "11th hour checks" of the game to prepare it for shipment to a Midwestern United States
Compact Disc manufacturer. The newspaper stated that Looking Glass planned to begin by shipping 100,000 units to retailers in Canada
and the United States, with another 100,000 copies later being sent to France
, Germany
and the United Kingdom
. The game was released for DOS
on June 7, 1995, with 200,000 units distributed simultaneously in the United States and Europe. The game's European releases were localized with German, French and English text and voice acting, which was made possible by "close coordination with international partners". Versions for Macintosh
and Windows 95
were later released, with the former being shown at the Macworld
Expo in April 1996.
, the game successfully competed with Microsoft Flight Simulator. PC Gamer
s Lee Buchanan wrote that it "soars above the pack of flight simulations", and considered it to be "the most fun [he has] had in a computerized cockpit". Frank Vizard of Popular Mechanics
hailed it as "the new top gun of flight simulators", and Doug Bailey of The Boston Globe
considered it to be the "first real serious challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the genre". The Record
s David Noack believed that the game's physics and stereoscopic terrain set "a new standard in flight simulation". Writing for Computer Gaming World, Bob and John Nolan stated, "If anything, you should at least take a look at this product, because [you will] be looking at the future of simulations." The game was a finalist in PC Magazine
s 12th Annual Awards for Technical Excellence, with the staff calling it "the simulator by which all others will be judged."
believed that the game was "the closest thing to taking wing this side of those multimillion-dollar flight simulators fighter pilots and astronauts get to use". Noack agreed, writing that the game "is about as close to flying within going to the airport". In 1996, Computer Gaming World
presented the game with a "Special Artistic Achievement Award For Physical Model". The magazine's staff praised Seamus Blackley's programming for pushing the genre "higher into the realm of simulation".
Ware found Flight Unlimited approachable, noting its "simplicity of use and depth of instruction". Buchanan hailed the lesson mode as "a dream come true for any budding pilot". A writer for The Washington Post called the game "[the] world's first truly easy-to-use flight simulator", in which "rank amateurs can just launch the program and start cruising immediately". The Washington Posts John Gaudiosi wrote that, while many games in the genre were overly complex, Flight Unlimited lets "those who [are not] rocket scientists ... experience the thrills of stunt flying." Gaudiosi also noted that its control scheme was simple to understand. In contrast, Bailey found the game difficult and initially "frustrating", stating that he had to play the game's lesson mode before even taking off. Atkin wrote that "learning to fly high-performance aircraft under a flight model this tough can be a challenge", but noted the game's scalable difficulty options. Bailey later recommended the game in a holiday shopping guide, and noted that "it can be difficult to master. But once you're up, it's worth the trouble."
A writer for The Washington Post
called it "a good entry product for more technically demanding simulators", and noted that "serious flight freaks will like the racing and advanced maneuvers". Gaudiosi wrote, "Invest the time and this disc will teach you all about aerodynamics and stunt flying (hard stuff, even with green hoops guiding you)." Buchanan found that "the aerobatic obstacle courses are incredibly demanding", and Denny Atkin of Computer Gaming World cited the game's Trick courses as "amazingly tough". Bob and John Nolan stated, "Pilots who love to loop around the skies of Flight Simulator 5 will go bananas for this stuff, but those who learned to fly with their index fingers on a joystick trigger ... might get a little edgy once the wow-power wears off." However, Atkin believed that, "unless [you are] never happy without something to shoot at ... [you will] be too busy choreographing aerial ballets, pulling off death-defying aerobatic stunts, or just enjoying a quiet soar down the ridge line to miss that stuff". Ware noted the game's "refreshing absence of weaponry", while Buchanan wrote, "If [you are] a battle-weary veteran of air combat sims, Flight Unlimited might be just the sort of [rest and relaxation] you need."
Bailey noted that the game requires "a real beefy machine" to run properly, while Atkin stated that its "massive horsepower requirement will restrict many gamers to lower resolutions and detail levels". Bob and John Nolan wrote, "This baby hogs computing power, but the power is put to excellent use." Buchanan believed that the system requirements
listed on the back of the game's box "must be a joke", and that a high-performance computer was necessary to run the game.
(1996) and British Open Championship Golf
(1997), were commercial failures. As a result, the company ceased self-publishing and was left in dire financial circumstances. Doug Church later explained that Looking Glass "was trying to establish itself as a publisher at a time when that was very, very hard to do. All the other mid-sized publishers were mostly going out of business or getting bought". He believed that the company had been "overreaching itself" with the venture, and that it was "being a little overambitious and a little cocky".
, and both were hired by Dreamworks Interactive
to create Jurassic Park: Trespasser
.
Constantine Hantzopoulos directed Flight Unlimited II
, which was published by Eidos Interactive
in 1997. The team could not continue using the real-time computational fluid dynamics of Flight Unlimited because, according to Hantzopoulos, it was "all black box spaghetti code
from Seamus". The aerobatics focus of its predecessor was dropped in favor of general civilian aviation. The development of Flight Combat was hinted at during the production of Flight Unlimited II. A third game, Flight Unlimited III
, was published by Electronic Arts
in 1999; it continued the focus on general aviation. That year, Flight Combat was officially announced as the World War II
-themed, Electronic Arts-published Flight Combat: Thunder Over Europe, but its name was eventually changed to Jane's Attack Squadron
. The game was canceled as a consequence of Looking Glass Studios' closure in 2000. However, it was later finished by developer Mad Doc Software and released in 2002 by publisher Xicat Interactive
.
Aerobatics
Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight. Aerobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sport...
flight simulator
Flight simulator
A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...
video game developed and published by Looking Glass Technologies
Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios was a computer game development company during the 1990s.The company originally formed as Looking Glass Technologies, when Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research merged....
. It allows players to pilot reproductions of real-world aircraft
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
and to perform aerobatic maneuver
Aerobatic maneuver
Aerobatic maneuvers are flight paths putting aircraft in unusual attitudes, in air shows, dog fights or competition aerobatics. Aerobatics can be performed by a single aircraft or in formation with several others...
s. They may fly freely, race through floating rings against a timer or take lessons from a virtual flight instructor
Flight instructor
A flight instructor is a person who teaches others to fly aircraft. Specific privileges granted to holders of a flight instructor qualification vary from country to country, but very generally, a flight instructor serves to enhance or evaluate the knowledge and skill level of an aviator in pursuit...
. The instructor teaches basic and advanced techniques, ranging from rudder
Rudder
A rudder is a device used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft or other conveyance that moves through a medium . On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane...
turns to maneuvers such as the tailslide, Lomcevak
Lomcevak
A Lomcovák is an aerobatic maneuver that can be performed by an aeroplane. The word originates from the Slovak aerobatic pilot 's mechanic, who at a 1958 air show in Brno, Czechoslovakia jokingly called Bezák's tumble maneuvers "Lomcovaks" when asked by journalists what they were.According to...
and Immelmann turn
Immelmann turn
The Immelmann turn refers to two different aircraft maneuvers.-In aerobatics:In modern aerobatical parlance, an Immelmann turn is an aerobatic maneuver of little practical use in aerial combat, and is a different maneuver altogether from the original dogfighting tactic of World War I from which it...
.
Flight Unlimited was the first self-published game released by Looking Glass Technologies. It was intended to establish the company as a video game publisher
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
and to compete with flight simulator franchises such as Microsoft Flight Simulator
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for the Microsoft Windows operating system, although it was marketed as a video game. It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator series...
. Project leader Seamus Blackley
Seamus Blackley
Seamus Blackley is a former agent with Creative Artists Agency representing video game creators.After entering Tufts University to study jazz piano, Blackley switched to study physics and graduated Summa cum Honore en Tesis. As a sophomore, he published his first paper in the Journal of Magnetic...
, a particle physicist
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
and amateur pilot, conceived the game in 1992. He felt that other flight simulators failed to convey the experience of real flight, and reacted by coding a simulated atmosphere for Flight Unlimited that generates aerodynamics
Aerodynamics
Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...
in real-time. Aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian
Michael Goulian
Michael George Goulian is an American aviator, who races in the Red Bull Air Race World Series under the number 99....
endorsed the game and assisted the team in making it more true to life.
Flight Unlimited received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success; its sales exceeded 780,000 copies by 2002. Reviewers lauded its realism, flight instruction, graphics and sense of flight, but some criticized its high system requirements
System requirements
To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer. These pre-requisites are known as system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed to an absolute rule. Most software defines two sets of system...
. The game was followed by two sequels: Flight Unlimited II
Flight Unlimited II
Flight Unlimited II is a 1997 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. The sequel to Flight Unlimited, it eschews its precessor's focus on aerobatics in favor of general aviation...
(1997) and Flight Unlimited III
Flight Unlimited III
Flight Unlimited III is a 1999 flight simulator video game developed Looking Glass Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to Flight Unlimited and Flight Unlimited II. The game includes ten user-flyable aircraft in total, and several new features...
(1999). The combat-oriented Flight Combat was planned as a direct follow-up to Flight Unlimited, but a string of development issues resulted in its belated 2002 release as Jane's Attack Squadron
Jane's Attack Squadron
Jane's Attack Squadron is a World War II flight simulator computer game for the PC. It was created by Looking Glass Studios, then finished by Mad Doc Software. It was published by Xicat Interactive, Inc.. It was released in the North America on March 22, 2002.-Gameplay:In Jane's Attack Squadron,...
.
Gameplay
Flight Unlimited is a three-dimensional3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
(3D) flight simulator
Flight simulator
A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...
video game: its gameplay is a simulation of piloting real-world airplanes. Players may control the Bellanca Decathlon, Extra 300S, Pitts Special S-2B
Pitts Special
The Pitts Special is a series of light aerobatic biplane designed by Curtis Pitts. It has accumulated many competition wins since its first flight in 1944...
, Sukhoi Su-31
Sukhoi Su-31
|-See also:-External links:*...
and Grob G103a Twin II sailplane. The game begins at the fixed-base operator (FBO) interface—a traversable 3D room whose contents represent menu options. For example, the player interacts with a row of scale airplane models
Scale model
A scale model is a physical model, a representation or copy of an object that is larger or smaller than the actual size of the object, which seeks to maintain the relative proportions of the physical size of the original object. Very often the scale model is used as a guide to making the object in...
to select an aircraft, and with a world globe to change airfield locations. Six settings are available, including Sedona, Arizona
Sedona, Arizona
Sedona is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U.S. state of Arizona...
and Springfield, Vermont
Springfield, Vermont
Springfield is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 9,373 at the 2010 census.-History:One of the New Hampshire grants, the township was chartered on August 20, 1761 by Governor Benning Wentworth and awarded to Gideon Lyman and 61 others...
.
The player may choose to begin flight on a runway
Runway
According to ICAO a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and take-off of aircraft." Runways may be a man-made surface or a natural surface .- Orientation and dimensions :Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, which is generally one tenth...
or taxiway
Taxiway
A taxiway is a path on an airport connecting runways with ramps, hangars, terminals and other facilities. They mostly have hard surface such as asphalt or concrete, although smaller airports sometimes use gravel or grass....
, or in the air. Aircraft are controlled via keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
, joystick
Joystick
A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...
, head-mounted display
Head-mounted display
A head-mounted display or helmet mounted display, both abbreviated HMD, is a display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet, that has a small display optic in front of one or each eye .- Overview :...
or specialized input devices such as pedals. During flight, several third- and first-person camera angles
Virtual camera system
A virtual camera system aims at controlling a camera or a set of cameras to display a view of a 3D virtual world. Camera systems are used in videogames where their purpose is to show the action at the best possible angle; more generally, they are used in 3D virtual worlds when a third person view...
may be selected. For example, the third-person Flyby View places the camera in front of the plane as it flies past, while the first-person Three-Way View displays more information about the plane's position and speed than other angles. Certain camera angles, including the Three-Way View and 3-D Cockpit view, provide the player with simulated flight instruments
Flight instruments
Flight instruments are the instruments in the cockpit of an aircraft that provide the pilot with information about the flight situation of that aircraft, such as height, speed and altitude...
such as an altimeter
Altimeter
An altimeter is an instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The measurement of altitude is called altimetry, which is related to the term bathymetry, the measurement of depth underwater.-Pressure altimeter:...
, airspeed indicator
Airspeed indicator
The airspeed indicator or airspeed gauge is an instrument used in an aircraft to display the craft's airspeed, typically in knots, to the pilot.- Use :...
, accelerometer
Accelerometer
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, also called the four-acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration , but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame...
, variometer
Variometer
The term variometer also refers to a type of variable transformer or an instrument for measuring the magnitude and direction of a Magnetic field....
and tachometer
Tachometer
A tachometer is an instrument measuring the rotation speed of a shaft or disk, as in a motor or other machine. The device usually displays the revolutions per minute on a calibrated analogue dial, but digital displays are increasingly common...
. The game is designed to allow players to perform aerobatic maneuver
Aerobatic maneuver
Aerobatic maneuvers are flight paths putting aircraft in unusual attitudes, in air shows, dog fights or competition aerobatics. Aerobatics can be performed by a single aircraft or in formation with several others...
s such as the Immelmann turn
Immelmann turn
The Immelmann turn refers to two different aircraft maneuvers.-In aerobatics:In modern aerobatical parlance, an Immelmann turn is an aerobatic maneuver of little practical use in aerial combat, and is a different maneuver altogether from the original dogfighting tactic of World War I from which it...
, tailslide, Lomcevak
Lomcevak
A Lomcovák is an aerobatic maneuver that can be performed by an aeroplane. The word originates from the Slovak aerobatic pilot 's mechanic, who at a 1958 air show in Brno, Czechoslovakia jokingly called Bezák's tumble maneuvers "Lomcovaks" when asked by journalists what they were.According to...
and Cuban Eight
Cuban Eight
A Cuban Eight or Cuban 8 is an aerobatic figure eight maneuver for fixed-wing aircraft both full-scale and radio controlled.Variations include the Half Cuban Eight and Reverse Half Cuban Eight, intended as directional changes and which are listed below.According to the Aresti Catalog, a Cuban Eight...
. Performances may be recorded and played back, with controls that allow pausing, rewinding and fast forward
Fast forward
To fast-forward means to move forward through a recording at a speed faster than that at which it would usually be played. The recordings are usually audio, video, or computer data...
ing. At any time, the player may stop a recording and resume flight from that point.
The game contains lessons that cover basic and advanced flight techniques, ranging from rudder
Rudder
A rudder is a device used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft or other conveyance that moves through a medium . On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane...
turns to challenging aerobatic maneuvers. A simulated flight instructor offers real-time advice based on the player's performance. Certificates are earned by performing well during lessons. In Hoops courses, the player undertakes a time trial
Time trial
In many racing sports an athlete will compete in a time trial against the clock to secure the fastest time. In cycling, for example, a time trial can be a single track cycling event, or an individual or team time trial on the road, and either or both of the latter may form components of...
through rings that float in the sky, with the option of enabling a "ghost plane" of the highest score. Four types of Hoops courses are available: Basic, Challenge, Distance and Trick. The last is intended as a highly demanding test of the player's aerobatic ability. The game's sole non-powered aircraft, the Grob G103a Twin II sailplane, features its own game mode focused on energy management. The player attempts to use the direction of the wind, thermals—which realistically occur above areas that absorb more heat, such as plains and parking lots—and the orographic lift
Orographic lift
Orographic lift occurs when an air mass is forced from a low elevation to a higher elevation as it moves over rising terrain. As the air mass gains altitude it quickly cools down adiabatically, which can raise the relative humidity to 100% and create clouds and, under the right conditions,...
caused by slopes to stay airborne for as long as possible.
Origin
The concept of Flight Unlimited originated from Looking Glass TechnologiesLooking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios was a computer game development company during the 1990s.The company originally formed as Looking Glass Technologies, when Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research merged....
' discontent with contemporary flight simulator
Flight simulator
A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...
s. Company co-founders Paul Neurath
Paul Neurath
Paul Neurath is a veteran game designer and creative director in the computer game industry. He founded both Blue Sky Productions and Floodgate Entertainment. He is currently Creative Director of Zynga Boston....
and Ned Lerner wanted to develop an exceptional game in the genre, and Neurath considered the idea during the production of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is a first-person role-playing video game developed by Blue Sky Productions and published by Origin Systems...
and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds is a 1993 first-person role-playing video game developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It is the sequel to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. Set in the Ultima fantasy universe, the game puts the player in control of the...
. In 1992, Seamus Blackley
Seamus Blackley
Seamus Blackley is a former agent with Creative Artists Agency representing video game creators.After entering Tufts University to study jazz piano, Blackley switched to study physics and graduated Summa cum Honore en Tesis. As a sophomore, he published his first paper in the Journal of Magnetic...
, who had been undertaking graduate studies in particle physics
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
at the Fermilab
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics...
research facility, was hired through a want advertisement
Classified advertising
Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge...
that Lerner had placed on a bulletin board. At the company, Blackley programmed the physics modeling system for a racing game and designed a large number of standalone physics demonstrations. He became fascinated by physics programming. An amateur pilot and flight devotee, Blackley asked Lerner extensive questions about his earlier game Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer
Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer
Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer is a 1987 computer aircraft simulation game produced by Electronic Arts that was orginially released as Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator...
, which Blackley held in high regard. In reaction to Blackley's enthusiasm, Neurath suggested that the company develop a "traditional Cessna sim".
However, Blackley instead proposed an aerobatics
Aerobatics
Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight. Aerobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sport...
training simulation, which he had conceived while reading an aerobatics magazine on a Lexington, Massachusetts
Lexington, Massachusetts
Lexington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 31,399 at the 2010 census. This town is famous for being the site of the first shot of the American Revolution, in the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775.- History :...
bus. Collaborating with Ultima Underworld II programmer Greg Travis, he created a thirty page concept document that outlined the game. His core idea was to recreate the "yummy, visceral, fluid feeling that you get when flying a real airplane". He wanted it to bear more resemblance to a playground
Playground
A playground or play area is a place with a specific design for children be able to play there. It may be indoors but is typically outdoors...
than to a video game, and sought to give it simple controls and realistic terrain to decrease the learning curve
Learning curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each...
for beginners. Blackley assumed the role of project leader, and engaged the team in "flaming sessions" to generate ideas. According to programmer Doug Church
Doug Church
Doug Church is an American computer game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the late 1980s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based first-person adventure/shooter/roleplaying games, including Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld II,...
, Blackley's concept of the game was not fully developed, but he clearly expressed his thoughts and motivated the team. The first months of the project produced disparate prototypes that demonstrated prospective features. The company committed to full development of the game in early 1993, and production commenced in March.
Production
Blackley's first objective was to code the game's simulated physics. He began by deciding on a programming method—in particular, he sought one that would allow aircraft to perform the "knife-edge spin" maneuver that he had witnessed at air showAir show
An air show is an event at which aviators display their flying skills and the capabilities of their aircraft to spectators in aerobatics. Air shows without aerobatic displays, having only aircraft displayed parked on the ground, are called "static air shows"....
s. In 1995, he said that he had never played a flight simulator with an accurate sense of flight. He later described his belief that the genre had stagnated, and that flight games were evaluated "by [their] implementation of the standard feature set", rather than by their enjoyability. Blackley researched physics programming in contemporary flight simulators, and discovered that many used large databases of wind tunnel
Wind tunnel
A wind tunnel is a research tool used in aerodynamic research to study the effects of air moving past solid objects.-Theory of operation:Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles in free flight...
and plane sensory equipment information to dictate how aircraft would operate in prerecorded scenarios. Higher-end simulators used a "Newtonian
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
" system, in which algebra-based measurements of force vectors determine a plane's position in real-time. However, Blackley believed that neither system correctly simulated the experience of flight.
In reaction, he used his knowledge of particle physics to create a real-time computational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics, usually abbreviated as CFD, is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with...
(CFDs) model for Flight Unlimited. The result is a simulated atmosphere: air acts as a fluid that automatically reacts to the shape of any object placed within it. Blackley gave the example that a lawn chair
Garden furniture
Garden furniture, also called patio furniture and outdoor furniture, is a type of furniture specifically designed for outdoor use. It is typically made of weather resistant materials...
, if placed within the game's real-time CFDs model, would fall merely because of its shape. The game's planes fly because the interaction of their architecture with the atmosphere creates lift
Lift (force)
A fluid flowing past the surface of a body exerts a surface force on it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction...
, as with real-world aircraft. Changes in the plane's direction are caused by the interaction of their flight control surfaces (aileron
Aileron
Ailerons are hinged flight control surfaces attached to the trailing edge of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. The ailerons are used to control the aircraft in roll, which results in a change in heading due to the tilting of the lift vector...
s, elevator
Elevator (aircraft)
Elevators are flight control surfaces, usually at the rear of an aircraft, which control the aircraft's orientation by changing the pitch of the aircraft, and so also the angle of attack of the wing. In simplified terms, they make the aircraft nose-up or nose-down...
s and rudders) with the simulated atmosphere. Because the dynamics of flight are simulated in real-time, the system allows for aerobatic maneuvers that were impossible in previous flight simulators. In 1994, Blackley said that it was possibly the first flight code designed for aerobatics. In constructing the CFDs model, Blackley and the team built from the Navier–Stokes equations of fluid motion, which Blackley described as "horrible, complicated partial differential equation
Partial differential equation
In mathematics, partial differential equations are a type of differential equation, i.e., a relation involving an unknown function of several independent variables and their partial derivatives with respect to those variables...
s". According to Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
, Blackley did not seek to represent the equations with perfect accuracy, and was satisfied when the results were consistent and the sensation that they generated was correct.
After programming a basic version of the CFDs model, Blackley used several programs to examine the simulated currents of air that flowed across a model of a flat plate. He adjusted the code until the plate fell realistically, and then constructed test models for a plane wing and fuselage
Fuselage
The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...
. He eventually built a complete but dysfunctional plane using data from "pinhead
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
books". By reading aircraft design manuals, he discovered that the problems were caused by his plane's incorrect tail and center of gravity
Center of gravity of an aircraft
The center-of-gravity is the point at which an aircraft would balance if it were possible to suspend it at that point. It is the mass center of the aircraft, or the theoretical point at which the entire weight of the aircraft is assumed to be concentrated. Its distance from the reference datum is...
. Following this, he created an exact three-dimensional model
3D modeling
In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical representation of any three-dimensional surface of object via specialized software. The product is called a 3D model...
of the Extra 300S over roughly three days. As he had not yet simulated the physical attributes of its propeller
Propeller (aircraft)
Aircraft propellers or airscrews convert rotary motion from piston engines or turboprops to provide propulsive force. They may be fixed or variable pitch. Early aircraft propellers were carved by hand from solid or laminated wood with later propellers being constructed from metal...
, Blackley programmed the plane to be propelled from the rear. However, the accurate model performed properly in the simulated atmosphere.
Artists Mike Marsicano and Kurt Bickenbach played critical roles in the creation of the game's aircraft models, which were built in 3D Studio. As reference material, the team photographed real planes at several airfields, and received blueprint
Blueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....
s and datasheet
Datasheet
thumb|A floppy disk controller datasheet.A datasheet, data sheet, or spec sheet is a document summarizing the performance and other technical characteristics of a product, machine, component , material, a subsystem or software in sufficient detail to be used by a design engineer to integrate the...
s from their manufacturers. The game's Grob G103a Twin II sailplane was based directly on the one that Blackley owned at the time. The sophistication of the real-time CFDs complicated the 3D modeling process, as the planes required accurate geometry to fly properly. While attempting to meet this goal, however, Bickenbach said that the models he created were overly detailed, which caused the team to struggle with performance issues related to the high number of polygons
Polygonal modeling
In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygons. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for real-time computer graphics...
. Reducing the number altered the plane's shape, which in turn reduced its flight realism; this necessitated a balance between performance and accuracy. To obtain audio for the planes, Greg LoPiccolo and Tom Streit—former bassist and road manager, respectively, of the band Tribe
Tribe (band)
Tribe was an alternative rock band from Boston, Massachusetts which was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They released three albums, two on Slash Records/Warner Bros...
—visited a Florida importer of Russian aerobatic aircraft. The two placed microphones inside the cockpits and next to the engines, and flew each plane at multiple speeds while recording with a digital audio tape
Digital Audio Tape
Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As...
machine. Combining this material with digital recordings
Digital audio
Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...
of wind sounds, the team fashioned a physics-based sound system: sounds of the wind and engine are altered in real-time based on wind speed in the game.
The flight instructor
Flight instructor
A flight instructor is a person who teaches others to fly aircraft. Specific privileges granted to holders of a flight instructor qualification vary from country to country, but very generally, a flight instructor serves to enhance or evaluate the knowledge and skill level of an aviator in pursuit...
was created by programmer Andrew Grant and voiced by Tom Streit. It monitors the player's controller input during "each frame of animation". If a maneuver is attempted, the instructor "interpolates the initial control movements" and predicts which maneuver is being performed. The instructor then gives advice on how to properly complete it, offering guidance if a mistake is made. However, Grant believed that the code is sometimes "too picky", and stated that it expects players to perform maneuvers more precisely than is humanly possible. The team initially planned to include an online multiplayer component, which would have allowed 64 planes to fly in the same area—giving players the ability to compete with one another. However, the feature was not implemented into the final game. The staff members also sought to include aerobatic competitions in which the player could participate, but the idea was dropped because of difficulties with realism. Problems with artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
-based judges were also a factor in the feature's removal.
Flight Unlimiteds terrain graphics were created with stereophotogrammetry
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is the practice of determining the geometric properties of objects from photographic images. Photogrammetry is as old as modern photography and can be dated to the mid-nineteenth century....
. The team gathered aerial photographs
Aerial photography
Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated position. The term usually refers to images in which the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure. Cameras may be hand held or mounted, and photographs may be taken by a photographer, triggered remotely or...
from locations in France and the United States. They combined two to three images of each area to create digital reproductions roughly 11 square miles (28.5 km²) in size. Each location in the game was based on two stereoscopic
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
sets of photographs, which were processed for more than 72 hours by a "dedicated Pentium tucked away in a dark corner". From the contrasting images, the computer generated a terrain "data blanket" with 3D height variations. While the team had considered using satellite or surveillance aircraft
Surveillance aircraft
A surveillance aircraft is an aircraft used for surveillance — collecting information over time. They are operated by military forces and other government agencies in roles such as intelligence gathering, battlefield surveillance, airspace surveillance, observation , border patrol and fishery...
images to create the game's terrain graphics, they found that the resolution was inadequate. Material from geographic information system
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
s was also studied, but associate producer Paul Schaffer said that it would have been "astronomically expensive" to obtain data with the necessary resolution.
After assembling a playable demo of Flight Unlimited, the team requested assistance from then-US Aerobatic Team member Michael Goulian
Michael Goulian
Michael George Goulian is an American aviator, who races in the Red Bull Air Race World Series under the number 99....
, who was instructing flight at the nearby Hanscom Field
Hanscom Field
Hanscom Field , also known by its full name Laurence G. Hanscom Field, is a public airport located in Bedford, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is operated by the Massachusetts Port Authority....
. Because of the game's flight code, Goulian was able to execute aerobatic maneuvers within less than three minutes of playing the game; he later performed his "entire basic aerobatic routine". Blackley told PC Gamer US that, while Goulian disliked flight simulators, "When he flew Flight Unlimited, he just said 'pretty cool.' I was so psyched". Goulian assisted the team during the next year of development, co-designing the game's flight lessons and advising the team on adjustments to the plane models. Aerobatic pilot Patty Wagstaff
Patty Wagstaff
Patty Wagstaff is an aerobatic pilot from the United States. Wagstaff traveled all over the world as a child: her father was a pilot for Japan Airlines, and Wagstaff would travel to Southeast Asia, Australia and Alaska to prepare for her own career as a pilot...
was also consulted. At one point, the team encountered problems while testing a maneuver in the game's Sukhoi Su-31
Sukhoi Su-31
|-See also:-External links:*...
, and Blackley was concerned that he would need to rework the game's physics code. However, Goulian phoned a colleague—a Russian pilot—who told them to compensate for the plane's abnormally large ailerons. Using his advice on flying the real-world plane, the team found that the maneuver worked correctly. Goulian endorsed Flight Unlimited, and wrote the foreword to its official strategy guide.
The graphics and physics code increased the game's system requirements
System requirements
To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer. These pre-requisites are known as system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed to an absolute rule. Most software defines two sets of system...
, and the team worked to optimize performance during development. Church noted the difficulty of improving the game's memory usage, saying that it took nearly as long as creating the physics model. Programmer Eric Twietmeyer ran weekly tests of the game's performance, disabling certain parts of the code—such as the physics calculations—to isolate which parts used the most memory. By 1994, Blackley's physics code took up only 1% of CPU time
CPU time
CPU time is the amount of time for which a central processing unit was used for processing instructions of a computer program, as opposed to, for example, waiting for input/output operations. The CPU time is often measured in clock ticks or as a percentage of the CPU's capacity...
, with the rest being allocated to the terrain renderer. Blackley optimized his code by converting the mathematical calculations of air from the 3D game world into a "math-friendly space", during which time the Navier-Stokes equations are applied. Afterwards, the data is returned to 3D space. According to Computer Gaming World, this method increased speed by "a factor of 100, with almost no loss in precision." The team had trouble with complex memory-related glitch
Glitch
A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system. It is often used to describe a transient fault that corrects itself, and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot...
es during development. Church called them "crazy", and programmer Greg Travis noted that debugging
Debugging
Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected. Debugging tends to be harder when various subsystems are tightly coupled, as changes in one may cause bugs to emerge...
the terrain cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
system was a "nightmare".
While leading the team, Blackley adopted a loose style of supervision. According to Opening the Xbox author Dean Takahashi, "Blackley [was not] ultra-organized. His idea of good management was to invite someone over for a gourmet dinner and have a casual conversation about work". However, Takahashi wrote that "Blackley worked hard to inspire his team", and he described artist James Dollar's belief that, "in contrast to other Looking Glass managers, he didn't take over tasks and make others feel stupid". During the first two years of production, the team was divided into small groups that worked on the game's elements separately. For example, Blackley programmed the game's physics, while Eric Twietmeyer and Tim Day created the terrain renderer. However, Doug Church later said that, while "the team [did] a bunch of very cool stuff, the FBO, the flight model, the instructor, the renderer, so on", the result "was almost like four separate programs, with no connection". Following the completion of the concurrently-developed System Shock
System Shock
System Shock is a first-person action-adventure video game developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. Released in 1994, the game is set aboard the fictional Citadel Station in a cyberpunk vision of 2072...
, a significant part of that game's team—including Church, Marc LeBlanc
Marc LeBlanc
Marc "Mahk" LeBlanc is an educator about and designer of video games.LeBlanc attended MIT where he received a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science....
and Rob Fermier—moved to Flight Unlimited to add connective material. At the time, Church said that it was difficult to meld the game's elements, but he later stated that they largely coalesced by the end.
Publication
Flight Unlimited was self-published by Looking Glass Technologies. Their previous games had been developed for other video game publisherVideo game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
s, and had generated $90 million total earnings for those companies. However, Ronald Rosenberg of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
reported that Looking Glass was "no longer satisfied as a backroom player surviving on royalties". Doug Church later explained that the company wanted to self-publish in order to escape the "treadmill of waiting for advances", which would allow them to make long-term plans without needing to satisfy the immediate demands of a publisher. In late 1994, Looking Glass announced that venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
investors, including Matrix Partners
Matrix Partners
Matrix Partners is a US based private equity investment firm focusing on venture capital investments. The firm invests in seed and early stage companies in the United States and India, particularly in the software, communications, semiconductors, data storage, Internet or wireless sectors.The firm...
and Institutional Venture Partners
Institutional Venture Partners
Institutional Venture Partners is a US based private equity investment firm focusing on later-stage venture capital and growth equity investments. IVP is one of the oldest venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road founded by Reid W...
, had provided the company with $3.8 million. The sum was intended to fund the development and self-publication of Flight Unlimited. According to Michael Humphreys of Matrix Partners and Ruthann Quindlen of Institutional Venture Partners, the decision was partly influenced by the past success of the company's co-founders, Paul Neurath and Ned Lerner.
Looking Glass intended Flight Unlimited as a gateway into the video game publishing industry. According to Lerner, the idea of self-publishing had been considered when the company was founded. In 1995, Looking Glass projected that sales of Flight Unlimited would increase royalty revenues to $10 million that year, up from $1.5 million in 1994. Jeffrey A. Kalowski, the company's vice president of finance and administration, expected that the game would recoup its development costs and make a return before the end of the year. He predicted that, over the following 12 to 18 months, the company's number of employees would increase from 52 to 82. The company's executive vice president and general manager, Jerry Wolosenko, told The Boston Globe that the company hoped to publish six games each year. According to Doug Church, the pressure for Flight Unlimited to succeed meant that the concurrently-developed System Shock
System Shock
System Shock is a first-person action-adventure video game developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. Released in 1994, the game is set aboard the fictional Citadel Station in a cyberpunk vision of 2072...
, which was not self-published, received little attention from the company's management.
Flight Unlimited was placed in direct competition with several major flight simulator franchises. Before the game's release, Shelby Bateman of Next Generation Magazine
Next Generation Magazine
Next Generation Magazine was a video game magazine that was made by Imagine Media publishing company . It was affiliated to and shared editorial with the UK's Edge magazine. Next Generation ran from January 1995 until January 2002. It was published by Jonathan Simpson-Bint and edited by Neil West...
wrote, "1995 is going to be a real dogfight in the flight-sim and aerial-combat categories, and LookingGlass is betting its bankroll ... that it can capture significant market share from the likes of Microsoft Flight Simulator and the debut of Spectrum HoloByte's Falcon 4.0
Falcon 4.0
Falcon 4.0 is an air combat simulation originally released on December 12, 1998 by MicroProse. It is a realistic simulation of the Block 50/52 F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighter in a full scale modern war set in the Korean Peninsula. Falcon 4.0s dynamic campaign engine runs autonomously...
, among others." Describing the situation, Johnny L. Wilson of Computer Gaming World wrote, "The games that sell big are the ones that allow you to blow stuff up, so, if anything, that could be a problem for Flight Unlimited." Doug Church explained that, because the game did not feature combat, and was not "a Microsoft Flight Simulator type [game] where you take off, fly some set course and land", the team spent "many late nights" deciding on marketing strategies. However, he noted that the game had a wide appeal among those who tested it during development, which he called "a really good sign". Talking to Bernie Yee of PC Gamer US, Paul Neurath said that he thought the game would sell well. Yee noted that Neurath "fully [expected] it to prove more popular than Microsoft Flight Simulator".
In January 1995, Looking Glass showed Flight Unlimited alongside Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is a 1996 tactical first-person shooter video game developed and published by Looking Glass Technologies. Set in a science fictional depiction of the 24th century, the game follows a faction of humans who colonize the Alpha Centauri star system to escape from a...
at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
, under their "Immersive Reality" marketing label. In March 1995, the Boston Globe reported that the team was performing "11th hour checks" of the game to prepare it for shipment to a Midwestern United States
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
Compact Disc manufacturer. The newspaper stated that Looking Glass planned to begin by shipping 100,000 units to retailers in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the United States, with another 100,000 copies later being sent to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The game was released for DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
on June 7, 1995, with 200,000 units distributed simultaneously in the United States and Europe. The game's European releases were localized with German, French and English text and voice acting, which was made possible by "close coordination with international partners". Versions for Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
and Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
were later released, with the former being shown at the Macworld
Macworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...
Expo in April 1996.
Reception
Flight Unlimited was a commercial success. It sold more than 300,000 copies by 1997, and more than 780,000 by 2002. According to Constantine von Hoffman of the Boston HeraldBoston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
, the game successfully competed with Microsoft Flight Simulator. PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
s Lee Buchanan wrote that it "soars above the pack of flight simulations", and considered it to be "the most fun [he has] had in a computerized cockpit". Frank Vizard of Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics is an American magazine first published January 11, 1902 by H. H. Windsor, and has been owned since 1958 by the Hearst Corporation...
hailed it as "the new top gun of flight simulators", and Doug Bailey of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
considered it to be the "first real serious challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the genre". The Record
The Record (Bergen County)
The Record is a newspaper in northern New Jersey. It has the second largest circulation of New Jersey's daily newspapers, behind The Star-Ledger. Owned by the Borg family since 1930, it is the flagship publication of the North Jersey Media Group. Stephen Borg is the publisher of The Record...
s David Noack believed that the game's physics and stereoscopic terrain set "a new standard in flight simulation". Writing for Computer Gaming World, Bob and John Nolan stated, "If anything, you should at least take a look at this product, because [you will] be looking at the future of simulations." The game was a finalist in PC Magazine
PC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...
s 12th Annual Awards for Technical Excellence, with the staff calling it "the simulator by which all others will be judged."
Design
Vizard stated that Flight Unlimiteds "very advanced computational fluid dynamics make [each] plane react according to spec". Buchanan lauded the fluid model for creating a "sensation of actual flight [that] is nothing short of magnificent", while PC Magazines staff stated that it makes "planes behave more like real aircraft than any simulator we have seen". Bob and John Nolan called the game's physics programming "groundbreaking", and Chris Ware of the Lexington Herald-LeaderLexington Herald-Leader
The Lexington Herald-Leader is a newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company and based in the U.S. city of Lexington, Kentucky. According to the 1999 Editor & Publisher International Yearbook, the Herald-Leaders paid circulation is the second largest in the Commonwealth of Kentucky...
believed that the game was "the closest thing to taking wing this side of those multimillion-dollar flight simulators fighter pilots and astronauts get to use". Noack agreed, writing that the game "is about as close to flying within going to the airport". In 1996, Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
presented the game with a "Special Artistic Achievement Award For Physical Model". The magazine's staff praised Seamus Blackley's programming for pushing the genre "higher into the realm of simulation".
Ware found Flight Unlimited approachable, noting its "simplicity of use and depth of instruction". Buchanan hailed the lesson mode as "a dream come true for any budding pilot". A writer for The Washington Post called the game "[the] world's first truly easy-to-use flight simulator", in which "rank amateurs can just launch the program and start cruising immediately". The Washington Posts John Gaudiosi wrote that, while many games in the genre were overly complex, Flight Unlimited lets "those who [are not] rocket scientists ... experience the thrills of stunt flying." Gaudiosi also noted that its control scheme was simple to understand. In contrast, Bailey found the game difficult and initially "frustrating", stating that he had to play the game's lesson mode before even taking off. Atkin wrote that "learning to fly high-performance aircraft under a flight model this tough can be a challenge", but noted the game's scalable difficulty options. Bailey later recommended the game in a holiday shopping guide, and noted that "it can be difficult to master. But once you're up, it's worth the trouble."
A writer for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called it "a good entry product for more technically demanding simulators", and noted that "serious flight freaks will like the racing and advanced maneuvers". Gaudiosi wrote, "Invest the time and this disc will teach you all about aerodynamics and stunt flying (hard stuff, even with green hoops guiding you)." Buchanan found that "the aerobatic obstacle courses are incredibly demanding", and Denny Atkin of Computer Gaming World cited the game's Trick courses as "amazingly tough". Bob and John Nolan stated, "Pilots who love to loop around the skies of Flight Simulator 5 will go bananas for this stuff, but those who learned to fly with their index fingers on a joystick trigger ... might get a little edgy once the wow-power wears off." However, Atkin believed that, "unless [you are] never happy without something to shoot at ... [you will] be too busy choreographing aerial ballets, pulling off death-defying aerobatic stunts, or just enjoying a quiet soar down the ridge line to miss that stuff". Ware noted the game's "refreshing absence of weaponry", while Buchanan wrote, "If [you are] a battle-weary veteran of air combat sims, Flight Unlimited might be just the sort of [rest and relaxation] you need."
Presentation
Atkin wrote, "Every few years a sim comes along that lets reviewers use the 'sets new standards for graphics' cliché, and Flight Unlimited is the 1995 entry in this club." He believed that its "terrain and virtual cockpit [looked] almost real". Bob and John Nolan stated that the game is "the ultimate show off piece for your new Pentium. ... The graphics are simply unbelievable—we're certain you've never seen anything like it on a PC". PC Magazines staff called the graphics "impressive", noting that they were "even more stunning than those in Microsoft Flight Simulator". Gaudiosi wrote, "The graphics are better than any [I have] seen—thanks to something called 'Image-scaping' technology, the 3-D texture-mapped graphics are photo-sharp." Ware noted the game's "stunning 3-D photo-realistic scenery", while Bailey stated that its "graphics are brilliantly rendered and whiz by smoothly". Buchanan called the game's terrain "just superb" and Vizard described it as "amazingly real". Buchanan believed that "what you hear in Flight Unlimited is every bit as good as what you see", calling the game's sound effects "utterly convincing". Atkin considered the "instructor's helpful voice (and his blood-curdling scream if you pancake the plane) ... to be one of the best uses of voice ever in a multimedia title".Bailey noted that the game requires "a real beefy machine" to run properly, while Atkin stated that its "massive horsepower requirement will restrict many gamers to lower resolutions and detail levels". Bob and John Nolan wrote, "This baby hogs computing power, but the power is put to excellent use." Buchanan believed that the system requirements
System requirements
To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer. These pre-requisites are known as system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed to an absolute rule. Most software defines two sets of system...
listed on the back of the game's box "must be a joke", and that a high-performance computer was necessary to run the game.
Aftermath
Flight Unlimited was the first of three self-published titles released by Looking Glass Technologies. However, the next two products, Terra Nova: Strike Force CentauriTerra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is a 1996 tactical first-person shooter video game developed and published by Looking Glass Technologies. Set in a science fictional depiction of the 24th century, the game follows a faction of humans who colonize the Alpha Centauri star system to escape from a...
(1996) and British Open Championship Golf
British Open Championship Golf
British Open Championship Golf is a 1997 sports video game developed and published by Looking Glass Technologies. A simulation of The Open Championship, it allows the player to engage in multiple forms of golf, including stroke play and fourball. The player competes at reproductions of the Royal...
(1997), were commercial failures. As a result, the company ceased self-publishing and was left in dire financial circumstances. Doug Church later explained that Looking Glass "was trying to establish itself as a publisher at a time when that was very, very hard to do. All the other mid-sized publishers were mostly going out of business or getting bought". He believed that the company had been "overreaching itself" with the venture, and that it was "being a little overambitious and a little cocky".
Sequels
Flight Unlimited was intended to be followed by a combat-oriented sequel, which was developed under the working title Flight Combat. In 1995, Seamus Blackley told PC Gamer US that he wanted the game to "feel so real that pilots will be afraid. They'll feel the gun hits." Talking to Computer Gaming World, he stated that it would teach players the "same curriculum [as] the Air Force", and that it would feature competitive online play. However, a company manager, newly instated by venture capital investors who "wanted a more professional management team", instead demanded that Blackley create a direct sequel to Flight Unlimited. The two argued regularly, and Blackley later accused the manager of "ripp[ing] the guts out of Looking Glass". In response to Blackley's refusal to create Flight Unlimited II, the manager fired him. Blackley left the company in late 1995 with designer Austin GrossmanAustin Grossman
Austin Grossman [b. ] is a writer and game designer who has contributed to the New York Times and a number of video games.He is the author of the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, which was published by Pantheon Books in 2007....
, and both were hired by Dreamworks Interactive
EA Los Angeles
EA Los Angeles is a video game developer founded originally in 1995 as DreamWorks Interactive LLC, a subsidiary of DreamWorks SKG....
to create Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a video game released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The player assumes the role of Anne, the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park...
.
Constantine Hantzopoulos directed Flight Unlimited II
Flight Unlimited II
Flight Unlimited II is a 1997 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. The sequel to Flight Unlimited, it eschews its precessor's focus on aerobatics in favor of general aviation...
, which was published by Eidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive Ltd. is a British video game publisher and is a label of Square Enix Europe. As an independent company Eidos plc was headquartered in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton....
in 1997. The team could not continue using the real-time computational fluid dynamics of Flight Unlimited because, according to Hantzopoulos, it was "all black box spaghetti code
Spaghetti code
Spaghetti code is a pejorative term for source code that has a complex and tangled control structure, especially one using many GOTOs, exceptions, threads, or other "unstructured" branching constructs. It is named such because program flow tends to look like a bowl of spaghetti, i.e. twisted and...
from Seamus". The aerobatics focus of its predecessor was dropped in favor of general civilian aviation. The development of Flight Combat was hinted at during the production of Flight Unlimited II. A third game, Flight Unlimited III
Flight Unlimited III
Flight Unlimited III is a 1999 flight simulator video game developed Looking Glass Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to Flight Unlimited and Flight Unlimited II. The game includes ten user-flyable aircraft in total, and several new features...
, was published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
in 1999; it continued the focus on general aviation. That year, Flight Combat was officially announced as the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-themed, Electronic Arts-published Flight Combat: Thunder Over Europe, but its name was eventually changed to Jane's Attack Squadron
Jane's Attack Squadron
Jane's Attack Squadron is a World War II flight simulator computer game for the PC. It was created by Looking Glass Studios, then finished by Mad Doc Software. It was published by Xicat Interactive, Inc.. It was released in the North America on March 22, 2002.-Gameplay:In Jane's Attack Squadron,...
. The game was canceled as a consequence of Looking Glass Studios' closure in 2000. However, it was later finished by developer Mad Doc Software and released in 2002 by publisher Xicat Interactive
Xicat Interactive
Xicat Interactive was a video game publisher with distribution across Europe and North America. Xicat held several significant licenses including:Gothic, Motor Trend, Jane's Information Group and Guns & Ammo....
.