The best flightsimulation on public market

[Skybird]

Skybird Is Soaring Again…

Making known an almost unknown jewel of flightsimulations:
Condor – The Competition Soaring Simulation

By Skybird
February 2008



“If flying would be the language of man, soaring would be it’s poetry.”



A green airstrip on a nice late Spring day in Slovenia, 2008. The sun is shining, the air is warm and the wind is lull. In the distance are the mountains, and groups of trees and farther away: dense forests are inviting for airborne sightseeing. Happy pilot Skybird is heading to have a happy hour of happy flying in the latest addition to his collection of flightsims from the past 20 years. Sitting inside a school glider, he demands the aerotow plane to hook up in front of him, the funny looking small plane comes from the right side, positions itself in front of him, hooks up, starts moving along the strip, and seconds later the sailplane is starting to roll as well. Wowh – Skybird soon will be airborne without sitting on an engine for the first time in his life!

But then, something goes wrong. The plane does not roll in a straight line, but starts to head to the right. Slight stick and pedal movement to correct that – and the thing starts sliding to the left, even more excessively. Another couple of seconds later the glider is doing a caricature of a skiing slalom behind the towplane, and is already ten meters above the ground with the towplane still rolling along the runway – that’s what I call lift! The trend continues and when the towplane lifts off, the tow already is broken and after a 15 seconds glide of irritation and fascination, Skybird is happily crisscrossing and half-looping the thing into the next trees up that hill that before looked so flat and harmless.

First lesson over. What have we learned? Don’t underestimate what is new to you. And in the wider context of not just this single event, but regarding the simulation to be introduced here: don’t think this is a light plaything, just because it is sailplanes only, and no “serious” motor and war stuff. In many things, “Condor – The Competition Soaring Simulator” probably is the best flight simulator you currently can buy for your money as long as not wishing to spend some hundred thousand dollars. This beauty that has remained unknown to most people for over three years now, is king of the heap in several aspects that emphasize both “flying” and “simulating” in the word flight simulation.

I never had so much enjoyment from having crashed a plane. Those few seconds already showed me what beautiful flying experience I would head for in the future. The feeling of being airborne and actually to fly was very intense. Those few seconds airborne compared to nothing I ever have experience in any flightsim I have played, and I played a lot: from the times of Sublogic’s Flight Simulator II , Digital Integration’s F16 Combat Pilot and Spectrum Holobyte’s Falcon (yes, the very first there ever was!), to the present times with it’s Flight Simulator 9 and X, X-Plane, IL-2, Falcon 4.0 and Flanker 2.5 ( which maybe had one of the most dynamic, “feeling alive” flight models so far).

Having been released in Spring 2005, Condor is still almost unknown to most sim-flyers, and I wonder why that is so. Using Google, I only found only few mentionings and reviews of it, in no way the number of sources compared to what is available for the mainstream sims as mentioned in the above paragraph. But where it was examined by a reviewer, it scored top notes and maximum points, and simflight.com announced it to be “product of the year 2005” Of all people I asked in real life, only one knew it. Asking in forums and on the web, only subsim.com’s Chock indicated he knew it. Already hidden in Europe, in America it seems to be almost completely absent. Maybe that is because there have been soaring simulators before, three or four, and none of them became too popular or any famous for their “realism”, I tried two of them years ago, and was left unimpressed. Or it is because people cannot imagine that you can have a good simming experience without super-complex virtual cockpits with two hundred buttons and screens around you, or action-paced air duels with fighters dancing around you in the sky. Both assumptions are wrong. There have been very few games only were a description would include words like “charming”, or “beautiful”, and some more games there have been where you would say they offered immersion and atmosphere, but say: how many games or sims come to your mind where you would think in terms of “elegance” and “relaxation”, even though excitement is there?



Distribution

The simulation is available via CD in Europe, several sources I checked in America as well did not list it (including amazon.com). Beyond that, it is available as download purchase as well, which for Americans seem to be the way out. Since the price after VAT does not vary, I opted for the CD version, and got delivered the latest version (1.12) of the software including all available speech packages. I spend 46 Euros. Price for download is 40 Euros before VAT.



Content, and mods

I got a CD, a DVD-case, and a small 18 pages booklet on how to install and setting up the options. From within the sim, and as pdf, a 44 pages main manual is available, too.

By default the sim comes with only one flight zone, Slovenia, featuring some 37.000 km2, which would be almost a square of 200x200 km. – but until today, 18 additional areas have been turned into flyable terrain by the community, from the Italian and Swiss Alps over the Grand Canyon, to several other flight resorts, mostly in Europe. These mods are free. Their sizes mostly vary between around 100 and close to 400 MB.

There are 13 different types of flight planes included, arranged in several different categories. Since this is a high fidelity simulation regarding flight physics, the developer does not allow “wild modding” regarding airplanes, and insists that any additional planes by the community must pass his tests and satisfy his demands, to keep the quality of the flight models and the competition in online races on a high level. However, several such planes have been released meanwhile in an all-in-one package, but for a small fee of 10 euros. A second package like this is under preparation. New skins are possible, but are not automatically delivered via the server during OL action, they must be manually exchanged amongst participants before.
While modders may be disappointed that they cannot do their own independent planes, I myself applaud that decision of the developers, which they comment in the manual with these reasonable remarks:

Condor uses an advanced flight dynamics model which demands a lot of accurate input data for every plane. To assure realistic flight characteristics of the planes, the data must meet our quality standards and must be critically reviewed and adapted to our flight model. We are convinced this can only be achieved by having a thorough understanding of the internals of Condor's physics model.
That's why we have decided not to allow the development of 3rd party planes for Condor. It would result in potentially nice looking gliders but with unrealistic and uncomparable flight characteristics which would ruin the soul of Condor which is fair, realistic simulation of competition soaring.
We have, however, given users the possibility to design the 3D models of the gliders they would like to see in Condor. With some knowledge of 3D modeling, with our cooperation and feedback, it is possible to build the glider to the phase where we take it over and finish it. We add pilot animations, moving surface animations, instrument panel gauges, textures, flight model and, if required, custom sounds. The plane then goes to testing to our beta team and when all errors are fixed, it's ready to be released in one of the plane packs.

Since Spring 2005, there have been 12 patches being released. I am not aware of major issues being left by now. I think this record qualifies for a description of dedicated customer service, and ongoing support. I must say, though, that changes between the menus, and entering the sim, and vice versa, can lead to irritating pauses up to one minute where the screen looks as if the game has stalled, and text boxes appear that are blacked out. But it hasn’t crashed – just wait. I still have not had a single crash or freeze. Well, after three years and 12 patches…

Online action has been very much on the minds of the developer from beginning on. Up to 32 players can line up for racing and acro competition. Last time I checked the website of the developer and the list of available dedicated servers, I counted 22 entries.



Technical Specifications

The developer recommends these minimum specs:

OS: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 (Apple computers can use Condor via Boot camp)
Processor: +1 GHz (non-Celeron)
Memory: 256 MB
Graphics card: DX7+ compatible video card with at least 64 MB memory
DirectX and all drivers up to date.
As usual, the better the hardware, the better the experience.

I run it under Windowx XP, on a P-IV, 3 GHz, 1 GB RAM, FX7800 GS (AGP, 256 MB, driver 84.21), Audigy 2. With a resolution of 1280x1024, 32 bit, all graphical options on maximum, I achieve totally fluent frame rates, always, even when turning at high speed. I use a CH Fighterstick, a CH Pro Throttle, Simped Vario Pro USB pedals, and Track IR4 (mouselook mode).

The sim supports force feedback equipment, but I haven’t tested that. The developer describes it like this:

Force feedback until now was never really done with a realism in mind. Most simulators used it as a 'movie' effect. This however changes with Condor , as it was designed with force feedback joysticks in mind for the ultimate experience. Condor simulates forces on the stick directly from its advanced flight dynamic model and controlling trimmer actually moves your stick like in real life!

Getting into it

There is a pretty solid set of options by which you can tune the sim to your needs, especially visually, but I would assume that on most system nowadays it should run pretty well and smooth even with visual options set to high. As said before, on my system it was always absolutely smooth. For those pilots not using a joystick setup software, the sim has integrated options to calibrate the three axis’ sensitivity in a non-linear manner, if desired.

There is a flight school included, offering lectures in four classes from Basics over Intermediate and Advanced lectures to Acrobatics. Some of the stuff is pretty much essential with regard to weather, thermals, and how to find the best relation between glide speed, sink rate and gliding range. You get trained in the arts of (realistically conducted) aerotow and winch takeoffs, how to make use of the yawstring, you learn what there is in ridge soaring, wave soaring, thermal soaring and upslope winds, navigation, MC theory, loops and stall turns. The lessons are explained in cockpit, with the pilot having the option to just watch and have an invisible instructor carrying out the needed actions, or to handle the steps and procedures himself. In writing on the screen, needed keycommands are also given within the explanatory text.

These lessons are better considered to be the basics of soaring theory. Since being able to make best use of the weather and winds is a must, a glider pilot better knows how and where to find the thermal energy he needs to keep in the air, and to win altitude. Else, even if sailplanes have ridiculously high lift factors, every glide inevitable not only moves the plane forward, but also downwards at varying speed.

The sim allows to save the complete flight as a replay that later can be watched while manipulating camera perspectives, zoom factors, and replay speed. Such files can be collected and distributed.

The sim also allows the flight to be saved in IGC format. This standard allows the flight to be loaded into Google Earth v4.2 upwards. You then see your airplane in replay over the terrain maps provided by Google Earth, inside Goggle Earth. Fun!

Next, the flight you have just done can be saved as a ghost. Later that ghost, several ghosts I think, can be loaded into your real flying, and that way you can fly against yourself. This is a solution that I consider not to be an improvised solution for the absence of AI planes, but it has real value and merit in itself. The AI planes are left out intentionally, says the develoeper – they had installed them, but then removed them - the AI proved to have been too good! Possible that they will come back in a downgraded incarnation in a later patch.

And finally, the sim can use the serial port to attach a hardware PDA and feed it with life simulation data in NMEA data format that also appears on the virtual PDA the simulated sailplanes often have installed in their cockpits. It is no gimmick, but has functionality, providing multiple pages of maps and navigation info, wind data, and markers to line up for hitting target boxes and goal markers.

With so many save game features, yopu can take it for granted that you can view your flight record on map, and analyse your lateral movement on map, while checking your vertical movement via moving graphs in altitude diagrams.



t.b.c.