Does flying a real warbird for a living, dull your appetite for the virtual kind? What’s the hardest thing to teach a novice flier? How good are the RAF’s own training sims? These and many other questions are answered by…
As the chance to quiz a serving RAF pilot / qualified flight instructor with an abiding passion for combat flight simulators comes along once in a blue moon, this interview is the size of a Mil V-12. In Part I,…
A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Once a month, assuming I can persuade Austerity’s Blackburn Cirrus Bombardier engine to perform the miracle of internal combustion, I spend a day or two scouring Simulatia and Grognardia for stories with…
The fact that, outside of mods, Close Combat and Combat Mission never made it to the Pacific, has to rank as one of digital wargaming’s biggest disappointments. Anyone who argues that PTO warfare lacked tactical colour or wouldn’t have suited…
To qualify for a ‘Dusty But Trusty’ article, a game must be old enough to vote in the Federated States of Micronesia, buy tobacco in Algeria, and serve in the Pontifical Swiss Guard. More importantly, it must be demonstrably super,…
In computer wargaming development an understandable fixation with A-List ding-dongs – Waterloo, Gettysburg, Bulge and the like – means a slew of singular scraps with considerable ludological potential remain unsimmed. In Untapped Tussles, a new sporadic THC column, I’ll be…
A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Once a month, assuming I can persuade Austerity’s Blackburn Cirrus Bombardier engine to perform the miracle of internal combustion, I spend a day or two scouring Simulatia and Grognardia for stories with…
Although “Professional Farmer: Cattle and Crops is the DCS World of farming games” isn’t a perfect analogy, it contains more grains of truth than chaff of fallacy. Both sims offer realism unavailable elsewhere, both come with cosy clickable cockpits and…
How much of my affection for Diesel Railcar Simulator is fondness for a transport sim that puts substance before surface, and how much is nuanced nostalgia for the vanished Britain it artfully evokes, I really can’t say. Because DRS is…
Want to turn a green lane into a brown lane, tow a Gulaschkanone across a snowy field, or roam the Western Desert trashing Axis airfields? Get a 4×4. Want quick introductions to low-profile PC games of interest to wargamers and…
A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. I could have scattered these topical tidbits throughout the week in the hope they’d make Tally-Ho Corner look lively and well-staffed. Concern for your LMB dabber persuaded me to glue them together…
Any room on the list of classic WW2 what-ifs for another noodle warmer? To old favourites like “What if America’s carriers had been present at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941?”, “What if Goering had kept pounding British airfields in…