After almost five years of development and speculation, a finished version of Argonaut Software's Birds of Prey (BOP) finally landed on my desk today. Surprisingly enough, there were no owls hooting, horses eating each other, and all that stuff you normally expect when something long awaited comes to pass - so I just booted up.

BOP was coded by Jez San and his team, from whence came Starglider 2, one of the all-time Amiga classics. It offers a choice of squillions of different aircraft depending on whether you decide to be a "good" guy or a "bad" guy, it flies smoothly considering how many other planes the computer contorls at the same time, and it makes the tea when you get tired of carpet-bombing little villages in South East Asia.

How does it play? Well, it's a bit like every flight game you ever wanted, but couldn't be bothered with because they're all just boring variations on the theme of "how can we make lots of money from cunning flight algorithms?" BOP is a great game, not a great simulation, so members of the Society for the Appreciation of Differential Calculus (S.A.D.) needn't buy it.

The action is set in a fictional landscape of land, sea, and islands, but all the aircraft are real. You can take off from a main airbase in a B-52, or ski-jump from HMS invincible in a Harrier, and if you get bored with "good" guy planes, it's easy to swap sides and fly in a MiG-29 or Backfire bomber.

After the manual protection is over (you have to answer a question on the technical details of an aircraft or missile) you jump to the pilot screen. Here you can load and save pilots, or create new ones, then it's time to get down to business.

First you select what sort of mission to fly. There are twelve to choose from, including the unusual options to drop parachutists or supplies, and test fly the X-15 or MiG29. Next comes the all-important choice of home base.

There are five of these for each side (Blue and Red - but it's hardly a coincidence they made the Soviets the Red team, is it?), two of which are aircraft carrier. Blue carriers are the Nimitz and Invincible, Red carriers are the Kiev and Minsk, but Russian carrier pilots are restricted to a choice of one aircraft, the Forger, as it's the only carrier-borne, fixed-wing plane the Russians have got.

If you got for a land-based pilot, your choice is far greater. There's a Tupolev Bear bomber, a Hercules, and you can even fly a 747. The more obscure aircraft include the F-20, the SR-71. Blackbird reconnaissance plane, and the Su-25 Frogfoot (Russia's equivalent of the A-10 tank buster). There's enough variety of missions and aircraft to give BOP the best long-term interest appeal of any flight game I've ever seen.

All aircraft are represented accurately in 3D, and they all fly more or less differently. Realism hasn't been insisted on, and where two aircraft are fairly similar you can, for example, find it difficult to believe you're in an F-16 rather than the Mirage in which you flew the last mission.

In more extreme cases, though, the feel of a Hercules is vastly different to any of the jet fighters. A bit like flying a phone box through a syrup-filled swimming pool, in fact.

If you haven't tinkered with the scenario and difficulty settings at the pilot screen, you'll start the game on Pilot level (the second of four difficulty levels) in the Green Fields scenario. If you're a big fluffy domestic fowl, you can downgrade the opposition by choosing Rookie mode, or if you're of a child-eating household pet, there's the Squadron Leader and Wing Commander modes.

Which based you selected will have determined what side you're on, but once the first mission is over you can fly from any of your side's bases and in any of your side's aircraft types. What you must always remember, however, is that "your side" and "their side" are going at it hammer and tongs all the time.

Once in the air, you can select the full screen view and then swap views to any of the aircraft presently in your sector, including enemy aircraft. This gives you an excellent feeling of being in a larger conflict rather than of being one small plane out to save the world. It's also fun to sit comfortably in a B-1 bomber at 50,000 feet and keep tabs on your fighter escort as they battle it out with MiGs thousands of feet below you.

The other outside views are of your own aircraft. The usual views are implemented, eight angles and a satellite overview, but they add a lot to the atmosphere because every plane has an identical cockpit layout, and only by popping out for a quick look is it possible to spot the differences between planes. I particularly liked the view of my A-10 complete with oodles of bombs and things dripping from below the wings. Yum!

The rear view of a Hercules is fun when on a drop mission. This initially gives you a black screen because you're actually looking back into the cargo hold. Once the door is opened, however, you can see the parachutist drop out the back of the plane and open his canopy.

There's a certain amount of sadistic tension involved when you wait for the chute to fail to open, but it hasn't happened yet in any of my missions.

On the strategy side of things, you can call up an AWACS map of the entire battle area and zip around to spy on what everyone else is doing (hint - they're all trying to kill each other) and when in flight there's a radar map of your immediate surroundings which you can zoom in and out of.

This is great for figuring out where that pesky MiG-25 just went, and for working out which tanks are friendly. Shoot a friendly target of any kind, and you're labeled a traitor and forced to swap sides, so it pays to check (A-10 pilots please take note).

When you and your comrades have liquidated enough of the enemy's assets, you're treated to a victory screen and you can go on to another scenario. If you don't, you better start getting used to the humiliation of potato queues or revolting daytime TV depending on your original nationality.

With a steady advance through the ranks, so much going on around you, the numerous ways of playing the game, and the vast size of the playing area itself, Birds of Prey is easily the most addictive and playable flight game on the market. Realism buffs will be advised to go for Flight of the Intruder or ProFlight, but those of us born with the need to stuff Mavericks down the throats of computer-generated bad guys will lap up this game like a starving cat at a bowl of catnip-flavoured cream.

What would happen if they started a war and nobody came? Well, with Birds of Prey you could do it all yourself. Because this game incorporates a large modern air war scenario with 40 types of aircraft taking part. And you can fly them all. So if you're a fan of modern military flying machines, you might just be in heaven.

When you've loaded the game and set up your savable pilot, you're presented with 12 major mission types. It's assumed that a major war has started between forces using Western technology and those with Russian kit. You can play either side in this conflict and choose the mission type you want (air interception, for example) and then you simply select an aircraft for your mission.

There's a fair old choice, but the computer won't let you use something ill-suited to the job. Try using a Hercules to intercept some MiG 25s and your Amiga will laugh at you. It's better go for an F16, F15, Tornado. Anything of that ilk. Next you've got to arm it.

Tumult in the clouds
Choosing your weapons is both detailed and easy. Point and click on the most destructive and you get to see the map. The playing area is a series of islands with the odd mountain and river chucked in. Bases, SAM sites and tactical buildings litter the war zone, and there are even carriers floating offshore.

Choose a base and the mission can begin. You always start off in a hangar, and once the door opens, you taxi out to the runway. If you're in a hurry (for an interception) you can hit full power . This lets you hit the runway while doing about 150 knots. Once you are in the air, you can select various radar modes to give you air-to-air capability, navigation or bomb-aiming (once more, this depend on your mission).

The cockpit display takes up about two-thirds of the screen, with a familiar HUD on the top. This really contains all the info that you need (speed, height and so on), but to the right of the display is a large bank of dials which give you much the same information. This display remains the same whichever aircraft you're flying.

Hitting the W key removes the cockpit altogether, leaving you with full screen graphics and an enlarged HUD. It's possible to conduct most of an operation in this mode, and it looks so much better, especially when viewing the plane in outside mode.

When you view your own aircraft, it's simply superimposed in front of you. The HUD 9and cockpit display) remain, but the plane appears in front. If you try a side view the controls still remain in view. This makes for some spectacular views, especially in full screen display mode, but it's impossible to fly the plane accurately whilst watching it.

The not-so-few
The key to Birds Of Prey is its massive flexibility. There are hundreds of mission/aircraft combinations, and although you only ever see one cockpit display, you can certainly make out the difference between the planes. The selection offered is so wide that one mission might see you flying a Harrier from the deck of HMS Invincible, and the next ferrying in 500 troops in a Boeing 747-400.

The flight characteristics of the planes differ so much that it's fun to swap between them during the game. You can also try out aircraft in missions that they weren't designed for (within reason. You can't put your SR71 Blackbird down on the deck of a carrier).

As you play the campaign, your actions affect what the enemy are up to. If you manage to A10 his airfields, he'll withdraw to the edge of the map. Send a Stealth reconnaissance flight over to get a Polaroid of him licking his wounds, then send in a Hercules full of troops to finish him off. Any stragglers can be massively bombed by a nice B52 mission. And you can fly all of these.

It's certainly taking flight sims into areas they've never seen before. Luckily the actual flying details have been kept fairly simple. To navigate to your target you simply follow an arrow at the top of the HUD. Your radar will pick up any enemy activity in plenty of time, and it's up to you to take the appropriate action. What you should do depends on the plane you're piloting, of course.

Can you leave the landing light on, mummy?
Storing the details of the 40 aircraft has taken such a large amount of memory that ground detail is noticeable less impressive than in MiG-29 Superfulcrum or F15 II. There are bases, fields, coastlines, hills and targets. These are all acceptable, though. (There's a particularly pretty snow-capped peak!)

The air-to-air views are good, but such is the nature of modern air warfare that you don't often get the chance to see the enemy. First it's a dot on a radar screen; then a dot in the sky and then it's a target. Hopefully by then, with any luck, it's dead meat. Trying to get close in to have a look sometimes yields excellent views of the opposition, but you'll have to dodge salvos of missiles to do it. It's in this environment that planes like the F16 or Tomcat come into their own.

Flying the planes in Birds Of Prey requires a fair bit of practice. In the centre of the HUD is a lozenge-shape which indicates the position of the imaginary control column. It's a bit unnecessary because when your joystick is centred, you'd expect the plane's joystick to be centred as well.
It's been like that for centuries in flight-sims, and the added realism that a lozenge gives isn't realy worth it. Until you get used to it, the plane (which ever one you're flying_ wallows around, fish-tailing its way towards the highly amused enemy. The key is only to use small movements of the joystick.

Apart from this, the flying is straightforward, if you don't fuss with the controls, the planes go in the direction you point them. You can select weapons by cycling through your payload, with the fire-utton on the joystick operating missiles and the gun (whichever one you have selected).

It's also very easy easy to get yourself into a spin too. If you leave what the experts call the flight envelope' by for example stalling at a low or high speed, your aircraft will tumble ground-wards at a frightening speed. You have to do this a few times to get the hang of recovery, but if you're quick you can click the mouse to pause the game and give you option menus. Select 'Easy Flight' and you'll bounce of the ground harmlessly.

Fight and flight
Birds Of Prey is a sim for the enthusiast. There's a large and comprehensive manual supplied, but if you already know the difference between the B1, the B2 and the B52 it would make things much easier.

Although the cockpit display doesn't change, certain procedures depend on the type of mission you're on and the type of plane you're in. Fighters (F15, F16, Tornado and so on) simply require that you switch on your radar and hunt for the enemy. You don't have to worry about ground targets (unless they're firing surface-to-air missiles at you) and you just need to concentrate on the other fighters as the range between you closes.

Before each mission it's possible to specify wingmen. You can have up to three other planes (the same type as yours) who follow you into combat. If you don't open fire, they will, and on Easy level your formation will be firing ripples of AMRAAMS and Sidewinders in the enemy direction. It's a bit disappointing if you don't get a kill and they do, but at least you'll have survived and, as leader, you will get the credit for it in the comprehensive debrief afterwards.

You don't see these wingmen (which is a pity) but they're programmed to follow you wherever you go. So if you run for home they'll accompany you.

Bombing in the B1 or B52 requires you to line up so that you fly over the target at the height required by your payload. Then you switch to the bomb-aiming sight and watch the target drift through the cross-hairs. It's tough but very satisfying when you get it right.

When attacking at ground level (in the A10, F15E or B2 Stealth bomber) you fire guided air-to-surface missiles such as the Paveway and Maverick. The target acquisition is similar to that of the fighters, but it's only concerned with things on the ground. If you get close enough with the A10 you can open up with its mighty 30mm Gatling gun. This makes quite a mess if you aim it right.

Nor law nor duty bade me fight
There is so much in Birds Of Prey that the flight-sim fan could disappear for weeks. The campaign scenario works well, the background detail is very strong and the variety of planes is, of course impressive in the extreme.

Graphics are strong, especially the planes themselves, and the levels are set so that both beginners and hardened pilots can have fun.
Letting it down is the frame rate. The graphics aren't smooth enough and there is an annoying jerkiness. It might be understandable, but it isn't forgivable. The lozenge control system would work so much better if the update rate has better. As it is, they combine to be irritating at the moments when you need to be clear-headed and quick.

It's this factor which stops Birds Of Prey getting a Format Gold. In every other respect it deserves one. Being able to fly 40 aircraft in a combat sim is no mean feat, and the war-game plot is strong enough to carry it off. But the fly-ability is the weakest point. Only a third of a screen is dedicated to outside views and the rest of the screen being filled with unnecessary dials isn't too hot.

Oh, and a head-to-head link with another player's Amiga, flying whatever plane he chooses would have been excellent. Still, Birds Of Prey is a massive attempt to produce the flight-sim. It nearly gets there, but the flying isn't quite slick enough.

The sheer quantity of flight sims I've reviewed in the last few months makes me wonder whether no one else in the AMIGA POWER office actually likes them. Not at all, I'm assured, they love them. It's simply because they're such a warmhearted, thoughtful bunch, and reckoned I might like a change from doing wargames. That's fine by me - I'm never happier than when exploring the heavens with a joystick between my knees - but I've got this nagging feeling that I'm slowly being labelled a flight sim buff, the sort of person who spends Sunday afternoons standing on the roofs of airport terminals taking down aeroplane registration numbers. It's not true! I just sort of like flight sims. A bit. Anyway...

Argonaut, the people behind Birds Of Prey, are no strangers to huge, 3D epics, in fact they've built their reputation on them. But this is their first flight sim, and they've been working on it for absolutely ages. So how does it differ from the other 3,166 flight sims I've looked at this month? And is it any good?

REACHING NEW HEIGHTS OF FLIGHT
Birds of Prey's main distinguishing feature is the number of different planes it simulates. It's really rather a large number, the sort of number that's hard to visualise in terms of tangible objects, like pineapples okay, and just about get your mind around ten. Or perhaps fifteen. But try to imagine 40 pineapples laid out on the table in front of you. It just can't be done, can it? But that's the unfeasibly large number of distinct types of aircraft Birds Of Prey lets you choose your 'mount' from.

There are 27 Western aircraft and 13 Soviet ones, and they range from nippy fighter planes to hulking transport aircraft, with all sorts of weird and extremely wonderful types in between. You'll have hours of fun just reading their specifications. (Or possibly not).

And the other one (distinguishing feature, that is) is detail. Argonaut have thrown caution to the wind and abandoned rapid screen updates (more on that later) in favour of packaging as much detail as they can into the graphics. I won't present you with a list right away, but it's worth bearing in mind that undercarriage doesn't just disappear when you press 'U', it actually retracts, with a suitable whirring sound.

And after you've loaded up your plane with missiles and bombs you can actually see them hanging off the wings. And cockpits have pilots sitting in them. Hangar doors open and close. Radar dishes rotate. Runway lights come on at night. And stars come out too. It's beautiful, it really is. (But more on that later as well).

FEELING THE NEED FOR SPEED
Birds of Prey's layout is pretty similar to any other flight sim's. Having set up a pilot and decided which side he's on, you then go through a series of screens choosing a mission to fly, a base to fly it from, a plane to fly it in and an array of weaponry to accomplish it with.

These sections are all strictly functional, and, apart from some attractive pics on the 'missions selection' screen, are unadorned with the pretty animated graphics normally associated with this sort of thing. The overall effect is reminiscent of Carrier Command - just the bare essentials, really. In many ways this is quite disappointing, but it does lead to the advantage, however, that you don't have to sit through hours of disk accessing every time you crash and want to start a new mission (in fact - and here's another remarkable Birds of Prey statistic - the whole blooming game loads off just the one disk. There's absolutely no disk swapping to be done at all!)

The Carrier Command feel extends into the rest of the game, too. Although the hardware you'll be using is clearly either Western of Soviet, the war you'll be using it in is a more abstract affair, fought in an imaginary world between Side A and Side B.

This takes a bit of getting used to, I have to admit. But if you can manage to suspend your disbelief, playing the game is actually jolly good fun. The missions are as involving as any I've flown before, and far more varied than most (just take a look at some of the screen shots) - indeed, the only area really missing is dogfighting. Technically you ought to be able to go chasing after MiGs, following them through all your favourite textbook dogfighting manoeuvres before downing them with a burst of cannon fire, but in practice I found that most kills tend to be made (as would happen in real life with many of these planes, most probably) at long range with missiles, and you never really get up close at all.

Then of course, there are the graphics, which are nothing short of superb. Each type of aircraft is reproduced in intricate detail, right down to things like proper cockpits (with pilots in) and round wheels. Control towers have windows (which I'm sure have people behind them if you look close enough, though I couldn't swear to it), and there are even trees dotted about the place with green leaves and brown trunks. Mind you, you have to be flying pretty (and dangerously!) low to see all this - most of the time it tends to go unnoticed, and BOP looks just like any other flight sim.

WATCHING A ZOOM WITH A VIEW
The other major graphical innovation lies in the way objects are coloured. I'm not too hot on all these technical terms, but BOP uses a technique which I believe is called 'light source shading'. What this means, in effect, is that surfaces are dark, if they're turned away from the sun, and light if they're facing towards it.
You don't really tend to notice this unless you're looking out for it, it has to be said, but it seems to give the graphics a subtly 'realistic' edge.

There are all the usual viewing angles as well, which an be zoomed in and out of and panned about, along with rather a nice line in views of all the other planes in your area, including tenemy ones. Picking up a ship on your radar and then cutting to a close-up of a MiG screaming in for the kill really does bring home the message that you're just about to die.

Sound is another thing that's worth a paragraph of its own. From the moment you start up your engines and kick in the reheat you know you're onto something - i.e. the sound effects are really good. As well as the splendid engine noise, which varies depending on whether you're flying a jet or propeller plane, there are numerous subsidiary effects (I can feel another list coming on).

For starters there's the wonderful, gut-wrenching sound of a missile being unleashed. This contrasts with the gentle 'gliding' noise your plane makes if you run out of petrol in mid-air. And don't think sound is just limited to your own plane. Fly past another aircraft and you can hear its engines too, and the same goes for tanks.

This may not be terribly true-to-life, but what the heck, eh? Other effects are stranger still: don't quote me on this, but I'm sure I can hear seagulls flying round my airbase. Finally, while machine guns sound decidedly limp, the resulting explosions more than make up for them (although the visual accompaniment is a bit weedy, it has to be said). But enough about sound - back to the graphics.

Ah yes, the graphics. Um, there's a bit of a problem.
There's only one snag with all this extravagance, and you've probably guessed it already. Remember I mentioned screen updates? Well, there aren't very many. Maybe one or two per second when things get really hectic, and about four at the most on an internal view with the detail level set right down at minimum. This means that things are noticeably jerky, quite seriously so in fact, and that's a problem which has consigned many previous flight sims to otherwise undeserved oblivion.

POISED FOR A RUNWAY SUCCESS
Argonaut are trying to claim that frame rate is some sort of pointless macho thing, and detail is a lot more important, but I'm afraid I really can't agree. The controls are sluggish enough as it is (joystick or keyboard control s a complete no-no, and even the mouse tends to be a bit erratic), so the last thing you need in the heat of the battle is to have to wait for up to half a second to gauge the response to your actions, only to find you've gone a bit too far in one direction, then correcting only to find (another eon later) that you've overcompensated, and your plane is wobbling hopelessly all over they sky.

True, you do gradually get used to it, and after a day or so you can almost believe you've learned to live with the problem. But you've only got to load up Falcon, Interceptor or Thunderhawk to snap you out of it, and make you realise just how much of a difference slick graphics make.

But I'm not going to condemn Birds Of Prey just because it's got jerky graphics. It's simply got too much else going for it. For a start, it's brilliant fun to play - your first couple of weeks of ownership will probably be spent simply trying out all the different sorts of plane, while flying missions will keep you going for goodness knows how long. And even when you think you know the manual off by heart (and considering the size of the bleeding thing, that little task should keep you occupied for a year or two), you'll still keep discovering new pull-down menus and options, and, well, all sorts really (it's that complicated).

So there we are, then. Although they haven't quite pulled it off (unless you're lucky enough to own an Amiga 3000 or something), Birds of Prey is a truly marvelous game - a real progression for the flight simulation genre - and I can firmly recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of thing.

Flight sim fans, as a rule, like detail. Lots and lots of it. The more background information the title has the better - so long as the gameplay remains intact, of course. So, for a game which does more than just thumb through Jane's Book of Fighting Planes, why not play the RAF spotters manual - Birds of Prey?

This year has seen the release of some excellent flight sims, most notably F-15 II and SuperFulcrum. But Electronic Arts are hell-bent on out-doing even these two gems with a title that would receive a listing for 'most heavily-researched software' in the Guiness Book of Games Record, if one were ever to be published.

Birds of Prey is without a doubt the most ambitious flight sim ever. It features dozens of planes, ranging from the hi-tech B-2 Stealth Bomber to the lumbering Boeing 747 and Hercules transport craft. And here's ust a few more: F-117A, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F-14 Tomcat, A-10 Tank Killer, Panavia Tornado, MiG-29 and the T-27...

The game is based around an East-West conflict, although the setting is fictional. A lone pilot, it's difficult to affect the outcome of the conflict, but as you do your bit, enemy resources diminish and friendly forces start to get the upper hand. The whole thing is played in real-time, so if you quite base to go on a mission it could be blitzed by the time you return.

Graphics are used to show the status of both sides, although those remain pretty static until the fourth mission.

Initially, Birds of Prey is hard. The more maneuverable fighters are extremely fighters are extremely tough to control: they tend to slide all over the place. And I found myself wrestling with the controls of a sluggish B52 bomber while I learned what all the keys did. Although the joysticks and keyboard are catered for, this is undoubtedly a 'head game' for those who like mouse controls. It took me several attempts just to get an aircraft off the tarmac, and more than a few stalls before straight and level flight was accomplished. Perseverance is definitely called for, but once the basics are mastered the whole game opens up.

To eliminate boring stretches on long range missions, a novel autopilot feature has been incorporated. Select your target, cruising-height, and how close to the target you want to be when the controls are returned. An external shot shows your plane flying off into the distance, and a couple of seconds later you're at your destination, providing nothing intercepted you en route, that is.

The presentation is extremely slick. When the game loads all you're required to do is enter your name, difficulty level, what time of day you want to fly at, and what kind of terrain you'd like to strut your stuff over. From there on, select what type of mission you prefer to fly and what plane you feel comfortable handling.

The aircraft select screens are very detailed, showing a rotating 3D version of the plane, a description of its capabilities, as well as a full technical break-down and what weapons it can carry. The mission orders and arming screen follows, and then the player enters the cockpit. The whole process is very simple and easy to follow, and you can go back to any of the previous screens if you think you've made a mistake.

The attention to detail is extremely impressive. Each mission starts in a hangar, whether you're flying from an airbase or carrier. When the graphics are in high-detail mode, the weapons on the plane are visible, and ground based objects are visually very impressive. I particularly like the way bombs go off with a large crash and a flash of light. The handling characteristics of the different types of plane is as you would expect. Trying to do any stunts in a 747 usually results in structural damage, while the fighters are amazingly manoeuvrable. Most incredibly the game comes on just one disk, and uses a minimal amount of loading. I thought you could only get compression like that with a steam roller.

There's also a huge variety of weapons, although some can only be loaded on to certain planes. There are general purpose bombs, loads of different guided and unguided missiles, cluster bombs and air-to-air missiles. Most aircraft are capable of carrying at least a cannon, whereas the B-52 can carry 100 unguided bombs in its hold.

Plenty of ear-battering digitised sound effects have been used for engines noises, missile roars and explosions. All these make a change from the normal cop-out white noise effects of other flight-sims.

The graphics are very utilitarian, as with most flight sims. There are some nice touches, though. If the missile view is switched on, every time you launch a rocket or bomb the screen follows it to its target. The drawback with this is that in the meantime you can't see what's happening to your plane. The control panel can be switched off, which frees up processing space and gives you a better view of the surrounding area.

Birds Of Prey takes flight simulators about as far as they can go on the A500. You'll certainly not be be stuck for choice with this sim. A game you must not miss.