Eurofighter Typhoon

- By Len "Viking 1" Hjalmarson.

"Only five weeks ago the clock ticked past midnight to take us into a new millennium. Things have changed for many simulation designers, and a few months ago some of the crew working on Typhoon at DiD left the company. Not long afterward DiD was purchased by RAGE software, and some expressed doubt as to whether Typhoon would ever see the light of day.

Typhoon is alive and well, however, and will find its way to a hard drive near you sometime this summer. That's good news, because EF2000 and Total Air War still have a strong following, testimony to classic flight simulations. Key to longevity is innovation. Typhoon will introduce a new approach, where the emphasis is also on the pilots in the game, rather than the hardware.

In Typhoon, pilots will be in the hot seat fighting against the clock. The scenario features a multi-national force with pilots drawn from the member nations, plus female combat pilots as this will be the norm for the period. To ensure maximum tension, the Typhoon has been placed in a very tough situation against superior numbers with limited intel (sound familiar?). Iceland, according to sources outside RAGE, is the chosen location, which brings back fond memories of low level flying through Fjords in EF2000 to avoid detection.

In EF2000, however, we had AWACS data available. There won't be any AWACS or JSTARS support in Typhoon. The scenario assumes that in this war there aren't enough of these aircraft to go around.

"Naturally, Typhoon will model the DASS (Defensive Aids Sub-system) as in EF2000, as well as an imaging system for guided weapons. ASRAAM will be there, and the AMRAAM has been replaced by Meteor (the S-225 in EF2000). Typhoon has multi-weapon racks, so load-outs for ground pounding will be substantial.

One of the actual Typhoon test pilots at Warton has certified the flight model. I found this information from Chris Worning, test pilot at Warton, on , www.eurofighter.org.

Typhoon will also feature a fully dynamic campaign. In the interview at www.combatsim.com Don Whiteford states that, "It's a dynamic campaign with event-triggered phases." Dynamic campaigns generally mimic known doctrine, which becomes predictable and less exciting after a while."

As you can see we're creeping towards our holy grail. Typhoon will be a truly dynamic campaign within the theatre of conflict.

The extra-theatre influences are events in other parts of the world which will effect the campaign system. It is the first time we have modeled a campaign at so many levels. I am unaware at this time of any other products that have such a comprehensive system.

There will be no more respawning of planes in Typhoon as in TAW and EF2000. There will also be a real fully dynamic ground war with territory capture. The ground and air wars are also fully intergrated with the strategic system, so all three will work togther to win the war.

One last and important addition is that of pilot modeling. In Typhoon we model the pilots 24 hours a day. This means that even when pilots are not in their planes their existence and states are modeled. This last point is the corner stone of Typhoon and will be one of the reasons why it will be different from most other flight sims."