Proflight

This was "the" dedicated Tornado flight sim before the appearance of Digital Integration's Tornado (1993).

It was shipped in a pretty hefty box and contained a huge a very detailed manual. The manual was cased in a ring-binder, and also included a full history of the actual Tornado aircraft design and operations to date, and an impressive technical cut-away drawing of the ADV version.

The list of keyboard commands was extensive and the game would have benefited from having a keyboard overlay or a separate reference card. The Tornado in this sim was more biased towards the ADV rather than the IDS.

The main weapons included were the 27mm cannon, Skyflash SARH AAMs, Sidewinder IR AAMs and 1000lb GP bombs. The flight performance of the jet was very complex, but was made even more so by the fact this beast had to be flown by the mouse. Using the keyboard and joystick was just short of impossible due to the high sensitivity of the main flight controls. You could get into some really nasty spins with this one!!

The cockpit was packed full of instruments and digital displays, but bore no resemblance to a Tornado cockpit. The radar was very basic and was a combined radar and threat display. The weapons had to be armed before launch, and I remember the missiles had to be launched within certain "g" limits.

The HUD contained no numerical data such as airspeed or altitude, but was a mass of lines showing a pitch ladder, compass, vertical speed and velocity vector. The "gunsight" was a recticle made up of a series of diamonds, and I seem to remember that there was also a "floating" dot - but I'm sure this was a reference to the current "g" being pulled, and it needed to be inside the gunsight for the AAM's to launch correctly.

The autopilot was a complex piece - I think it had six different modes which could be used on their own or coupled together for various effects. Some of the modes had a higher priority and would cancel out the functions of a "lesser" mode. The wing sweep and flaps could be set as either manual or automatic operation. There was also an auto-throttle which could be set in knots IAS or TAS.

The jet engine sound effects were VERY nicely done. You could spin in the Tornado, but it was a real bitch to recover using the mouse.

I liked the way that it had the correct stars at night, and you can navigate by them. Actually, playing during "daylight" was slower, so I always flew at night. I loved the low level turbulence - this sim had the best feeling of flight until Su-27 Flanker 2.0.

Flying under bridges was great fun - I liked that fancy suspension bridge just in front of the runway. I was able to barrel roll under the bridge and still line up for a touchdown in windy conditions.

There can be a couple of planes gunning for you, but I think there was never more than one in visual range at a time. It was roughly MiG-23 shaped. They might shoot long range missiles at you which were evaded like SAMs (press the counter measure button - if the missile still makes it to you, jink at the last second). Close in they use missiles and guns.

Dogfighting was a slow affair compared to modern sims - they could just barely out turn you, but with proper control you can get them in your crosshairs eventually, or at least escape them. After you shoot a bunch of planes down in the early missions, there would be less and less. You might go on 2 or 3 long range flights in a row and not see a single one.

Has anyone killed all the targets in the game? There are like 30, and most of them are sooooo far from the airbase. It is like half an hour flight time to those, and you did not want to sit at the computer for all that time.

I was once 5 or 6 targets from doing so, but then the save games became corrupted.

Hmmm. Maybe I should boot the old Mega 2 up and try it again. I did pay $75 dollars for the sucker.