The digital image, released by Boeing to Air & Space Forces Magazine, shows a layout with many new “glass cockpit” color displays, but retaining some of the “steam gauges” and analog-style displays from the B-52H’s six decades of service.ĭominating the dashboard will be four large color multifunction displays which will present a variety of flight status information, as well as imagery from the B-52’s new radar system-derived from the F/A-18’s AN/APG-79 radar-as well as presentations of the new B-52 datalink and imagery from Sniper or Litening optical/infrared targeting pods. The image is still considered notional but will likely be close to the final version of how the BUFF’s “front office” will look, starting in the middle of this decade. This is now the high watermark for interactive Star Wars experiences.A new Boeing image shows the B-52 cockpit will take on a cleaner, more streamlined appearance after the bomber completes a program of some of the most substantive changes in its 60-year history. I’ve been waiting 23 years for a game to come along and take the crown for the best Star Wars flight sim from X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, and have had to endure guff like 2001’s Starfighter in the meantime. Be advised, though: if you are playing on PlayStation VR, the headset’s ageing, low-res display means that picking out distant ships feels like peering at a gooseberry through a bathroom window smeared in lard.Īny grumbles about the variety of vehicles or locations or the difficulty of empathising with mute main characters are dwarfed by the litany of things Squadrons does right. Swooping around an asteroid, or following a Tie interceptor’s trajectory up and over your head, is indescribably epic, and something you should experience if you are able. The sensation of simply peering around your fighter’s cockpit, leaning back in your seat as your ship catapults into hyperspace, or looking out of the window and seeing your X-Wing’s S-Foils lock into attack position, is an unrivalled Star Wars experience. Outside VR, Squadrons is a beautiful space blaster inside VR, it’s extraordinary. No more updates are planned for the game, however, meaning no fresh modes are on the horizon. Both are excellent the addition of human foes imbues hectic dogfights with added camaraderie and unpredictability. The only options are 5v5 deathmatches or fleet battles, which involve larger, to-and-fro conflicts with the eventual aim of destroying the opposing sides’ capital ships. Multiplayer support is a little more threadbare. This is childhood-fantasy fulfilment on a galactic scale. No other game in history has immersed me so completely in the universe George Lucas created. Let’s not beat around the bush: if you are a fan of Star Wars and have the means to play Squadrons in VR, you should buy it right now. Praise was unanimous, EA’s Motive Studio took note, and now here we are with a whole game where you can fly around inside X-Wings and Tie Fighters. It wasn’t until EA released Rogue One – a single, supplementary VR mission for 2016’s Star Wars: Battlefront – that the concept of actually being there was quietly nailed: the holy grail towards which Star Wars games had been striving for 34 years. Yet even the ones that succeeded were constrained by the technology of their eras, leaving much of the work of convincing the player that they were actually in a galaxy far, far away to their own imaginations.
X WING COCKPIT LABELED DRIVERS
I t wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to posit that one of the primary drivers of video game innovation over the past 40 years has been the desire to live out Star Wars fantasies – from the Parker Brothers’ Empire Strikes Back in 1982 (the first Star Wars tie-in game) to the superlative X-Wing/Tie Fighter series in the mid-90s right through to the slick Battlefronts of this generation.
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