CFS4 ....and all that

Every now and then a thread will pop up in one of the flight sim or combat flight sim forums raising the subject of Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 4 or CFS4 as it is more commonly known.

Quite often interesting threads will develop and, of course, with lack of news on such a product, much speculation arises. Inevitably some naysayers will chime in with doom and gloom comments not only about the possible future, if there is any, of Combat Flight Simulator but Flight Simulator too. The threads invariably evolve and diverge and invariably end up predicting the end of the simulation genre and the demise of PC games etc.

The consul v computer debate and angst has been on the go since the early 1980's and is nothing new. The simulation genre, while not quite as buoyant as it was a decade ago is undergoing something of a renaissance with many new titles appearing in store shelves and others announced in recent times. The simulation genre is far from dead and at the very least, will most definitely survive as niche products by smaller publishers if not by the larger publishers. If Ubisoft's catalogue is anything to go by the simulation genre is still viable and Ubisoft are not a small company.

For an interesting series of articles on the future of simulations I recommend reading the 'round table discussions' in the editorial section of simHQ [scroll down and on the lower right page].

As for CFS4... well who knows? Microsoft have changed their development and release cycle in recent years with Flight Simulator and until the advent of the ACES blogs and also the recent AVSIM conference there was much doom and gloom and speculation as to the future of Flight Simulator. This has now changed and there is much less speculation about FS - though there are a few people who do not read the MS blogs or do not want to. As to the future of Combat Flight Simulator, all we can glean is the little that was reportedly said by Microsoft at the 2004 and 2005 AVSIM conferences which amounts to CFS is not dead ... keep watching [or was not dead at September 2005 anyway].

Interestingly I carried out a web search this morning and discovered an interesting thread at simHQ showing some screenshots of what could have been in CFS4. It appears to have been well regarded by the beta testers and a considerable improvement on CFS3. Anyway - history is history and CFS4 did not appear - a real pity.

[Edit Sunday 1:47 PM - UMT+10: The images in the SimHQ thread now appear to have been deleted Fair enough - I appreciate the reasons. Very nice scenery though, and quite a tease. Sad and disappointing that such beautiful work was never released.
Edit 28 December 2005 - For some reason, the thread on CFS4 has now been moved to the new Over Flanders Fields forum at SimHQ - link updated above.]