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@{"b"}Software Preview@{"ub"}  

Title: The Shadow of the Third Moon 
Type: Flight Simultor Game 
Author: Titan Computer 
Price: About £35 
Requirements: WB3, 4MB Fast RAM, 2x CD ROM, 25MHz '030, 25MB HD space, AGA or Gfx Card 
Recommended: 8MB Fast RAM, 50MHz '030 or faster, 4x CD ROM, Monitor 

It's been quite a while since we've had a decent flight sim on the Amiga. And worse, all the old classics (F19, Birds of Prey - my faves) refuse to work on accelerator cards, so even if you can  live with simple polygon landscapes, it would be at least nice to have them silky smooth, rather than playing them on 14MHz '020 with no Fast mem.  

tsottm (what do you mean 'Use Autocorrect'? I'm typing this in  Scribble!), being a modern game, doesn't just work with faster CPUs, but requires them, and like these other new games that are appearing, is happily OS friendly, multitasking, and works with graphics cards.  

The display method is an intersting one. It doesn't have texture maps, and does away with polygon landscapes altogether, and uses a 'voxel' engine. This is probably the most efficient way to render landscapes, which are now no longer large flat areas with the odd pyramid hill, but instead rolling landscapes with gradually changing heights. The speed is reasonable; a 50MHz '030 manages 8-10fps on average in Lores, with detail maximum.  

The demo is a bit buggy at the moment, crashing every so often, but I'm sure this will be fixed. It plays nicely, and is promising in terms of gameplay. One interesting feature is that if you crash into the ground or water (or another plane!), you don't crash, but bounce off. This is pleasing to have, as with the voxel landscapes, crashing into a mountain is a far more likely event! Maybe there will be different settings for this, as  most flight-sims have, in future.  

As well as the landscapes, the other graphical effects in the game look very nice, such as the skies, the other planes, and missiles that you fire. And the in-between flight briefing screens are very good to, in 640x480 format.  

A very promising flight sim, I just hope it plays as well as it looks!  

@{"b"}Mark@{"ub"}   
 
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