Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
LucasFilm Games released Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe in August of 1991 for IBM PC MS-DOS. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was designed and programmed by Lawrence Holland, programmed by Lawrence Holland and Peter Lincroft (X-Wing), and drawn by Martin Cameron and James McLeod.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe is the successor of LucasFilm Games' Their Finest Hour of 1989 and Battlehawks 1942 of 1988.
The rendering engine of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe -- which is based on the one employed by Their Finest Hour -- was not exactly cutting edge in 1991. For example, its aircraft models are flat polygons, not solid 3D polygonal models. That means, depending on the angle of view to the aircraft the rendering engine suddenly switches between side, end and top elevations of the aircraft. In addition, the rendering engine interpolates rotation and scaling of the aircraft; the effect akin to sprite-scaling. Presumably, such trickery was employed due to the vast number of aircraft, projectiles, explosions and smoke trails that need to be drawn during battle. Thus, the engine is advanced due to trickery that cuts down on polygon-pushing requirements. cf. Falcon 3.0 of 1991.
That said, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe plays very well, runs very well, and it a lot of fun due to the "business" of its render-fields. If one wants to learn about WWII air combat history and have fun while doing it, one cannot do better than Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and its two predecessors.
In Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe players can pilot four different United States Eighth Air Force aircraft and five different German Luftwaffe aircraft.
560K of 3.2 EMS memory is recommended when running Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was distributed on 4x 3.5" 720kB diskettes or 3x 5.25" 1.2MB HD floppy disks and 1x 5.25" 360kB floppy disk. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe installs to hard disk drive via Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe Installation. The install size for v1.0 is 3.4 megs and consists of 371 files.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe audio supports AdLib, IBM PC Speaker, Sound Blaster and Tandy 3-voice. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe sound effects and music were composed by Michael Land and Peter Lincroft.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe controls support mouse, keyboard or analogue joystick.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe Features
- Flat-shaded real-time 3D graphics with 3x ground-detail levels
- 16-color EGA/Tandy or 256-color VGA 320x200
- Realistic World War II air combat flight simulator
- Setting: Western Europe 1943-45
- 2x Campaigns: USAAF Eighth Air Force or German Luftwaffe
- 9 different WWII aircraft to pilot
- Flight physics: roll, pitch, yaw, thrust, drag, lift, gravity
- Mission Builder
- Automatic pilot
- Take off, landing, spins, spin recovery, stall, stall recovery
- In-flight Map/Radio screen
- Create & manage pilots & crews
- Medals & Promotions
- Review Combat Records
- Gun Camera and Film Viewing Room (VCR-like playback from multiple views)
- Save/load replays
- 5x cockpit views
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe manual: 89 pages.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe copy protection: Code Wheel.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe Tour of Duty Add-ons
- P-38 Lightning Tour of Duty (1991)
- P-80 Shooting Star Tour of Duty (1991)
- Do 335 Pfeil Tour of Duty (1992)
- He 162 Volksjäger Tour of Duty (1992)
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe Aircraft
- Bf 109G-6 & Bf 109G-10
- FW 190A-5 & FW 190A-8
- Me 163B-1a Komet
- Me 262A-1a & Me 262A-2a
- Go 229A-0
- P-47C & P-47D Thunderbolt
- P-51B, P-51C and P51D Mustang
- B-17F & B-17G Flying Fortress
- He 162 A-2
- P-38H & P-38
- Do 335 A-1
- P-80A
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe Ordnance
- 13mm MG 131 machine gun
- .50-caliber Colt-Browning M2 machine gun
- 30mm MK 103 cannon
- 15mm MG 151 cannon
- 30mm MK 108 cannon
- 20mm Hispano cannon
- 20mm Mauser MG 151 cannon
- 30mm Rheinmetall Borsig Mk 108 cannon
- 5cm R4M rockets
- 50mm SG 500 Jagdfaust high-explosive rocket-propelled shells
- 500/1000/2000 pound bomb
cf.
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