A is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path water closet and see what wargame and simulation news items stick to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you’ve visited a transport museum or heritage railway in the past twelve months, or can put these battles – Bunker Hill, Bataan, Borodino – in chronological order, you probably won’t regret clicking where it says…

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If there’s a niche games haven’t really filled, it’s lazy Sunday morning telly. Something for when your gran’s round, with a hot cuppa and the gentle patter of a light shower tapping against the windows. This week, Dovetail Games are flicking the channel over to Great British Railway Journeys, a Train Simulator spin-off that’s delivering Michael Portillo’s frightfully English BBC Two series to Steam on March 5th.

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Giant flying machinery simulator Flight Sim World [official site] has taken to the early access skies today. Will it soar and glide like a divine condor, or will its engine splutter and crash like a divine condor that has suddenly died of a heart attack? With metaphors like this, who can say. It s from Dovetail Games, the makers of the Train Simulator series, responsible for the swarms of train-based DLC you often see on the Steam storefront. Our Alice once said that Train simulator is one of those fascinating games where people who ve played it for hundreds of hours will tell you it s awful . So it is hard to judge how their journey into the air might turn out. … [visit site to read more]

The makers of Train Simulator are riding the rails in Unreal Engine 4 for the first time, having finally made the long-promised switch from their own janky engine with the release of Train Sim World: CSX Heavy Haul [official site] last week. It certainly looks prettier than old Train Sim, at least. While Train Sim’s many DLC add-ons cover thousands of miles and scenarios by now (even helping Halloween monsters in a spin-off), Train Sim World is starting with hauling cargo on the USA’s 100 mile-ish Sand Patch Grade. It seems to suffer from technical leaves on the line, mind. … [visit site to read more]

In the light industrial districts that have sprung up around FSX, X-Plane, and DCS World, genuine craftsmen aren’t all that hard to find. The machine tools that whirr and thump and whine in the workshops of add-on makers like A2A Simulations and PMDG are operated by passionate perfectionists – driven micrometer wielders whose scrap bins brim with components that look, on first, second and> third inspection, absolutely flawless. Elsewhere in Simulatia, it’s a different story. Just about the only sim that can boast a third-party add-on as lovingly fashioned as this Texan or this Fishbed, is Train Simulator. I enthused about that add-on – a delightful Class 205 DEMU – a few weeks ago, and in today’s Flare Path I talk to the outfit behind it, Armstrong Powerhouse.

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With the 100th anniversary of warfare’s first armour action less than a week away, I was rather hoping I’d be able to fill today’s gaping word trench with a fat fascine of WW1 tank game news. Graviteam are working on a landship sim! Rev Sudasana is to release a Whippety version of Armoured Commander! Noble Empire are going to let us assemble A7Vs!> As it’s now Friday morning and my OPs have yet to sight a single rhomboid on the horizon, it looks like Plan B will have to be put into operation instead. A few inches below yonder html parapet lurks news of Dovetail’s TS replacement, plus talk of the latest Sengoku Jidai add-on and a WW2 MP tactics game with hints of Close Combat, Men of War, and Jagged Alliance. … [visit site to read more]

In the alphabetical news round-up waiting like a pre-pounce puma beyond the break ‘A’ is more likely to be for ‘airship’ or ‘angry house’ than ‘apple’. Stripy ungulates probably won’t feature in the entry for ‘Z’ but simulated Bf 110s or Mitsubishi A5Ms might. If you’ve an eye for a shapely engine nacelle or a finely chiselled turret if you’ve an interest in the bloodier bits of history – I guarantee your curiosity will be piqued by something> in the 26-compartment specimen drawer below. … [visit site to read more]

The dimmed lighting, the rearranged seating, the bowls of hydrogenated corn snacks… by the time you’ve put two and two together it’s already much too late. Your persuasive host – Tedious Tim from next-door – is directing you towards a chair and fussing with his laptop. After the interminable ‘SE Asia 2014′ and ‘South America 2015′ you vowed never to attend one of his holiday photo slideshows again yet here you are, jammed between Bella the Bull Terrier and Old Mr Richardson from across the road, contemplating 2? 3? 4hrs? of ‘Africa 2016′. … [visit site to read more]

Q’s tail is a trip hazard. V and J often fall over in high winds. B lacks dignity*. Rain tends to collect in M and U… Many letters of the alphabet have inherent flaws but here at The Flare Path we treat all 26 with equal respect when we’re compiling one of our breathtakingly superficial alphabetical sim and wargaming news round-ups.

* It’s easily transformed into a cartoon bum.

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(provided for reader convenience)

Tim,>

There’s no kind way of putting this: this week’s Flare Path was a disgrace. You’ve done some pretty unprofessional things in the past but slyly writing-off an ambitious work-in-progress flight sim because you’ve seen similar projects fail, and recommending a wargame that you’ve played for a mere two hours, sets new standards of irresponsibility. Where was the detailed TS2016 coverage and the piece on the imminent DCS: Nevada? I turned up expecting topical analysis of genre stalwarts and found instead multiple paragraphs on an obscure half-finished Dora sim! And the less said about that awful title pun, the better. You are aware, are you not, that Loos is a good hundred miles from the Ardennes, played no part in the Battle of the Bulge, and was never visited by a WW2 railway gun? Your Meuse seems to have deserted you on this occasion.>

Deeply disappointed,>

(your name here) … [visit site to read more]