As we go into 2025, one of the up and coming flight sim projects that I’m most excited about is Combat Pilot. Developed by Entropy Aero, an flight sim focused subsidiary of Barbedwire Studios (famous for Call to Arms – Gates of Hell), and lead by industry veteran Executive Producer Jason Williams, this is definitely a sim to watch out for as it continues to develop. Those familiar with the project already know that its a WWII themed combat flight sim set in the Pacific Theatre of operations and is starting out with the pivotal Battle of Midway.
One of the biggest recent developments for the sim has been the launch of their Combat Pilot: Carrier Qualifications Pre-Alpha experience which I wrote about recently. To get a little more behind the scenes information on the Pre-Alpha and what plans the team have going forward I got a chance to do a Q&A with Jason, whom I have interviewed a few times, and we also have Carlos Flors, in his Stormbirds Q&A debut, who is Combat Pilot’s Technical Director.
Enjoy the Q&A and if you’re a fan of flying heavy bombers, you’re going to want to read to the end. Let’s have a look!
Combat Pilot Q&A
Welcome back to Stormbirds blog Jason! Welcome Carlos! Thanks for doing another Q&A with the community here. Let’s get right into things with Combat Pilot. Since the announcement back in May of 2023, Combat Pilot has launched and regularly updated a website, forums, a Discord community, shown off dozens upon dozens of screenshots, released plenty of videos, and most recently started up a Patreon and a storefront. In broad strokes, how are things going with Combat Pilot and where do you think you’re at in the development of this entirely new combat flight sim?
Jason: Things are progressing as planned so far I would say. Some bumps along the way, but the vast majority of our work has gone well and we’ve met just about all development goals to this point. Obviously, preparing for our public debut at FS Expo was tough and so was preparing our Pre-Alpha build for release to special Patreon members. However, we climbed those hills successfully. These were good early tests of our ability to work as a team. We’ve also kept our promise of being open and transparent about our progress and the challenges we face.
We’re still in the beginning stages of our journey to a fully feature-complete sim and game engine. Remember, Combat Pilot will be built in several stages with every early title building up on the previous one until we get to a more complete status with a full module. Those being Carrier Qualification, Air Combat, Naval Warfare and then Midway Invasion. And then the Solomons beyond that.
For Ace Tier patreon members, a playable experience is now available to try out. For those who don’t have access yet, what’s in this playable Pre-Alpha right now? What kind of experience are they able to have at the moment?
Jason: Primarily basic Carrier Ops with unassisted landings and takeoffs from the two carriers we have built. And you can fly from our stand-in Midway Atoll as well. We wanted to give our supporters something to see and do while we work and demonstrate what’s possible with the engine and prepare them for a new combat experience in the Pacific. It’s all about building a community of like-minded simmers and customers. You can’t just plop a new sim onto the market and expect everyone to buy it or be interested without a detailed explanation of what you’re doing, why and how. I’ve sold sims for a long time and it is indeed a niche market with a checkered history. It takes time to build a following. The earlier you start that process the better so long as you can demonstrate quality work and progress everything will be ok. Our overarching goal in 2024 was to show we are not vaporware and that Entropy Aero is a serious outfit. 2025 will be all about technical and artistic progress.
Where does this go from here? Will there be regular updates? What kinds of features are you planning to add into the mix next?
Jason: Yes, we plan to update the Pre-Alpha as we go (albeit on an irregular basis) and then we’ll transition to the Alpha and then Beta of Carrier Qualification. Then we’ll basically do the same process for each additional foundational title such as Air Combat and Naval Warfare which will culminate with our first full module – Midway Invasion.
Going back to the bigger picture, now that a playable Pre-Alpha is out and you’ve got a growing community around the project, what can you share with us in terms of your next steps? What are some of the bigger features that you’re developing that a combat flight sim needs to have?
Jason: We have learned many things in our first 18 months, namely what we can and can’t do with Unreal 5 and where we need to create custom solutions. We always knew this would be the case, but we did not know exactly where we would need to invest resources. Now we have a better idea and one example is the physics engine. We have begun to build our own physics and flight-engine called ‘EntropyFM’ that will be native to Unreal and make it easier for us to take advantage of modern computing power and features like damage, AI and Multiplayer. This is a very important task and we don’t take it lightly, but we are utilizing what we have learned with our previous solution and applying it to EntropyFM so progress has been rather quick. You’ll learn more about this effort in our next Developer Diary. We are also currently working on better support for controllers and we’re going to start improving our User Interface. Later this year we will start implementing VR. Anyone planning on getting a 5090 to smash VR frames?
Carlos: What we aim to make is the most technologically advanced flight and physics model ever made for any flight simulator, not only from a realism point of view, but from the core architecture. Multi-threaded, assisted by the huge feature set of UE5, featuring both rigid and soft body physics, etc. It will take lots of time, but we are in the unique position to be able to do this now, before the game grows large with features and content which prevents us from reviewing something as fundamental as the core physics.
We’ve seen lots of images of two key aircraft, the F4F Wildcat and the A6M Zero. Are there modifications, optional armaments, or alternate versions of these aircraft that you’re planning to do? The non-folding wing F4F-3 for example.
Jason: These particular aircraft did not have exotic field mods or lots of variants to choose from, at least during the Midway period. The F4F-3 with non-folding wings will certainly happen at some point. These planes will come with the standard armament found during the Battle of Midway first and foremost – bullets, cannon shells and bombs. And of course, drop tanks! If there was some kind of optional armament or equipment arrangement for any aircraft we hope to model it, but right now our focus is not on combat elements per se.
What about some of the other aircraft critical to the Midway battle? What types are you working on next?
Jason: We plan to build the B5N2 Kate and the D3A1 Val next followed by the SBD-3 Dauntless and TBD-1 Devastator. Finding qualified partners to build additional planes to the standard we want takes time, but hope to have them underway very soon.
Carlos: We want to build all relevant planes to the theaters that we are manufacturing and create an ecosystem of partners and creators. The challenge is to find experienced, committed, serious and talented partners who can work with a sense of urgency.
One of the other related projects that you’ve shown off recently is a B-17 Flying Fortress! That’s exciting and an interesting development for people who have been calling for flyable heavy bombers in a combat flight sim for a long time now. Can you tell us a little more about that project and how it fits into the bigger picture?
Jason: Yes, we also plan other ‘Special Aircraft’ like the F2A Buffalo and variants of the B-17 which you saw in our Special Announcement video. And… we also have a B-24 which you can see right here. This one is a J model, but we plan to convert it to a D as well. There will be other surprises along the way too. The bombers will be projects in and of themselves, but our most important goal is to build the principal participants of the Midway battle. These Special Aircraft will be used to supplement our overall product-line and allow us to work with content creators in ways not necessarily possible within our standard budget. Any profits generated from selling Special Aircraft will be funneled back into development of the core engine and of course, more content.
Carlos: Adding heavy bombers into the game presents unique technical challenges that we are willing to tackle from an early stage. It’s important for us to make our simulator future-proof. Featuring these unique bombers is a way to grab the bull by the horns and also satisfy the craving of the community that has existed for a decade or more.
Back in the summer at FlightSimExpo 2024 you were up on the stage and revealed that you have content plans that go beyond the Battle of Midway and that you’re planning to do Guadalcanal and the battles in that area of the Pacific next. The connections between the battles in terms of material and equipment seem obvious but I’m curious what opportunities it gives yourselves as developers to make that your next goal. Are you able to lay foundational work for it now that will pay off later on?
Jason: The Solomons Campaign in WWII offers us so much in the way of gameplay options and history to tell, it’s a natural next stop. The biggest draw is the introduction of land-based USAAF aircraft such as the P-39 and the unique P-400 variant of the Airacobra, different marks of the Zero, the B-25 and Japanese bombers like the G4M Betty which saw tons of action in the Solomons. If we can pull off the Solomons in a convincing way nothing will stop us and we can go to places like New Guinea and beyond. Everything we do for Midway will be applicable to the Solomons. However, the terrain will be obviously a bigger piece of the work.
Carlos: We’re currently establishing the foundational technology for doing our terrain. In UE5, some teams (mostly defense projects) use satellite-based spheroid depictions of the earth with convincing and rapid results. We’ve had the honor of talking to some of these teams during our development. However, our product is quite different and requires unique solutions that do not currently exist as a commercial out-of-the-box package or through technology partnering. The depiction of our terrain should have the fidelity of the 1940s, which rules out many modern satellite-based resources, especially for islands. Moreover, we want our terrain to be deformable via explosions, impacts, etc. We want atmospheric effects to interact with the terrain. Rain will create puddles that should be interacted with. Snow should collect on the ground and be squashed. Underwater bathymetry should be accurate for things like naval battles or torpedo allowable depths. We should also offer the possibility to create maps by partners and modders in the long-term. The list is very long… To tick all the boxes, we need our own terrain solution, which is similar to our need to make our own physics engine. But all of this is to be mated to the underlying capability of Unreal, which when successful, will be a very powerful flight-sim solution and move the genre forward.
I know some readers are excited about the possibilities but naturally worried about the scale of the battles. How are you attempting to scale the project to do lots of details at the individual aircraft level but also add in larger formations and ships into the mix?
Jason: Scale is important to us, but to comment now without our new physics engine being implemented and other enhancements in place would just be empty words. We simply don’t know the upper limit of what’s possible yet or what trouble we’ll run into along the way. We, of course, have tried to strike a balance between detail and scale. And our move to a new physics engine is part of that because it will be better suited technologically for larger battles etc. So, we are very mindful of scale vs. detail. We hope our final balance will not only be impressive, but also allow for fun and challenging missions.
We also haven’t begun to work on optimization at all, which will make a difference in how much stuff can exist at once in the sim. On the bright side, when it comes to rendering, our carriers featured in the Carrier Qualification pre-alpha are several million polygons in detail, which as far as we are aware, is above what anyone has ever released before, and despite the lack of any optimization, it runs quite well.
Revisiting a couple of questions that have been circulating in the community. What are the plans for clickable cockpits?
Jason: All we can say is, yes, we plan to have them. All our cockpits and systems are being built with that support in mind from the beginning. It may not come immediately, but will eventually.
We’ve talked about VR before but I know it comes up frequently as there are VR only flyers out there. What are your plans for VR and might we see that in the pre-alpha or is that a feature that will have to come later in the process?
Jason: We plan to implement it in time for Carrier Qualification release, but that assumes implementation goes well and performance is ok. Some players have already forced it with UEVR and seems to actually work decently according to the reports I’ve seen. I’m in the market for some new VR goggles myself so I can try it and prepare for our implementation. VR is important to our future goals for sure.
We can let you know already that we will be using OpenXR as the architecture for our VR implementation. If you want to make your game the most vendor and hardware independent nowadays, OpenXR is the way to go. There are additional features of the different headsets which are limited to using the DLL’s of those products. If we get our hands on additional headsets, we will implement headset-specific features over time, as long as it does not create incompatibilities with the core architecture.
Last question! Where does Combat Pilot go next? You’ve got a working Pre-Alpha and plenty of things I’m sure that you need to work on. Is there anything you can share with us about those next steps?
Jason: Our next stop is Carrier Qualification which is scheduled to be ready by the end of 2025. We will continue to share updates on our progress in our Developer Diaries and special videos etc. We just ask that everyone please continue to follow us and support us in whatever way you can.
Carlos: After Carrier Qualification, we will work on adding the air combat side of things. Damage models, ballistics, weaponry, dynamic weight and inertia distributions. Exciting times ahead!
Jason: And remember, if you want to practice carrier traps right now, hop on over to our Patreon and join our Ace Tier or you can join whatever tier you’d like if you’re so inclined. Different tiers have different perks. But Ace Tier gets you into the cockpit today! We also have some additional nice things planned for our Patreon subscribers who stick with us in this early phase.
You can also support our efforts by purchasing our 2025 Wall Calendar in the Combat Pilot Store! And don’t forget to join our Discord server and our discussion forum and follow us on all our socials. Our growing community has been fantastic to us since we launched which we appreciate to no end.
Thank you for the continued coverage as always Colin! We love Stormbirds Blog!
That’s all for now! I want to thank both Jason and Carlos for doing the Q&A. Getting a bit of insight into how Combat Pilot is progressing is always interesting. The sim has vaulted over its first few hurdles and has many more to jump on its way towards a finished product but this is a team that is doing something that hasn’t been done in a couple of decades. Building an entirely new combat flight sim is a bit of a novelty and an extreme challenge but it is happening and I remain optimistic for it.
You can learn more about the sim in development on their website, forum, Discord and various social media sites. Check them out and stay tuned for further coverage here on the blog.
Stormbirds 
Leave a comment