Jane's F/A-18

Jane's F/A-18 is one of the final study flight simulators by Electronic Arts under Jane's Combat Simulations brand, the sequel to the highly successful Jane's F-15. Jane's F/A-18 was released in 1999; it simulates the F/A-18E Super Hornet and carrier-based aviation in a fictional campaign around the Kola Peninsula during a Russian civil war. It comes with a mission builder as well as a campaign builder. Fans have created content such as new cockpits, enhanced graphics, new aircraft, vehicles and also the Persian Gulf area ported from Jane's F-15 as the games shared the same graphics engine. Since its release, users have created many new missions and campaigns that take place in both the Kola Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

Development notes

from C.J. Martin, producer and designer of Jane's F/A-18, on the simulation, and on the decline of the flight-simulation genre in general:

"The Jane's Combat Simulation label was something Paul Grace (CYAC/USNF/etc) cooked up between EA and Jane's Information group. Around that time Andy Hollis started up the Origin Skunkworks at OSI Austin. Paul's team in Redwood Shores worked on the so-called survey sims - of flyable aircraft, medium level of fidelity when it came to aircraft systems. Andy's team created study sims - single subject, highly detailed flight models/systems.

Andy recruited a bunch of MPS folks to join him, but they didn't want to move to Austin, so the Baltimore studio was born. In Baltimore, we created the study...
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