Jane's IAF: Israeli Air Force

Jane's IAF: Israeli Air Force is a military jet aircraft Combat flight simulation video game released in 1998. This simulation was developed by the Israeli company "Pixel Multimedia" and was released under the Jane's Combat Simulators line from Electronic Arts.

The game which is set in the middle east featured a single campaign mode which included several missions and a Massively Multiplayer Online Arena. There were two type of campaigns; the first types of campaigns featured recreations of several historic operations of the IAF such as the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1982 Lebanon War. The game also features the historical Operation Opera, in which the Israeli Air Force bombed and destroyed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor. The second types of campaigns featured several fictional futuristic operations with Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The combat flight simulation is a survey simulation but featuring good photo realistic graphics and decent flight models.

The game became very popular in Israel, and is used until this very day by the Israeli Air Force as a recruitment tool, showcasing in Air Force open days, recruitment centers and community events.

It was one of the first simulators to use a realistic terrain based on stereoscopic satellite terrain data of the Middle East used as the main arena of the game. The terrain becomes more pixilated and less attractive the closer you fly to the ground. In 1999 a Patch 1.1 was released for free downloading on Jane's website which eliminated the terrain shimmer seen in the earlier version of the game.

The game supports both hardware acceleration and software rendering.

Multiplayer
Between the years 1998 until 2002 a player of the game could log onto Jane's Combat.Net website and find other potential players to play multiplayer games against. The Multiplayer version of the game featured an "All-Out-War" mission (each player for himself) or "Teamplay" (two teams against each other). There were also two additional aircraft which were available only in the multiplayer mode - the MiG-23 and MiG-29. This game can also be played with others over a LAN or the Internet.

Aircraft
The game featured seven available flyable aircraft (Nine including the two additional enemy aircraft available in multiplayer mode). All the aircraft used in the game have served or are currently serving in the IAF. You can choose from the Mirage III, the F-4E, the F-4 2000, the Kfir C-7, the F-15 2000, the F-16D, and the Lavi ATF.

There were also two additional aircraft which were available only in the multiplayer mode - the MiG-23 and MiG-29.

The aircraft you will be flying against consist of a wide range of Soviet aircraft exported to Arab states such as the MiG-17, MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-17, Sukhoi Su-24.

The flight characteristics and cockpits of the aircraft are fairly realistic mainly due to input given to the game developers from former Israeli Air Force pilots.

The demo version
In 1998 a free demo version of the game was released which is available on the web until today. The demo version only enables playing with the IAI Lavi and only in one Campaign in order to demonstrate the overall gaming experience of the game.