 In March 1996 , PC Gamer US reported that Flight Combat was " still taxiing across the design board " , and that the team planned to focus " on how the aerial manoeuvres are performed as you fight " . Looking Glass designer Constantine Hantzopoulos told the magazine that a modified version of the Flight Unlimited engine was being used to develop Flight Combat and Flight Unlimited II . Hantzopoulos commented that Flight Combat was " the project everybody at Looking Glass wants to work on " . The team expected to be finished with the game in roughly one year . By June 1997 , GameSpot reported that Flight Unlimited II was running on the new <unk> engine , coded from scratch by programmer James Fleming . In addition , the real @-@ time <unk> model from Flight Unlimited had been discarded , as its programming was " all black box <unk> code from Seamus " . GameSpot 's T. Liam MacDonald noted that the Flight Unlimited II team expected soon to use the same engine for a combat flight simulator set in World War II . Computer Gaming World similarly reported that the company was " definitely hot " to develop Flight Combat , and that it might be created after Flight Unlimited II . Following that game 's completion , the team could not decide between developing Flight Unlimited III or Flight Combat . As a result , they decided to develop them simultaneously , and Flight Combat began production in early 1998 . Unlike all of the studio 's other games , development of Flight Combat was funded through an insured bond , in an attempt to guarantee that the game would be finished . The company 's Tim <unk> later said that this setup was " a real pain for [ the team ] in some ways " . 
