Columnist bemoaned it, pundits predicted it: simulations are supposed to be dead. Yet 2001 produced a handful of sims that would stand out in any year. A couple of years ago, when sims were in their heyday, every entry seemed to be a WWII sim. The 2001 winners display remarkable diversity: an incredibly comprehensive civilian flight sim, an intense air racing sim, a hardcore simulation of modern submarine warfare, and our Simulation of the Year, a recreation of the relatively unknown air war over the WWII Eastern Front, Ubi Soft"s and 1C:Maddox Games" IL-2 Sturmovik.