Falcon 4.0

Rating:
Summary: Buddy Spike
Review: 1987, year of acid house, and Spectrum Holobyte's 'Falcon' (ST / Amiga).

Gigantic and imposing, 'Falcon 4.0' is more or less the last word in ultra-realistic, ultra-anal combat flight simulators, one which shot itself in the foot. After half a decade in the making, it came out two years ago to variable reviews - most praised the stunning graphics, the realism and the campaign, whilst bemoaning the monster PC required, and the mountain of bugs. Nonetheless, this is a product of quality and depth, something to which the passionate network of fan sites testifies. Two years later it still looks stunning (the horizon stretches away seemingly forever, and only the chunky textures look dated). The newer patches (multi-megabyte downloads all) fix most of the bugs, leaving the world with a rock-hard simulation of an F16 locked in combat with North Korea.

Apart from the ultra-realism (just for example, you don't just have to fly waypoints - you have to do it *on time*) the campaign mode sets it apart from the competition - you're basically flying over a giant wargame, one that is played out in real-time (even when you're selecting ammunition load-outs and so on), and your actions, however small, play a part in the big picture. As you soar over the battlefield, you watch explosions ripple along the ground in the distance. The complexities involved in planning and administering strike missions can be daunting - thankfully, you don't have to, as you can just drop yourself into an existing mission.

Despite the ability to tweak the realism, this is still frighteningly complex to start with, even if you're a flight sim veteran. The relative antiquity of the F16, compared to such sci-fi aircraft as the much-simulated F22, contributes to this - if you're expecting to just press 't' to hit the nearest ground target, you'll be horrified at the array of radar modes, bombing crosshairs, and the insanely strange way in which you can't just press a button to drop a bomb - your fire control computer does that for you. Nonetheless, once you start to get the hang of it, it's gripping.

As in real life, the Other People fire back - and, often, your first warning of an incoming missle will be a loud bang, followed by a complete loss of control, a spin, a radio voice announcing an incoming missile, and a crash. It's not fair, but then again neither is real life. Flying low over enemy vehicles will get you shot to pieces, and with 510 cannon rounds you can't strafe them into oblivion. On the other hand, I can't think of another sim that lets you drop napalm over the enemy.

It's interesting to compare it to DID's five-year-old 'EF2000'. That also had a clever campaign mode, although being set over Norway it was mostly restricted to air and sea units. DID's simulations managed a balance between realism and playability that fell on the latter end of the scale.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to today's standards
Review: Compared to other simulations that were on the market when Falcon came out, this game truely did not measure up. Especially after Jane's F/A-18. It was and still is buggy and slow running. Look at F/A-18, which runs beautifully and has crashed maybe once on me. Even Jane's F-15 with its older graphics is better and less buggy. Instead of this game, look into spending your money elsewhere...on something like Jane's F/A-18, or F-15.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but you have to know how to use it
Review: Falcon 4 is really two programs, a flight simulation and a ground war simulation. In my opinion, it's the best flight simulation and the best war game currently available.

Too many people have missed the amazing experience of the Falcon 4 campaign because of the irritating bugs. If you set up the program very carefully, however, the bugs aren't a problem. This worked for me: (1) start with a fast CPU, a up-to-date 3dfx video card and Win98SE with DirectX 6.1a (2) Defrag and install Falcon 4, the 1.08 patch and the 1.08i2 iBeta executable. Download all the latest device drivers. (3) Read the Falcon 4 articles and user forum at "combatsim". Do everything suggested in combatsim's "F4 Tuning" article. (4) Use PC Magazine's "Enditall" utility to terminate all unnecessary background processes before starting Falcon 4. (5) Save, exit and restart each time you end a flight in the F16. These steps will make Falcon 4 about as stable as, say, Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2000. If you're tired of ordinary computer games, it's worth the trouble.

Rating:
Summary: Falcon 4 news and info...
Review: Falcon 4 is the pinnacle of realism. The fact that it is sodifficult, and takes months to learn, is a testament to howrealisticly modern fighter combat has been modeled. Every true simmer will admit that no other game on the market has or will come close to Falcon 4 in immersive realism.

I have been playing Falcon 4 since its release over a year ago. Yes there are bugs but the patches do work. Many of the bugs are driver related. So be sure to install the latest drivers from your 3D card manufacturer.

It is important to mention that Hasbro, the new evil empire and unfortunately the owner of Microprose, has decided to no longer support Falcon 4. Apparently Hasbro feels that the combat sim market is too insignificant to justify their continued investment. They have therefore disbanded the development team. So no future development, or bug fixes are planned. This is indeed a shame. Falcon 4 is the most advanced, realistic and ambitious flight sim ever created, and we will not see it's equal for many years. END

Rating:
Summary: Flawed perfection
Review: First off get the current patch (1.08). Without it Falcon 4 is a buggy dung heap. Second the system requirements are too low. Start with the "HOT" system. Anything less will be anticlimactic. Patched and running on a HOT system, Falcon 4 is the beautiful, challenging, and exhilerating. At max resolution it is stunning.

The training engagements should be considered a requirement; the SAMs are deadly, the enemy aircraft intelligent, and the flight model is unforgiving. I have yet to be able to use the most realistic avionic settings; Some day. This is a fantastic example of a pure hardcore flightsim. I love the challenge. This one has finally pushed EF2000 off my hard drive.

By the way I would have given the game 5 stars if it had been released in its current patched version. It's a shame we wind up doing playtesting for companies.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed perfection
Review: First off get the current patch (1.08). Without it Falcon 4 is a buggy dung heap. Second the system requirements are too low. Start with the "HOT" system. Anything less will be anticlimactic. Patched and running on a HOT system, Falcon 4 is the beautiful, challenging, and exhilerating. At max resolution it is stunning.

The training engagements should be considered a requirement; the SAMs are deadly, the enemy aircraft intelligent, and the flight model is unforgiving. I have yet to be able to use the most realistic avionic settings; Some day. This is a fantastic example of a pure hardcore flightsim. I love the challenge. This one has finally pushed EF2000 off my hard drive.

By the way I would have given the game 5 stars if it had been released in its current patched version. It's a shame we wind up doing playtesting for companies.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Graphics, and realism
Review: First the bad news, the missions are slow to load, probably due to the sheer ammount of graphics to be loaded. Also, the enemy AI pilots don't seem to manuver like a real pilot would - there are no true manuvers. With closely matched aircraft, both planes end up turning in a verticle circle until one can fire on the other.
The good news is that the graphics are as good as anything I've ever seen. I love the interactivity with AWACS, ground control, and refueling tankers (although I still haven't managed to succesfully refuel). It's one of the best modern combat flight simulations on the market, and worth every penny.

Rating:
Summary: So-so game.
Review: For those of you wanting a good Flight sim. Turn to Jane's.

I am a Hardcore Flight Simmer. Flight Sims even convienced me to join the NAVY AVIATION. But this game's graphics are rather sad. I mean I have a serous system 600MHZ P3, 128MB ram, 32MB VideoRAM Nvida GeForce card. Well enough about my system. Back to the game. The Flight modeling is good but the Game in the nicest way possible Sucks. Spend your money on F/A-18, Usaf, or Flanker 2.0 if you are a hardcore flight simmer looking for a new game for the arsenal. Take my Military Honor on it.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommend.
Review: Gigantic and imposing, 'Falcon' is more or less the last word in ultra-realistic, ultra-anal combat flight simulators, one which shot itself in the foot. After half a decade in the making, it came out two years ago to variable reviews - most praised the stunning graphics, the realism and the campaign, whilst bemoaning the monster PC required, and the mountain of bugs. Nonetheless, this is a product of quality and depth, something to which the passionate network of fan sites testifies. Two years later it still looks stunning (the horizon stretches away seemingly forever, and only the chunky textures look dated). The newer patches (multi-megabyte downloads all) fixed the bugs, leaving the world with a rock-hard simulation of an F16 locked in combat with North Korea.

Apart from the ultra-realism (just for example, you don't just have to fly waypoints - you have to do it *on time*) the campaign mode sets it apart from the competition - you're basically flying over a giant war-game, one that is played out in real-time (even when you're selecting ammunition load-outs and so on), and your actions, however small, play a part in the big picture. As you soar over the battlefield, you watch explosions ripple along the ground in the distance. The complexities involved in planning and administering strike missions can be daunting - thankfully, you don't have to, as you can just drop yourself into an existing mission.

Despite the ability to tweak the realism, this is still frighteningly complex to start with, even if you're a flight sim veteran. The relative antiquity of the F16, compared to such sci-fi aircraft as the much-simulated F22, contributes to this - if you're expecting to just press 't' to hit the nearest ground target, you'll be horrified at the array of radar modes, bombing crosshairs, and the insanely strange way in which you can't just press a button to drop a bomb - your fire control computer does that for you. Nonetheless, once you start to get the hang of it, it's gripping.

As in real life, the Other People fire back - and, often, your first warning of an incoming missile will be a loud bang, followed by a complete loss of control, a spin, a radio voice announcing an incoming missile, and a crash. It's not fair, but then again neither is real life. Flying low over enemy vehicles will get you shot to pieces, and with 510 cannon rounds you can't strafe them into oblivion. On the other hand, I can't think of another sim that lets you drop napalm over the enemy.

Also, I bought my first FS software to fly the number one freeware aircraft simulator on the Internet - The TR-3B Flying Triangle. I flew fighters for the Air Force in late Vietnam, specifically the F-111 and am rated commercial also. The TR-3B Flight Simulator for Microsoft's Flight Sim, is based on the writings, lectures, and TV interviews of Edgar Fouche who wrote "Alien Rapture." (See amazon)

Why? This is what the genius who developed it wrote: "For the experienced flight simmer on FS2002 PRO, I have developed this complete exotic amphibian TR-3B package, which is now available as freeware for download. It includes 3 models - the purple Astra, blue Locust and white Hellas - and as an extra 4th model the TR-3X with its own speedy attacker flight dynamics. The package includes TR-3B panel & gauges, noise cancellation sounds, fsuipc and special lights effects.

This TR-3B is a heavy tactical reconnaissance aircraft equipped with a magnetic field disruptor that reduces the weight by 89 percent (it is not the same as anti-gravity, though). It has been created for Microsoft Flight Simulator. All gauges are included.

The TR-3B can float like a speedboat at Mach 1.5 over water, fly like a heavy helicopter, like a bush plane, a business jet, like a military jet and lift like a rocket. Cruise speed is approx Mach 4.7 at FL340 and above, and approx Mach 2 at sea level. Service ceiling approx 69,000 feet ASL. Super stable. FSFREEWARE, SURCLARO, FSPLANET aircraft simulator sites have reported as many as 5000 downloads in one week!

I searched and read many many web pages about his book and the author, Edgar Fouche including; startfinish(put in the dot com.)biz/wise Click on links for Fouche and Flying Triangle. You will find his full presentation, and the download links for the TR-3B. Get the Great TR-3B Top Secret aircraft simulator and X-Plane, which I highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the headache
Review: I have a Falcon 4 since it's release, and used a numerous patches with various results. My final opinion: look elsewhere...

This game is nice when it works; unfortunately for me, it will crash quite often, and usually in the most inappropriate moments /like when you have the enemy locked, before landing, etc/. problem is that it takes a very long time from launching the game into the firing position. After a few reboots and hours of "playing", I'm finding myself to have fun maybe 10 minutes. The rest of the time I'm loading or rebooting.

I used all available patches and tried 3 different videocards /Voodoo2's in SLI, Viper 550 and 3D Prophet/; remember that one of the early patches actually worked quite well...but other things were flawed.

This game has a problem with bugs, and will probably never be fixed enough to run on every system. Maybe is's too complicated for today's systems, who knows.

Demands on system are very high, particularly in the campaign mode /main part of the game/, which really needs a major CPU power. Even to load a single missions takes forever. Tried multiplayer a few times as well, game kept crashing.

Maybe it is possible to fine tune the game&system in order to minimize the crashes, but I'm giving up /don't have really the time and patience for those tweaks and believe that to have the latest drivers for everything should be normally sufficient for every game, don't have usually problems with any game which I couldn't fix within a couple of minutes/.

Run on PII400/128MB, 3D Prophet 32MB DDR video /3.68reference nVidia driver/, SB AWE64 sound, Win98 SE and DirectX7 .