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A History of Military Flight Simulations on the PC
by Len "Viking 1" Hjalmarson The Mature Years: 1997-2000 Falcon 4.0 was incredible. It was initially released with a huge ring binder in the military manual style, with removable pages since it was expected that new pages would be added as the simulation grew. At the time I mimicked Charles Dickens introduction to Tale of Two Cities and wrote of it, "It was the best of sims, it was the worst of sims." Anyone could see that the depth and breadth of the game was fantastic, but it was plagued by bugs, and much of the campaign was broken. The first patch finally arrived six months later, and the second a full year later in December of 1999. By version 1.08 Falcon was beginning to live up to expectations. |
In spite of the problems, Falcon 4.0 modelled a real time and fully dynamic air and ground war, with full ATC, a detailed and complex system of communications interaction with AWACS, JSTARS, FAC and wingmen, and even allowed dynamic entry and exit into the multiplayer game. The padlock system was the most flexible yet seen. Falcon 4.0 began to really hit its stride in the spring of 1999 as the iBeta team http://www.ibeta.com continued to fix bugs, improve multiplayer features, and release unofficial patches. | |
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This article is copyright ThrustMaster and Leonard Hjalmarson. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without permission. Email MiGMan with your experiences or any information related to this sim. |
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The contents of this website are copyright © 1998 - 2007 by MiGMan |
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