Hi guys,

Yes, I've let the Yankee Station website expire. There has been no movement on the project in a long time, and at this point, I don't think there ever will be. I really wanted to bring a realistic, in depth, innovative combat simulation to you guys, and it's hugely disappointing that I've been unable to accomplish that.

Yankee Station was a pretty unconventional concept. Based on historical mission data (several million rows of data, actually), it would have featured an unprecedented number of accurate missions (flown by 30 types of aircraft) that the player could participate in. Above all, I wanted YS to be an incredibly detailed simulation of the tactics and combat environment over Vietnam / Laos, with realistic alpha strikes on the big targets up north, proper FAC control of strikes in the south (with the FAC providing full sitreps, target location relative to marker smoke, run-in directions, ordnance usage, TIC comms/support), and realistic navigation (TACAN, Bullseye etc...). I also wanted realistic and dynamic mission evolution, where occasionally a strike, CAP, or road recce could turn into a full rescue attempt for a downed friendly pilot. Things like that would allow the player to feel a great sense of achievement.

YS wouldn't have been a particularly mod-friendly sim, due to the strict adherence to historical accuracy. There would have been no free-flight in the combat zone (so the only way to see North Vietnam would have been with people shooting at you, just as in real life). I really wanted to go for the 'sweaty palms' side of air combat, paying close attention to those things that provide a real sense of accomplishment, and not spending so much time on the more mundane procedural stuff (IMHO, the full engine startup thing gets a little boring after a while, and could also create mission timing problems).

Ultimately, I would like to have added a number of flyables to the core product. Along with the F-4 and F-8, I planned to have A-6s (for the night and all weather work), A-4s (just because they flew so many varied missions), A-1s (for a complete SAR themed add-on), and perhaps even a FAC add-on.

I'm going to leave my options open with regard to YS, but for now I've spent too much time and money on it, and there are other things I need to do.

Regards,

Richard J

Sorry to hear that Richard sounded promising - best of luck for the future.

I'f only I could win that lottery to set up my flight sim company . . .

One of the saddest things in flight simming is the lack of a dedicated, high-fidelity Phantom sim. Freefalcon 5.55 (Falcon 4.0) does provide an alternative. I like the Strike Fighters series Phantoms as well, and in some ways I think they are a better representation of the Phantom than FF5, but the overall simulation- campaign, systems, etc.- that Falcon provides tips the scales in favor of FF5 for simulating the Phantom right now.

I have a couple of videos that show a bit of Phantom flying in Freefalcon.

Here is a beta test of the Israel Theater of Operations 2 that I shot, a dogfight between a Phantom and MiG-21:
http://vimeo.com/20141687

I also did this video a while back where I dubbed the audio from a video someone posted up showing Phantoms and Bucs doing traps to some beta video of the Freefalcon 5 Phantoms; lots of carrier landings:
http://vimeo.com/4672408

I do find the Phantoms in Falcon fun to fly, and I do feel like I get my Phantom fix, but I really would have loved to see a sim built from the ground up focusing on the Phantom.

Alas, all of my work on creating a Vietnam theater for Freefalcon was destroyed when PMC decided to go payware. That is a whole other story.

See ya,
Toonces

For all the limitations of the SF series, flying an F-4 in Falcon 4 (or any of its derivatives) makes about as much sense as flying an F-4 in LOMAC/FC/FC2. Even with "lite" avionics, the SF2 F-4 is far more realistic. Falcon 4 is an amazing achievement and with all the updates has stayed really current. But I would never use it to fly anything other than what it was designed: the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Too many of the systems are hard coded to represent only the F-16. The F-16 external 3d model looks great in LOMAC and thanks to that games superior network code, it is the sim of choice for the Virtual Thunderbirds. But no matter what the 3d model looks like, the guts of any plane in LOMAC/FC/FC2 have to be one of the existing flyables. I know the others aspects of Falcon 4 probably make it the greatest combat flight sim of all time. But I have no desire to fly what is essentially an F-16 reskinned to look like an F-4... yuck! Much of the SF2 game engine could act as a framework for building a hard core F-4 sim. But there is no profit in doing that, so no one is ever going to do it. I am just happy that Destineer fronted WoV and WoE, which allowed the series to evolve into its current much improved state. It is a shame that an indie company like Third Wire can't team up with a group like the guys that do Falcon BMS to produce a superior product at a fraction of the cost and time. But a combination of legal issues and the inability to have a strict production schedule when relying on unpaid volunteers make such a thing impossible.

If Yankee Station had met all its design goals and been released this decade, I would have been one happy camper. Sad to see another great flight sim concept fade into the history of what might have been.

Well there's nothing stopping anyone from crowdsourcing an F-4 sim.