I hear ya man! That game got me in trouble while I was getting my undergrad -- everything turned out o.k., but there for a while...Can you say obsession? Those were good times. But F3 was far from perfect. Remember how the flight model would change when your speed dropped below some low threshold? (Can't remember the exact speed now -- 180 kts?) I would get so frustrated when I'd make the commitment for a guns kill and spend my energy nose high, just to have the flight model change and my firing solution totally wiped out. Good times. Good times. I can still hear that bass in the UI music...

Well i just upgraded to dual radeon 6970s' in crossfire mode and i get about 50 frames when tooling around, it drops near the flot by a bit. All this on an i5 running at 4ghz with 8gigs ram. It sure is a hog on resources, even today. I highly recommend 4.32, read the manuals and enjoy the ride. Sure is pretty.

Cass

I have not tried the current BMS, no. It's on my list of things to do. And yes, it would be back to flight school, I'm afraid. It's been years since I strapped on a virtual F-16.

Miao, Cat

my first encounter with the falcon series was also my first encounter with a simulator. its was falcon 3.0. i must have been 3 or 4 back then(or even 2 lol). still i got some memories on that.
my encounter with falcon 4.0 was a brief one. i was 8 or 9 back then, and as you can understand a simulator game which can be considered realistic even today was a bit too much for a kiddo, of course i never reached the point where i had to use the avionics because i could not even control the aircraft. so far thanks to games like the falcon 3.0, longbow, FS98 and CFS, i got used to using the arrow keys for control, but F4 did not have the arrow keys as default for conTROLLING the aircraft. back then i had no idea whatsoever about settings, control mappings and whatnot. i was frustrated and disappointed, i could not control the aircraft and i didnt know why. the only thing i could do is see my F16 fly in a straight line while i was pressing every button one by one on my keyboard in a desperate attempt to control my aircraft and go to the encyclopedia to see the aircraft and vehicles.
i cant remember how my dad got the copy of F4. shortly after acquiring the sim, he returned it somewhere as if it was rented or something.

and that's my experience with falcon 4.0

A search on google for F4.0 prices led to this post. I still have the falcon 4.0 binder version and the hint book and wanted to know if I should keep it or sell it. This inspired me to try loading the sim (actually AF version) on my new laptop. First time I have played the sim since 2001. I bought AF but never loaded it. Instant action put me over the target so I navigated the waypoints without paying close attention. Bombed the runway cleanly and quit the sim. Found out that I had navigated back to home base and bombed the nato runway.

I bought the binder version when it first came out and you needed the sim forums to hack thru the crashes to desktop. It was my upgrade from European Air War (EAW)simulator. I was Sgt_Jointstar in a EAW online squadron "The Mighty 8th". Then got promoted to Lt. Then shortened the name when the nickname wouldn't fit. I hated air to air in F4.0 but loved it in EAW. It just seemed that F4.0 was all pointing the nose and not energy management since the gun to wreck your systems with accurate shots out to 5,000 feet. I then focused on ground attack and online missions with fellow squadron pilots. Much fun after all the patches.

I ran into a Col. Bonanni during ground war games at an Air Force base in early December of that year. Thought I recognised him and asked if he was in any sims. The rank thru me off since the 4.0 hint guide was written by a Major. But it was him. We talked about how hard the great the sim was. I described just focusing on ground attack since it was so overwhelming to cover all missions. We talked about how poorly it was selling even though it was so detailed. I thought it had turned gaming into real work instead of fun to complete a mission. He then asked if I wanted to meet the developers. They were in one of the rooms on the AF base watching the war games play out on the screens. Nice guys. They were planning Falcon 5.0 and doing research. I didn't bother them with too many questions. We did have a laugh when an A-10 discovered a SAM sight in the war game and circled over it to identify it. Everyone figured it was dead since it would have been in the Falcon 4.0 sim. I tried to buy another copy of the game or hint book at the local store to have signed by Col. Bonanni or the developers but it was out of stock. Also, I wasn't into sims that much by that time and didn't feel like tracking the Colonel down again. Later that month, I read that the development team was let go. I hope it worked out ok for them in the end and they got to work with better companies.

Also, I read a book called "Vipers In The Storm" that same year about the experiences of a F-16 pilot in desert storm. F4.0 helped with the terminologies and giving me the "I was there" feeling. Very cool.

I still have my Binder Edition, I've contemplated selling it, but it's a nice piece of nostalgia.. especially in today's age of digital distribution.

I remember racing to the local game shop the morning it came out, and begging the clerk to sort through boxes to find me one. It wasn't cheap, around 70 or 80 bucks IIRC.

All I really remember were the insanely long load times (DCS A-10 has a done a good job of reminding me). Some of my favorite online multiplayer experiences were flying on persistant servers.

I've recently grabbed BMS, and am seriously thinking about getting back into it. It really holds up quite well, especially with the changes the BMS team has made.

Nice story Joint! If you haven't tried BMS yet, you should look into it. All you need is your original Falcon disc, or maybe just the Falcon 4 .exe.

Longish story... Got hooked on Falcon AT; thoroughly loved (and hated) Falcon 3.0, bought the MiG-29 Adversary add-on and the "Fighting Tiger" add-on; bought Falcon 4.0 as soon as it came out and got the big binder version (wife had a fit over how much it cost); messed with a few of the mods that eventually came out. Took my time getting around to buying Allied Force, but finally did. And now with Bench Mark Sims, Falcon is new all over again.

I never did fully learn the systems and never got to be any "good" at combat flying in any Falcon version. But I've always been in awe of the depth of simulation the Falcon series presented, which motivated me to keep coming back all these years. I currently have AF and BMS installed. 20 years after my first forays with the Falcon series, I still have two different installs active and in use.

All I have is some low powered laptops (i7 chip but no graphics). I am running AF to learn the systems again. BMS looks great but it will have to wait until I build a new desktop. I have the original F4.0 disk still so I will be good to go with BMS when the desktop is up to snuff.

All the posts about not learning all the systems makes me feel better about only learning Air to Ground missions. I also used to stay in the mission planning (prelaunch?) screen and talk on Roger Wilco as a ground controller watching the area map for my online squadronmates. Easier to tell them what was heading their way than the awacs. Lots of clean fun and time wasted that year.

My intro to Falcon was version 3. The head surveyor at work had it on a 386DX that was the fastest computer at my organisation and the only one with a math co-processor. We'd play at lunchtime. Years later he suicided, but Falcon brings back good memories of him.

I was blown away when I saw Falcon4 unexpectantly when it came out including the enormous ring binder manual. It's the only manual I've ever fondled and treated as extremely precious. But the sim ran very poorly on my then PC and was an utter bugfest. Unfortunately this and real life distractions meant I didn't look at it again until Allied Force/Open Falcon/Redviper, but I kept my original F4 manuals.

A online F4AF mission where I got a gun kill of a Mig-29 that was attempting to shoot another member of the flight is the most exciting and intense gaming experience I've ever had.

Over time I accumulated two other original F4 copies (one discovered deep in a secondhand/junk shop), all of which I covet more than Gollum coveted his ring. Good thing too because my original ring binder has rusty metal bits! I think that F4 is the greatest sim of all time and in the top 5 games of all time. I think the potential in BMS with the modern hardware support is absolutely astounding and I hope they get good versions of other planes like the F-18 or my favourite the F-111.

I'm extremely grateful to the fantastic people that have kept F4 alive particularly whoever leaked the source code and the original developers.

My new BMS Panel (planning to spend a lot of time on BMS!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-AFJJpTKkc