Hmm, Why FLY falcon AF ? no flight model, its flying like train in trails. But if you care just systems you can go with AF.. but my choice is bms because i like feel the plane and motion when i fly, no ctds (yet), 90% single player and bit multiplayer too. And terrain looks about 10 times better (i own AF too) =)

Did you noticed thes "few" features means overhaul most of the sim part of F4?
It's huge task. Just look at Il2/CloD. Team of full-time developers, workining on quite solid base of Il2 code for almost as long as BMS team stil can't get things right. They still has to fix their gfx engine, fix broken AI/campaign and add weather that is still missing.
Don't you understand major features aren't gonna happen in couple of weeks/months?
F4AF was way less revolutionary than BMS, most of the things you can find in SuperPak4. Yet it took 2 years to release and 3 years of patches to get to the point it is now.

Kinda funny, BMS terrain is still better than F4AF one, but you see it as con of BMS and not F4AF. New terrain engine didn't make it into first release so what. It's tremendous task which would delay release for another few years, it was perfectly releasable without it. You don't like it, learn to code and write your own, better. Go ahead, let's see how long it'll take. Maybe then you'll appreciate what you got.

Well it's not good even for that, if you're into systems moddeling F4AF can't stand a chance incomparision to BMS, the difference in level of details is outstanding.

F4AF was meant to fill the gap between F4 as it was in 2002-2003 and next big thing. Pretty good at role it had to perform but nothing more. The only reason one wouuld like to stay with it, is BMS is not working right on his rig (due to higher requirements or incompatibility)

I may be totally wrong, but isn't BMS done buy fans who "hacked" the code and made it better? Point is == "fans," as in guys who do this on their spare time. And BMS is free. Compared to AF which had an entire team who sold their product afterwards. So I have a little respect and patience, seeing as I am currently enjoying what other people have done for free and during their precious spare time.

As an AF pilot years and years ago, my biggest gripe with AF was having to switch from 2D to 3D just to flip switches in the cockpit. Then again, I wasn't as serious about simming back then as I am now.

Right now I am enjoying having just one cockpit (switching 'pits just killed so much of the immersion for me, nevermind the SA view), being able to throw switches like I do in DCS A10, and having fancy new toys to play with (TGP, -9X). Like you, I am a bit disappointed about the "lack of polish" with regards to in-'pit shadows and the ground textures... I was a mud-mover in AF, and have been enjoying the DCS A10 terrain, so the BMS terrain is glaringly ugly, but there are guys working on it... unfortunately, these guys have lives, families, jobs, and hobbies so progress will be slow but I have all these as well so I understand where they're coming from

I'm eagerly looking forward to what new surprises the BMS dev community can come up with, especially since the price for this is something I'm very much willing to pay -- FREE!

It seems your resolution is pretty low, so yes zooming in is pretty much necessary in this case. However check if the "double resolution cockpit displays" option is checked in the BMS config editor and see if unchecking it helps a bit.

Since its hard to convey tone through a forum, let me say first that the following is said in a completely friendly manner. I only write this because there seems to be some misinformation about what BMS is or isn't in these forums. I have never looked down on AF, I have flown it quite a bit as it came out just when I was returning to flight sims after some years of absence. Now..



That it looks coherent is fact. However the graphics were barely updated from the various F4 flavors floating around at the time so I don't think it was such a monumental task. On the other hand, what BMS have done and continue to do with the graphics is a monumental task, which is one of the reasons why things take so long. They could have waited until every aspect of the graphics was updated, which means the release would be around 2020 (have you counted how many 3d models are included in F4 for instance?). I don't think anyone would want that. Things like these are being worked on though.

Also:



BMS has a new terrain engine which already looks miles better than AF.



To clarify, the current BMS team is not the same that made the older BMS patches. Some people are the same but not many. And no this BMS has not been in development since the last BMS patch, its much younger, the dev time is not nearly a decade as you suspect.



The above are much more relevant to AF actually, which just took the best stuff of the mods that were already out there. Very little has been developed from scratch for AF. How much of BMS is new, well if you could see the (literally) hundreds-of-pages long changelog you'd know. And that is a changelog from OF, which was already probably the most advanced F4 flavor. Just to point the big stuff out, there is new terrain engine (not entirely new but significantly different from other F4 versions), new FM / physics / weather (this is entirely new), transition to DX9 gfx engine (also entirely new), new MP code (entirely).



Months? I'd say never, it is not one of the team's goals. And I don't know of any hardcore study sim that features more than on aircraft in full detail.



That makes it sound like a bug-fest which it isn't. Keep in mind that what works in AF works also in BMS. Its just that BMS has 10 times more stuff implemented, and some aspects of some of this stuff do not work 100% correct under some circumstances. The percentage is pretty small.



That is true, BMS looks to the future and develops the sim to be as good as it can be, no holds barred. If you don't agree with this approach then I can't say you're wrong, anyone would like something that runs perfectly on medium hardware. Same goes with bugs, AF chose to remove a ton of features to spare users the bugs. BMS instead choose to include those features and fix the bugs. As you say, its a matter of choice. BMS chose to have a longer developing time but end up with a better product. One of the team members made a great post about development on the BMS forums. I won't quote it in it's entirety but I'll write the resume. Commercial products have limited resources (money to pay the staff), and a deadline. For free products money is not an issue. So with a long enough dev time, a free product will always be better than a commercial one. I say with a long enough dev time, because commercial products (like AF) are worked on full-time, while the BMS guys work on it on their free time. On the other hand, AF had a deadline as I said, BMS does not. They can keep developing it for 10 more years and we can only imagine what the results can be.



Nothing has ever been promised by BMS is all I can say on that.



And there's more to BMS than graphics, dear lord so much more! I think you're in denial man! Joking aside though, it sounds like you have not tested BMS much or at all. One other reason I've written all this is that personally I think you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg and you're seriously missing out. As far as I can tell, the biggest thing AF had was stability. BMS is rock solid on my current and previous machine, never had a CTD. Then again I only had 2 (two) CTDs in the 2 years flying OF (again on 2 different machines) so maybe I'm really really really lucky? Hmm, somehow I can't believe that. BTW, that is the exact same number of CTDs I had with AF too in 2 years. Every other aspect besides stability is simply incomparable between the two versions. I say try it out a little. Try and see what has been changed, to what degree and to what fidelity to RL. I believe you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Sorry for the huge post and the derail.

Hilarious - pretty sure you never even installed BMS judging how clueless you are. Any work done for free on this sim is a bonus - its already surpasses AF in pretty much all areas - not only that it actually gives you a feeling of interaction with the environment as a flight sim should - pretty important if you have flown planes before.

Totally stable as well for me - its fantastic work! - and in a years time I'm sure LP will release Falcon 5 for you to buy - yeah good luck with that.

Well, I go back to Falcon 3..and all of the addons available back in the early '90s. When I saw Falcon 4 on the shelf..picked it up for a closer look..noticed the weight of the packaging...I rushed it to the checkout stand.
Brought it home and I truly believe I have NEVER seen such a gorgeous piece of marketing assembly on any product in my entire 50 some years.
So, like most of us here, we have Falcon4 running in our blood forever.

Upon picking up Allied Force a month ago, I knew in my heart that the main product would be to remove buggy coding...even before I loaded it. I didn't bother going to YouTube and viewing AF videos...no need on my end. I put this little system together w/the limited funds I have these days. So I assumed Allied would be a smart choice (hardware wise)
I wasn't disappointed.
Lemme give ya'll my take.
Reflecting back, Falcon 4 was/is coherent- it reminds me of someone taking a comic book and turning it into 3d...and bringing it to life.
And all the while, its totally in your face. And you still jump at the sound fx now and then I don't care how seasoned you are.
I would hate to admit to someone just how many hours I've got in Falcon3 and 4 together. I'll just say that it would warrant an investigation by an entire team of psychiatrists.


As for FF5 crashing....I laid in bed and pondered the matter. And I believe the crashing 'could' come from the fact that I'm asking too much from my video card. Or maybe it's the 5.55 patch. There's so damned many options one could point the finger at, then you begin to realize what a daunting task is in front of anyone attempting to take the Falcon 4 to the next level.

Falcon flight sims are fluid and they need to remain fluid. When you're at the merge w/an enemy aircraft, you must get the sensation of things moving at Mach. You snap your finger, and just that quick, your enemy is gaining on your tail headed for lead pursuit. Falcon always fulfilled that emotion. No other sim I've used was as fast & furious.
I liked the Janes F15 & 18, but they felt like slow motion compared to Falcon.
And when the heat is on, your butt's on the edge of your seat, and you're ham-fisting your joystick...That's the real success of a flight sim for me. Honestly Jane's would put me to sleep with their fly-bys. You turned away for a few seconds in Falcon4 and your next view was an empty sky with the whistle wind ablowin'....
Yep, the comic book graphics I'll always hold dear to my heart.
It'll run on any system today...no CTD whatsoever...High graphic settings are good enough.
Because, when the heat is on....noone is paying attention to graphics.
And you find your butt is sore from the edge of your chair.
And you dust yourself off and fly again.
Yep. Falcon, no matter what your flavor.

*after reading the whole*

Know what? Let's pretend I never said anything and drop this ball.
I can see already where this is going and I don't like it. Sorry for the guys that took their
time to respond me - really sorry, because I won't respond in kind. Don't take it as a personal
insult, but if I keep replying here the next step shall be to label me Troll for having stirred
such a reaction. And that's not going to happen. A polite: 'forget it'.
Everyone keeps running his favorite sim (not that I ever said stop BMS) - end of the story.

A nice day to you all

You know very little about Falcon if you think that. Now, if you compare BMS to say, OF, then, yeah, it incorporates a lot of stuff that OF had because well, OF was essentially a alpha leaked version of BMS before the amazing stuff like the fully simulated flight model based off NASA's data.



Sometimes I wonder if there was no SuperPack 3/BMS 1.0/2.0 would there have ever been an AF? The answer to that is a 100% no.

Yeah AF is coherent - the #%&*$# cockpit/models match the #%&*$# terrain. At least with BMS we get nice things but still the terrain remains bad but at least it's not ALL bad now.

Likewise with the avionics. AF is coherent and "complete" because it's avionics don't aim high. It that regard it matches the terrain, 2d cockpit and models. BMS at least has set their bar high.

AF not finished yet? Ok, show me what LP are doing to improve AF to make it better than BMS.... I thought so.

But you're right to each their own but with the updated gfx, avionics, MP stability, campaigns and no sign of LP ever improving AF then it's very obvious that BMS is the superior product.