He said he was interested in the Falcon campaign mode and such, whereas FC2 only has scripted missions... If flying and blowing things up in arcade-y third-person was the goal, then yes, I guess FC2 would work. So would DCS A10C (it has an arcade mode too!), HAWX, or even Ace Combat on the PS3/PSP.

Don't complain about hawx is all my life that I'm waiting to face overwhelming enemy forces with and airplane loaded with 50+ missiles and unlimited cannon rounds (and don't tell me that is not fun) . Seriously BMS learning curve is a wall (where i bang my head often) but when it comes to why someone would fly a simulated warbird immediate fun is not the reason i spend more time designing panels and tweaking my cockpit parts than actually flying (I'm an happy grease monkey but a bad pilot).

As Ice said the only thing that interests me is the campaign mode. If it had a visual training guide like DCS A10c/P51/Blackshark 2 I would be happy to play it but it doesn't seem to so I'll probably stick with the DCS series. I did download Falcon 4.0 just to try BMS, I don't think I want to take that plunge with no training mode so I'll likely uninstall it.

Why giving up so soon? Like I said, there is no training but joining a vSquadron will give you better training than even DCS did!

I'm not into multiplayer and teamspeak etc. is the problem.

If there's any quick start guides out there just to get the engine started, flying and some explanation on weapon systems I would be willing to stick with it. I found a video series but I would prefer PDF's or forum threads.

No need for a tutorial on how to start the engine. Unless you want to learn the 10-20 minute ramp start, your engine will always be running when you spawn in.

Ahhh, startup is my favorite part of flight sims!

There is Red Dog's checklist... should be in the Docs/Checklists & Cockpit Diagrams/F-16 Checklists folder. Filename is Main Checklists.pdf. Or you can do the startup tutorial with the training scripts, but turn off TIR before you do it so that the script can "point" your view to the panels you should be looking at.

Fair enough, but it's hard for someone to teach you via forums You can simply do multiplayer for your training, but I don't see why you prefer AI wingmen over human ones. Remember each time you wished you could ask your wingman for better support or help? Or you wanted him to do something but there was no command for it? Or wished he wasn't so show-off during aerial refuelling? Go with a Human wingman -- better in every way. In fact, that's one reason I never played any of the DCS missions myself. Stupid AI wingman would spot targets up to 15nm but wouldn't really tell you more. Human wingman could share SPI with you and stuff.

Plus gone are the days wherein you fly with someone and they warp all over the place (happens sometimes in DCS, but not BMS). I do formation flying with the guys I fly with and it is smooth as butter. Well, at least until the flak and SAMs start flying!

Agreed. The beauty of BMS is how easy is to fly a campaign with other people. If it's been a single player campaign you can fly it cooperatively. If it's been a cooperative campaign you can play it single player. Simply amazing.