Well I finally upgraded to a System7 (64) and with this event, I am reinstalling both BMS 4.32 and Falcon AF. In both regards, I need the following help to locate what has become unconnected and apparent unrecoverable links:

1) Falcon BMS:

A) Where can the various theaters? I eventually found PMC, but was surprised by the cost of each theater download from Korea128, Israel to Desert Storm.

I do have the latest update, Aeyes Cockpit and HiTiles.


B) Falcon AF:

I have the last official LeadPursuit upgrade as well as the Hitiles. Where can I find a cockpit payload? Do the BMS theaters work in Falcon AF? Where can I find an "executable" installation of the 'Skunkworks' Mod. An excellent creation for which I have only found a download (169Mb) of an un-installable file.

Thank you for any assistance

1.A - http://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?32-Theater-Discussion

Open each theater topic and look for the downloads for each theater. Some are WIP or beta testing and not
released yet.

http://falcon-online.org

Here you can download Sinai, Battle for Balkans*, and Red Flag (Korea)

*currently unavailable due to pending update, rumored to be released around x-mas.

B - Falcon AF is pretty much dead. Skunkworks and HiTiles is about all you can add here I'm afraid. Fun and
stable, but not much (if any) online play going on there. It is also far behind in just about every aspect,
when compared to BMS, as a Sim.

Try this for skunkworks mod - http://www.moddb.com/downloads/skunkworks-mod

HTH - schnidrman

Note that Aeyes and HiTiles do **NOT** work with BMS.

I very much appreciate the support. The links are quite helpful. The "Skunkworks" link does download a ~169Mb file, but the file is inaccessible and is not functional as an executable. Is there another source? I recognize that AF might be 'dead', but it remains a personal old favorite.

Well Aeyers does have a 3D Pit for BMS

I completely understand, and only recommend BMS if you enjoy the much improved realism that BMS brings to F4.

I felt the same way as yourself a couple of years ago, when another poster on this thread kept helping me along with AF but kept insisting that, if I flew BMS, I wouldn't bother with AF any longer. Short story: He was right...
Thanks Ice!

For my own tastes, it's the flight model and the way the jet handles itself vs. AF, and the clickable 3D cockpit, and learning more realistic weapons deployment procedures, etc. etc. etc. All in all, it doesn't get much more real than BMS.

That being said, AF has better campaign management, but campaign modes in most of the BMS theaters do work and are winnable in both SP and MP.

So in a nutshell, if your going to get serious, get BMS. If your just passing time, enjoy AF for it's rock solid stability (BMS, with a vanilla install w/ update 7 is also very stable) and fantastic campaign management.

I don't know if there are any active links out there for skunkworks any longer, the link I posted was the most current one I could find, but maybe someone has the file and can share it.

schnidrman

Don't get me wrong, I loved AF. I "missed the boat" with Falcon 4.0 so I grabbed AF when I found it. I learned most of what I know via AF. As I was flying without TrackIR, I concentrated on A-G roles as that needed less head-on-a-swivel work. When I got a TrackIR, I found it a pain to be switching from 2D mode to view gauges and work the cockpit and then switching to 3D mode to look at the outside world. I had that bound to my HOTAS but it was an immersion killer.

Even if BMS was exactly the same as AF or even lacking in the campaign department, I would go to BMS simply for the increased immersion of the fully-clickable, all-gauges-working 3D cockpit. You NEVER need the 2D cockpit again!

schnidrman, you're welcome and I'm glad you're enjoying your time in BMS!

Thank you all for the frank and instructional comments. While I still lack an actionable link to the Skunkworks, I have fumbled upon a far more frustrating feature to Falcon AF.

I had a bad installation, probably due to user interface. I reinstalled, but now receive a recurrent message requesting a "Crash Report" with details and attachments.

"A previous run of the product crashed. To help the developers......"

This alert message will NOT go away no matter how many (3 so far), I uninstall and reinstall "the program". This message only leads to a crash of "the program" and has become a major impediment.

Does anyone know how to eliminate this killer message? Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Two things instantly come to mind,

1. Make sure no files for F4AF are still remaining on your hard drive before re-installing.

2. Given the operating system you are using, I think you are going to need to run F4AF in Windows XP compatibility
mode.

Are you using Win8? I know I ran AF on my Win7 machine before BMS came around.

Thank you for the comments and recommendations. I am now running AF on System7 (64). I have "uninstalled" three times with the same game stopping warning message returning after each new install.

The compatibility idea is attractive. How do I set up another installation ensuring that it is XP or backwards compatible to its OS?

Ideas welcome.

Update:

Resolved: I reset the executable compatibility and selected myself as the administrator.

However, after eliminating all content from the program directory and reinstalling the program I still received the same error message that killed the launch. I am of the belief that FalconAF is not System7 compatible.

Ideas on achieving compatibility welcome.

Try this...

http://help.unc.edu/help/win7vista-windows-xp-compatibility-mode-in-windows-7-and-vista/

One simple thing to try:

Try installing FalconAF to a directory not under c:\program files. Security changes in Windows from Vista onwards can sometimes thwart older programs written in the pre-Vista era.

One more complicated thing:

It sounds like the app when launched is reporting a previous crash. Since you have removed everything from the file system, there's a good chance that FalconAF is looking in the registry. If you are not aware, the registry is a central location on Windows where programs read and write information for later retrieval.

There is an easy way to see where this guy is looking:
1) Download ProcessMonitor from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
2) Extract the zip file to some directory on your machine and launch ProcMon.exe
3) Launch FalconAF
4) ProcMon will show every file access, registry access, and a bunch of other stuff that a given process on your machine is doing. Just look for FalconAF.exe (or whatever the .exe file for Falcon AF is called) to see what it is doing right before it pops up the dialog.

If you can post a screenshot or report of what this shows for Falcon AF I may be able to help you further. For example, if it's looking in the registry we can remove the key that tells it there was a previous crash.

F4AF is quite compatible with win7 I run it without probs.. Maybe the old "movie file missing codecs causing crash" problem? Might be worth a try to rename the "movies" dir.

^1+
F4:AF was coded on win7 builds so for sure it should work with that OS.

I wish to thank everyone for their assistance in trying to solve this message from hell problem. While I question that a program published in 2005 could have been written in WIN7, I did try the regedit tool of pthighs. But after some time, the ProcessMonitor ran out of virtual memory on a 16Gb machine and ceased functioning. I did look at its results, but could find nothing that suggested a problem resolution. In fact the Microsoft link only opened a door for unfriendly tools to try to bury themselves in my system, a problem much similar to 'Torrent' setups.

I am looking to obliterate the file for FalconAF in the system "Documents and Settings". However, I have not located the Falcon or Lead Pursuit folders in my System7 setup. Where should I look in the system drive?

In the meantime, I will rename the movie file or potentially eliminate it in the hope of stopping the failure alert. It could be a codec install problem. Win7 is not as forgiving as XP

My bad must of been vista now that I look at timeline, I was on XP at the time .

Update Number...

I renamed the 'movies" folder. This brought only a non-launch. Returning the name to "MOVIES", the program launched with complete introductory movies. And as the two Falcon soared into the sunset, the program died failing the transition from introductory shell to core game files. It is most likely not a codec peripheral issue. Any other ideas?

I will now launch into a search and destroy for the LeadPursuit, Battlefield or Falcon AF folder hiding somewhere in the system drive.

OVER

On 30 December I examined the content of the folders contained in the system drive, finding none related to LeadPusuit, Battlefield or Falcon AF.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to eliminate the prior failure message which is killing launches? I have uninstalled and reinstalled the core program without effect. The message is buried somewhere and launches simultaneous to the Falcon AF program launch.