I'm an admitted European Air War addict so my personal bias is toward that type of environment. Pardon my asking questions that have probably been done to death in this forum but......

1) How is the stability/bugs with the latest patches?

2) Can someone give me a brief overview of add-ons available. EAW on my harddrive has had just about everything overhauled including plane skins, terrain, sounds, and flight models. Some of the terrains have been using F4 tiles so I'm guessing that a similar change has taken place in the Falcon 4.0 world.

3) What type of view system is employed. I also fly Janes F-15 (is it safe to say that here?) and wonder if F4 has a similar 2D/3D cockpit option---ie functional buttons in 2D and virtual cockpit in 3D. It sounds petty but I've gotten so used to using a mouse controlled virtual cockpit in EAW and F-15 that it seems awkward to use anything else.

4) My system is not great by todays standards: PII 350, 64meg RAM, 12 meg Voodoo 2 card. How will F4 perform on my system?

5) How is F4 online? Is there a service to match pilots or where pilots get together (ie EAW squads hang out at Kali)

Thanks again for your patience with newbie questions!

1 ) as long you doesn´t buy intel crap i800 chipset series it s OK stable.

2 )No real add ons but patches cockpit, skys ... terrains are coming up.
But men... you have a hellll to walk to master F4. I too play EAW, and it sound dumb easy i bore myself after two missions since i´ve got falcon 4. Get it download patches you won´t regret it if you like jets, when you put it easy its quite affordable even for unwitted ones. But woth time you will want to move to the nexstep until you go to the crazy 100% realism.

3 ) all that you´ve listed is there...

4 )It´s okay, you´ll just have to turn grafic down a bit.

5) don´t know, my tel line here in brazil is a crap...

Come on join the party get entralled and put one more vice in your head...

'nuff said...

Grab yourself a copy... you won't regret it.
F4 is a masterpiece, and at this point in time a mature(stable) product.

Avionics wise: If you liked F15, you'll be right at home in the viper :-)

As for multiplay: This is the big one...Nothing can touch F4's multiplayer TEs & Campaigns <g>

At this time there is an active F4 ICQ list with over 600 pilots registered.

Also, there are plenty of on-line squadrons & internet games to hook up to. Heck we have one up and running every weekend. ;-/

FAngs32
444th VFS LAN
Montreal

1.) Stability - Fantastic , some problems might come up with new patches, hex edits, but they are sorted quickly.

2.)as said there is a massive development community for falcon and most is concentrated on realism patches, to improve the weapons, flight performance etc.
Reactivating things that were disabled by Microprose in later patches.
But there is ongoing development on New theaters, Kuwait, Bosnia, with new objectives, force compositions etc.

3.) The 3d cockpit is not the best , but the 2d's are excellent being really clickable , replacement cockpits, wide view cockpits, 1024*768

4.) the only real slowdown you will get is on the campaign ,( dogfights,TE (user mission) will run perfect.
Again Falcon is very scalable so you can turn a lot of stuff down and it still looks great.

5.) it not as accesible like EAW ,(Zone, Kali ) but it has a much greater potential esp as ADSL ,Cablemodems become more widespread .
Basically we are talking about a full blown campaign ( Air war, Ground War ) where you and you mates actions have an effect on the outcome of the war, more than say EAW, which is more partial dynamic, Falcon is the real thing.

Other things to think about,
* Tactical Engagements ( fantastic mission builder that allows mini camapigns )
* Great Flight Model
* Great feeling of being in a war , with ground , air battles raging around you and comms from other pilots, AWACS etc .
* Very Customisable ( easy to change the sky, sounds, weapons , flight performace etc )
* Unoffical ability to fly nearly any plane, even the B52 ( half supported but fun anyway )
* Extremely Detailed AC Systems , with Advanced Radar operations, this is not a shoot and kill sim, like TAW. You have to find the target on your radar which is a mission to it self.
* Brilliant Manual 500+ pages plus, very detailed , try to get the Ring Bound version
*The campaign is so vast and huge that you cant just complete it in a day, you need to employ strategys that work, it s a war going on.

So get Falcon 4 now, some reviews in the beginning said it was a Flawed Masterpiece, well now it's Just a Masterpiece.

How can I persuade you... by force of arms perhaps? Nah, role-reversal should do.

Question: Why don't you persuade us to quit?

Answer: YOU CAN'T! This game is too dang good. Nothing you could say would ever get us to stop playing it! I hope that will be enough to convice you.

You shouldn't buy it. Once you play it for awhile, it is a nightmare...no other flight sim will satisfy you anymore and you will find yourself flying Falcon 4.0 night after night...until you decide you are tired of it...than you will buy another jet sim...play it for awhile...than you will go fire up Falcon 4.0 again.

Glad to see that the F4 community is every bit as helpful and enthusiastic as the EAW community I'm used to. Nice to know there are folks willing to help excited yet ignorant!

Thanks again!

quote:

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Originally posted by Spawnbob:
Zero Niner another one for u to get is Commanche Hokum by Razorworks/Empire.
Go over to the Helo section on Combatsim forums and you will see why this is the LB2 Beater. Full Dynamic Campaign and a View system to get extremely excited about.
Also very stable, ie no Bugs at all.
6 Campaigns, 4 Flyable Helos, ( if Apache Havoc installed , which is on Budget).
Something that Falcon doesnt have, Fully Loaded Airbase and Carriers with suckers on the tarmac ready to be wasted .

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A. I haven't seen it out here in Singapore.
B. It'll probably end up on the shelf uninstalled.

I also play both EAW and F4.0 (as you may know). Here are some observations concerning F4.0 addons:

Like EAW Falcon 4.0 has been rebuilt from the ground up. With all the graphics addons out there the program simply no longer looks like it does out of the box.

While I have gotten very used to the virtual cockpit in EAW (I play at 1024) I have never gotten used to the one in F4.0. It's ugly. You will gain an appreciation for 2d cockpits with this program.

New terrains have not been built for F4.0 like they have been for EAW although that is set to change. One thing we can now do is change the map and elevation data so that new campaigns in new areas can be created. EAW of course still uses the default Europe map at this time.

There are literally dozens of fixes, patches, and graphics enhancements floating around but you will have an easier time getting F4.0 up to speed then EAW. With STAB and ECA CP European Air War can be a bear to set up.

Hope this helps.