[lostllama]

http://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg2Yc65pQK8

I'm a little late in discovering this but I thought some of you may like to know about it (you may already do). This is a mod for the original Falcon 4.0 developed by MicroProse, which was released in 1998 - it is NOT compatible with Lead Pursuit's Falcon 4.0: Allied Force sim, unfortunately. I know several of you own the latter, but I thought this might be of interest to you anyway. The original F4 is probably very rare these days, and going by a brief search on Amazon both new and used copies are quite expensive (between $70 to $141; much less on ebay at ~$25).

This mod revamps the old sim almost entirely, bringing the glory of DirectX 9 its way. The video shows the obvious enhancements it introduces and makes me wish this had been developed for Falcon 4 AF. Although I've not tried it I'm hoping to at some point, as a relative has a copy of Falcon 4.0 somewhere in storage.

I'm wondering if anyone knows how this compares to FreeFalcon. Another sim featuring the F-16 to look out for is Fighter Ops (if it ever sees the light of day) and there's Jet Thunder too (not an F-16 sim but it looks interesting).

[Thaeris]

You might be more familiar with this than I am, but I thought BMS was supposed to be stand-alone. Heck, most of the user-maintained versions of Falcon are stand-alone!

I've played with FreeFalcon a bit, but not too much. As far as I know, most flavors of Falcon are a tad bit buggy and require some finagling to make run properly. The main focus of FreeFalcon is to be more stable, and so far as I know, does better in this department than BMS. FreeFalcon has not been made to delve as much into further developing the realism of the F-16 as BMS has, but it will allow you to fly pretty much any fixed-wing aircraft it has in its database. I believe that both the BMS and FF communities will strive to work with each other more in the future, so hopefully, we'll get the best of both worlds.

...More importantly, if we get a sim that doesn't need to be re-started every new mission (during campaign), or a sim that doesn't need to have the user jump through hoops to manage properly in general, then it will be a good day indeed!

[Unknown Target]

I think all you need for this is the original Falcon4.0 EXE. Falcon's not my cup of tea, personally.

[Dragon]

The problem with Falcon 4 is that it's insanely hard to buy, heck even to pirate here in Poland. It's one of these things that are simply nowhere to be found, or they cost an atrocious amount of money.

[Thaeris]

Like I said, most of the fan-maintained Falcon sims are stand-alone, meaning you don't need the original program to run them. I'm not really concerned about legality in that instance, as they are essentially abandonware, they're a new game in most ways altogether, and they're not Allied Force. That said, I think this community shares at least some form of related understanding about free development (from their perspective), and if you dig for a bit of information on their work, I think most anyone would agree.

That said, though I've not even bothered to touch Falcon in a while, it seems that they're gaining a brighter, cheerier, more hopeful exterior (and hopefully interior as well) than when I first started loitering about their forums. See here:

http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/content.php/130-FreeFalcon-Mission-Vision-for-The-Future?s=a2c38aaf5da4a0d5cffb614e118b36f9

Tell the truth, I'd not been able to log onto the forums for a few days there, and I feared the worst, what with all the legal shenanigans seen about the web.

[Mikes]

The problem with Falcon 4 is that it's insanely hard to buy, heck even to pirate here in Poland. It's one of these things that are simply nowhere to be found, or they cost an atrocious amount of money.

Could you order from here? http://www.amazon.de/Hasbro-Falcon-4-0/dp/B00004TOSU/ (If it works with the German Version)

[Thaeris]

I just read the FAQ... apparently, this one does still need the CD present during installation. However, if you don't have the CD, or want to buy it, get FreeFalcon, which should be more stable regardless.

[lostllama]

The problem with Falcon 4 is that it's insanely hard to buy, heck even to pirate here in Poland. It's one of these things that are simply nowhere to be found, or they cost an atrocious amount of money.

Could you order from here? http://www.amazon.de/Hasbro-Falcon-4-0/dp/B00004TOSU/ (If it works with the German Version)

According to the FAQ, it will work with any language version of the F4 CD, however BMS is in English language only; not that that seems to be a problem for you Dragon (assuming that you can obtain F4 from there).

There's a video on YouTube comparing BMS with FreeFalcon here. It's a comparison of the same in-flight refueling training mission, so I doubt it's really in-depth but it gives a taster of some of the differences.

...Also some of the comments under that first YouTube video in my OP seem to be saying that all posts about BMS on the FreeFalcon forums were being deleted for some reason. Although I've found a recent one there asking about the differences between the two: http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/showthread.php/20935-Some-simple-questions. Apparently BMS is much more stable in multiplayer.

I suppose that if I can find the CD for F4 then I can find out for myself.

[Thaeris]

That's certainly quite a nice video...

All I can say is that they're both quite buggy... and again, I'd like to see both communities come together to make a better simulator. Not having the hostile attitude, which when I first joined the FF community, linger around, and a greater acceptance for community development and cooperation should go a long way in the future.