In 1987 I recall seeing a brown and black box with a picture of a Falcon swooping onto a Mig-21 as I walked past a Tandy electronics store. I'd been playing computer sims on the commodore 64 - almost all exclusively Microprose products - for about 4 years. I didn't have a computer that could run it at the time but it stuck in my head. Now almost 2 decades later the latest incarnation of this product has been released and it stays true to it's pedigree.

Getting here has taken a long time and has been a very rough ride in some places - but the one thing that Falcon had going for it that no other combat sim ever has is the Gilman Louie vision:

"In Falcon 4.0 our goal is to design a F-16 simulator that will put the player's head into the war, not just into the plane. We want to suspend disbelief and to give you a better understanding of a pilot's role in a large scale engagement. The secret of Falcon has always been balancing the campaign with the flight simulation".

Falcon's approach was different to all other's. Create a believable warzone THEN put an aircraft in it. Many other developers of the time focused primarily on creating graphics engines with which to woo consumers and developing the player's aircraft with as much fidelity as they are capable of and MAYBE tacking on some limited multiplayer code and basic multiplayer gameplay. The end result has often been pretty and complex but with a short lifespan and very limited replayability. When Microprose created Falcon4 they designed a monster - a sim to eclipse all other simulations. Unfortunately when it came to translating the vision and design to code they failed. Falcon simmers were left with a flawed masterpiece that gave a tantalizing view of what it should have been but constant crashes and weird issues made it impossible to enjoy.

Recent Falcon History
There's been more drama in Falcon4's history than the average Shakespearean play.

The watershed moment for Falcon's continued development was the leaking of the Falcon4 source code by what is suspected to have been a disgruntled employee.

Before long a coder had started working on it and had produced an updated executable which he wished to release but he could not get a response from the IP owners. Other people had created more data and had cleaned some up. Before long community based modifications were being done by those who could see the potential Falcon had and were determined to do what they could to realize it. All with dubious legality, and almost none were compatible with others. Before long the sizable ego's of those who considered themselves Falcon's true saviors clashed - resulting in wasted effort and in many instances - sheer stupidity.

A new group was formed - the Falcon4 Unified Team. All falcon modders were invited to put their issues aside and join together in a fully authorized and LEGAL community effort to fix and enhance Falcon. The catch from the IP owners was that there would be a deadline for the executable work.

Most of those with coding expertise within the Falcon community joined this group. F4UT released the Superpak series which updated the executable and data in an attempt to change Falcon from a crashfest to a stable simulation - and from all community efforts they produced the most stable version of Falcon4 ever to be released.

F4UT hit the deadline - and got permission to extend it for the release of Superpak 3. It was apparent to the coders that more work would need to be done and now being without a job within F4UT (all that was left for the future was data work) they negotiated an agreement to continue executable work which would be released to the community for free on the conditions that this development was kept secret and that the Intellectual Property owners would receive the source code for their own further development.

While the coders who were members of F4UT continued on this 'secret' project with a selected handful of others who's expertise would be relevant to the exe work the F4UT data guys worked on the huge task of cleaning up the data for Superpak 4. This data job was much more effort than all of the executable work done put together. Whereas a coder can tweak a few lines of code and recompile to modify the behavior of bugs the data people had to test every single object within the Falcon database in all possible circumstances it would be encountered in within the simulation. With over 200 volunteers working on this it was taking months, and looked to possibly take years to be done thoroughly.

Unfortunately months or years was not quick enough for some of the extras in Viperops. They attributed this delay in SP4 to be stalling for the Viperops project regardless of there being no other evidence.

One of the extras within Viperops leaked a copy of the Viperops testing executable in an attempt to sabotage the effort. Further executables were then locked down to prevent them from running on machines other than that of members of the team to ensure compliance with the original agreement with the IP holders. This locking down however was all the evidence that was needed to satisfy these malcontents that Viperops was going to steal community work for a commercial project. So they outed Viperops and the community lost the most thoroughly tested and stability focused free executable it would ever have seen.

From this point onwards the Falcon community was fractured and turned into a pub brawl - with groups stealing the work of other groups and a rush to add more features and eyecandy whilst doing little for Falcon's underlying problem - stability. For all intents and purposes Falcon was dead with only the horse kicking left to be done. All later work has actually decreased the stability that was reached with the Superpak series even though there has been many excellent steps in the graphics department. But a pretty trainwreck is still a trainwreck and there looked to be no end to this problem in sight. This problem persisted for over 2 years and the one other commercial attempt was stillborn - Falcon4 OIR.

Then one morning a few months ago an unknown group calling themselves 'Lead Pursuit' appeared on the scene with an announcement of the imminent release of a new version of Falcon. One that focused on stability. EXACTLY what most Falcon players wanted first and foremost and the community effort had so far failed to yield. Many breathed a sigh of relief and migrated to new forums to leave those groups who were spending more time slamming other groups than on actual development work to argue amongst themselves. Plainly the majority of the community was sick and tired of the whole Falcon melodrama.

Before long some familiar names were appearing in the development notes and gleaned from various online sources - and it became apparent that Lead Pursuit was made up of those who were the founding fathers of Falcon community modification. These were the men who made the modding possible in the first place.

Falcon4 Allied Force

Falcon4 Allied Force seems to be a logical extension of the Superpak series - with the same primary focus on stability and quality control rather than adding new eye candy and half working features. In a way it's a rationalization of what we've seen so far in Falcon - removal of badly implemented features like JDAMS and the ability to 'Fly Any Plane so long as it uses the vipers avionics' type of thing which resulted in myriad poorly simulated aircraft.

New Features:

• Multiple threads in the code for true Dual Core processor support
• Revamped graphics engine
• Reworked multiplayer engine
• Highly advanced artificial intelligence
• 716 page advanced .pdf manual
• 110-page "new player" printed manual
• Reworked dynamic campaign engine
• Brand new theater of operations
• New high resolution models and cockpits
• Highly detailed terrain and airbases
• Intuitive User Interface
• Trackir Enhanced Support

Installation:
Installation is very simple and it takes about 5 minutes to install the simulation. This is a huge improvement over the 'Falcon Dance' - the process in which you can patch the original Falcon4 which is almost impossible for Joe Six-pack and takes much longer.

One of the BEST features is that there is NO copy protection. NONE. You are not required to use the CD during gameplay and are able to create a backup copy. It's nice to finally have your legal rights as a consumer respected by a publisher.

First Impressions:
The initial movie is interesting but it fails to set the mood for the sim. The footage is nice but I didn't find myself riveted the first time like I did with the original.

The music is very science-fictiony - has Lead Pursuit not been to an airshow with jets? Where's the electric guitars?! Yes yes it's a cliché but the music is more suitable to eve-online than a jet combat sim. I haven't found myself humming F4AF's music like I had with the original Falcon.

Interface:
Falcon has always had a good interface, and Lead Pursuit further polished it. I am glad to see that things that can screw up your gameplay are no longer present and that items that should not be accessible to the user are no longer there. Having all items within the sim tweakable had resulted in further fragmentation of online play.

All areas are efficient and simple to use.

The only complaint I have about the interface is that the gray background makes the red text difficult to read.

Graphics configuration: F4AF supports standard 4:3 ratio resolutions - being 1024x768 - 1280x960 and 1600x1200. The 'native' resolutions are however 1024x768 and 1600x1200 with the 1280x960 resolution cockpit being an autoscaled one. It would have been very nice to be able to use non 4:3 resolutions as well.

Control configuration:

Controller assigment screen.

The sim supports TrackIR in enhanced mode. You will want to be using the latest version of Trackir and will need to ensure you have downloaded the latest profiles from Naturalpoint. The Trackir implementation is great in 3d view but worse than useless in 2d view. Fortunately you are able to disable trackir for the 2d pit by making the appropriate selection.

The rest of the controls input section is well done. Before deciding if you are going to assign a keystroke to a function you can press that key and the list will highlight that key for you and display what function it is currently assigned to. Clicking on that function will display a window that prompts you to select the key you want to reassign - if it is already bound it will display what that bound function is and you have the chance of canceling out your new assignment or replacing the current one. Essentially this gives the user two chances of not screwing up.

Difficulty settings:

Setup screen - streamlined and improved from earlier versions.

F4AF is VERY scalable. You could throw a jostick into the hands of a 5 year old and they could zoom around in instant action to their hearts content or on full realism be provided with a very challenging and realistic experience.

Training section and Documentation:
The simulation contains thirty training missions. However by themselves they are almost useless unless you have printed out 197 pages of the pdf manual or have access to the electronic manual on another computer.

The included paper manual is more a technical reference than training material - anyone who's read the Jane's F/A-18 manual will know exactly what I am talking about. It would have been a better idea to have the training lessons as the paper manual simply because you are unable to reliably alt+tab out of the 3d simulation to refer to electronic documentation whilst doing so in the 2d interface works flawlessly.

The 716 page pdf manual is excellent and if you are even half serious about Falcon you will want to print it out. One thing that is missing is a tactical reference as a separate pdf file that mirrors the online one in the simulation. I could see the tactical reference weighing in at a thousand pages quite easily. Maybe some enthusiastic simmer will put one together.

Falcon4's tactical reference provides detailed data on most of the simulations objects.

I printed up the pdf manual at Kinkos for a cost of around $80 Canadian.

Mission Editor:
The mission editor kicks freckle.

The tactical engagement mission editor - powerful and slick.

It is extremely powerful and it takes literally seconds to create simple missions. With some other simulations you are required to insert every single object into a mission and plot all the waypoints and each individual loadout etc. Falcon uses a system that takes the real world into account - The military does not send out individual tanks or artillery pieces on missions, it sends units. With a few clicks you can place an entire battalion of enemy armor on the map, give it waypoints and a mission and you are done. I've yet to see a mission editor in any simulation that is as well designed as Falcon's.

The game engine:
Graphics: One word - FUNCTIONAL.

An ATC assisted night approach to an airfield.


A stretch of coastline with the fluffy clouds in the background.

Some of the terrain textures are ugly - some are excellent. Same with the 3d models and skins. The 2d cockpits are superb and are fully clickable whilst the 3d cockpits are of not much more use than keep the player oriented in combat. Improvements over earlier versions include dynamic lighting, fog and clouds. The clouds achieve their function - obstructing line of sight - but definitely do not fulfill their aesthetic purpose. Eye candy was clearly not a focus for Lead Pursuit. The upside is that graphics do not bring your system to it's knees and make the game unplayable. There's other prettier simulations out there but if you attempted to simulate the environment of F4AF in them you would be counting seconds per frame.

A rugged region of yugoslavia from my viper's pit..

The terrain mesh in F4AF is much better than in Falcon4 though it still suffers from 'LOD popping' as you get closer to it.

Sound: The sound effects are good. The radio chatter is almost constant - including AWACS, ATC, FAC's and every other aircraft in the theater on guard channel or in your package/flight. You can tune the radios in the cockpit to different frequencies to quiet things down.

Multiplayer: Here's where F4AF beats all other simulations into submission, though there are some issues. So bad news first - If you are behind a router you need to map two ports, 2934 and 2935 directly to your Falcon computer. This is just a small issue if you have one computer behind the firewall wishing to play but if your buddy dragged his PC to your place and you wanted to play on someone else's dedicated server you are out of luck.

The other issue I encountered is if your machine is multi-homed - i.e. more than one network card in it. The simulation seems to get confused as to which card it should be using (this should be familiar to old falcon users) but the SIMPLEST solution would have been to simply have the network code check which interface has a default gateway for internet games or is on the same subnet as the server for LAN games and use the correct card for the job.

The multiplayer screen - no more post-it-notes with server ip's on your monitor.

Now the good news - Falcon online rocks. Unlike other simulations that have simply tacked multiplayer code on near the end of development Microprose realized that it needs to be one of the driving principles in design of the simulation environment. Lead Pursuit have taken this a few steps further and have made it very stable. I've done 12 hours of online multiplayer on a dedicated server with up to 6 players and it has been excellent. There are some cosmetic issues (player aircraft that are close to your own and airborne warping slightly) but function wise it works very well.

The multiplayer interface allows you to set both upload and download speed - especially important if you are hosting. In addition the sim retains a list of servers you have previously connected to. You can also connect by a host name rather than an IP address. My dedicated server runs on a dynamic IP network and I use a little utility along with a free service from dyndns.org to point a hostname to that address. If my IP address changes the agent automatically updates the record in seconds.

You might have noticed the words 'dedicated server' above. This is a biggy. You can run F4AF on another PC and have it host your online campaign. You can password protect the campaign to prevent undesirables from participating. You can save your progress and reload it later. This is an excellent feature for friends or squads who wish to fly through a war together anytime anyone wishes to.

Other multiplayer features are tactical engagements - think of these as normal missions like in other simulations - and plain dogfighting with some tweakable features. Falcon4's mission editor includes a comprehensive set of 'mission objective criteria' that allow you to set victory objectives per team.

Artificial Intelligence: F4AF shines in this department and the whole warzone performs in a realistic manner. AWACS controllers are a great source of information and will even warn you if a threat aircraft is approaching you. BUT - you can also BE the AWACS controller yourself - generating strikes and co-ordinating flights direct from your AWACS interface screen.
The AWACS interface - simply join an AWACS squadron and the war is yours to control.

The Air Traffic Control code is very good - far surpassing earlier versions of Falcon. One issue I experienced with it was when I had taxied to the wrong runway and it kept prompting me to move to the other one. A call of 'you're at the wrong runway dumbass' or somesuch would have been welcome. The other issue was when I called incoming while at 30,000 feet. The ATC attempted to steer me in (and I DID manage to land it) but I think more idiot proofing would be handy - vector me off some distance and altitude away before bringing me in. Once again this is more a user issue than a sim issue.

The integrated air defense system (IADS) AI is excellent. The word 'sneaky' is applicable. Whilst performing a strike on a powerstation I was fooled into thinking I was outside of the range of an air defense system that was spotting for another site that was sitting quietly and feeding off the other site's data. I lost two aircraft of my flight while we attempted to dodge the salvo of missiles this silent site launched at us.

The wingman AI is good - though learning how to control it effectively requires a little work.

If you attack a ground unit it will scatter, making it much more difficult to attack on subsequent passes.

One of the greatest strengths is that the AI is not magically aware. Awareness is simulated with things such as lighting, contrails, sensor suite capabilities and command and control facility assistance all helping to influence the AI's perception.

Avionics: This is one of Falcon's strengths.

The wideview pit - almost everything that clicks in the real thing is clickable in here.


One of the other panels in the viper - and these buttons and knobs aren't just for decoration.

Falcon4 provides a fully clickable 2d cockpit for that extra step in realism. You do not have to learn keyboard strokes for in game functions - simply press the same button on the jet that the real pilot pushes. This is a real immersion giver. If it's in the viper there's a very good chance that it's in the simulation, and more importantly that it is simulated rather than approximated (in other words - the processes of the device are simulated to produce an end result rather than approximating the end result directly).

The only other sim that has come close in fidelity is Jane's F/A-18.

Flight Modeling:
The flight model feels good. With some of the other versions of Falcon I have played in the past it has felt wrong - while some of them felt great. The Fly-By-Wire system assists greatly in aircraft stability but it is possible to 'overload' it's capacity with multiple axis maneuvers. I'll wait until I hear comments from a real viper driver on the accuracy of the 'feel' or someone with the aeronautics engineering skill to comment on the performance data.

Other Features:
One of the extra features is the ACMI recorder. ACMI stands for 'Air Combat Manoeuvering Instrumentation'. It records activity around your aircraft that you can view later. This is a great training tool and that is the real-world purpose of this feature.

ACMI display screen - Mig29A about to take a sidewinder.

Another overdue feature is the update checker. The patch dance is GONE.

Longevity:
Unlimited. The dynamic campaign provides a zero effort unlimited environment to sim within, whilst the excellent mission editor makes creating missions a breeze. The robust multiplayer code provides an excellent online experience that is second to none.

Conclusion:
F4AF is a step back in many ways from the latest community efforts but it focuses on the things that matter. Unlike some developers who have focused on adding extra features or eyecandy Lead Pursuit focused primarily on getting what is there already to work reliably and realistically. In this area Lead Pursuit has succeeded. This is the biggest reason for any Falcon4 owner to purchase F4AF. It's also CHEAP

Since the first writing of this review Lead Pursuit has released half a dozen patches that contain bug fixes AND enhancements that further push this sim ahead of the pack - for FREE.

New players may have issues getting over the initial graphics, but their first online campaign experience will convince them that there are more things to a sim than eyecandy.

Falcon4:Allied Force is an order of magnitude above all other jet sims. Some have better graphics, some equal the avionics fidelity, but no other jet sim approaches the whole package.