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General discussion Release: Falcon Collection(142 posts)(142 posts)
(142 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 23, 2015
F-16 Fighting Falcon

<span class="bold">Falcon Collection</span>, a retro flight sim anthology, is available now, DRM-free on GOG.com - with a 40% launch discount on the Weekend Promo: Retro Mishmash.

Falcon was a game changer. Realism was the name of the game, and Falcon did things that have never been done before. Realistic simulated physics, a detailed, first-person cockpit view, and a ridiculous manual. Starting from Falcon in 1987, through Falcon A.T. and Falcon 3.0 - each release brought us closer to the very real flight experience.
Among the games' goodies, you'll also find a bonus as-is copy of Falcon 4.0, but also the "Art of the Kill" instructional video & PDF - a very real lesson, by a very real F-16 pilot, on how to tame the supersonic arsenal. Simulation mechanics are one thing, the spirit of flight is another - and the foreword says it all:
"Art of the Kill has been designed to teach you the fundamentals of Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM). As the name implies, BFM is the cornerstone of tactical fighter aviation. Since its principles are rooted in the laws of physics, geometry and aerodynamics, they are non-negotiable and cannot be finessed."
Badass.

Take to the skies in the extremely realistic <span class="bold">Falcon Collection</span> now available, DRM-free on GOG.com.
Posted October 26, 2015
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Phc7006: I did.. Arena would run relatively smooth in most cases - although players using lower-end systems wouldn't probably have said that -, but in some environments, like towns, it would start slowing down, even on what was then a relatively new and performing system.
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timppu: Ok, but if you ran it smoothly (fast enough PC), how about the lists? Currently navigating in the spell lists, or even merely selecting your player class from a list in character creation, feels far too fast. Or changing the volume settings in the options screen. Was this also an issue in real MS-DOS?

Playing the game on DOSBox, I've noticed the same you say. When using a fixed amount of cycles in DOSBox, some dungeons/areas run quite smoothly and fast, while others may run in molasses. I think it depends e.g. on the level size, smaller dungeons run much faster than bigger ones, or so it appears. It is great though that you can change the virtual PC speed on the fly in DOSBox, with Ctrl-F11 and Ctrl-F12.

What is not so great regarding TES:Arena is that to me it seems faster PC/cycles doesn't just improve the framerate, but also makes the game run faster? So you have less time to react to enemies, you run faster around etc. Or am I only imaging that? E.g. when I swing the weapon, it seems to travel across the screen much slower with lower cycles.
Regarding the lists, I don't remember that as "too fast" in real MS DOS, at least not when the game was initially released. I tried the 2nd TES game (daggerfall) again later on a late pentium ( I mean the 133 Mhz MMX version ) and there I had such an experience. Funny is that I went to the end of Arena, but never went far in Daggerfall, then i completed Morrowind ( but not the expansions), but went only to 50% of so of Oblivion and never even tried Skyrim.
Posted October 31, 2015
Falcon BMS 4.33 has been just released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcMOOOulhME
So good time to buy Falcon Collection now.
Posted November 01, 2015
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cemtufekci: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcMOOOulhME
Wait, what?! When did flying other aircraft besides the F-16 become a thing in Falcon 4? I never knew. I'm still convinced I'll never climb the learning curve on this sim, but if I'd known I could get a Harrier for it, I would have grabbed it at the release price here just to give that a try.
Post edited November 01, 2015 by Shadowcat
Posted November 01, 2015
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cemtufekci: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcMOOOulhME
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Shadowcat: Wait, what?! When did flying other aircraft besides the F-16 become a thing in Falcon 4? I never knew. I'm still convinced I'll never climb the learning curve on this sim, but if I'd known I could get a Harrier for it, I would have grabbed it at the release price here just to give that a try.
Basicly about 90 percent of the fun about this game is about studying. These kind of sims are called "study sims" indeed. You mostly study these games instead of playing. Not much else to do except repetitive missions but thats also fun. So dont be afraid to give it a shot. Lots of fun is waiting for you.
Post edited November 01, 2015 by cemtufekci
Posted November 01, 2015
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cemtufekci: Basicly about 90 percent of the fun about this game is about studying. These kind of sims are called "study sims" indeed. You mostly study these games instead of playing.
With respect, I believe that "study sims" are so called specifically because they provide an in-depth study of (usually) a single aircraft (as opposed to "survey sims" which provide many flyable aircraft -- but with the expectation that each one is considerably less-detailed than the single aircraft of a study sim).

A necessity for study on the part of the player/pilot is a natural consequence of the detailed modelling of a study sim, but I've never understood that to be the reason behind the phrase.

Falcon 4.0 is clearly still a study sim, despite now providing multiple flyable aircraft (although if the others are not so detailed as the F-16, then I suppose you might consider it more of a hybrid). It's not remotely common for a game to be under ongoing development for this amount of time, after all, so it's not surprising if the modern F4/BMS is a bit outside the norms of these generic descriptors!
Posted January 24, 2016
Bought back in October but I've just tried playing recently.

Falcon 4.0

I am getting about 5 frames per second, and I cannot figure out why. I easily had 30fps back in '99 when I played this, so something is clearly wrong. My system is ... fast. Running Win 8.1 Has anyone else run into the same issue? GeForce GTX 770.

Thanks in advance!
Post edited January 24, 2016 by pilot_boy
Posted June 17, 2016
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pilot_boy: Bought back in October but I've just tried playing recently.

Falcon 4.0

I am getting about 5 frames per second, and I cannot figure out why. I easily had 30fps back in '99 when I played this, so something is clearly wrong. My system is ... fast. Running Win 8.1 Has anyone else run into the same issue? GeForce GTX 770.

Thanks in advance!
Same! The FPS really drops when in cockpit view/mode. Different camera views really affect the FPS in a huge way and ending/aborting the game shows a 60 fps-like passing by jet fighter.


Things i've tried to solve the problem:

- Updating all the drivers (motherboard, chipset, GPU, operating system, DirectX, etc.)
- tried a lower game resolution (small performance increase but still slow as hell)
- Tried Direct3D instead of software



My system's specifications:

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K (Second generation / Sandy Bridge)
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GPU: GeForce GTX 970
SDD: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB as boot/OS drive and a bunch of 4TB /2TB HDD's
OS: Windows 10 x64


Also: To get the best possible performance ALL of my hard- and software Energy Saving capabilities were disabled at the time of testing.


I'm looking forward to people's thoughts on this and hopefully there's a solution that doesn't require me to degrade the game's quality even further, because after all: What's the fun in that ;-)
Post edited June 17, 2016 by oLDsKooLg4m3r
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion Release: Falcon Collection(142 posts)(142 posts)
(142 posts)