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Falcon 4 Plus
by Bob "Groucho" MarksFaithfully rendering the Block 50-52 Viper, Paul’s artwork is extremely clean and crisp and a huge improvement over the murky default ‘pit. Best of all, you get this work of art with a boost in frame rates, however slight. In our rough little test, the Paul Wilson ‘pit was pulling down a respectable 13-14 FPS- a marked increase of the slovenly default cockpit.
It’s very cool, and the always-improving Paul Wilson cockpit is one of my faves- or was, until F4Turbo came out. Unfortunately, it is not yet compatible with F4Turbo. It will be soon, I hope.
The Benhur / Skypat v2.10
This particular cockpit has me torn. Similar in layout to the Paul Wilson cockpit- indeed, it shares the same “six” view- it offers some unique features not available in other cockpits. One of the neatest things about it is the “step down” view mode- a feature that allows the pilot to look at the HSI along with the rest of the panel.
The HSI is in sight
This is a truly cool feature, allowing for great navigational SA. The most vaunted, gee-whiz feature of the Benhur / Skypat cockpit, however, is the lighted cockpit, linked with the HUD brightness switch.
Night B/S v2.10 cockpit
Sure, it is good-looking, very nice from an artistic standpoint. It will, however, suck an easy 7-10 FPS away from you- granted, it’s at night when your frames go up- but it seems of questionable use during a time when most of us are wearing NVGs anyway. To each his own, however, and- like South Park- if you don’t like it you don’t have to turn it on.
The cockpit, also rendering a Block 50-52 build F-16, is also fully compliant with the CAT I / CAT III FCS switch to rock & roll when running light on stores.
What does bother me is the “rough” look of the daytime ‘pit. It just lacks the polish of the Paul Wilson cockpit. This is, admittedly, a personal problem and your preference may say otherwise.
However, since the release of F4Turbo, I’m a believer. This cockpit is now my “wide view” ‘pit of choice for this simple reason: I can pull down a respectable 16-17 FPS in our controlled campaign scenario- that’s a 40% increase over the default cockpit and a 28% jump over the pre-F4Turbo B/S v2.10 frame rates. Gotta love it- I can sacrifice a little eye candy for that.
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