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Falcon 4.0 Plus - Part 2
By Bob "Groucho" MarksA few things struck me as the missions specific to the selected aircraft came up. First of all, nationality specific names come up on the assignments list---you won’t see a “Jones” or “Garcia” on a Chinese Su-27 list, for example. Why did MicroProse bother? They obviously had the Electronic Battlefield in mind for this stuff.
Weapons are specific to each aircraft. MiGs won’t have Western missiles. Also, tasking is accurate; don’t expect to see a BARCAP task for a C-130. That is accurate for the most part. There are, however, an awful lot of deep strike missions tasked to A-10s. This is incredibly dense when you consider that there is a NK tank column 5 miles from their home base. IBeta is reportedly working on rectifying this for RP3.
Not waiting for your carrier-based flight
When selecting naval aircraft, keep in mind that the code does not model carrier operations and you must wait until the flight is airborne to take command of it. Jumping into an F-14 or 18 before launch will just get you run-over by the carrier. Attempting to land on a carrier is also a quick way to get blown up.
Merlin’s excellent front-view
OK, let’s back up a bit. Regardless of the aircraft you pick, the cockpit will always be whatever “ckptart” folder you have loaded up. There have been several attempts at aircraft-specific pits out there, to varying degrees of success.
Most are “ripped” art from other sims like USAF or Flanker 2. Problem is, this art does not port well to Falcon, and these “ripped” cockpits also look “mangled, burned, and peed upon”- awful looking things that also negatively impact your frame rates. It seems that the only real way to go about this are ‘pits built from the ground up for Falcon.
Merlin’s excellent F-14 2-d ‘pit is, in my opinion, the best non-Viper office available. At this point, it’s a 12 o’clock only view. The other views use the default F-16 cockpit, but it helps immersion without whacking your framerate count.
