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Page 7

The Onramp to F4Plus:
A Guide to Patching Falcon, One Stitch at a Time
by Bob "Groucho" Marks

The new eRAZOR executable can have some of the iBeta and 3rd-party patches applied to it. I believe a true RP/eRAZOR meld is just around the corner. It will have to happen given the furious pace of eRAZOR patch development. Many of the fixes commonly applied to the RPX/1.08X series are a native part of the v1.0795 exe, including Cat I/III, Nike RWR display, anyplane flying/tasking and a functioning bubble slider. Flight models and the like can be applied, but others cannot. Experimentation is king here.

It doesn't really need most of those patches, however. Apparently, the black art of source code editing allows for some enhancements that hex editors can only fantasize over. This person implemented some new realism tweaks that will bring long-time sufferers of Falcon Foolery into convulsions of joy. During a BAI mission, for example, I actually received a useful AWACS call: "Snake 21, be advised, hostile aircraft entering your area . . ." which then sang out bearing, airspeed, and altitude. Whoa!

After I came to, I peeled a sheet of the Read Me off of my face and read it. There is a damned respectable list of fixes and enhancements in here, folks. We all know about the mind-blowing graphical boost that the DX7 engine overhaul has given F4, but that was just the beginning. All new wingman commands, widespread avionics enhancements, much less forgiving damage modeling tweaks, and major weapons mechanization fixes are all a part of v1.0795. Best of all, all of this comes without a noticeable frame rate hit from the huge speed increase received from the original. Not everything works as advertised yet---some of the voiceovers on the new comms are not quite right and the new ". bmp" formatted screenshots (no more ".raw"!) are saved somehow "flipped" over, for example; but it would be ludicrous to expect such a monumental leap forward to take place without a glitch or two.

This is an incredible addition to the ever expanding, never boring world of F4Plus. Regardless of where you choose to stand on the legal/moral slippery slope of SC hacking, eRAZOR, , mirv, and the rest of the v1.079X hack team are to be commended for the added relevancy and hard drive life they have added to the Sim of Sims.

 

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