This was where we called it a day, but based on what we saw this war was not going to end soon. There are some issues to be worked on and tweaked, but overall, the campaign engine on it’s own is a work of art. I am tempted to say FALCON 4 is not merely a flight simulator, but a war generator that we are given the privilege to fly F-16’s in.

At this writing, campaign will be supported in LAN mode without a doubt. Over the Internet, there may be some issues that need to be addressed to insure stability. The "Server Add-on Module", to be released later, will be aimed at solving these types of problems. The massive amount of data required to transmit is the concern here. As you increase the number of players, Internet or LAN, the amount of data to transfer goes up dramatically. The Server Modules purpose will be to run the campaign, sort out what actual data YOU need, and send you just that.

This way if several flights are in the air in different parts of the campaign area, the data transferred to each player will be significantly reduced, thus enabling more people to fly and offering more stability. Obviously as the name implies, you will need a dedicated server to resolve this. And yes, there is talk of doing this as well. (I have also spoken with several individuals who plan to do this on their own, so there should be no shortage of Internet campaigns to fly in once the Server Add-On is released.) Campaign in solo play is a given and will provide more hours of fun than I care to speculate.

Another module that will get a lot of attention is ACMI. In the past, various flight sims have supplied us with everything from wire frame ACMI to full 3D recordings of your mission. Well, FALCON 4 has covered it all. You can pretty much set ACMI to replay in anything from wire only to a full 3D rendered replay movie style, or anything in-between.

You will also have the option of cockpit view or various outside views. So if you want total realism with wire frame replays, you got it, if you want to watch yourself movie style, you got it, you want to mix 3D with wire frame … yes, you guessed it, you got it. You can even switch these details on the fly, while the recording is playing back.

Click to continue . . .

The ACMI is set up with features such as wing streamers and gravity vector, various view options, aircraft focus options (do you want to see the action from your opponents point of view?), and much more to help you analyze what you did right or wrong. You are also able to play sections or easily replay sections using a slider bar. For those of you that have seen the demo, there have been so many improvements that you will hardly recognize the game. And I am not just talking about graphics, which have improved tremendously. Various other changes include: frame rate increases in every area of the game; flight model has improved dramatically; enemy and friendly AI are still being tweaked, but are much improved. (Quick note: SU-25’s have this amazing ability to drag you low and over AAA and SAM sites. They are crafty little devils.) The dynamic campaign engine will far and away be the best to ever be released.

Add-Ons are planned as well. The givens are MiG-29 and F-18 add-ons. These will also come with additional campaigns, much like the FALCON 3 series. But these are not the only aircraft add-ons planned. There is also the mentioned planned Server product. You can expect a rather long and prolific product life with the FALCON 4 series.

While the quest for the "Holy Grail" is never ending, FALCON 4 will come the closest to it that the flight sim world has ever seen. Release is scheduled before the end of ’98. Yes, I know we have heard several dates and there have been many delays, but based on the state of the program right now, features that are in and working and features that are being tweaked still, this will happen. And trust me it will be worth the wait.

Once the builds mature some more, I will review the updates and enhancements again. Many of the features are still being tweaked, so some changes may still occur. I also plan to do a recap of a full multi-player LAN campaign mission soon.