If you have any interest at all in military flight sims I’d recommend giving DCS a try. It’s the best modern jet sim I’ve played and I’m an old school simmer who goes way back. And it’s free! The SU-25T isn’t simulated with as much depth as the payware planes but it’s still fun to fly and learn the game with :)
Very.
The 1.5 patch is extremely pretty, and runs about two or three times as well as old-DCS did on my machine. Haven’t had a chance to really mess around with smoke effects and weapons and whatnot, since my shooting range mission broke with the new editor.
Sometimes I think I should’ve just gone with DCS for my switchology fix. I’m not sure I’ll have much time to spend with the Falcon 4 dynamic campaign, and I don’t have much patience for old and busted-looking games if I can help it.
DCS is cool, and probably a better switchology game, but BMS is a better wargame, by far.
DCS doesn’t have a dynamic campaign but I’ve gotten into some similar type stuff online. Missions where like players in Hueys have to ferry troops from one place to another while the group pounders take out anti air defenses and the fighters fly escort overhead. There’s also a big week long mission once a month called Blue Flag which is basically a dynamic campaign but entirely with players controlling all the air and ground forces :) And you’d certainly learn things in either game that’s applicable to the other. I’m down for some multiplayer if anyone wants to join. I usually play on the 104th server.
I should also add that it helps to have a decent understanding of flying in general before you hop into a high performance fighter plane and expect to do well :) Especially if you’re doing something as realistic as Falcon 4.0. I’ve been flying flight sims since like MS Flight Sim 2.0. From civilian to military (from WWI biplanes to modern jet fighters) as well as doing lots of upper atmosphere stuff, orbital flights, even moon landings with sims like Orbiter and KSP. I’ve done full instrument approaches in a hardcore sim 737 FSX addon. I’ve got a good grasp on how to fly all sorts of different planes.
That being said, it still took me a solid 2+ weeks of reading and doing practice flights in DCS before I felt competent enough to get online and not feel like a total jackass :) Flying the plane is only half of your job. I had that part of it down. But learning how to use all the sensors, how the weapons worked, how the controls are laid out, how to spot ground targets, how to work together with teammates, how to avoid anti-air defenses… That’s all stuff you never worry about in FSX :) You have to be a pilot, but also a radar operator and an eagle eyed spotter and a navigator and a radio man and a handful of other jobs. And you have to figure out how to divide your attention among all those tasks without flying into the side of a mountain :) It’s not easy! But you just have to be patient and not be afraid to ask for help. It helps to have people readily available to ask questions to. Being on the 104th server and Teamspeak has been a huge help, because I can hop into a channel and ask questions when I need to. And people are usually pretty cool about helping the new folks out.
So, don’t get frustrated if you’re not an ace fighter pilot right away. It’s a lot to learn! But it’s also a ton of fun and super rewarding when you make breakthroughs :)
Just pick whatever sim you feel comfortable with. I like DCS because it’s shiny and new and the flight model/sim level feels pretty good to me. But since these games are striving to be so realistic, a lot of the lessons you’ll learn in any one of them will carry over to other flight sims as well. Whoever it was that was having a hard time with the startup procedure… I was a little confused my first time in the DCS A-10C, but a lot of my knowledge of how to start up my 737 in FSX helped quite a bit. Most planes are pretty similar in that regard. First you turn on the power, then setup your instruments/computers, decide on a fuel/weapons loadout, turn on the fuel, start the engines, etc. It’s sort of like driving a car. Whether you’re in a Ferrari or a school bus, it’s the same. You already know what to do. Put on your seatbelt, start the engine, put it into drive, press the pedal, etc. Planes are the same in many respects :)
Rather sneakily, they put multi-seat capability into 1.5 with the L-39 module. Hopefully we’ll see it backported to the other two-seaters soon.
As far as I know, the TF-51D modeled in the game is not a straight TF-51D; it doesn’t have controls in the back seat, which is a crying shame. DCS really ought to have a free fixed-wing trainer and a free helo trainer—flying is hard, and it would be much easier to involve people without a lot of hardcore sim experience if we could be in the cockpit with them.
Here’s some video action to show off the new graphics engine: MiG-21 vs. F-4, a dogfight I simply could not have pre-1.5, because it was impossible to maintain visual contact on a jet at the ranges at which jet dogfighting takes place.
Favorite moments: chasing the Phantom vertically past the sun at 0:50 and seeing his afterburners glowing, actually seeing a target against the ground at 1:06 and 1:35 (you may need to wait for the HD versions to finish processing before you can follow him at 1:35), seeing the AoA warning lights at 2:18, yanking the stuck past them, and letting the afterburner fix it, and the kill in the vertical at 3:05.
schurem
1949
That was great, good kill man! No way i could shoot that accurate going up like that. Really nice how your head tracking needs to work around the big thing on the roof. Moar bitte? Perhaps with some commentary?
I wrapped up the Falcon 4 training. I’m no expert, but I’ve been itching to jump into the campaign. I chose the one where the good guys had made significant progress into North Korea. I asked AWACS where the nearest bandit was and turned toward him. I couldn’t figure out why none of my controls worked until I realized I wasn’t in master arm mode. Oops. I had to ask my wingman to take down the first guy. Then we flew toward 4 or 5 bandits. I shot one down and then exploded. Found out later I forgot to explicitly click on one of the jets in the Sweep mission, so I was actually supposed to be flying a SEAD mission. I guess it’s kind of scary how much air-to-air ordnance I had on a SEAD plane. Looks like I needed it.
Anyway, I totally bungled my first mission, but this seems pretty fun. I’ll give it as much time as I can before I need to move on to other games.
The campaign is super easy to play. It reminds me of EECH, though it’s a wider scope so it’s harder to tell how the war effort’s going. It’s a little boring to have to fly out to the mission area but at least I can get up to altitude in a reasonable amount of time, unlike Rise of Flight! I know I can join a mission up until the ingress point too. Returning to base and landing is actually a lot of fun.
A few stories so far:
Got a couple of easy air-to-air kills with beyond-visual-range missiles on my first real mission. I probably need to turn the enemy AI up higher…
Returned to Kimpo airbase one time and didn’t know where to go. There was a U-shaped hanger structure so I thought it’d be cute to stop in there. I came to a rest and then instantly exploded. They dinged me for friendly fire. It must have been a glitch. I checked later and the structure was still destroyed. Hehe.
The first time I ran a SEAD mission, I paid more attention to my steerpoints than the threats on my HARM radar. I had a couple missiles launched at me. Watching the contrail come up from the ground is an awesome and scary experience. They are deceptive though. I was in a bad position but thought I had plenty of time to do a last-ditch maneuver. I glanced at the wingman radio commands for a second, and the next time I looked up, I could see the missile only a few hundred feet away. Kaboom. Fortunately they let you replay missions. The next time around, we launched our missiles as soon as they were in range and ran back to base!
I decided to join a sweep as the leader of the second element instead of the flight lead. Loved watching the whole group taxi up and take off two at a time. So neat. I got airborne and then got a soft radar lock on a two-ship element moving along my steerpoint line, but it turned out to be the wrong group! No wonder my wingman wasn’t on my 7 o’clock as usual. :) Fortunately AWACS pointed me in the right direction. But letting the AI lead was a bad idea. Once we encountered enemy aircraft, the AI went crazy flipping between slightly different formation orders. I couldn’t tell who I was supposed to engage. Anyway, the flight lead took a hit and started smoking badly. He went to the alternate airfield so I decided to follow him. He looked good going in, but he exploded on landing. I decided to land unsafely just behind him. The runway looked clear but I either had a hard landing or I clipped an invisible object. Something blew up but I survived.
Oh dear, now I want a dynamic campaign like this in a modern game with better chrome! I might be out of luck…
I love to just listen to the radio chatter. They did such a wonderful job making it all seem real.
Especially when I land on the wrong landing strip.
So say we all. Also, I dream of a space sim game with a dynamic campaign like the one in Falcon 4. No space sim I know of ever did this, and the only one I can think of that had a dynamic campaign of sorts was Starshatter, but it was not as deep/dynamic as the one in Falcon 4.
Well, maybe one day…
New story:
Sweep at night. We’re almost to the last target steerpoint and I ask AWACS for the nearest threat. They point out an Su-27 50 miles away in the other direction. I decide to go after it. Turns out there’s two of them (later three). It’s hard to keep a radar lock, but I tell my flight to engage. I get a missile launched at me but the warning goes away within seconds. I finally get a decent lock within range and fire two medium-range missiles. A little while later I can see multiple explosions in the sky. Yeah!
Just then I get a loud launch warning from an SA-2 site. I panicked a little and decided to go full afterburner back toward home. All my wingmen start complaining about fuel and they divert to the alternate airfield. I have no idea where that is so I have to ask AWACS, who vectors me to the location 50 miles away. I turn the throttle down as far as I can while maintaining altitude and speed. The FUEL warning is flashing the entire time. I radio the tower with an emergency and somehow it’s on the right frequency. They clear me in.
I’m about to make my final turn toward the landing and the lights start shutting off. I know from the training missions that means no more fuel. Fortunately I’m close enough that I’m able to flop onto the runway. I think I have it lined it up pretty well but one of my landing gears seems to clip something. The plane screeches to a halt on two wheels, but it doesn’t explode.
1 air-to-air kill (a Chinese J-11 variant of the Su-27) with 2 more from the rest of my flight.
Editer
1956
Not exactly a RECENT simulation, but GOG has the Falcon collection (Falcon, Falcon AT, Falcon 3.0, and Falcon 4.0) on sale for just $5.99. Killer deal, just for the disc/DRM-free Falcon 4.0 and digital manuals.
Alas, doesn’t have Flight of the Intruder. I assume the latter will never get an official re-release due to the movie tie-in.
Er…it does have the F/A-18 add-on in Falcon Gold.
OMG THIS WORKS, and works beautifully. Thanks man!
Flight of the Intruder was an A-6 in Vietnam simulator, wasn’t it? Same engine as Falcon 2
Editer
1960
A-6 and F-4 Phantom. Plus MiG-21 (with Phantom cockpit) in multiplayer.
