Falcon 4.0 ® is a registered trademark of Spectrum Holobyte Inc.
July 21, 1997
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Falcon 4.0 is coming ! When ? According to the latest rumours in the end of September 1997. Yes, it's a long time, but he who waits for something good....
We have yet to see any military sim so devoted to realism as Falcon 3.0 was, and hopefully Falcon 4.0 will be in that same good Spectrum Holobyte
tradition. It will be a Win95, multiplayer air combat sim with it's main scenery in the Korean peninsula. A real-time war will always be in progress in the
background and recreate the chaos of real air war. This along with enhanced graphics and SpecHolo's superbly modelled F-16 avionics simply has to
be a winner.
Falcon 4.0 will include the Falcon 3.0 padlock view, a scrollable cockpit and possibly new padlock views based on systems developed
for the US Air Force in 1992. Falcon 4.0 will support at least 4 kinds of multiplayer setups. There will as in F3 be modem, direct link and
local area network support. Falcon 4.0 will also be available on TEN (Total Entertainment Network) for multiplayer over Internet.
Modem and direct link connections will of course support two players only, but network setups will probably support over 30 players and the TEN setup is supposed to support hundreds of players. Even the mission planner will support multiuser updating for cooperative planning. The instruments and displays will be updated to the F-16 Block 52 C APG-68 and Harm Targeting Radar systems. The battlefield engine will be running all the time the software is up so you risk being blown up under the planning of your next mission.
All of Falcon 4.0 will run in 65000 colors and the screens are optimized for 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 resolutions. The scenery of Korea will be full size, so one can fly from one end of the country to the other. On your cross country flight you will pass over terrain features like rivers, lakes, cities, forests, farmland, mountains, etc. The landscape will be visual at long distance too, gone are the mountains that suddenly pop up in front of you (unless it's a foggy day, hehe).
What hardware will you need for all these goodies then ? Well, according to the latest Designer's Notes a 486 will not be able to do this for you. By the time Win95 and all it's stuff is up and running, you're 486 is out of serious simulation power. So a P90 with 3D acceleration or a P166 with standard graphics will give it to you. Support is planned for 3D cards with 3Dfx, Rendition, Cirrus Logic, ATI or S3 chips. This list is likely to be expanded as time goes by though.
It has been a long waiting, but I'm sure the Falcon 3.0 tradition will be followed, and that this one will be even more above the competition. Keep up the good work SpecHolo, and give us that little extra !
I will continously add information about Falcon 4.0 to this page as I find it. I'll also gladly accept
tips
by e-mail.
Please visit Hagar9's Falcon 4.0 Website
and find out more about Falcon 4.0 here.
or
read CD magazine's preview here !
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