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Originally Posted by Blacklight
What mod is the GWX of the original version of Falcon 4.0 ?  |
Oh, these days I'm not sure :p
Basically, my understanding of the falcon legacy is uh...
Stock F4 begat RealismPatch, a series of releases that began improving it.
Realism Patch eventually begat SuperPak releases, which really reached a peak by the SP3 release.
Around the time when SP3 appeared, a group called BMS did an exe mod which could be installed on top of superpaks. It was allegedly made with permission of Atari which held F4 copyright at the time, and it may have inadvertedly introduced a few glitches which it didn't have a chance to fix as their permission to continue work ran out when rights to F4 were purchased (and eventually made into Allied Force) by another company.
From that point, there was two development tracks - one was SP that didn't include any of the BMS code, which ended with SP4.2, a remarkably stable and functional release. It's quite old by now and graphically outdated, but is a very safe and full-featured functional bet.
The other was FreeFalcon, which disregarded the possible legal issues and continued to work with BMS and SP3 code. Eventually FreeFalcon releases were modded further to become RedViper, which is a fairly recent thing.
Whichever you choose, I believe SP4.2, RedViper and OpenFalcon all come with one-click installers that you can put on top of the stock game (patched to 1.08).
The only piece of the equation I don't get because of being out of the scene for a while is OpenFalcon. I do see that it uses BMS code and is also probably a FreeFalcon derivative.
Personally, I was always rather happy with SP4.2, but I may try these new releases sometime.
Otherwise, if you want an idea of the changes - look up SuperPak cockpits vs stock cockpits! There's about
5 times more functional switches, buttons and other tweaky things in the cockpit that all do their proper functions. If you're particularly thick-skinned, you can do a fully realistic
48-step startup procedure before each mission. (or skip to taxi or takeoff with all your systems already on). Still unparalleled in any sim! And the amount of systems, weapons, and other additions is massive. Not to mention improvements to AI, graphics, and all this other mumbo-jumbo. Basically it's a whole new game. Post-SuperPak, the game is the most realistic and full-featured combat flight simulator ever. Nothing even comes close to the level of detail it includes. Unfortunately my suspicion is that by "ever", it may well mean that we won't see anything approaching it anytime soon, if indeed ever.
One ifunny story I recall about one of the early SuperPak (or was it even before SuperPak?) releases was when it got held up by a couple of weeks - reportedly because there was concern over classified information on F-16 cockpit systems (I think it was something to do with countermeasures) being leaked via that.
