F4AF patch 1.06 out
 

Falcon 4 is approaching it's first birthday, and Leadpursuit has just released the fifth patch for it, 38 MB in size, version 1.06.

Patchlog here: http://www.lead-pursuit.com/news.htm

Download in their download section.

I'll try again with this one, so far F4AF in single player mode has been a non-starter for me, and made me return to SP4OCI. I consider 1.06 to be the last chance to turn AF into something useful for single players (while the online experience is said to be good and very stable, but I do not play online).

I hadn't bought F4AF due to lack of resources last year, and to be honest your comments (among others) have been making me slightly suspicious of it after that since I'm a stricty-single player on it.

I'd like to play around with F4 again sometime though. What do you say - wait for AF to get fixed up and order it, or try the original patched with the latest SP or FF again?

Rolling wheels!!! Wheeee!

Ok, now what?

If you play single player only, then it definetly is not worth it, I have returned to SB4.2 one-click-installer, and concerning the summary of details concerning functionality, and stabililty, and reliability of the included features it is far superior to AF. It is not flawless, nore compelte, nor perfect, but far better than AF, nothing more and nothing less. Certain graphical details may look a bit better in AF, but it is not enough to compensate for the many setbacks. I personally stopped seriously testing AF with 1.03. 1.05 was so dissapointing that I abandoned it very soon. I play tanks most of the time now, but when flying Flacon, it is SP4.2 withouit further mods and addons (no FF or BMS or whatever). I do not remember when I had my last CTD. Tankers work. Comms work, weapons work, AI most of the time does well, wingmen are there and do as I order them. All this is broken with AF at least in 1.05.

If you play online a lot, then you still have to accept broken details, but the stability of online games is said to be far better with AF. I do not know, online is not my interest.

Waiting for AF being patched: rumours are that 1.07 will be the last patch they will offer, and I am sure it still will not be completely adress all the many issues, nor will it be modded. It is even possible that 1.06 now is the last patch. Having surfed Frugal's and simHQ I got the impression that 1.06 again is far from being a product beyond doubt, many peopole complain about growing instability and ctd's, and still broken functions, and not just a few. I found the general feedback after one day so discouraging that I'm even not interested too seriously try it again, although I have installed it this morning. and then I found myself flying another SP4.2 mission, before going to SBP :cool:

So, for single players I definetly recommend the SP4.2-OCI, very easy installation (one-click), and you're done. No further stuff, no FF, no BMS, no nothing. To me this purist's setup is the best, most reliable and most complex Falcon I ever had. FF has given me troubles last time I tried it (frames and ctd's).

Thanks for the advice.

I think I'll give the old bird a spin in the next little bit :yep:

(until SHIII came out, Falcon 4.0 was my religion - I played it for 6 years, all the way from 1.0 to SP4.2 and I still think I'm far from "through" with it. It is, without a doubt, the finest modern flight sim that has ever been put out, with features that other games never even touched :up: )

I'll beat you on that: I'm with Falcon since the very first Falcon for the Amiga and Atari ST came out. That was, I think, 1987 or 1988 :D .

I'm not competing, I'm not old enough to. :lol:

Falcon came at a crucial age for me (come on, there's not that many 14-year-olds that grit their teeth on F4 at full realism! :88) ), and at the right point - just when I was fresh out of F-22: Total Air war which gave me a good taste of single-player dynamic flightsim campaigning without being too complicated, especially on avionics (I'd gone back to that game several times afterward too - definitely my 2nd favorite modern jet sim).

It was also good that I started with F4 and had to learn it from basics, because I probably would've given up on it if I could jump right into full-scale campaigns and discover the massive bugs in initial versions. But by the time I finally learned the ropes, the game was already patched to a playable state and the first Realism Patch was already out. :)

Geez, I'm really tempted now :doh:

Have you tried LOMAC (Lock On) not as realistic as F4 but very close. Also got up to 8 aircraft you can fly. A10 Tank killer, Russian Su-33 and the German Mig-29A to name a few.

I got F4 but am to scared to play it again, totally too realistic for me that when ever i went in the air it was garranteed i would get shot down. :D

I liked LOMAC on some points, and spent some time learning it, but something was missing - even the clickable cockpit I missed. I may give it another shot, but I'd already given up on it twice. The lack of dynamic campaign is a big miss-out, I think.

-----

The biggest skill (at least for me in F4) to have - and the longest to develop - is getting situational awareness quickly from limited clues. I absolutely love it as a game of SA. If you know how to be careful - you won't get shot down too often.

On the downside, I still hear RWR tones in my sleep :rotfl:

Whats the lastest Patch for Falcon 4 and any good mods?

I might install and give it another try. Last time i was playing F4 she was running on win98se. Does it have to be patched to run on winxp pro?

SP4.2 OCI (one click installer). No more dance.

1. Falcon from CD,
2. (if you use German version: copy over the English talk-files),
3. and one-click installation of SP4.2.
4. Done.

I do not use more mods. BMS and FF are not stable for me. the old version of high-tiles are included in SP42oci (the new is AF-only). BMS I do not use, gives me jerky frames, some ctds, sound and radar and RWR issues. For comparable reasons I also do not use FF (which is more graphical enhancement than function-wise enhancement anyway.

Patching for XP is not required.

Thanks for the info.

I never had much issue with BMS over top of SP4, so you might want to consider giving it a try. It does add some nice graphics engine improvements.

I'll try it out in a couple of weeks, myself. If BMS causes any trouble, I've no qualms in going back to plain 4.2 either.

I'll have to dig out my falcon disk and try it on my new system, my old one could barely run the campaign. So many great sims so little time....

Could you possibly elaborate on the radar/RWR issues that occur with BMS Skybird or anyone else? I remember reading something about it when I regularly checked the F4 forums. Thanks.

PD

It's long ago, so my memories are... hazy. Radar did not work reliable, and RWR often was completely broken, or malfunctioning. frames were stuittering, sometimes more, sometimes less. System freezes, ctd's. That was with BMS 2.0. BMS 1.03 send me crashing on two systems. both BMS, if I remember correctly, overwrote functionality of the original SP installation again, reducing it that way - but it is long ago that I tried it. BMS is known to need patches, but they stopped active support for it due to some löicense issues, or becasue they started to work on professional (commercial) stuff for Falcon. Maybe it even found it's way into AF, I do not know. SP4.2OCI with hightiles and partially volumetric clouds looks good enough anyway to please my needs, and is a breeze to install. I don't need more.