I recently sold my Falcon 4 original ring bound manual and software for quite a lot of money. I was not surprised as it was a real collectors item. It is great to see that its community still thrives.

CJ

A collectors item indeed!

 

I got lucky (before this COVID mess started) when I stumbled upon an ad for an original Falcon box + CD + maps + manuals in pristine condition for… $20!

Needless to say I jumped in the car and went to pick it up right away. 😄

Imagine for a second in the future a combination of MSFS scenary and the likes of BMS or DCS as a combat sim.....  Wow!

4 hours ago, CJ1045 said:

I recently sold my Falcon 4 original ring bound manual and software for quite a lot of money. I was not surprised as it was a real collectors item. It is great to see that its community still thrives.

CJ

I've got one of those original binders lying around on the shelves.  Falcon3 had a beautiful manual too.  Its been a while since I've had to dig through shelves to find software.  🙂

MBS and F4 are/were great - but people forget how damned painful F4 was after the brilliance of F3.  It literally took 10 years from 1998'ish release  before there was hardware and decent code to make it all work properly.

BMS really isn't in the same genre as MSFS.

If you want a highly detailed combat sim with a dynamic campaign then it's currently the best thing out there but that's not what MSFS is trying to be at all.

7 hours ago, Matchstick said:

BMS really isn't in the same genre as MSFS.

If you want a highly detailed combat sim with a dynamic campaign then it's currently the best thing out there but that's not what MSFS is trying to be at all.

Definitely agree. They scratch a very different itch, but there is overlap in certain areas. I would imagine the same type of person who loves PMDG products would be right at home in BMS, because they appreciate that obsessive attention to detail. I think another area that BMS succeeds at is providing a very immersive F-16 "pilot" experience, well...without the G-forces. You've got mission planning, target recon, weapon delivery planning, navigation considerations, and coordination of roles within the team. So excluding the extreme study sim aspects, you have all the other parts that go into using the F-16 to wage war. And as a bonus, throw in the best dynamic campaign ever created in a flight sim. Rock solid multiplayer, it's FPS friendly, and as long as you have Falcon 4 it is 100% free. You can buy Falcon 4 on Steam for $7. 

Edited September 10, 20214 yr by RobJC

I have falcon 4.0 and tried the bms mod, as good and immersive as I’m sure it is, for me it was just too much of a learning curve, I just couldn’t find time to truly learn it. This isn’t a simulator you can play an hour or 2 every other week and get proficient with it, you truly have to invest the time to learn it, and for me I just don’t have that availability, but I do wish I did cause it seems to be a great sim for some fun combat. 

12 hours ago, bofhlusr said:

My very first intro to flight simming was Falcon AT. I'm not sure if that became Falcon 3.0.  Wasn't the code base of Falcon 3.0 leaked?  Where does Allied Force fit in the evolutionary tree?  I walked away from Falcon after getting distracted by Enemy Engaged, DCS, Microsoft flite sims, and the Supreme Commander strategy game (which has very realistic ballistics physics, and to this day still has a very active community also).

The Falcon 4 was launched at december 1998,  its original code base was leaked at april 2000, and derived in some improved and not very legal versions as ERazor, EFalcon, Free Falcon, Open Falcon, BMS, etc.- Allied Force was a greatly improved version made by a developer who bought the rights,  and the actual BMS Falcon 4, is a now a legal and highly improved evolution of Falcon 4.-  

1 hour ago, flyinpilot212121 said:

I have falcon 4.0 and tried the bms mod, as good and immersive as I’m sure it is, for me it was just too much of a learning curve, I just couldn’t find time to truly learn it. This isn’t a simulator you can play an hour or 2 every other week and get proficient with it, you truly have to invest the time to learn it, and for me I just don’t have that availability, but I do wish I did cause it seems to be a great sim for some fun combat. 

The best way to learn is join a group and fly multiplayer. They will cut down the learning curve and get you proficient much quicker. Might be 10 to 50 times faster to pick up this way. But…you are right. BMS is very deep. It requires a lot of time and consistency to get good. It is a second career in some ways. Best gaming i have ever experienced on a PC but it is a steep climb.