| ROBERT POLLARD 2005-07-15, 6:43 am |
| I play it with complete realism on, but then again I have had Falcon since
the original came out in 1997 (wont be long till its 10th anniversary!).
That said, I'm very rusty and I'm having to pick up old skills, like the
ability to furball properly with just guns. Played 2 campaign missions, lots
of dogfights and one or two of the training missions. The lighting and
clouds in its graphics engine seem to make a huge difference to the overall
look and the various falcon models have well realized cockpits.
On my first landing I aimed right for the end of the runway and was on AOA.
However I noticed that the fence around the airbase was very close to the
runway and it looked like my wheels might clip it. I thought, 'there's no
way they put collision detection on the fence(!?)'. How wrong I was! Now I
just aim at the tire marks further down the runway.
The Italian campaign is a relief for me as I had done Korea to death in the
original. A lot of the place names seem a lot more familiar which makes me
feel more at home their. I didn't see any walls of Migs (like the old one -
this is good), and managed to pick up a raid building up on my radar. My
wingman and I went in and I claimed a Mig21 but got shot down by an IR
missile. I survived by parachuting, but realized that my missile avoidance
techniques for IR missiles had been almost completely forgotten. (I used to
use padlock on the missile and keep it beamed, but had forgotten how to
padlock items!)
ATC seems much more detailed. I got a bollocking for not requesting take
off(!) Plus in the mission debrief it tells you all the occasions that you
hacked off ATC. I had done it on no less than three occasions! Not sure what
they all were, but I think one of them was not using the vectors assigned to
me to clear the airfield. I like this aspect as it brings much more
immersion to airfield ops.
Performance wise the game is a little slower than the original in some
places (I suspect the clouds have a lot to do with this), but I was playing
it on my laptop with a Radeon 9600 which isn't exactly optimum. (My G/F
plays World of Warcraft on the main machine!)
I really like this version. I hope some more new theatres get released
covering some current topical areas. I also look forward to some different
aircraft to fly that have been properly coded with the correct avionics now
that there is a commercial development team behind it.
FlashPan is Back! :-)
"Nats" <nstutt@nstutt.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:db6e33$fqs$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
quote:
> Well even the most experienced of us dont play on complete realism. Youll
> almost definitely want to soften up the air to air refuelling option as
> its very difficult and you have to do it quite a lot. Youll also be best
> turning on near labels becuase you just cant tell which nearby planes are
> enemies or friends in the game - due to graphical limitations - but you
> would in real life. Labels help a lot. Also I tend to turn off the more
> difficult padlock option where you lose lock if the target goes under your
> plane - too much like hard work IMO. Other than that you should try and
> learn the realistic avionics/radar but youll probably only use 50% of the
> functionality like I do. Similarly I can never remember how to mnaually
> select communications channels and the like but you never need it as a
> rule. So although it looks difficult you really only need to learn to
> land/ takeoff, manage the radar, and use the weapons modes. Most of the
> other stuff is incidental to the game.
>
> <jamesarlene@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:1121281332.407226.106510@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>
>
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