With his debut article, Michael Dugas takes a look at the history of the Falcon Series and examines how far the community development of this title has progressed over the past few years. Click on Read More to read the full editorial.This is a classic, watershed year in the tumultuous history of the long-lived Falcon series: there will be no further development of the Voodoo-based version of the program. Most people might take note of that particular development with little regard, but as an old-timer in the Falcon world, it made me reflect on Falcon's wacky path and wonder if the program really has any life left in it.
My involvement with this simulator began way back with Falcon AT, which I bought mainly because it had fairly good (for the time) 3D models of the MiG-21, an airplane that I admired then and now. So I bought Falcon so I could look at my favorite airplane "flying" just before I shot it down. That is truly a perverse reason to buy something!
However, not long after I discovered Falcon, Spectrum Holobyte released Falcon 3.0. Following my established pattern of purchasing software for obtuse reasons, I bought Falcon well before I had a PC to run it on, just for the opportunity to read those beautiful silver-covered manuals. And I bought the expansion packs, also long before the means to realize the programs became available to me. I read the many books on the program, with a much wider variety of information and choices available then than now.
However, Falcon began its slide into trouble when Spectrum Holobyte purchased Microprose in 1993. I guess that the market's recognition of the Microprose name was more widespread than that of Spectrum Holobyte, because that label soon disappeared from the scene. The tail wagged the dog, and Mr. Gilman wound up working behind the Microprose nameplate.
They were my favorite software house at the time, and I really was pleased, at least initially, to see Falcon join the same house that included Gunship, M1 Tank Platoon, Stealth Fighter and Strike Eagle, among others.
Microprose released Falcon 4.0 in 1998, the same year that Hasbro acquired them. I remember thinking back then that, with so much corporate muscle now behind Microprose, things should turn around for them.
Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. Falcon 4.0 was a quantum leap forward for the franchise, and it was very raw when it hit the streets. The patches from Microprose support were flowing forth fitfully, trying to address the many unresolved problems.
I visited the old Microprose website frequently, listening to Pete Bonnani tell his war stories, waiting for the next patch. And the next. In 1999, Hasbro formally ceased support of Falcon. The bleeding had to stop, I guess. But Falcon was too good, too rich in depth and potential, to die.
It was as if the floodgates to the most tumultuous period in the simulator's virtual life were opened. Many groups tried to correct Falcon's remaining fundamental flaws, with the result that several incompatible versions of Falcon started to appear.
The adverse effects of this fracturing continued, largely because no formal owner of the franchise could be found to continue the development that the Falcon community so obviously wanted. Falcon was sent to one foster home after another. It languished.
For a brief, shining moment, it seemed as if the Falcon community itself could solve the problem, and the compromise of F4UT emerged, to take on the mantle of informal leadership and rationalize software refinement under one development team, much like iBeta had before them.
There is something about Falcon that seemingly will not permit such an orderly, but slow, process to evolve. Maybe Falconeers are inherently an impatient lot, eager to see their favorite program reach its potential completely. Sadly, the Falcon community fractured once more, and two new executables appeared, developed by other community groups, competing with the "approved" F4UT version in legitimate (Benchmark Sims via G2Interactive) and illegitimate (Free Falcon) forms. I guess the old saw is true: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
F4UT has made it clear, however, that their era has drawn to an end. Falcon has been patched, via SP3, as far as programming will permit. The data edits of SP4 are largely complete, with only minor refinements to be seen. That is why I reacted to the Voodoo announcement with resignation; the original Falcon has evolved as far as it is going to under the mantle of legitimacy. Glide was long gone. HAL is here.
The next step forward, along the lines of graphics improvements, must make use of a new executable along the lines that BMS was working on before they were stopped. The present state of affairs, when the two (F4UT SP3/4 and BMS 1.03) development efforts are merged, is an unstable one, with enough problems to make their combined use an "at your own risk" kind of package. Deliciously Falcon-like stuff.
It is possible, even probable in the unstable Falcon world, that BMS will be permitted to release their latest work, too. I wonder, though, what effect a Falcon, free of data and program errors, dressed up in DX9 (or whatever) graphics, would have on the desires of its present owners? Is it, perhaps, not in their best interest to allow the community to complete the Falcon evolution?
More importantly, what effect will the eradication of substantially most of Falcon's problems have on the Falconeers? I think Falcon is more than just software; it is people struggling to solve an enormous problem in concert with like-minded people, all in a disjointed, cumbersome cyber-world effort.
I wonder if reaching the final destination with Falcon will see the community members, those joined voluntarily together for so many years, step off of the No-Next-Patch-Bus, with nothing left to do. Maybe it's not in the best interest of the Falcon community to finish the job. Perhaps the impression that there is much left to do, which would be readily accomplished by the Falconeers but for the evil ways of Falcon's mysterious owners, is important to maintaining community.
Perhaps it is true: the struggle is the message.
If so, then the situation at the moment, with a slightly clunky, partly unstable, it-needs-more-work-where-is-the-next-patch Falcon is just what the good doctors ordered.
So, I resolved to find out just what the present state of Falcon is. Maybe I was too wrapped up in political machinations to know just how much real progress was actually being shown. Maybe the "end of things" wasn't so grim after all. Maybe we were closer to our dream than we realized. "Maybe," it's the stuff Falcon is made of!
Wondering just how far the old dear had actually evolved, I made two installations of the simulator, one on an old rig built just for the original Falcon 4.0 and a parallel installation on a more modern machine, something not quite state of the art, but substantially more powerful than existed when Falcon was birthed.
My Voodoo machine is an ancient AMD 750 MHz with 256 MB RAM (Windows '98SE) and a wonderful old 3DFx Voodoo 5 AGP video card. The more modern rig is an AMD 1800 with an ATI Radeon 9600XT and 512 MB RAM (Windows XP Professional). I put the most modern WHQL drivers for both cards on the two systems. CH controllers were installed on both setups. Nothing particularly sophisticated, just grunt machines quite capable of doing the job asked of them, sort of era-specific hardware. Something I'll call "yesterware."
I used just the basic F4+1.08us+SP4 dance--BMS was not likely to show anything on the Voodoo machine, and I wanted an apple-to-apple comparison, with only hardware differentiating the installations. I couldn't do much about the OS variation, so I just ignored it.
On the modern rig, the frame rates in a very specific TE mission are very high, generally remaining well above 40fps regardless of what's occurring around the Viper. It's smooth, it's clean and wonderfully immersive, just as Falcon should have been all along.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the results produced by my 3DFx machine. The modern frame rates, even on my Falcon-specific AMD 750, are substantially better than ever they were, even under Glide. No shimmering. No jaggies. No hitches and pauses. What a ride! Even if Glide is gone, the V5 still runs Falcon beautifully! So my fears of the reduction in visual value because of the restriction to smaller texture sizes and the loss of 3DFx' API were almost unfounded.
However, all these improvements considered, I can safely say this: neither modern version approaches the sheer visual beauty of the last Glide version of Falcon. RP5 was clean, smooth and very much a fine-looking work. Was RP5 inaccurate and buggy? Yes, it had multiple flaws. It was also painfully slow.
Voodoo and Falcon were originally made for each other. Somewhere in my Falconish heart, I miss Glide, even though I know, intellectually, leaving that old API behind was technically the best thing to do.
Maybe there are new 3DFx drivers! I know I can overclock the V5. Maybe BMS 1.04 will support Glide!
Falcon is dead. Long live Falcon!
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