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Falcon today

Since its initial release in December 1998, Falcon 4 has been popular among military simulator pilots due to its dynamic war campaign engine, highly detailed aircraft avionics and multi-player capabilities

Empowered by the leak of the source code in April 2000, continual development of the software by community members has allowed Falcon 4 to live on years after the MicroProse studios were shut down and official development of the simulator ceased

Through its history, the patches have made a wide range of additions, improvements and sometimes even complete rewrite of parts of the original program, as such as we now have a Falcon which can’t be compared with the original Falcon 4

Falcon is a simulator that has become a true benchmark, a reference and probably the combat simulator the most successful of all time

What the community has been able to achieve is without comparison with what a company could provide with a classic business model in a reasonable timeframe

On the basis of the financial income generated by the sale of F4:Allied Forces, the attempt of Lead Pursuit to develop in fulltime the next instalment of the Falcon franchise did not result in any product on the market

Fighter Ops was certainly a little too ambitious although very promising at first, as its developers ended up in focusing on the training aircraft T-38 Talon only instead of the modelling of the F-16, A-10 and F-15 in different versions

Even though, the development seems to have reached a stall and the outcome of this new franchise is not expected before long despite having been started nearly a decade ago

The DCS series engendered by Eagle Dynamics and its payware add-ons business model looks relatively successful, but what appears as a serious alternative crucially lacks a dynamic campaign engine

Same goes for the “Seven-G” simulator, a realistic F-18 simulator still in development that does not seems to be built around a complete engine war, core feature of Falcon which still stays unmatched as of today


Despite its internal boundaries established by its creators and the foundations limits inherent to its old age, we can be certain that Falcon will continue to be shaped by its community during several years

In fact, the community that developed around Falcon 4 is an unprecedented phenomenon in the world of flight simulators

Never before - and maybe never again - so many talented people have worked so hard to correct and expand a program by dedicating their contribution to improve the virtual experience of all the community

Even with the news that Falcon is bought, sold or developed under license, the community continues to develop what is now Falcon, and the Falcon community hopes for what Falcon will be tomorrow

Whatever happens we can nonetheless stay assured that enthusiasts who worked on Falcon for several years can only continue to push the boundaries of the military flight simulation much, much forward