Ooo, thank you both! Gonna grab me one of them. 🙂

Yup, Falcon4.0, still playing it after nearly 20 years, with the BMS addon. available on Steam. It has the best dynamic campaign in a combat sim which makes it endlessly replayable

Steam linky

BMS stuff….

[video]https://youtu.be/QcMOOOulhME[/video]

Heh Falcon 4, I had an F18 pilot once tell me in my teens that if I could wrap my head around that I could probably just go and steal an actual F16.

Didnt it used to come with something like a 600 page textbook as a manual?

pondo – Member
Ooo, thank you both! Gonna grab me one of them.

Tom is correct “Birds of Prey” is the correct name…!

Didnt it used to come with something like a 600 page textbook as a manual?

Nah it’s only about 200. You can be done with the tutorials in about 6 months.

The original Falcon 4.0 manual is indeed almost 600 pages.

The Falcon collection is available on Good Old Games for less than £8 and includes all the original manuals as PDF’s. Theres quite a few other old sims on gog.com and as most of them have DOSBox integrated they can be downloaded for Mac/Linux as well as Windows. (Falcon 4.0 needs proper Windows or WINE though).

https://www.gog.com/game/falcon_collection

Simpleplanes is well worth a look. Also on gog.com for Windows/Mac

[video]https://youtu.be/il1DjVpi_Fk[/video]

Frankly it’s all been downhill since this

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U383qVJh9fA[/video]

ZOMFG the BMS mod has F14s.

Want.

It’s ancient now but I never found anything with a better flight model for a WW2 combat sim than Microprose’s European Air War. Just managed to make it work on W10 too

Best flight sim ever

Deadkenny

From zx spectrum? Graphics look a bit too good.

BBC Micro 😀 . Early Acornsoft game from Geoff Crammond, of Sentinel, Revs and later on the PC, F1 Grand Prix series fame.

There was a colour version too though never saw it.

Ah Aviator

My little bro wrote a game for the BBC B and he got to chose two games from the vault at Acornsoft, one was Aviator the other was some crappy text based adventure game. He did nearly wee himself with excitement when they opened the door of the vault tho 🙂

It’s ancient now but I never found anything with a better flight model for a WW2 combat sim than Microprose’s European Air War. Just managed to make it work on W10 too

Dude, are you high? 😀 IL2 Strumovik back in 2001, utterly wiped the flaw with EAW’s flight model and both DCS World and the IL2: Battle over Moscow totally wipe the floor with the original IL2.

Might try those then, I only ever tried Janes WW2 Fighters and MS Combat Flight Sim.

Chocks away on acorn was pretty good IIRC.

Hamish! Those really are oldschool and agricultural! Il2 was a bar setter.

Dude, are you high? IL2 Strumovik back in 2001, utterly wiped the flaw with EAW’s flight model and both DCS World and the IL2: Battle over Moscow totally wipe the floor with the original IL2.

See, I just do not agree…
(Not necessarily re EAW / CFS vs IL-2 / DCS, but “in general”)

Yes, the detailed modelling “wipes the floor” – systems, buttons, functions, and yes, parts of the flight model are more complex and more detailed (buffet & stall, departures etc)

But that does not make a better flight sim…

It’s also one reason my interest in flight sims remains high, but my participation is low…!

PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model, but they don’t have the £Millions of “supporting environment” – hydraulically activated cockpits, 360° projected visuals etc. The level of “immersion” does not match the level of modelling.

The result are aircraft in DCS, for example, that take an awful lot of practice to fly – not because their real life counterparts were difficult, but because the high fidelity flight models are not matched by the normal cues that a real pilot would have.

The universal real life pilots’ verdict on the Spitfire, for example, was that it was a beauty to fly: “you put it on”, “it was an extension of your arm”. In the current high end sims, aircraft like the Mustang, FW190 and Bf109 are very, very difficult to fly.

To me, this misses an essential fact – young men with very little training were sent out to fly and fight in these machines.

And they were able to…

WarThunder.

Free to play

Biplanes to coldwar jets.

Pretty on a nice machine.

Online gameplay.

i was just about to post about WarThunder as well.
In historic mode or whatever they call it these days its very good.

Spot on rkk01

PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model, but they don’t have the £Millions of “supporting environment” – hydraulically activated cockpits, 360° projected visuals etc. The level of “immersion” does not match the level of modelling.

The result are aircraft in DCS, for example, that take an awful lot of practice to fly – not because their real life counterparts were difficult, but because the high fidelity flight models are not matched by the normal cues that a real pilot would have.

The universal real life pilots’ verdict on the Spitfire, for example, was that it was a beauty to fly: “you put it on”, “it was an extension of your arm”. In the current high end sims, aircraft like the Mustang, FW190 and Bf109 are very, very difficult to fly.

The Spitfire actually has pretty dire control harmonisation and pilots that didn’t grow up with it being deified are usually pretty quick to notice it. The BF109 wasn’t a difficult plane to fly either, just land (Spitfire isn’t loads better though) – the stall characteristics are very very good. What puts pilots off from flying it on the edge are the slats being opened.

IL2 was pretty easy to fly but it gave a much better feeling of flight, with visual and auditory cues as to what was happening – than EAW ever did.

In fact I’d say the highlight of IL2 – is your complaint. In real life, the Spitfire was easy to fly aerobatics – as it was in IL2. The issues it had in IL2 came down to the fact that the only thing it was good at was a continuous turn – a defensive manoeuvre favoured by novices. This is of course where a PC falls down, as the lack of feedback means that it can be hard to ride the stall without dipping a wing and spinning into the ground. Although if you keep this up for too long in real life, you’re eventually toast as well.

But this was an issue it faced in real life as well, it was a plane suited to novices in the early stages of the war – novices whos unfortunate lack of experience meant that their best chance in combat was to enter a defensive turn. On the other hand you had the Luftwaffe pilots who were veterans of the Spanish Civil war and France who were experienced enough to ignore the slats opening so they could out turn the Spitfire in a instantaneous turn, allowing you to pull lead and make momentary snapshots on British pilots. And later on you had FW190 pilots who could exploit exceptional elevator and aileron response at speed – meaning that as long as you made sure that you had the height advantage you could swoop on targets – making passes at high closing speeds without loss of control. Even if you didn’t have the height advantage and got bounced, as long as you had some height – to get away was a case of simply rolling over into a vertical dive – rolling back the other way during the dive and repeating until the aircraft behind you with crap aileron response simply couldn’t keep up.

In the Spitty, all you could do was turn and hope that someone didn’t do a drive by on you from above.

Hell – these are the aircraft I’d rather have gone to war in than a Spitfire –

1) P-47 (big, takes lots of damage, decent response at speed, crazy dive speeds, lots of firepower)
2) FW-190 A or D (small, great dive speed, great response at speed, great view on all models, heavy armament)
3) P51 with 25lb of boost pressure (if you’re caught on the deck, jam the throttle to the wall and nothing other than an ME262 can catch you…or maybe a Tempest).

😈

Thanks again all. Been watching the squabbling quietly from the side. 😆

Im going to give MS Flight Sim X off Steam a go. My kids are still quite small so taking part in aerial combat is a bit beyond them.

At the moment they just want to fly planes and try out tricks and trying to land etc. So £20 on that and £30-50 on a stick and throttle seems a good start.

I ‘need’ to learn to fly too then maybe move on to IL2 or something later if I’ve got the time and inclination to put the practice in.

As there’s a couple of flight / WWII aircrfaft nerds on here (looking at Tom amongst others) can anyone recommend a good not overly technical book on WWII aircraft tactics and flying characteristics?

I’m enough of a geek I like Airfix kits and it would be nice to have a reference book that gives the aircraft more context.

Any BFM/ACM manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_combat_manoeuvring

and anything by Erich Hartmann

http://www.azquotes.com/author/41538-Erich_Hartmann

Loads of books about and forum posts on performance of aircraft.

Generally my advice is

* High Yo Yo’s are your basic bread and butter, go into the vertical after the merge, turn back in on your target at the optimum turn speed. This way you build up kinetic energy in the climb and don’t lose too much by simply banking after your target.

* Avoid turn fights at all costs

* Make the other guy lose energy – you got the better climb rate? Carry straight on after a head on merge, let him bank after you, drag him in a climb and then zoom climb and hammerhead back down on him.

* Don’t trim your plane properly during cruise, especially rudder. Rudder is hard to compensate for in a bounce – it might give you a second or two to react.

* If you’re going to get engaged by an enemy with loads more height, when you’re at sea level. Turn into the merge and try to drag them into high deflection shots.

I mean potential energy….grrr

PC sims may have approached / reached the level of modelling detail that military / commercial sims can replicate, in terms of the fidelity of the flight model

Not convinced this is the case. Military and commercial flight sims effectively use a model provided by the manufacturer directly from flight test data. A PC sim uses a model based entirely on (educated!) guesswork or attempts to directly simulate the airflow over the aircraft (X-Plane).

Depends, historical sims use original and new flight data.