Falcon 4.0

Falcon
Falcon	1987
Falcon A.T.	1988
Falcon 3.0	1991
Falcon 4.0	1998
Falcon 4.0: Allied Force	2005

Falcon 4.0 is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person and third-person simulation and vehicle combat game in the Falcon series.

The game's source code was leaked in 2000. One of the community projects which made use of it is the BMS mod, which is the community's preferred way to play the game. On May 4, 2023, the rebooted MicroProse announced upon claiming the franchise rights that they would officially support the BMS mod.^[1]

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Falconpedia - A wiki dedicated to Falcon 4.0

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SafeDisc DRM^{[Note 1]}
GOG.com		Available in Falcon Collection bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold under bonus content for the latter.^[4] Also available alongside Falcon Gold's separate store entry as an extra.
Steam
Green Man Gaming (unavailable)		Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold.
Humble Store (unavailable)		Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold.

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

Patches

The official v1.08 patch provides bug fixes.

BMS mod

BenchMarkSims webpage

Not compatible with Falcon 4.0: Allied Force.

Includes compatibility fixes for modern operating systems and graphics cards, as well as bug fixes, visual enhancements (including DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3.0 support), and additional content

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\config^{[Note 2]}
Mac OS (Classic)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/429530/pfx/^{[Note 3]}

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\campaign\SAVE^{[Note 2]}
Mac OS (Classic)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/429530/pfx/^{[Note 3]}

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics settings (retail)

Graphics settings (BMS Mod)

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		See BMS mod
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		Run the game with the `-window` command line argument. Requires 16-bit color mode.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See BMS mod
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See BMS mod
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See BMS mod
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See BMS mod

Simulation settings (retail)
Simulation settings (BMS Mod)

Input

Control settings (retail)

Control settings (BMS Mod)

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration		See BMS mod.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

Sound settings (retail)

Sound settings (BMS Mod)

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Master, interface, music, engine, Sidewinder, RWR, cockpit, flight and other comms, sound effects
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Traditional Chinese				Retail only.
French				Retail only.
German				Retail only. Localized voiceovers were a separate download.
Italian				Retail only.
Spanish				Retail only.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
LAN play		16
Online play

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Issues unresolved

Graphical glitches

Graphical bugs are experienced during gameplay while running in Windows 7. Some textures will show bright purple sections with and without the patch and with the patch, text is unreadable while using hardware rendering. Switching to software rendering solves this but the game slows to a crawl while the cockpit is in view. Sometimes the menu screens will bug, certain elements not disappearing when changing menu - running in Windows 95 compatibility mode could fix this (most prominent on Allied Force re-release).^{[citation needed]}

VR support

Devices	State	Notes
TrackIR		Supports: Yaw, Pitch.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	5
Glide	2.54
Software renderer

Executable	PPC	16-bit	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
Mac OS (Classic)

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	95	98
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium 166 MHz	Intel Pentium II 450 MHz
System memory (RAM)	32 MB	128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	175 MB	600 MB
Video card (GPU)	High Colour graphics card	8 MB of VRAM

Notes

↑ SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10^[2] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.^[3]
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/429530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (429530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

↑ MicroProse is back on the Falcon series - last accessed on 2023-05-06
↑ Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
↑ Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
↑ Release: Falcon Collection - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023

[4] SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10^[2] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.^[3]

[gamedir-6] 2.0 ^2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

[Proton_path_note-7] 3.0 ^3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/429530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (429530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

[1] MicroProse is back on the Falcon series - last accessed on 2023-05-06

[2] Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16

[3] Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16

[5] Release: Falcon Collection - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023

[1]

[Note 1]

[4]

[Note 2]

[Note 3]

[2]

[3]

Developers

	MicroProse
Mac OS (Classic)	Westlake Interactive
Publishers
Retail	MicroProse
Retail	Hasbro Interactive
Mac OS	MacSoft
Digital (2015-2023)	Retroism
Digital (2023-present)	MicroProse
Release dates
Windows	December 11, 1998
Mac OS (Classic)	June 1, 1999
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase, Expansion pack
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person, Third-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Simulation, Vehicle combat
Vehicles	Flight
Themes	Contemporary
Series	Falcon