Key points
- The source code was leaked in 2000.
- It is highly recommended to play the game with a joystick
- The manual is required to fully understand the underlying game mechanics
- Most of the community has switched over to Falcon BMS, a heavily upgraded fork of F4's source code.
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
- 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
- On May 4, 2023, the rebooted MicroProse announced upon claiming the franchise rights that they would officially support the BMS Mod.[4]
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
Save game data location
Video
Graphics settings (retail)
Graphics settings (BMS Mod)
Simulation settings (retail)
Simulation settings (BMS Mod)
Input
Control settings (retail)
Control settings (BMS Mod)
Audio
| 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
Connection types
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 |
Native |
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[1] 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.[2]
- ↑ 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
