eFalcon 1.09 Preview - By Mark "Frugal" Bush - Page 2 of 2
Before the end of the cap we end up tangling with some more Mig 23's and this results in a guns up dogfight. The AI here is at least as mean as it was in 10799 and this becomes quite a tough fight, I can see on the HSD that my wingman is a fair distance away at this point and has a target of his own so I can't count on him to get my ass out of the fire. Fortunately the Mig 23 is no match for the Viper and I am able to dispatch the bandit albeit expending a lot of effort in the process. I hear my Wingman call Fox 3 short and see his slammer hit home. After checking with Awacs I see that our station area is secure and request relief as the Hack Time is showing that we've now been on station for 18 minutes.
We return home without incident and receive good vectors from ATC. I bounced on my landing and was surprised not to hear the Tower say "Next time get a clearance". I don't think this bug has been fixed in 1.09 but perhaps some work has been done on it. I taxi clear of the runway and watch my Wingman make a silky smooth landing. I consider taxiing back to the ramp and shutting the jet down properly but decide against it. The debrief shows a successful mission with 8 kills recorded by our flight.
This gives you a taste of some of the differences in 1.09 but there are plenty more. Low level night missions using TFR instead of NVG's are a blast. The TFR still needs a lot of work but it's functional. Multiplayer has been looked at too with some work done on the stability. A really welcome addition is the new Awacs support for multiplayer. It is now possible to get much more information from the map screen such as the number of aircraft in a flight, speed, heading and altitude. This is great for multiplayer squadrons that like to have a human Awacs. Especially as 1.09 gives us the ability to turn off Awacs calls when there is no Awacs on station.
It has not all been good though, initially my frame rates were very low. I fired up F4Patch version 4 and unapplied the RP4.1 and 4.2 bubble settings. This increased my frame rates up to 27fps and as yet I have noticed no ill effects as a result of removing those bubble settings. I have also been suffering from the V5 stutter problem, which I never had in 10799. This is a little perplexing as the graphics engine is the same as in 10799 so the same settings that work so well for me in 10799 should work in 1.09. I thought it may be due to the 1.09 2D Cockpit so I tried Paul Wilson's V7 and Skypat's Millennium pit but the stutter was present in those too. I only get the stuttering in the 2D 12 O'clock center view though and only during turns. It is easy to work around this by changing to the 3D cockpit or pushing up on my hat to the to the 12 O'clock high view during a turn. This is a small price to pay for the enhancements available in 1.09 I actually find using the 12 O'clock high view quite natural as it means I am looking into my turn.
There are so many changes in 1.09 that this article would be very long if I listed them all, fortunately the Manual is available and so you can get all the details there. I'll finish this preview by looking at the awesome 1.09 cockpit. In my opinion this is the best cockpit to date for Falcon 4. The level of detail is amazing and the views are photo realistic. The cockpit is essential at this point being the only pit with full 1.09 functionality including clickable power switches and fuel management controls. The cockpit has night lighting that is enabled by a switch on the right panel. One problem that I found was that it was impossible to see the switches at night (including the light switch). This could be a big problem if you use the clickable switches rather than the keyboard to preflight the jet. It also rendered the night lighting switch useless as you can only see this switch during the day. Fortunately I was able to resolve this by editing the tod.lst and changing the diffuse setting to 0.55 during nighttime. This kept the cockpit dark but made the switches visible.
Am I impressed with 1.09? You bet your ass I am!! Currently I am using eFalcon 1.09, Donuts skyfix v3, Deuky's Photo realistic terrain (which still needs a little work) The official 1.09 Cockpit (2D & 3D) and Aeyes full colour loading screens. This feels like a whole new F16 sim, Falcon 4.5 if you will. It's still a long way from perfect but I can honestly say that I'm having more fun in Falcon 4 at the moment than I've had for a very long time.
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