What Made Falcon 3.0 Great?

Today ACE continues the What Made It Great series by covering one of the most important Flight Simulators of all time, specifically Falcon 3.0.
Links to the game:
www.gog.com/ga...
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#Falcon3 #Falcon #WhatMadeItGreat

[@_Braised]

Not to mention Falcon 3.0 and 4.0 have dynamic worlds that have AI thinking on a tactical and strategic level behind the scenes, so that the entire war zone could play out differently every time you played. No flight Sim dynamic campaign had ever pulled that off on the same scale before or since.

[@andrewa837]

Falcon 3.0 is the full package. 3 different planes, many many red flag and training missions, early ACMI, a semi dynamic campaign a bunch of theaters, and many other improvements that made the game portion just as strong as the sim. It and Falcon 4.0 were groundbreaking for their times.

[@RCAvhstape]

You had to lead your whole squadron of pilots, manage ammunition and avoid running out of aircraft in the campaign mode. And there was an entire war being waged by the AI across the whole theater while you were flying your one little mission. Tanks and troops were fighting each other on the ground, and ground was being gained or lost. If you took out a fixed SAM site, it stayed out for good. Take out a bridge, it effected the enemy's strategy. As you gained ground your squadron might redeploy to a different airfield. Absolutely brilliant game engine, on top of the absolute kickass gameplay itself. Dealing with enemy fighters was only part of it. Bombing strike missions were the most fun. You had to plan your ingress and egress on the target based on intel about where the enemy air defenses were, you had to let your escorts, fighter sweep, and SEAD forces do their jobs, you had to decide which weapons to load up, how to attack the target, and how to get out without getting shot down. And you might still tangle with MiGs at some point. The addons, with different theaters and the ability to fly the F/A-18 or the MiG-29. The third party add-ons such as Strategic Falcon, which was my favorite. It gave you way more control over mission planning. You could send a flight of B-52s on a target, with a fighter sweep of F-15s and use your squadron's F-16s to fly escort or SEAD. I would load the B-52s to the gills with Mk-82 bombs and carpet bomb enemy targets and watch eh whole thing on the "gun camera" afterwards. I would fly close air support missions with CBU-58 cluster bombs and Maverick missiles and hit enemy tank formations at 600+ knots, pulling away in full burner dodging SA-7 missiles. Tangle with MiGs in 4 on 4 hairballs, intercept enemy bombers. What a great game. RIP Spectrum Holobyte.

[@joshevans2391]

Dynamic missions that were never the same... plus realism for the time

[@ancalites]

Falcon 3.0 was the first PC game I ever played. I was still using a C64 at the time, so you can imagine how completely blown away I was.

[@dy031101]

Falcon 3.0 actually got me into the sim genre and is directly responsible for me breaking two Logitech Wingman Extreme flightsticks lol

[@syaqsakma81]

Nostalgia.. I was on my first 80486 PC.. :)

[@DeusEx0101]

Squadron management, pilot stats (you can even train your pilots at red flag to increase stats), limited resources (planes, pilots, weapons), dynamic campaign in 7 different theaters, 3 different flyable aircraft (with different avionics), carriers, accessibility features to help reduce the difficulty (a little). No other flight sim has all of this. Not even BMS.

[@michaelbridges2386]

Learning the radar in realistic (HFR) mode was interesting.

[@gtdcoder]

I still use padlock view in modern sims because that’s how I learned in Falcon 3.0. I prefer it to using head trackers.

[@s2korpionic]

Definitely great. I don't think BMS would be here without it.

[@MrWickstar]

This was the game that got me into video games. I had Nintendo before this but playing this started a 30 year hobby.

[@taotoo2]

You missed the factor that seemingly 90% of flight simmers don't care/know about - dynamic campaign. The successor Falcon 4.0 remains leagues ahead of DCS etc for this single reason, IMO.

[@michaelmesolellaesq]

Whoa. Learned something today

[@michaelmesolellaesq]

#rudderpedals I remember this game as the first time I ever felt an immersion into a video game, music was awesome too #soundblaster

[@alessandrocostantino3759]

"giaanwra"

[@tldogmeat]

this thing came with a 500 page manual... never got into it. strike commander was alot better

[@Falconno3]

what