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Falcon 3.0 game manual (1991) [pdf]
- csixty4 3y agoThe Falcon 3.0 box was huge just to contain this manual. The game had so much depth and the manual somehow was able to make it make sense.
- heelix 3y agoIf I remember right, I think my copy even shipped with a VHS tape of instruction. So many hours spent on it.
- johnobrien1010 3y agoWas it this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFMX5z-ed4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFMX5z-ed4
- nullindividual 3y agoAnd you can rewatch it in all its compressed glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qw5s2Ag9ls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qw5s2Ag9ls
- TehShrike 3y agoOh wow, I didn't know this existed, thank you
- dharmab 3y agoPeople still use that tape to learn how to dogfight in modern simulators.
- johnobrien1010 3y agoIf you detailed game you may enjoy DCS manuals as well: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/documentation/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/document...
- fl7305 3y agoThe DCS AJS-37 plane is based on the official declassified pilot's manual. The DCS manual contains many diagrams taken from it as well. https://tanks.mod16.org/2016/08/29/saab-aj-and-ajs-37-viggen-flight-manuals-sfi/ https://tanks.mod16.org/2016/08/29/saab-aj-and-ajs-37-viggen...
- hparadiz 3y agoSomeone got this for me when I was a kid and I tried running it on a 166 mhz Pentium 1 with 16 mb of ram (a Toshiba desktop). It did not go well.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoYou must be thinking of a different game - Falcon 3.0 came out in 1991 when a 486 would've been top-of-the-line. I played this fine on a 486SX and it was fine.
- sumtechguy 3y agoYeah that spec of machine should have easily played 3.0. Unless it was running too fast?
- hparadiz 3y agoI remember it taking minutes to load and then only getting under 20 fps. Maybe I had the graphics up too high. I didn't know what I was doing at all.
- sumtechguy 3y agoIf I remember right that game was wildly picky about the amount of memory free in the lower area. It may also have been an XMS/EMS issue. Some games were really picky about what you had running. It could have been not using the extra 15MB of memory if it was not set correctly.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoI think maybe you’re thinking of Falcon 4.0?
- wyldfire 3y agoI tried playing it on a 386SX/16MHz and it definitely suffered. It was somewhat playable with the detail features cranked down to minimum.
- octygen 3y agoFor any people that don't know, a modernized fan-modded version of Falcon 4.0. The manual for it is also huge. https://www.falcon-bms.com/downloads/ https://www.falcon-bms.com/downloads/
- mdaniel 3y ago> A: For external devices, we recommend to use a HOTAS, VR Headset and / or head tracking device for best experience! Whoa, they modded VR support into Falcon? Have you tried that and if so how is it?
- jcft2 3y agoHaving bought a second hand copy with no manual, I printed that badboy out at 25% scale (4 pages per double sided sheet), as it was actually needed to go through the tutorials. Took hours and ended up about 2 inches thick.
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- Aetheridon 3y agoif anyone is looking for a modern version check out "Falcon BMS"
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- mobilio 3y agoLink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_3.0
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- jonathankoren 3y agoWhen this game came out I really wanted to play it, but I didn't have the machine to do so. Now, 33 years later I watch videos of people playing DCS and I'm in the exact same situation. Only before, I had no money, but today I have money, but choose not spend it, because I'm the kind of guy that would drop multiple thousands of dollars on peripherals. "Wanna play DCS?" "No. No, man. I'm clean."
- dmpk2k 3y agoStill vastly cheaper than a fighter jet!
- gregatragenet3 3y agoStill vastly cheaper than 10 hours of flight training in a Cessna that was built when humans were last on the moon.
- dmpk2k 3y agoTragic truth. :( GA has problems, and they're only getting worse.
- dharmab 3y agoGood news, DCS is now viable to play on an Xbox gamepad and cheap head tracker. Some if the best online wingmen I've flown with are using gamepads.
- jonathankoren 3y agoWhy would anyone want to play it with a gamepad? That’s absolutely the Wrong way to play any flight sim. You need joystick, throttles, rudder pedals, and ideally a VR headset. IR head tracking appears to work, but I have no idea how, given that you’d have to point your head away from the screen to look over your shoulder.
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- ben7799 3y agoI'm amazed I've never played any version of this AFAICT. (Maybe I played something before Falcon 3.0 in the 80s at someone's house or I'm just forgetting) I loved the flight sim games of that era. I haven't played one in a long time. Of course one of the issues was I had taken some flying lessons in high school but couldn't really afford it. I told myself I was going to get my license after I got out of college. Then I played a lot of flight sims while I was still a student. When I got out of college I took a bunch more flying lessons and eventually decided I didn't actually like it... and never played any more flight sims again. At some point it seemed like just work... and when these sims get too complex they also seem like work.
- fl7305 3y ago> when these sims get too complex they also seem like work The A-10 plane in DCS seems to be as complex as the real plane (?) I think that's where I saw a hilarious video of a poor guy trying to get it started and taxiing to the runway for something like three hours before giving up. On the other hand, the AJS-37 Viggen in DCS is fully accurate (I've checked it against the declassified official pilot's manual), and it can be started in a few minutes using a simple checklist. They really should be guarding them well at airshows ;) > At some point it seemed like just work I like flying too in principle, but all the required detailed technical knowledge about airspaces, ATC comm, etc doesn't make it that appealing to actually get a license. Gliders / hanggliders / paragliders are much nicer in that regard.
- TehShrike 3y agoI sunk so many hours into this game as a kid. It's crazy how much depth they were able to pack into a flight simulator in 1991.
- discardedrefuse 3y agoThis brings back memories. I still have the Falcon Gold boxed set that brought EVERYTHING! Besides Falcon 3.0, it had F/A-18 Hornet, MiG-29 Fulcrum, the extra theaters, separate manuals and reference cards for everything, giant wall maps of the theaters, and an instructional video course called Art of the Kill and its manual. There was so much literature. It was amazing. 12 year old me could've probably taken off in a real F-16 given the chance!
- MrDarcy 3y agoI remember getting into scripting creating a menu system that could boot with either mouse or keyboard drivers loaded, but not both, because falcon 3.0 required about 610K of conventional memory, leaving only about 30K for sound, joystick, and mouse drivers.
- sumtechguy 3y agolh and 4dos were my spirit guides for that
- discardedrefuse 3y agoYes! Learning to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat (from a book) for games was probably the catalyst that pushed me into IT.
- mark_undoio 3y agoI had a very tiring Christmas day (mostly tiring for my dad, though) putting together boot floppies for various games. Eventually I got really good at it - selecting what drivers were required and packing them efficiently into base and extended (I think that was it...) memory. Sometimes IIRC I'd swap boot disks around and discover extra features in games that only appeared with even more base memory.
- reneberlin 3y agoThat one brings back lovely memories! I totally forgot about that ...
- scandox 3y agoSpectrum Holobyte. Those words could have sold me anything in 1990. If I'd had the money.
- fatnoah 3y agoI had an uncle that was huge into flight sims at the time, and I'd get his hand-me-down flight sticks & throttles. I spent soooo much time playing Falcon 3.0, and teenage me would get so sad when one of my favorite wingmen would get shot down on a mission.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoI think Falcon 3.0 was the first multiplayer game I ever played. If I remember correctly, it supported it via serial port connection and a friend from school and I played it over a 9600bps V.32 modem link.
- aplc0r 3y agoI recently went down a rabbit hole of playing early home flight simulators. One that stuck with me was Tomcat F-14 for the Atari 2600. A combat flight simulator on a system with one button seemed impossible. I tried playing it without any information at first, but couldn't figure out the controls. So I looked up the manual and found that it used the Game Select and Difficulty switches for additional controls. Having the left and right difficulty switches for the arresting hook and landing gear felt surprisingly cool. I didn't have a lot of games for the 2600 growing up, so I'm sure there are lot of examples of clever controls, but this would have blown my mind as a kid. https://archive.org/details/Tomcat_The_F-14_Flight_Simulator_1988_Absolute/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Tomcat_The_F-14_Flight_Simulator...
- dharmab 3y agoFor a point of comparison, here's what F-14 simulators are like today: https://youtu.be/8N0rRTvHGBY?si=tINfIqzwQ6fHk7p8 https://youtu.be/8N0rRTvHGBY?si=tINfIqzwQ6fHk7p8