Happy 25th Birthday Falcon 4.0! 1998-2023+
-
Hi,
Falcon 4.0 was released 25 years ago on the 11th December 1998!
Happy birthday Falcon 4.0! 25 years and still the world’s greatest combat simulator thanks to the ongoing efforts of BMS!
(hope I am not pre-empting anything. It has been 11th December here in Australia for 20.5 hours)
-
Thanks @Thommo, I’m glad an Aussie is kicking it off right for us!!! I am so thankful to everyone that has helped keep Falcon alive this long, yes the developers, but everyone that continues to fly it too! It’s been an amazing 25 years.
I basically bought BMS as an 19th birthday present to myself, so Falcon 4.0’s many different flavors has been basically a part of all of my adult life! So thanks to everyone and BMS FOREVER! Friday is my personal 25th year of owning Falcon 4.0:
-
All these years my memory was it was released to US stores on 12/07/1998 (my birthday)… Maybe I just bought it as a belated BDay present…
-
Video from 5 years ago… XD
Hopefully I can make another remake with the 4.38 with the new terrain.
-
@molnibalage +1 I’d vote then for it to become official BMS 4.38 and later intro
-
-
Let’s hope for a very juicy 4.38 video to celebrate what BMS will become.
-
Been flying falcon 4 in all its iterations since 2002. Now closing in on 4000 flight hours for the F-16 in BMS.
Thanks BMS for a great sim and many years of fun flying!
-
@b0bl00i or at least some new 4.38 screenshots!
-
Wow! 25 years!! So glad to participate in this online community, here’s to a bright future for BMS and the Falcon IP, too!
-
@Thommo said in Happy 25th Birthday Falcon 4.0! 1998-2023+:
Hi,
Falcon 4.0 was released 25 years ago on the 11th December 1998!
Happy birthday Falcon 4.0! 25 years and still the world’s greatest combat simulator thanks to the ongoing efforts of BMS!
(hope I am not pre-empting anything. It has been 11th December here in Australia for 20.5 hours)
Best Falcon fondant rendering ever!
-
I will probably repeat myself as I think I wrote it already before…
For me it all started with Falcon. But not that Falcon. No, it was
on C-64. I was 6, maybe 7 years old and I was sold to the idea of flying and fighting. Around that time my parents brought me to some local ‘airshow’ (imagine ‘airshow’ in just not communist Poland organized at the level of municipality… but hey, there was PZL Wilga and my parents wanted to show me how it flies. The first time I was how trees and building and fields became smaller and smaller… it was magic!Falcon Patrol was not the only “sim” on my C-64. There was very important multiplayer combat simulator called
. I played it with my Dad. Gosh, I am not able to count how many of our dogfights ended in the midair collision!:-)Fast forward, it is early April of 1999. I did not have a PC at that time, but I was already begging my parents for months. Coming back from school I bought Gambler (04/99). It had few pages dedicated to Falcon 4.0 tips & tricks.
OH-MY-FUCKIN’…!
I was instantly sold to its muddy-greeny GFX! I knew it was this! But as you remember I did not have a PC yet 14 months later I came to EMPiK and saw big box with Falcon 4.0 for 99 PLN. I bought it immediately. I was 15 years old and its 600+ pages long manual was overwhelming, but I read it as a finest lecture! I still remember how long I need to ask my parents to let me download 1.08us which, if I remember correctly, was 18MB big and it took all night to get it on my
.Then it was eFalcon. It was SP4. It was Red Viper. Cockpits from Aeyes. FreeFalcon… OpenFalcon! Then silence…
…but then one collegue from my ArmA2 squad told me “hey, have you heard, some guys are working on Falcon and it is going be huge!”
I was like… “yeah, right…”.
Few days later I learn about the release of 4.32. Woah, it was like… it wasn’t like mod. It was like full blown AAA combat flight simulator! My collegue was right. Those guys made something HUGE. They has taken everything what made Falcon - Falcon - and brought it to another level! 4.33 was even bigger. 4.34 killed my interest in chatting with Jester, if you know what mean. Hell, trailer for 4.34 still gives me chills!
But then I learnt about new terrain and MSFS happened and my Cougar got broken… long story short… I skipped 4.35. Then 4.36. I was seeing BMS as too focused on Viper avionics. “New HTS and HARM improvements”. I was like “…what?”. Imagine that to this day I probably never released a single JSOW. Never fired HARM in other way that using HTS pod. JTAC? OK, it sounds cool, but looks freakin confusing, pass …
Fast forward to 2023. The year of the Eagle!
I have learnt that full fidelity F-15C has been added. Oh my! My dream came true! I have installed 4.37, then U1, U2 and U3 and instantly realised I need a proper controls. In three weeks I have designed and printed F-15 grips for old Suncom SFS base and today I am going to finish F-15 stick, also heavily modded Suncom Talon. Three weeks! You know when I started this project, but I was unable to finish it due to lack of inspiration? January of 2018. That says something. By the way, last week I have also fixed my Cougar HOTAS and ICP.
I am so extremally glad that Falcon BMS, while not changing its famous acronym, is becoming EBS:
Electronic Battlefield Series
Long live Falcon 4.0, happy anniversary!
Thank you BMS team!
To this day I still have this Gambler issue and I like to read from time to time.
-
-
Happy Birthday Falcon!!
-
@Snake122 I have the same CD, but I got mine at a Circuit City. Sorry, no proof of purchase
-
I bought mine on release day from the Virgin Mega Store on Oxford Street London - I was waiting for the doors to open on my way into work.
Took the manual to my, later-to-be, in-laws at Christmas. I spent most of the time reading - not sure they thought their daughter had made the right decision, but 25 years and 2 kids later…
In fact when my firstborn was a baby and wouldn’t sleep, I used to fire up Falcon 4.0, and sit on the Swiss Ball with babe in arms - not easy flying HOTAS one-handed.
-
@MailMan too bad Circuit City receipts would be far more nostalgic these days, although I’m always surprised Best Buy continues to exist too!
-
I still have the invoice for my Falcon 4.0.
Dated 29th Dec 1998
Price: 2.190 BEF (That’s €54.29 or $59.05)