Falcon BMS: Aiming High

It's back, baby! The old, yet popular flight sim Falcon 4.0 made by Microprose was staple for anyone who loved realistic flight sims in 1998 when the game first came out. It was unprecedented in it's realism and detail, even including a manual that was thick as a phone book written with help from actual F-16 pilots. The game was just downright groundbreaking in the complexity and number of features for the time, including a dynamic campaign, dynamic weather, digital encyclopedia and reference library of aircraft, ships and equipment. Even with the early access release of the F-16 for DCS, Falcon 4.0 is still lauded for being one most accurate flight sims for the F-16 ever made (likely to say so until the DCS version is fully released.  

Properly resurrected from the dead

However, the game was not immune to the vast strides in improvement of video game technology from the time it came out to now, and it certainly does show some age and can be rough around the edges to say the least. But ever since the leak of the source code to the game by one of the devs in April of 2000, there has been an active and vibrant modding community surrounding the game. 

BenchMark Simulation's mod team logo

Thus enters the ambitious mod called Falcon BMS (Bench Mark Simulations) that first released in 2012 to breathe new life into the old game. It is nothing short of a complete overhaul to vastly improve both the visual fidelity and gameplay. It adds a completely new terrain engine to the game, improved weather effects, weapon and animation effects, vastly improved 3d models, and greatly improved skins across the board. As far as gameplay, they have introduced fully 3d interactive cockpits to replace the older models, improved multiplayer code, and improved AI to better facilitate better dynamic campaigns, support for newer versions of the F-16, and adding a host of new friendly and enemy aircraft, and these are just some of the new features. 

A picture of the difference between the game and the mod circa 2015 from the Steam community page.

Of course, being a mod, you'll still need the original game to play it, which used to be a difficult endeavor for some time, as the game was not in circulation for quite a while. Thankfully, as of now, you can find copies of it available at both GOG and Steam for reasonable prices. So go check out the mod as they are still releasing new versions as of 2021, and plan to continue to improve it and release new versions in the future.