Some of you may be aware of the free mod for Falcon 4 called "Falcon 4: BMS" (which stands for Benchmark Sims, the name of the group who created it). For those who aren't aware of Falcon 4: BMS and are still on the lookout for any hardcore flight sim titles that are the polar opposites to the COD's and Modern Warfares, then feast your peepers on the pics at the bottom of this post...

The point of this post is more about the fact that Falcon 4 is, sadly, unavailable anywhere at a reasonable price. You can buy copies of it on Amazon or ebay for US$160 on average. So this leaves the BMS mod's availability left only to those who still have copies of the original Falcon 4 game. It's a tight community but a great game and mod like this needs more gamers.

Falcon 4 deserves a release, now more than ever! :)

The sheer amount of work that has gone into BMS over the years is on a level that's easily on par with Black Mesa for HL2. It is truly next gen alongside others modern day sims of today like DCS or the Take On series. It also has continual development going to this day! DCS, though, doesn't have an F16 module released yet. Some of the highly detailed features instilled into Falcon 4 BMS include:

HD Graphics with HDR, self-shadowing and other lighting fixes
3D Virtual cockpit
A new Terrain engine
Multi-player code improvements
Improved Flight modeling, avionics and physics
Enemy AI improvement
New Sound engine and UI
Airbase and weather modeling

And much more!

To any gamer who is looking for a sim with incredibly realistic gameplay on all levels, an excellent learning curve and solid community of players who are still actively playing this sim online, look no further. Implore GOG to get the rights to release it so that you too can experience the awesome Falcon 4 BMS! :)

Falcon win! Hawx sux!

I came across a copy of Falcon 4 at Goodwill last year for about $4, but never got a chance to install it. I played the heck out of 3 years ago. This game was made at a time when you were actually forced to learn something-- this was not the AAA hollywood style action sims we have today. The manuals were bound and very detailed. You not only learned dog fighting techniques, but had to learn map reading and navigation. Certainly no substitute for the real thing, but at the time it was as close as a civilian could reasonably get with out the real world education and commitment.

Thanks for this, I'll be digging into this soon. :)

Just wanted to mention that the distribution rights to F4 are currently (as I understand it) held by Atari, and they are about to go under.

Anyone feel like dropping the cash to obtain the rights?

I heard Hasbro Interactive had it a while back, they probably offloaded it to Atari... It'd be great if it could be salvaged before it gets lost in the software abyss if Atari goes belly up.

And if Atari does go under, that'd mean the Atari logo in Bladerunner was a lie too... 2019, my butt!

It would be great if GOG could add this game somehow from its new owner or whatever. Well there's nothing stopping some unrelated company buying the name and using it for gaming purposes much like Commodore Gaming... although now that I go to use them as an example I find out they've already ceased to exist. :)