This 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!
I recently picked up a copy of this from a retro game store while on vacation. The box was covered in dust and slightly damaged on the corners. To my surprise everything inside was in mint condition. Simulators obviously have a higher standard of documentation, but it really made me miss game manuals in general.
Tunic, a game released last year, contained an in game manual in the style of older games. I personally found it legitimately useful, and fangamer recently released a hardcover version that is now out of stock.
If you're into modern games with useful manuals check out EXA Punks and Shenzen I/O. They are both Zachtronics programming puzzle games. And you have to print the manuals yourself (or order them online), but they're every cool and done in character. For example, the EXA Punks manual is a pair of 'zines.
Thank you for reminding me! I actually own the printed zines for EXA Punks. They also came with a secret envelope to be opened at a certain point in the game. I ordered them mostly out of a love for anything Zachtronics did. I don't have the Shenzen I/O one, but should really get it printed. If I recall there was also a physical manual for TIS-100 at some point.
I 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.
I 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.
Having 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.
When 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.
I'm a fan of old Flight Simulators but couldn't get into DCS. Too complicated, feels like work. Because of the technical limitations, the older Flight Simulators had just the right amount of complexity, making them a lot more fun.
Why 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.
Head trackers don't map movement 1:1, more like 1:10 (or so). Thus if you want to look 180 back, you turn maybe 30degs but can still eye the screen. Basically you gesture with your neck.
It sounds awkward but it works very well as an input method. It's also way less intense than VR for longer sessions.
Not saying it's absolutely superior, just that it's pretty good as designed.
1. Because in much of the world, HOTASes are taxed at ludicrous import rates and are not affordable.
2. Because the Xbox and PS5 gamepads are better designed and more reliable than any flight stick under $135. Remember, these gamepads have 7 figure R&D budgets, and are used by real world soldiers to control some drones and robots.
3. Because they're 100% viable. I personally know two people who can fly better on a gamepad - including formation flight, air refueling, carrier landings and all combat roles - than I can on $1000 of HOTAS.
4. Because portability is useful for people who travel, such as one of my wingmen who is active duty US military. When deployed he has his gaming laptop and a gamepad.
Your attitude is exclusionary, acidic and outdated.
P.S. As mentioned IR trackers use a multiplier curve, so on mine a 20 degree movement gets multiplied to 180 degrees in game. It feels very natural and intuitive.
Also, you don't need rudder pedals at all. The executive producer of DCS World is wheelchair bound, and simply uses an input on his throttle to control the rudder. This is the person who makes the Apache tutorial videos, BTW.
Heh, funny you should mention the X52. It's got a long-running issue where the potentiometers develop jitter, inhibiting fine control.
The 3D Pro is alright, but it's got fewer usable buttons than a gamepad, (the ones on the base aren't reachable with the grip hand) so it's kind of sixes with a controller. The gamepad is a bit better at input-heavy aircraft such as the A-10 or the front seat in the Apache.
I'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.
> 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.
I 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.
I 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.
I 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.
You 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.
If 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.
Might you be thinking about Falcon 4.0? That came out in the late ‘90s and struggled on the best available hardware at that time (as well as the best available hardware for the next decade or so).
