Soon our flight (Troll 1-1 and 1-2) is sitting on the runway and we are cleared by the tower for take-off. Pushing my HOTAS forward I light the afterburner and my F-16 slowly lumbers down the runway straining against the weight and drag of a full load of fuel and ordnance. As you can see, FF3 fixed the graphics glitch that only showed a single CBU canister instead of the proper dual load-out per pylon.
After a significant ground-run my plane finally breaks free of terra firma and starts accelerating for a the cruise climb.
Almost immediately two stand-out features of FF3 reveal themselves. I have never played F4 with anything above BMS 1.03, which I used briefly to make a Falcon movie. Though I was aware of the great graphics improvements with BMS 2.0, I never actually saw it in action. Since FF3 uses the BMS 2.0 “engine” the new effects are in there. The first effect that is readily apparent is what I believe is called “specular highlights”. As your view of the 3D objects rotates in space, a reflective “sheen” moves across the surface of the objects. It is very hard to describe, and even more difficult to translate with a screen shot, but suffice it to say that when you see these 3D models flying in the sim and you pan around them the effect is jaw dropping!
The second readily apparent effect is the very subtle motion of the orbit camera in space, giving a more “fluid” feeling during the external view. A great job has been done implementing that effect. Ever since I saw the LOMAC “jitter-cam” I’ve wanted something similar in F4 and this is a pretty good approximation.
As we climb out away from our base I take a minute to look around the cockpit. Gone is the rough looking 2D cockpit of previous F4 versions. Paul Wilson did an outstanding job of giving FF3 users a free 1600 x 1200 cockpit to use, and according to the FF3 manual, there are 5 other cockpits for use with the other F-16 variants (Block 40/42C, 50/52C, 40/42D, 50/52D, MLU, and 60). I assume these cockpits change automatically when you select different types of F-16s, but I would suggest reading the manual to make sure that is correct and to familiarize yourself with the differences in the different cockpits.
With our aircraft in navigation mode I have the A2A radar in the left MFD and the HSD in the right, showing my steerpoints and strike area.
Reaching over to the left sub-panel I select PRGM 3 on the counter-measures panel to give me a mix of chaff and flares upon pushing the counter-measures button on my HOTAS.
Out of habit I also reach over to the left side panel and turn off my anti-collision and position lights. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is a “visibility” penalty for leaving these on. I don’t know if that is an urban myth or not, but you would certainly not want to draw any extra attention to yourself north of the DMZ.
