SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Falcon 4.0: Allied Force

Turning to the TRAINING section I was pleased to see all of the training scenarios included. The training missions exist for both the Korean and Balkans theatres and the training missions we flew appeared to work correctly. That said, the training consists of preflight briefs as opposed to real time "as you fly" text or voice-overs. This is something we feel is a weakness in F4:AF especially for newbies. So, you need to read about the training missions in the huge manual we talked about earlier, then run the missions. If you get into trouble, you can always pause the sim and refer to the manual — that is assuming you printed the pages out first. Learning the operation of the realistically modeled F-16 systems would be much easier by using a follow-along, step-by-step format. SimHQ has some plans ahead for training in F4:AF. More news on that later.

The aircraft load-out screen allows you to manipulate the stores your aircraft carries and the new, cleaner interface is very nice. Much of F4:AF shares this common theme: it might not be new, but a lot of old things are certainly done better.

Now might be a good time to mention that you select theatres of operation, for training, tactical engagements (TE), or campaigns, by selecting the BATTLEFIELD menu button at the bottom of the main menu. Once you have selected which region you wish to fly in (Korea or the Balkans), you can select what type of flying you wish to do (training, TE, campaign or instant action).

For those that just want to hop in and shoot something down or drop some bombs, F4:AF retains the INSTANT ACTION module which will get you going in mere seconds. The nice aspect of instant action is the ability to drag your fighting location anywhere on the map and to quickly set a time of day so that you can see the different environmental effects. Speaking of which, a new addition with F4:AF is the "fog altitude" and "fog percentage" sliders that significantly change the visibility and clouds within the theatre. I experimented with these settings from setting just a low ground fog that settles into the valleys all the way to a 10,000' layer that simulated realistic IFR-type conditions.

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