Ukyou recommends: Free Falcon 5

I have been an avid Flight simmer for the past 15 or more years. My passion started with my original passion with flight and aviation and that spilled naturally into the virtual world. I have always wanted to be a fighter pilot (A very big departure in current standing and personality :P) and I immensely enjoy the odd combat flight sim every now and then. And in this I have pursued the ultimate flight sims starting from the oh-so-passe-now Microprose original F-19 Stealth fighter to the current flight sims like LOMAC and FSX.

the lovable F-19,I have such nice memories of this game :P

The F-16 has always been one of my favorite aircraft. And to say F-16 to a flight simmer is to mention the Falcon 4.0 series of sims. The latest version I got my Viper fangs into (Pun intended) is the Free Falcon 5 series. An open source version of the legendary original Falcon 4.0 supported by the fan community with extra flyable aircraft, theaters, 2D and 3D cockpits and more.

I got my hands on FF5 and installed a few extra high res cockpits I purchased online from from http://www.cockpits.nl/ . These were worth every piaster! The biggest feature of Falcon 4.0 is to me the extreme realism and great attention to accurate modelling of the avionics and the flight model. Set on veteran setting for AI opponents, I could not hold on more than 5 mins without finding myself clobbered by the virtual bogeys.

Extreme realism is the name of the game, nearly every thing is clickable with according actual real-life function :D I would to get Track IR just for this game (and LOMAC)

The biggest booboo of Falcon 4.0 was the sub-par graphics and low realism of the modelling of the landscape and the weather effects (like clouds and so on). With FF5 I get all that and more. The cloud modelling is beautiful to a fault and the sensation of flight is great!

Beautiful aircraft and weather modelling of FFV

The addition of extra aircraft models is great, added with extra high res cockpits, you can enjoy flying the F/A-18, the F-14, the F-4 and even the EF-2000 Eurofighter! I love the high res F/A-18 cockpit the most in the new ones I got and I would like to spend more time mastering carrier landings (I have yet to achieve one successful wire, all bolters :P)

Great F/A-18 cockpit :D Now carrier ops in FFV are possible

Free Falcon and the additional pay-ware Extra packages are the next best thing to actually flying the F-16 and other cool 4th generation fighters! I am looking forward to getting MS FSX with the Aerosoft F-16X add-on for THE ultimate in F-16 simulation.

Be warned this is a Study sim. Expect to spend hours reading the manuals (500+ pages)!

P.S. I burrowed the pics for some of the cockpits as i couldn't get screen grabs from my own PC :D will replace them later with my own pics.