The pace in 1998 was gruelling and many advances were made. Improvements in hardware were enabling programmers to realise many of their dreams and 3D accelerators were still new to the mix. Rendition and NVIDIA were contending hotly with 3dfx for the 3D accelerator crown.
In the autumn of 1998, Novalogic released F-16 Multi-role Fighter and MiG-29 Fulcrum, boxed simulations that were aimed at online play. At the close of the year, in a kind of macabre capstone to the proceedings, MicroProse released the long-awaited Falcon 4.0.
Falcon 4.0 had been at least four years in development; the project had almost ended in the garbage bin two or three times. In the end, Gilman Louie salvaged it and with the help of Leon Rosenshein as lead engineer, Kevin Klemmick wrote the campaign AI and Pete Bonanni (a serving USAF Viper pilot) pulled off a sweeping simulation of the F-16 and its combat environment.
Falcon 4 was incredible. It was initially released with a huge ring binder in the military manual style, with removable pages as it was expected that new pages would be added as the simulation grew.
At the time, I channelled Charles Dickens and wrote of it: “It was the best of sims, it was the worst of sins.” Anyone could see that the dept…
