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 - Great Game -- even for 7 year old.....I bought this game for my son's seventh birthday. Because I was afraid it would be too complex, I also bought a high-end WW2 Combat Flight Simulator. .....Flying the game on a duo core laptop. .....The WW2 simulator crashed the graphics multiple times and is harder to fly (then Falcon is in simplified mode). We haven't flied it more than 2 days. .....Falcon on the other hand is getting flown all of the time. Sure, the realistic options are incredibly hard (which I like), but the simplified is arcade-like and a blast to fly. .....You definitely need a joystick. My one attempt at networking to another computer on my home network was a failure. And it will take me a year to understand all of the intricacies as a part time player. Still, there is such an andrenaline rush flying something that acts and feels like an F-16 in a 20+ plane dogfight that there is no way I couldn't rate it 5 stars. .....Thank you Atari for keeping this old favorite alive! Rating: - There can be only one.I am a huge flight sim fan. Been a virtual pilot for 2 1/2 years now with more than 800 hours and loving it. I read the reviews for this game, both one and five star, read about the graphics issues, and thought, u know what, how bad can it be? Well the first thing I noticed was the cockpit. This thing is highly detailed and complex. You have navigation,weapon, and communication systems squeezed (and I mean squeezed) into this small space. Technology has made it lot less cumbersome than it should be, and thats how it is in a real Viper. If you're a person whose sole purpose to go to external view and watch how cute the jet is, or to try to pinpoint your house on the ground, then this is not for you. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are there. The Jet is moderately detailed, from the pilot fully geared in the cockpit to the tiny registration number on the back. But when you fire up the after burners for example, the nozzle expands and contracts, but the fire is like a set of lines with crayon in the middle. This was done purposefully by the manufacturer because, from my experience with flight sims, a highly detailed cockpit and a highly detailed environment don't do so well together. They made it universally compatible; this can run on any computer. It takes about 1 gig on the hard drive (you dont need the cd after installation) but could've easily been 6 gigs, telling from looks of the cockpit. All in all a great game. The start up procedures for the Viper are excellent. ATC is great, the manual, oh my, how could I forget the manual. After three days I'm still in the process of reading this. If you want to learn the F-16 (why? I dunno, maybe in a couple years aliens will invade and all able-bodied civilians will have to man a jet ;p), you have to read this fully. Right now I'm learning to identify and destroy moving and static ground targets. Still a long way to go but it's fun cuz there's a training mission at the end of each chapter. So Rating:  - Very disappointing!After having read so many good things on this sophisticated flight sim, I took the big step forward and purchased it. What a disappointment! I know that art will always be more difficult to master than criticism, and I must first start off with the good features of the game: its flight model is quite realistic. The man-machine interface is impressive, with keys accessible inflight with the use of the mouse pointer. Also, the canopy layout and effects are very well rendered. Combat is fun, and yes, overall, the simulated aircraft feels close to the real deal. Now, the bad ones. Graphics and terrain rendition are appalling. Looks like the engine that was used was one that was already a bit obsolete at the end of the late 90's. Also, programming your joystick -mine is a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro- turned quickly into a tedious task. The flight modelling of the Falcon is far from perfect and needs some serious improving. Come on, it's so damn difficult to get the aircraft to stall realistically!! I have been addicted to Lock-On ever since it was first launched. And I am still. And before, I was hooked onto F/A-18 Korea, but it is now cruelly showing its age. Get yourself Lock-On, and nothing else, then please tell me what you think of it. It's a day and night difference. Lock-On remains, up to this day and according to me, the very best in advanced, realistic A2A combat flight sim. Period. Rating: - AwsomeThis sim is awsome. Get this: I'm running this sim on Windows 98, Pentium-3 800mghz, 600 meg ram, and the real kicker... A Voodoo 550 card with 64 meg of ram. with the graphic settings turned down a little the sim works well. I did not expect the sim to work at all. I can't wait for a better system to run this sim. Rating:  - Pretty GoodNot bad ,but not as great as other reviewers would lead you to believe,first off game play is very good,dynamic campain,lots of variety in missions,the learning curve is steep but that should be no surprise with this title. Now the graphics-you guys gotta be kidding me,compared with other flight sims that came out about the same time, notably Lock On and Pacific Fighters this game is lame graphicly and I mean lame. Flying close to the ground is like flying over spilled paint, it's terrible. And their bragging about it.Luckily there is a fix called Hi-Tiles that addresses that problem fairly well but will cost you another 12 bucks or so but it's worth it. You can find it at the games web site. Controls, there's lots of them, but what I found annoying were the outside view from the cockpit, instead of a smooth look at the world outside you get this snappy and confusing hatswitch view that doesn't seem natural,you'll get used to it eventually ,you'll have to. Dont get me wrong this is a very good sim but the reviews of the past seem to come from starved Janes Sim fans. But I do recommend this sim.
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