GL: Right now our group is focusing on a lot of exciting things that are critical to any new release, such as isolating bugs, and focusing on improvements and new features. In addition we are working on developing a good infrastructure for dedicated Falcon 4 server play.

WG: New features. Do you mean the addition of the much-anticipated Mig-29 and F/A-18, and if so, when will they be available?

GL: Yes, those among other things. We don’t know exactly when they’ll be available yet, but we are working on them. We would like to have a good campaign infrastructure first before introducing these titles. There is also the possibility of adding an F-14 sim to the Falcon universe because of the overwhelming requests from the simmers on the web. We also are working on adding new missions and vehicles for download over the Falcon 4 website.

WG: Will F/A-18 and Mig-29 be full-fledged products, or add-ons to Falcon 4?

GL: That is being debated right now, with the plan currently being to offer them as full products, but that may change. We want the Falcon simmer to have a full flight sim and campaign experience, and will be compatible with the on-line campaigns.

WG: You spoke of an on-line server, which is new and exciting news. What can you tell us about this on-line server; will it be similar to Jane’s Combat.net, or is there anything similar?

GL: The on-line server will be similar to NovaLogic’s electronic battlefield, except for the campaign element of course. It will be a dedicated server which will run several real-time war campaigns that will allow you to join in the war at any time. The campaigns can last many months, and will allow for on-line Falcon 4 pilots to join in at any time, until the war is over. This is an element that we would like to have established for the release of Falcon 5. Actually, Falcon 4 was designed from the ground up with the on-line play in mind.

WG: Falcon 5? What more could you possibly add to an already "complete" sim?

GL: Well right now we are thinking about lessons learned from Falcon 4, and at this point are conceptualizing adding better graphics, better AI, and better networking as a starting point and building a foundation.

WG: Do you really feel that this is "The Benchmark in Flight Sim Technology," as proclaimed on the cover of the Falcon 4.0 box? Or from your experience with all the delays, is this really to be considered a lesson learned?

GL: Well, I feel this is the benchmark of any serious flight sim that wants to compete with Falcon 4.0. It definitely was a challenge, but think it is definitely the future of flight sim technology. The dynamic campaign is truly an element that should be employed whether the simmer uses it or not. It offers replayability to the customer, instead of getting fifty hours of play with static campaigns or canned missions, you essentially get unlimited replayability since it is different every time you play.

WG: Speaking of the dynamic campaign, it seems to be one of the strongest features of this flight sim. What can you tell us about it that makes it unique from other flight sims?

GL: The campaign is truly dynamic in that it has a completely different programming thread for the campaign, which is running even while you are grounded and establishing your next mission. Also, depending on how quickly you get back in the action, other allied missions can get weighed in your favor. If you don’t touch the campaign world for a while, it can penalize you. One of the things that people are just starting to take note of is the Priorities button, which can establish the priorities of the campaign, hence the outcome of the campaign. People need to realize too that priorities take time to see any changes. There are a lot of other nuances in the campaign that people are just starting to find out about, and I expect it will take at least six months before people start to learn all the details.

WG: Falcon 4 is the most highly-anticipated PC flight sim of all time, although it took five years to get to market. What would you say were your largest bottlenecks in getting to release?

GL: First of all I would have to say that this is one of the most ambitious products ever to come to market. Secondly, we had a very young team (with a lot of energy) without much experience and they had to learn along the way. Thirdly would have to be the fact that we had a very large team to manage.

WG: Do you feel that most of the bugs and memory leak problems will be fixed in short order?

GL: I believe with patch 1.04 a majority of the memory leak problems have been addressed. The problems occur with how the program interacts with the O/S, and how it reserves and blocks memory. Falcon 4 requires a large block of memory to run smoothly, but unfortunately Windows is constantly manipulating the memory. We tried to get patch 1.04 out as quickly as possible since putting out patch 1.03 was my biggest regret because it probably caused more new problems than it fixed. We plan on not only patching bugs but also improving the product with future patches.

WG: What is your opinion on the use of memory recovery utilities that people are using with Falcon 4 to regain those large blocks of memory?

Automatic memory recovery utilities do not improve performance while in the game. It is good if you exit and recover memory, then restart; but it will be of little benefit if you use an automatic recovery utility. Manually adjusting it between missions may be beneficial. Sometimes these memory recovery utilities, which run in the background, close down programming threads that the program thinks it isn’t using, but it actually is.

WG: When can we see patch 1.05 then, and what will it include? How about higher resolution 2D cockpits?

GL: Patch 1.05 should be out within a week [as of 2/25/99]. It will include several more memory leak and bug fixes, improvements in multi-player and AI, but the biggest change will be a 20-30% improvement in frame rate with the 2D cockpits. We are dedicated to continuous improvement. We do not expect to have higher resolution cockpits for quite some time, due to the amount of work involved in all the graphics for all the clickable and moveable graphics in the cockpit.

WG: Considering the horsepower for a "Really Hot!" system requirement is a Pentium II 450 MHz and 128 MB RAM, what do you feel is really appropriate for top notch performance?

GL: This is of course dependent on settings, but if all settings are at maximum, except for player bubble, on my P2-450 with 128 MB, I had a huge amount of improvement, about 20-30%, in the campaign with the 1.05 patch. I can only say that the faster the processor, and the more memory, the better it will run.

Actually Falcon 4.0 is really meant to run optimally on a dual-processor system. I believe the latest beta release of Windows NT 5.0 with DirectX handles this quite well. It is programmed so that the campaign engine is passed through one processor, while the flight model and other stuff is run through the other. The team is going to optimize all Falcon products this way. People who claim that this is bad programming don’t realize that all the coding is set up for dual processors, but still runs well with a single processor.

WG: Great. How has the acquisition of Microprose by Hasbro affected Microprose, and how will it affect the future of Falcon?

GL: Actually it has been great, the advertising campaign during the NFL playoffs is the biggest example. They give us a lot more support, with larger marketing and distribution muscle. They also allow for more resources since it is a much larger corporation. Some people think the downside is that Falcon may be dumbed down to say, the level of Centipede, since Hasbro is more of a "gaming" company. Not true. They acquired Microprose for one reason: to go after the hard-core gamer market, and are dedicated to support us.

WG: I heard that you actually had an opportunity to fly in an F-16, is this true?

GL: Yes, that is true. I am not a qualified pilot, but have had some flight experience with other flight trainers, etc. After logging many, many hours with Falcon 4.0, I was able to actually fly the F-16 myself, and it was amazing how simple it was to fly. It was easier to fly than a Cessna. You just point to where you want to go, and it goes there. We were able to go from zero to ten thousand feet in under fifty seconds. Once up there, the quality of the view was amazing.

After flying the F-16, I realized how overpowered most other fighter sims are, especially when loaded with ordnance. We had one sidewinder on each wing and an ALQ pod, and I couldn’t believe how much it affected performance compared to an unarmed F-16. You can also bleed speed very quickly if you don’t employ the appropriate flight tactics. People need to realize that a plane’s flight characteristics change drastically depending on what ordnance is loaded, and that they need to adjust accordingly.