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   Welcome to the fourth edition of the Falcon 4.0 designer's notes. In
   previous editions, we've talked about the design philosophy for the
   game and given some hints about how certain parts are going to work.
   This time I get to talk about my piece of the action: the graphics
   engine.
   
   I'm a private pilot and fly out of Oakland airport whenever I get the
   chance. It is always an exhilarating experience to "slip the surly
   bonds" and soar over the countryside in my own plane. My biggest goal
   for the graphics in this game is to achieve that same sense of wonder.
   I've fooled myself a few times lately with the prototypes, so I think
   we're on the right track. [INLINE] GRAPHICS
   
   I suppose the first question anyone has to ask is "How's it going to
   look?" The answer, of course, is great. Falcon 4.0 has a lot to live
   up to, and we all know it. What we've got in store for you is nothing
   short of spectacular. We've posted some screen shots, and they're
   nice. The thing to remember, though, is that the real game's terrain
   will be flowing smoothly by as you fly one of the most realistic
   flight models available anywhere, and the scenes won't be JPEG
   compressed into oblivion.
   
   When I started on this project, Flight Unlimited was just hitting the
   shelves. We were all impressed by its ground-breaking realism, but
   knew we had to do better. We needed to build a world 2,500 times
   larger with much greater visual variety and still retain the same
   level of realism and fit on one CD-ROM. A year and a half later, we've
   accomplished that and much more.
   
   All of Falcon 4.0 will run in "high color" mode (that is, 65,000
   simultaneous colors). In addition, both the setup screens and the
   flight simulation have been optimized for high-resolution display
   modes (800x600 and 640x480 respectively). This will allow us to
   provide unprecedented image quality and, just as importantly, variety.
   In the past, games have been limited to 256 colors for entire scenes.
   The result is often "cartoonish" looking environments. With thousands
   of colors to work with, our artists have been free to accomplish
   wonders. [INLINE] TERRAIN
   
   We started out with satellite photographs and elevation data covering
   all of Korea. This gave us good-looking terrain, but we wanted more.
   The satellite images just weren't crisp enough. We went out and found
   hundreds of aerial photographs from all over the country. These we cut
   up, processed and rearranged to supplement the satellite data
   throughout the map. The result is a startlingly realistic pilot's-eye
   view of the world with excellent detail no matter where you fly on the
   map. Those of you who've flown NovaLogic's F-22 Lightning II game may
   worry that Falcon 4.0, with only one theater, won't have enough
   variety in our scenery. Not to fear. Unlike F-22, Falcon 4.0 will have
   a full-sized realistic map so that you can fly from one end of Korea
   to the other and see all the variety of terrain you would expect as
   you pass over rivers, lakes, cities, forests, farmland and mountains.
   The scenery is good enough that it's fun to simply fly around and
   look.
   
   We've put a great deal of effort into ensuring that you do get to see
   the terrain; and lots of it. Few things are more frustrating to me
   than flight simulations that seem to think the entire world is
   shrouded in dense fog all the time. We've certainly got haze and fog
   in Falcon 4.0, but on good days, you should be able to see major
   terrain features 50km or more into the distance. Of course, nobody can
   see a airplane or a tank that far away, but you can certainly see the
   ground! We simply won't tolerate mountains "popping" up in front of
   you at the last minute. We've developed a "level of detail" system
   which reduces terrain detail in the distance smoothly so that
   important terrain features are preserved, while subtle details fade
   out to maintain performance. Oh, and by the way, targets don't "pop"
   up either. If you can get a strong enough radar return, you can see
   targets out to the 80-mile limit of the F-16's radar scope. Since
   we've got a real campaign, we know what every vehicle in the game is
   doing all the time. If you decide to take an alternate route to your
   target or ignore your target entirely, that's fine. There will still
   be an interesting world with a war on out there.
   
   As was mentioned previously, Falcon 4.0 has been designed from the
   beginning to be a multiplayer game with a real-time campaign running
   all the time. One consequence of this is that war goes on 24 hours a
   day (in game time, of course). We've put a lot of effort into making
   sure that the night-fighting experience is just as intense as the
   daylight missions. A lot of little things go into making this happen.
   When the sun goes down, it stains the western sky crimson. The city
   lights begin to come on, and as night sets in, the stars emerge. If
   you're lucky, it isn't a moonless night, and you'll get some
   additional lighting in the target area when the moon rises. You'll
   have to keep an eye out for AAA and SAMs, but at night that job is a
   little easier thanks to the muzzle flash and rocket exhaust. [INLINE]
   3-D OBJECTS
   
   I've talked a lot about the terrain now, but what about the 3-D
   objects in the world? We've gone all out in this department as well.
   We've got several hundred air, sea and land objects from the U.S.,
   South Korean, North Korean, Russian and Chinese inventories in the
   game. Each object has had its own textures individually drawn to
   capture specific details. The objects are dynamically lit by the sun
   and are Gouraud-shaded for a smooth appearance. We've built in
   hundreds of special behaviors like retractable landing gear,
   traversing and elevating turrets, rotating antennae and moving control
   surfaces to give each object a life of its own. We want to give you
   that deep-down feeling in your guts when you look out the window and
   see all the AAA guns tracking you. [INLINE] HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
   
   I'm afraid I have some good news and some bad news about system
   requirements. The bad news is your old 486 just won't cut it. By the
   time you get Windows 95 and all its drivers running, there just isn't
   enough performance left for a serious simulation. We've looked long
   and hard at the huge range of computer performance in the marketplace
   and decided that to meet people's expectations for Falcon 4.0 we had
   to take advantage of the state of the art. The good news is that we do
   take advantage of the state of the art. We've made every effort to
   build a scaleable engine, but to get things looking the way I want
   them too, you'll probably need a 90MHz Pentium with a strong 3-D
   hardware accelerator or a 166MHz Pentium with a good conventional
   video card. Part of this requirement comes from the graphics, but
   we've also got the most complete campaign and simulation engines in
   the business, and they both take time to run as well. We think you'll
   find it's worth it! [INLINE] 3-D VIDEO CARDS
   
   Both the terrain and objects for Falcon 4.0 are all new. We've
   designed cutting-edge performance into the engine from the start. Both
   software-only and hardware-accelerated graphics are supported by the
   game. The one surprise might be that, although we're running under
   Windows 95, we aren't using Direct3D. We simply couldn't get the
   performance and quality we need out of the current version. Instead
   we've built on previous work by Intel and come up with our own
   graphics engine which produces excellent image quality and
   performance. We're planning to ship with support for 3-D cards
   including those with chips built by 3Dfx, Rendition, Cirrus Logic, ATI
   and S3. As more hardware is coming out all the time and discussions
   are ongoing, this list is likely to evolve and grow. We watch the
   online news groups, so let us know which boards you're interested in
   seeing support for.
   
   This project has been a long time in coming, but it's all the little
   details that make Falcon 4.0 much more than just another F-16 game. So
   until you see our handiwork on the shelves, know that we'll be slaving
   away here to get the finishing touches on the flight experience we've
   all been waiting for.
   
   Scott Randolph
   Senior Graphics Engineer
   Falcon 4.0 Team
   Spectrum HoloByte/MicroProse
   
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