PM G4 Radeon 8500 OS 9 Falcon 4 No 3D Graphics?!?

[richardallan]

Hi Everyone.

I recently dusted off my Old G4 (Digital Audio Dual 533, ATI Radeon Mac 8500) to play some old games in Mac OS 9. I have F\A-18 Korea and Medal of Honor Allied Assault running beautifully with high resolution 3D graphics.

One game I always wanted back in the day was Falcon 4. It was supposed to have the best graphics and most realistic flight characteristics of any Mac flight sim. I recently downloaded a copy from Macintosh Garden, along with all the updates etc. but it looks terrible. I have selected RAVE in the preferences but it seems to be only rendering in software. And the maximum available screen resolution is 800 x 600. Can this be right? F/A-18 Korea is way better than this. I thought Falcon 4 set the standard back in the day. What could I be doing wrong?

I hope someone can help me with this. Thanks in advance if anyone has any ideas...

 

[bkmoore773]

I'm a fan of the Falcon series and played it back in the late '90s. 800x600 was considered high resolution back then, and most people had CRT monitors, so it didn't look bad, even on a larger screen. I have Falcon 4.0 installed under classic on my Powermac G5, fully patched to 1.08c. Unfortunately, it only works with software rendering at 800x600 and I haven't found a joystick that works with it. That being said, the G5 has enough power to run the game at the highest settings very well, and it would be fun to play if I could only figure out how to get a game controller working.

I recently acquired an old office Pentium 4 PC for free. I put in an Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT graphics card, and it runs Falcon 4.0 Allied Force quite nicely in resolutions greater than 800x600 in hardware acceleration. I believe there's an intel-mac version of Falcon 4 Allied Force available, but I've never played it. I suspect it would support higher resolutions as well.

There are basically three versions of Falcon 4.0, that I'm aware of:

1. The original 4.0 for both PC and Mac. Pretty much only runs on late '90s hardware, or under classic.

2. Falcon 4.0 Allied Force, ca. 2005 with updated graphics, improved driver support, and a Yugoslavia campaign. PC and Intel Mac version. This version works quite well on my Pentium 4, and would probably be the best Mac version if you have an early intel Mac.

3. Falcon BMS, which is a community patched version of Falcon 4 that runs on current gaming hardware. PC Only. I don't have the hardware to play BMS and have never tried it.

 

[richardallan]

Thanks for your reply.

I am just really disappointed with it. It looks worse than the old Hornet 3 which had no 3D acceleration. Much worse! If I can't get the 3D working I'll just uninstall it & stick with Hornet Korea. I don't know if I'm missing something somewhere.

I do have a couple of joysticks but not here. I'll try to pick them up in the next couple of days.

 

[richardallan]

Ok. I have the 3D working in Falcon 4 but it still looks terrible. I don't know what I did/changed. I think I'll just delete it & stick with Hornet Korea.