Dassault Aviation Falcon 50

By Andrew Herd (9 October 2001)

he Dassault Aviation Falcon was one of the more distinctive business jets of the seventies, and a design which is still capable of turning heads. Although it wasn't built in huge numbers, specifications were remarkable for its class: a maximum ramp weight of just under 41000 pounds, take-off thrust of 3,700 pounds, and a maximum rate of climb 3,400 fpm at sea level. The Falcon was capable of M 0.87 above FL240, yet it had a stall speed of 83 kias with flaps 48, which translated to a Vref of 126 kias.

We do, of course, already have a Falcon for Flight Simulator, in Abacus' Corporate Pilot package, but this is the twin-engined Falconjet 2000, and it suffers from the usual and distracting Corporate Pilot problem of not having the EHSI display centered in its panel window, so this older trijet is particularly welcome, not only because of the pedigree of the development team, but because it is an exceptional piece of freeware.

The visual model is based on a 1976 vintage hull owned by the Conservatoire de l'Air et de l'espace d'Aquitaine, which is a non-profit making association, whose activities center around the preservation and restoration of airplanes and document collections. Founded in 1987 by René Lemaire, who was Falcon project manager at Dassault-Aviation, it is now run by General Marc Alban who is also executive manager of the Musee de l'Air et de l'Espace located at Le Bourget. The Conservatoire is located very close to the Dassault-Aviation factory where the Falcon 50 is built, and the team benefited from a close working relationship with Dassault.

The package is just over 9 Mb in size, and should be unzipped into the main \FS2000 folder, making sure that you have the 'use folder names' and 'overwrite existing files' options checked. Fail to do this and you will run into trouble, because the software uses Dai Griffith's excellent radio set, and if the .dat files associated with these radios do not install into the FS2000 folder, loading any aircraft which uses them will crash FS2000. You have been warned!

Once the process is complete you will find two versions of the plane installed, the "standard," which has 12000 polygons and the "light," which has only 7800, and is kinder on frame rates. Both planes bear the fictional registration F-CAEA; in France the "C" range is reserved for sailplanes, but whatever you do, do not try gliding in this one. In addition to read-mes in English and French, there is a full checklist, a speed reference file, and a wonderful manual presented in an innovative .exe format.

This review concentrates on the standard version of the plane, but the only difference between this and the light version is that the latter uses a simpler visual model to preserve frame rates. The panel and flight models are identical between the two versions, and I reckon the light model will run acceptably on a 300 MHz Pentium, as long as you don't push your luck with weather and scenery density.

The visual model is very impressive, certainly in the top 5% I have seen for FS2000, and better than many commercial releases. There is a full complement of moving parts, transparent windows, and animated bits and pieces. When the plane is first loaded, the airstairs are in the down position, showing off a partial view of the cabin interior. Incidentally, one thing to watch out for here is that if you had another plane selected originally, only the number two engine will be running. Unusually for a freeware aircraft, there is a full set of cockpit views with extremely crisp bitmaps, which leads me on to another feature of the plane, which is that if you don't switch on the nav lights before using anything but the forward cockpit view, virtual cockpit overlays will prevent you from seeing out. This is well covered in the readme, and once you get used to it, isn't difficult to remember - because although there doesn't seem to be reason for it at first, the "nav light fiddle" allows some rather clever programming tricks to be done.

The panel is very good indeed, with the usual gorgeous bitmap that we have come to expect from Yannick Lavigne. The special gauge programming was by Fred Banting, who has worked with Yannick on several other projects, and the result is better than any other bizjet panel I have seen for FS2000, freeware or commercial. The only downside is that the panel uses default night lighting, but since many commercial panels do exactly the same, one can hardly fault the team.

In addition to the main panel, there are several auxiliary windows, notably the overhead panel, the radios and a "zoomed" view of the primary flight instruments. The overhead is fully functional and can be used to start the plane, though many readers will be delighted to hear that you can also use the standard keyboard command, which starts the engines one at a time.

The radio stack is, as I mentioned above, courtesy of Dai Griffiths and shows his rather wonderful Collins radio set. There is a separate manual for the radios, and I suggest that you read it carefully, because Dai has implemented an almost completely realistic stack, which means that the radios do not operate the way the default set does in FS2000. This is a very complex and capable setup, but once you get used to it you will wonder how you ever got on without it.

As far as I can recall, I first saw a zoomed flight instrument display in Corporate Pilot, and I was struck by what a good idea it was then, so I was delighted to see that this team has implemented something similar. The panel has been kept deliberately near to the original perspective in order to maximise the forward view, and while I could read the instruments on the main panel very easily on a 19 inch display, it would be difficult to do so on anything smaller, so I am sure that many users will welcome this feature with open arms.

The flight model was so good that I looked to see who had coded it - the answer was Rob Young, who is better known for Fly! models, and might hopefully defect back to Flight Simulator now that FS2002 is on the horizon. His influence is apparent the moment you begin to taxi; the nose wheel steering is positive and makes navigation around airports extremely easy. Rob recommends setting all the controls sensitivities to about 50% in the FS2000 menu, but I had no problem using my standard set up.

According to the readme, Rob was, "...determined to overcome what in my opinion are big mistakes in flight modelling... in many 3rd party FS aircraft, and it intrigues me why the same mistakes are present over and over again in 90% of the add-on aircraft I have tried. These include vastly over sensitive pitch and trim, rolling too quickly, spoilers too strong, ground brakes far too strong, reverse thrust too powerful and general "feel" too stiff and lifeless." This is a sentiment I couldn't agree with more strongly, as the curse of FS2000 is beautiful visual models with arcade-type handling, a problem which is compounded by the tradition of modifying existing flight models, often ones intended for completely different aircraft. The trouble is, I guess, that flight model design is just about the most difficult part of FS2000, and it isn't helped by deficiencies in the API.

It didn't take much flight time for me to realise that Rob had achieved his aim. The Falcon accelerates smoothly, and rolls sedately without any difficulty initiating turns. The readme makes a particular point about the smoothness of the trim and it is possible to get this set well enough that the plane will fly just about hands off. Unusually for an FS2000 model, the aircraft taxis without using abnormally large amounts of throttle, which Rob achieved by the neat trick of increasing fuel flow at low thrust. This same approach means that braking and reverse thrust will seem inadequate to users who have grown accustomed to the FS2000 defaults, which have more in common with carrier arrester wire deceleration than anything you might see in a business jet. The first developers to tackle this "feature" of FS2000 were the 767 PIC team, and many readers will recall how the forums were full of complaints about how pathetic the brakes were on that sim, when in fact they were pretty close to reality!

The manual has a section comparing performance to the detailed specifications of the real aircraft and these were tested by Peter Sidoli, an experienced corporate jet pilot. Having no access to a Falcon (but I am willing, if anyone can get me a couple of hours, wet) I took these at face value, but from what I hear, the general performance envelope is pretty realistic. I wouldn't expect any less from Rob.

So, we have, I think, a new contender for the prize of best FS2000 corporate jet. But before I forget, I'm saving the best till last... the Falcon has a virtual interior, which can be accessed from the classic cockpit view by switching the nav lights off and pressing the "S" key. This is something to see, believe me. Once inside you can use the view zoom mode, or a hat-switch if you have one, to move about inside; or you can just stare through the windows, sip your drink, sink into the leather seats and watch the world go by. As you can see from the screen shot above, this mode is extremely impressive, and I think we are likely to see it featuring on other aircraft before long.

There have been so many really good aircraft released of late that I can hardly believe the progress which is being made. It wasn't that long ago that you really had to scratch around to find halfway acceptable Flight Simulator planes, which was why competing simulations have been so successful, but as of today, I can't think of a category where FS2000 can't offer an aircraft which is unbeatable in its class.

If you have any problems using the plane, Yannick has an FAQ here.