Falcon 4.0 Operation Desert Storm Theater (ODS)

Background of Operation Desert Storm.
August 2nd, 1990 the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after accusing Kuwait leaders to oil price manipulation which supposedly would have cost a millions USD in a month to Iraq. Western nations were shocked, at first there was no direct statements from the US leaders about this dreadful act. Soon after a meeting between Margaret Thatcher (UK prime minister) and George Bush (US president), the policy got tough on Iraq. President of United States of America quoted saying "This will not stand..." It was not long after that when US troops started to move into the Saudi Arabia with intentions of making sure Saddam wont come further south and invade Saudi Arabia too. The was called Operation Desert Shield.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Iraq's withdrawal and imposed sanctions, but to no avail. U.S. President George Bush began working to form an international coalition against Iraq. By mid-January 1991, that coalition included 39 nations and a military colossus of 670,000 troops, 200 warships and the world's most state-of-the-art military equipment. The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, had authorized "all necessary means" to remove Iraq from Kuwait if they had not voluntarily withdrawn by January 15th 1991.

At the night of January 17th, 1991 Allied Aircraft took off from bases around Saudi Arabia, in Carriers at the Gulf and base in Diego Garcia with the destination: Iraq. At 02:38am local Zulu time, the first bomb of Operation Desert Storm was dropped by F-117 stealth fighter and the rest, is history...

Operation Desert Storm Theater
How would you like to join Allied forces in the Gulf and fly sorties against the Iraqi dug in troops all over the Iraqi soil? Dropping bombs on strategic targets, hammering ground forces, destroying airfields and command & communication sites. You will fly missions from Saudi Arabia on historic bases like the real pilots did, you will fly over the heavily defended city of Baghdad as well as Kuwait & Basra. You will sweep the endless desert terrain in search of the scud launchers that were considered so much threat to Israel. All this on PMC "Operation Desert Storm" theater to Falcon4.

PMC TFW Operation Desert Storm Theater is a tribute to the men and women of the Coalition forces in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. We aim for the realism with intentions to produce the best Iraq-Kuwait-Saudi landscape with historical unit placement, like the Scuds, EW radar's etc.

Size and Coordinates

This is 128 segment theater. Theater region is four times the size of Korea as we cannot model accurate historical scenario in the smaller theater size. Even this 128 theater gives us some limitation as couple of important airbases in Saudi Arabia did not make into the area. However this is very good selection for the middle east. (Click image for larger shot)
(Nautical Miles): 1104.75 x 1104.75
Resolution: 0.134858 Nautical Miles
Centered on: Lat 31 Long 43
NW: Lat 40.2063 Long 30.9456
NE: Lat 40.2063 Long 55.0544
SW: Lat 21.7937 Long 33.0851
SE: Lat 21.7937 Long 52.9149
Highest point: 17151ft

Textures
ODS contains totally new tileset. The basic terrain is plain desert which has of course desert city, road, river and coastline tiles. Then we have the lush arable land and other areas nar Tigris river etc. Next when we move to higher grounds we have light colored mountain textures with all the necessary features. Lastly we have dark colored mountain textures for the highest elevations on mostly Iran, Turkey etc.

Campaign
The campaigns we feature is Historical Operation Desert Storm year 1991 conflict with Iraq. Second campaign is fictional "Black Phoenix" which is full out war between Saudi Arabia/Coalition Vs Iraq/Iran. Iran vs Iraq war campaign is also included. The objectives are created by the standard method from DCW data and all landmarks should be in their correct places in the theater. We run approximately 12000 objectives including all bridges and factories, radar sites, sam sites and other important "targets". The objectives are same for all campaigns and Tactical Engagement.

Known Bugs
The tiling is made by CATE supported by few human tilings on major cities. Some parts there might be some errors on coast line cities, some bridges might be two close to each other. Also transition from one terrain type to another with roads and rivers or cities might cause some bad tiling. However overall these errors are not that distract the player too much. We will fix these small errors in the future.

Voices for Air Traffic Controllers are default Korean. No ODS specific sounds have been added, yet. Airbases should have correct TACAN channels for navigation according to real world data.

Flight Scheduling is slow or perhaps even non existing on historical 1991 ODS campaign due the reason that the squadrons are placed according to historical data. It might be that we must move them around for better gameplay in falcon, but so far it uses historical placement. The Black Phoenix campaign uses same placement but does indeed have more enemy activity from Iranian side at least. One important note is that even the manual instructs you to change PAK priorities (using old image's) please use the Set by HQ button! If you change PAK's yourself even the default Korean campaign slows down on its activity, same here with ODS. Anyways please keep on posting reports on the squadrons you detect that aren't scheduling flights.

Current Features
Seamless one click exe installer, installs ALL necessary theater files without user input. Uninstalls the theater completely without damaging any original Falcon files or other theaters. Theater can be switched from the in game Theatres menu. You can have multiple theaters installer at the same time.

New User Interface graphics including AWACS map for TE/Campaign and new Kneemap for in-flight.

Theater specific historical Aircraft / Vehicle skin set made by fine skin artists of Falcon 4 scene.

Completely new tiles! No old Korean textures were used in ODS terrain, all brand new tiles to create that desert look of Middle East. There are about 230 tiles currently and the desert look is clean and simple without too much "clutter". Desert, and two types of Mountains for higher altitudes are included.

Version and Download
Latest version can be found from Falcon 4.0 PMC Theaters page.