xylem

In FC v1.12, I went back to fly some of the canned missions, and one in particular has me perplexed. It is the A10A night mission called Offensive CAS. It seems to me it's the same mission that was in v1.02, but the weapon loadout includes what the briefing calls SUU-2 (but which the in-game labels identify as LUU-2). These appear to be flare or candle bombs. I think the original mission had some kind of canlde bomb but they did not behave as these do. They seem to produce a small light and instead of lighting up the ground as the old ones did, these produce no light on the ground. However, the building roofs and the targets (armor, etc) glow in an odd ghostly way. I have not looked to see if these bombs are available in the mission-creation loadout, but they are not referenced in the manual, or in the in-game encyclopedia, and I've never heard of them. So my questions are: What are these bombs, where can I find more info on them, how are they properly used, and is the night-lighting effect which they produce correct or an aberration ? Another curiousity- this mission caused the overheating alarm to go off on my cpu, although others haven't. Grateful for any insight......

Thanks for the heads up, Snomhf. I'll give it a try.

Your explanation is great, Zaelu. And much appreciated. Thanks much........

Thanks Zaelu, Can you clarify something, though; I'm not sure how to do that. Do you mean rename the folder? Or copy it and replace the Lock-On folder it's currently in with it? Or what? Please forgive my ignorance. Thanks......

I know this is dumb but, being a good citizen, when I installed FC 1.1 I immediately patched it up to V1.12. Now I discover that a great many of the training missions can't use v1.12, but require v1.1. So, in order to do the training missions, do I need to totally uninstall everything, and just put on v1.1? or can I install a new v1.1 in addition to v1.12? and is so how- do I just put it in a different folder? I am somewhat confused by the fact that there are already two lockons in 'Programs' and in the 'Add/Remove' panel. Anyway, be grateful for any advice....

Fish, here is mine. If you use TrackIR be sure that none of the TIR commands (EG, center) use F9, which I think is the default 'pause' key, because it will turn off the TIR when you give orders like 'rejoin' to your wingman. Hope it works for you. lockon-gc.ZIP

OK guys, thanks for clearing some things up. I appreciate your help in bringing me up to date; and upon further checking I see that what you say is true and works as such. I think one problem I have is that some commands programmed into my Saitek X-52 are obsolete or wrong altogether. Some were carried over from earlier versions. And also x-52 can't distinguish between "+" and "=" since they are on the same key; hence 'ctrl +' (range/elevation BVR search) is the same to the stick as 'ctrl =' (which I have set to 'MFD Radar range IN'). This is causing no end of problems. lol One additional thing, though. The manual says (pg24) that "The scan pattern can be slewed in elevation " : 1. "smoothly by direct elevation slewing" or 2. "discretely by the range-angle method." I think that method #1 may be wrong (or unavailable) for Russian aircraft. At least I can't get it to work. But I may be mistaken; I need to do more study, and fix my programming (duh !) to be sure. But once again thanks for setting me straight on so many things. Cheers......

Aha. So I am. Thanks for your quick answeer GGTharos. I wonder if you would indulge me a little. I did do a search for this information, but could find none. Maybe you can point me in the right direction. The only reference I could find in the read-me's was v1.1 which said ony: "The vertical radar scan zone has been adjusted for Russian Fighters. " And page 230 of the v1.1 manual says: (Step 3) to set target elevation use the 'Shift-; and Shift .' keys, which basically I am doing. It also says you can "use the scan elevation caret along the left, vertical axis of the HDD. Control of this setting can be assigned a game controller axis." (which is also what I have done). So, anyway, shouldn't I then be able to see the elevation in the HDD? It seems more ergonomic to have the horizontal and vertical direction of the antenna represented in one place. Is that caret supposed to work in the game? And also in the HUD the elevation is not continuous but I have to keep hitting the button to get it to move incrementally; is this what was intended, do you know? And one last thing: do the numbers in the HUD represent degrees? And so there are only 15 degrees of divergance from horizontal? I guess I missed some 'required reading' about this; so coulld you tell me where I might find info on this? Thanks, again.... :)

Hi, Since upgrading to FC I find I cannot slew my radar up and down (vertical?). I have 'radar/eos scan' mapped to the ministick on my X-52 (as I did for v1.02, where it worked fine). I also have the Target Designator Cursor box mapped to the ministick. I have used the punctuation keys (semi-colon, comma, etc., and their Shift- versions) as outlined in the Keycommand List to accomplish this. The TD cursor in the HUD works fine this way, and the radar in the MFD will slew through the 3 sections Horizontally (left, center, right), but I cannot get the scan cone to move up or down. When I move the stick the little carret seems to wiggle a bit, but it won't slew. In fact if I use the appropriate keys (shift-; and shift-. ) it still does NOT work. The ministick tests out ok in windows. Has anyone had this problem. Is it a known bug? Or am I just missing something? Thanks....

That makes sense Weta; I noticed that after reducing to 'All Planar' the carrier casts a shadow on the water, but the superstructure doesn't cast a shadow on the flightdeck. Well, I can probably live with that; but it's a shame after spending $350 for a high end video card. I noticed on other air sim fora that people are complaining about shadows and also about 'shimmering' which I also have.

Haven't tried with the Su25 yet, Weta. But I did take RuggButt's suggestion and turned down "Full" shadows to "All Planar" and the problem went away. I don't even know what planar means, or the difference between Full and 'all planar'; can anybody point me to an explanation? And how do we know it's the nvidia drivers? And is anybody planning on looking into this? Cheers, Amd BTW that's funniest thing I've seen in a long time RYKE. LOL

I recently put in a new card, too; 7800 GT, and upgraded to FC. Now I've got this bug. But I also didn't have it before with LOMAC 1.02, and I've always had nvidia cards and late drivers. It happens only with the SU-33 as far as I can tell. Very disappointing. Also I'm not using heat blur, haze is basic, and no AA or AF, so it's something else. Is there any solution on the horizon?

uhmmm....I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, though. My aircraft itself is always overshadowed. It can be out in the bright sunlight but always appears dark. And if I fly over the carrier, a line ( like the umbra on the moon) with light on one side and shadow on the other passes over the ship; usually the plane seems to be 'dragging' the shadow. If I select a view of the carrier it too is totally shadowed (dark). This doesn't happen with other aircraft. Also, I've always had nvidea cards, with new drivers (8xxx) and never had this problem before. It seemed to come with FC. I wish I knew what could be done about it.

Well I just got a new video card (BFG 7800 Gt) and installed FC1.12, and sure enough I got this shadow problem whenever I fly the SU-33. Jeez, it's my favorite aircraft, but now it's always dark, as if in constant shadow. So, also, the carrier. So is this a game bug that will be fixed? Or is this a nvidia problem, and if so is someone talking to nvidia to see if it will be resolved in new drivers or something? What are the prospects ?

It's rich text file; opens in wordpad. I think the easiest way is just to copy it bit by bit into word. Thanks anyway guys...

Well, it opens in Wordpad on it's own; but I can't find any way to manipulate it . I don't have Word, but instead Wordperfect (corel), which will open it (since it opens Word docs). And when it opens it, it actually paginates it correctly. But the 'gridlines' show up as big black bars for some reason, and I can't find a way to delete them, and printing a page that way just uses too much ink. I can't seem to open it as as a spreadsheet, so I don't know why the gridlines are there or how to manipulate them. Anyway, just thought someone might have gone through this before. Thanks...

Hi, I just installed FC, and I need to reprogram my x-52. But after printing out the key-commands list for FC, and starting the programming grind, I discovered that each printed page was missing 5 or 6 lines of commands at the bottom of the page. I've tried everything I can think of: reformating the page, etc. but I can't seem to get it to print correctly. So, does anyone know where I can find a printer friendly version, or can you tell me how to format the one I have so it will print correctly? Feeling pretty dumb about this, lol. (and btw; did a search with no luck ) Thanks.......

Yep. Thanks again. Slowly becoming educated..... :)

Thanks Ruggbutt. I D/L'd the DivX Player with codec and played file on that- great video, and instructive. Just curious tho- is there any way to get Media Player to play this, or am I better off just using DivX (and having an additional application on my computer) ?

Guys, Please forgive my ignorance, but when I try to play this avi file in Windows Media Player I get audio but no video. Do I need some special codec? and where can I get it? Thanks...

Thanks Rossi, I'll check that out...

Thanks Rossi; Excuse my ignorance, but how does one create a paypal account?

No kidding, it's absolutley beautiful. Finally, a manual the way it should be; great graphics, clear pictures - especially the HUD pics- make things much easier to understand. And each chapter Heading is a beautiful screenshot. I haven't tried printing it out yet, so I don't know how it prints, but it doesn't look like there will be any problems. It's also massive; big job. Anyway; thanks ED, this is more than I hoped for.

Thanks, wsoul2k; that worked.

How, exactly, did you get the manual? When I registered and clicked on the link to d/l the manual it just returned me to the registration page.