firesoldier845

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm a 'sideliner' too, I come here to just check news on LO or BS cause I'm a fan as well. FWIW, I think the entire flight simming community has been spoiled by IL-2. Not all of us our fanboys of both IL2 and LO but a good deal of people play both. Oleg has put out a whole ton of free patches and planes, it's just insane how long they have been updating IL2. IMHO, I think it's pretty much spoiled everyone into expecting free planes, more features, endless updates regardless of what sim. cheers

Couldn't agree with you more. Although, I gotta admit it's a tough call between flight simmers or RPGers as to who argues the most online. But if it's not Falcon vs LockOn, it's the F-15 vs the SU-27 or east vs west. It's funny though, same old same old silly people. They spend so much time in the forums arguing over stupid crap I wonder if they actually play Lock On at all. It's is good entertainment though. The ubi lockon forums are good for a laugh or two as well but I think most of the 'top gunners' lurk here.

Yes as far as I know you have to do a complete reinstall if you already have converted from another language to English. You always want to do the conversion to English last. REINSTALL-PATCH UP and then convert. If you used one of the later converters it should have made backups of all your files so you can copy those back and then patch up. If u want to try that. cheers

Me too Skopro. I wish I could run on high. Its really is a great game, and I am critical of it but really it's one of my favorite games. I wish there was a bit more systems management in the tanks and helos. I haven't played Black Shark, but the KA-50 in ArmA is horrible. There aren't even flares or any countermeasures so you are dead meat from a hand launched SAM. The helos fly like crap. But yes, I have read about the patch and am eagerly awaiting it. The infantry combat is top notch of any sim. Im in a squad that has been playing World War II ONLINE (WWIIOL) for 5 years and we have been waiting for another game to come along because we are bored with WWIIOL. I would recommend anyone who is into military sims to get ArmA. It is a bit arcadish in the tanks and helos but it is much better than say Battlefield 2. I wouldn't consider the harrier, helos or tanks though anywhere near the complexity of say LockON, or Steal Beasts 2 or T72 Balkans on Fire. But if you want a multi unit air, sea, ground multiplayer game that is even close to a bit of realism than ArmA is it - or WWIIOL, although the later is pretty old. cheers oh one other thing - skorpo is spot on. I don't think a US release has been announed yet. You can buy the Czech or German version and convert it to English BUT so far with every new patch that is released you have to reinstall the game from scratch, install the patch and then install the language conversion program last. So it's a bit of a pain with the German and Czech versions but it WORKS. You can't simply repatch and then reinstall the language patch. It has to be a clean install. I'm going to buy the UK version though so I don't have to mess with re-installs each time they release a patch. fs

FWIW the graphics are amazing. I have a MacBookPro 2.16ghz with a weak X1600 graphics card and can play the game at NORMAL to LOW settings with the about 1km visibility on the ground. My desktop is a E6700 with Nvida7900 and can play at NORMAL to HIGH settings with about 3-4 km visibility. The game is a beast but is playable even on my laptop. The max graphics are truely amazing but it will bring my desktop system to a crawl. You can set the visibility up to a range of 10km which just looks amazing but is unplayable fps. The future will be pretty awesome. There is no other FPS war game better IMHO even though I am very critical of the HELOS, tanks and other vehicles being arcadish. Wait for a US or UK release if you don't speak Czech or German. cheers fs

I have armed assault and it's a great game but I am dissappointed a bit with the realism. The infantry combat is VERY good, but the vehicles are not near "sim" quality at all. There is no sense of realism at all in the vehicles. I would consider the vehicle and air combat as one notch above Battlefield 2. Total arcade with maybe some realistic physics for the weapons. Their is absolutely zero "systems management" in the tanks or planes or helos. I still give the games a huge thumbs up. Everytime I find time to get on the computer its a hard decision between wanting to play LOMAC or ArmA. But I will say honestly that I am a tad bit dissappointed with ArmA. I could go into a long winded tirade over what is arcadish in the game but don't want to go off. I would have to say in the last several years the 2 most anticipated games for "me" were LockON and ArmA. LockON did live up to the hype for me. ArmA does not. I'm in a squad that plays World War II Online and we are more than likely switching over to ArmA pending the US release. ArmA is awesome. I would recommend anyone with an interest in FPS war games to buy. I don't want to steal any thunder from the original post. But I would warn anyone that it is not "sim" quality, especially the vehicles and systems management is very arcade. Still a great game, better than and more realistic than BF2 IMHO. Infantry squad combat is awesome. Shoot a guy in the torso and he goes down. Realistic ballistics for the hand held weapons. Infantry seems to be spot on. Even the AI is very fun to fight. Tanks, helos and other vehicles are arcade mode. cheers fs

I think what interests a lot of people would be to at least have online missions with goals in mind. Al la, IL2 Sturmovik online battles. Right now I do enjoy playing online, there are missions with goals on some servers. But most players seem to be concerned with just trying to get as many kills as possible without any regard for the mission. I like how IL2 has a certain amount of pilots and planes for each online battle as well as goals like defend or bomb a bridge or an armor column or something a long those lines. It would be cool if we could have something like that for LockON in the future. As well, I think it would even be great to have a certain amount of missiles and bombs for each side. Some element of supply rather than people just loading up on AMRAMMS, MAVERICKS, R-77, R-27ERs, ET's and what ever else. Think of what that would bring to the online battles if you had to use AIM-7's and some vanilla R-27s? Oh, I know it's only wishful thinking as well as most every other comment posted in the forums over the last 3 years. Things will get better for this sim, it's just going to take some time. BShark looks amazing from the fan videos people have posted. It's just a taste of things to come down the road. cheers fs

I'm sure he put a lot of effort in. I appreciated it. It was a heck of a lot of fun and more squads should do it. It would be nice to have an online dynamic campaign like F4 but the fact that LockOn doesn't have it, well it's not a show stopper for me. Some people take the bull by the horns like the "not to be named" squad leader I am talking about. That's a lot of work. I'm sure he spent several hours a day creating a mission for the rest of us to enjoy. Too bad, we don't have more leaders like that in the community. Things will get better in LockOn though. ED is on to something good. This is the best sim released in years. The squad I am in plays "other" games but we are thinking of renting a dedicated server and I will more than likely admin it so I should have a night a week to host some LockOn scenarios to dedicate to the community. I am trying to get someone else to admin my squads website, if I can do that I should have enough free time to make a LockOn community site - which I have always wanted to host. I just don't have any free time ATM. cheers fs

In regards to the online dynamic campaign it would be awesome. But I tell you can get the same enjoyment from LO. I was in a LO squad for a short time and we had nightly missions against the AI. The squad leader would create missions and even ask us the day before what we wanted to fly and we'd all meet at 9 p.m for a massive mission against the AI. I tell u it was the most fun ever playing LO. I have F4 too and really it's good, but I just like LO so much better. To each his own though. I wouldn't criticize anyone who plays other sims that they enjoy better. I mean who are any of us, myself included to tell others what sim they should like? We all have our favorites. I buy and own them all pretty much with the exception of some of the more recent WWI sims I haven't bought.

Although I have a lot of suggestions, it all boils down to the market place and supply/demand. There just isn't the demand. There is a demand, but it's not like the demand for other games. I've tried to get my friends to play LockOn, they think it's really cool. They love to watch me play, or they love to watch videos I make but since the game has been out I might be lucky to have recruited 2 people to go out and buy the game and they barely play it because of the steep learning curve. There's roughly like 33,000 registered users here and I bet maybe 5% or even less are even active regular posting members of the community. If a game sold 33,000 copies it really wouldn't be considered a success. At $30.00 a copy that's what around $1,000,000 - I bet the game costs several millions to develop. That's a net loss. I'm not saying they lost money. My point is they have to sell a heck of a lot more copies than just the small amount of us that visit this website and whine and cry all day long about how the game isn't the way we want it or how it should be like this.. blah blah blah. It's not that I don't have any respect for other peoples opinions or how they feel about flight sims, it's just that we (the people here on lock.ru forums) are a very very very small portion of the overall potential consumer base. The majority of consumers don't want to read a 300 page manual to play or flip through 20 buttons and sit on the tarmac for 15 minutes just to start up their plane. Not to mention the absolutely unrelenting PWNING a newbie would take when they first went online. The more the hardcore people demand realism (and I include myself in this bunch) the more potential customers leave the genre. Flightsims are going down the tubes, the hobby has been declining for years. I think it has to do with competition from other games, as well as the steep learning curve to get into modern combat sims. It might get better, it might get worse but as people demand MORE, the development costs soar and the price is going to get higher unless more people join the community. I bought x-plane simulator over 10 years ago when it sold for $250.00 a copy and had plain 3d graphics without any textures. That's when it was a small community. It's pure economics. I'd pay that much for LockON if it came down to it, but everything has a price where I'd have to say oh that's too much.

I'm sure the experts will join in soon but as far as I know the RETAIL CORE2 DUO comes with this gooey round stuff on the CPU fan that sorta looks like a pad, but it's like silly putty. To be honest I don't remember if i was on the CPU or the FAN heatsink but I am pretty sure it was on my heatsink\fan. When you put the heatsink fan on the CPU it kinda mashes that silly putty stuff and you should be all set. At least my fan had it. I had the same concern you do. The instructions were not very clear, but as far as I know you don't need to add thermal grease to the RETAIL CPU\HEATSINK\FAN. My has been running fine since like August, but I thought the same thing you did as well when I built mine. I mean, if your going to OC maybe a name brand thermal grease might help out but like I said you shouldn't need it to run at default speeds. cheers fs

Oh I have a question that I should really know the answer too this but when you lock in HOJ mode is it totally passive? In other words is it totally silent or will the enemy still see your radar on their threat indicator but just not show a lock? When you lock in HOJ is your radar on or off thats what I mean in simple terms? thanks

I really wish Apple would include as a BTO option a better graphics card for iMac. I'm pleased with my x1600 Radeon but would gladly have paid for a better card if they would give option. I think Lomac should run fine though. The X1600 in iMac is clocked a lot faster than the one in MBP.

The only problem I have with starforce is my DVD burner will no longer burn directly from Windows anymore after I install a program with starforce. It works fine using Nero or Roxio. I can live with it though. But because I have seen it cause some minor issues on my system I do believe people that say it causes bigger problems for them. As for the pirates, as far as I know the DL version of FC has not been cracked. But the GOLD version of FC is. It's freely available on net and starforce CD protection is easily, easily bypassed. Armed Assault was released a few weeks ago with Starforce CD protection and was cracked in days if not minutes. The DL version though with the activations has not been cracked as far as I know. I don't mind the activations too much, it can be a problem cause I do upgrade my hardware quite frequentley - several times a year something is coming out of my box and a new piece going in. But I still have like 6 or 7 activations so really that should last me a few more years. Do u know if we will need to use DUAL activations for BS and FC or I wonder how that will work once BS comes out? Because I will definitley use up the 6-7 activations I have left on FC before my BS ones are used up.

Yeah I've run it on my Macbook Pro under bootcamp. It runs actually quite good. Infact I was kinda suprised at the performance. Your not going to be able to run everything at high or anything like that but MEDIUM to LOW settings its fine on MBP 2.16ghz. I don't have it installed anymore though because I just have really no reason to have it on there since I play LockON with my desktop. I just was curious how it would run. I un-installed it to save space so I can't go and check anything for you now, but it does work fine.