firesoldier845

Is the F-16 sim going to include the current group of flyables as well F-15, Su, Mig, A-10 and Frog?

One thing u should think about is the bigger monitors are nice but most LCDs look like crap unless you run at the default resolution. A big LCD might have a default resolution of 1600X1200 or even higher. That means you have to run LOCKON at a high resolution or it looks like crap. So you run at high resolution and that kills your performance. So when you buy think about that - most 17" LCD = 1280X1024 and 15" =1024X768. Trust me, Lock ON will look better on a 15" LCD at 1024X768 then on a 21" LCD at 1024X768. FWIW, I have a 17" LCD and run at 1280X1024 - if I try to run at lower resolutions it looks like crap but I get decent performance at 1280X1024. cheers and good luck

Sounds great. I think you guys are running the best server on hyperlobby ATM - very nice - especially for us who like to play A2G. Thank you VVS504.

Here is the way I understand it, If you delete structures out of the HIGH folder it will just replace the structures with the ones you deleted or in other words you will just get more of the other structures that you didn't delete. If you really want to reduce the number of buildings you have to change a setting in your graphics.cfg file. FIRESOLDIER845 { near_clip = 4; middle_clip = 4; far_clip = 60000; structures = {20, 2000}; trees = {100000, 6000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {3000, 40000}; mirage = {3000, 10000}; surface = {10000, 50000}; lights = {50, 10000}; lod = 0.7; } See the structures = ?? The first # is the density and the 2nd number is the range (I think in meters) that the objects come into view. If you lower the density you should get better fps over the towns. You can also try reducing the range as well. I have mine set to 20 and 2000 and my fps never drops below the high 30's even over the large towns. You can also look for: LandLodDistances { LandDay { L01 = 8000; L12 = 25000; This is the range at which LockOn will choose between high or low resolution textures. If you lower to these settings you should get better fps without much visual quality loss. I found if you go below these numbers you will start to notice the terrain quality will reduce significantly. By using these 2 tweaks I've practically doubled my fps over the default settings. cheers

Hey Goya, your one heck of a virtual pilot in that F-15. I've tangled with you a few times and sure hate it. I don't think of ever managed to ever get you without getting whacked myself. I got you a few times but you always got me too. You still flying the F-15 mostly? Lately, I've got into ground pounding with the regular SU-25 and love it. Now that I got my LOCK-ON config tweaked to perfection I'm having a blast with the ground pounding in SU-25. I remember one time I flew a co-op with you guys in S77th flying the SU-25 and it was the hands down best time ever I had playing LOCK-ON. I haven't been on hyperlobby that much since 1.1, the whole ECM thing just really changed the game for me. I used to play every single night for hours but since 1.1 I just haven't been playing that much last 6 months or so. Maybe after the patch I'll get back to AA to combat. I'm getting back into it, been trying some ground pounding on VVS 504 server and having a total blast. You guys ever run ground attack missions on S77th at all? nice to hear from you - you guys in S77th are really a good bunch. cheers firesoldier845

Have been reading some real life use of SU-25 in Afganistan - guess they would sometimes use 1 SU-25 to illuminate a target with the laser designator while another SU-25 could come in from another direction and launch a missile. Just wondered if this could work or does work in Flaming Cliffs? If not would be a cool feature for CO-OP play. cheers

Yeah gotta admit, I used to play on your server a lot and souless was a great guy. Talked to him on TS a few times, flew some missions with him a few times when you guys did co-op. I have a pretty nice work schedule and used to play a lot online and I would almost always see souless online. I used to wonder man how does this guy get to play so much cause he was almost always online??? I guess he has his reasons. I go through phases too where I get sick of a certain game. He'll be missed online though. You guys have a nice squad, a really good bunch of guys in S77th. Needless to say you guys provide a great contribution to this community with your hyperlobby server. cheers and thanks

Hey it would be nice to have a slider, but I gotta admit I get great performance with just a few tweaks of the graphics.cfg file. I've almost given up on this sim several times because of performance issues but really a few tweaks and I get great fps and couldn't be happier with my Lock-On experience. FWIW, I'm not sure if 3.0 pixel shaders would make performance better or worse. What I mean, is with 3.0 ps maybe things would look even nicer but the performance hit would be even worse (not 100% sure on this though). Also, I think ED so busy with the patch and Black Shark Add-on that they probably ain't going to do squat more for Lock-On engine. Really, you shouldn't have to go in and hack the config files to get decent fps but you can and performance is pretty good - I'm happy with it. But a new person or not so smart person may have a tough time with all the tweaks. It took me years of playing this sim to finally figure out a decent solution compromise of visuals, etc to get good fps and visuals - oh and 2 computer upgrades costing thousands... :) lol cheers

Anyone sure on what the max amount these can be set to for a computer with a gig of RAM?

I have the same specs as you and tweaked my LOCK ON setup to get really awesome fps. Typically 50-100 fps and high 30's in highly populated areas. These are just some tips as others probably will have some differing views: Mirrors are fps killers so turn them off. There is a water mod that you should get but I still run my water at MEDIUM. With the tweak you lose the ripples in the water but you still get the nice lighting effects. This helps fps a lot. Make sure you get the overcast cloud mod. In your graphics.cfg file look for LandLodDistances { LandDay { L01 = 10000; L12 = 40000; } I leave my L01 to 10000 and L12 I set at 30000 - this will also give you a nice fps boost. It has to do with the distance for high and low res textures. You can set them lower but I noticed if you go lower than 30000 u will see some strange things and nasty edges of the textures in the terrain so I leave mine at 30000. I use a custom view range setting } FIRESOLDIER845 { near_clip = 0.2; middle_clip = 4.; far_clip = 70000; structures = {15, 3500}; trees = {100000, 6000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {3000, 50000}; mirage = {3000, 15000}; surface = {14000, 80000}; lights = {100, 30000}; lod = 1.5; } The settings are better than LOW but lower than MEDIUM and this helps with fps. I set my STRUCTURES DENSITY to 15 which will really helps reduce the amount of buildings over cities. Some people may want more buildings but I find this number to be good enough for me to get the feel of flying over a town but not wasting fps on useless buildings. Over the big cities I get average 40fps or higher. I use the MEDIUM scene file which means you don't get all the nice huge forests and landmarks but it's good enough for me and I get great fps with plenty of overhead for AI units and explosions and stuff. Yet, you still get some nice trees and stuff like that along roads and towns. Naturally, though you can tweak everything to the way you want it. I'm still experimenting myself with settings. cheers firesoldier845

Been messing around with LOMAN and have been able to double my fps and am very happy with LOMAC atm but wanted to tweak the eye candy to what I like. I've figured out a lot on my own but maybe someone here could clear a few things up. Obviously the 1st number is the density and the 2nd number seems to be the range at which objects are faded out or in. structures = {30, 2000}; trees = {60000, 3000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {3000, 40000}; mirage = {3000, 10000}; surface = {10000, 50000}; lights = {50, 10000}; lod = 0.7; Mainly I just need to know what each thing is though. I want to use the HIGH scene file because I noticed this has the nice forests and certain objects that don't seem to appear unless it is used. structures = Is this just the buildings and specifically what buildings - does it include bridges? powerplants, etc or just the generic buildings? trees = obvious dynamic = is this just the cars and trains or does it include ships? does it have any effect at all if u leave the civilian AI disabled? objects = is this stuff like at the airfields like fuel trucks and such - or is this bridges, lighthouses, powerplants, etc. mirage = not sure on this one?? surface = how about this one too?? So far I'm having good results and am very pleased with my settings. (the config above is not my own custom one just one of the generic ones I cut and pasted). However, I sure would like to tweak things a big if I could. Thanks for any help.

Not to be arguementive, but what's the point about whether or not the video is just the javelin explosion or not? I mean, isn't an enemy tank going to be full of fuel and ammo??? Hey, not being argumentive or trying to start a flame war. Sure, if the tank was full of C4 or something like that to make the explosion look more dramatic yeah that's wrong-it's faked. But, if it's got fuel and ammo what's wrong with that?

Ok cool, I thought that because they don't seem to work at all but had to ask. thanks for your help.

Just curious, does anyone know exactly what autopilot modes work in the regular SU25? are all those new modes just for the SU25T or do some of them work in the plain SU25?

I played once with the S77th in a closed game against the AI. There must have been 12+ of us online. I flew in a group of SU25's with Dante and someone else in the squad whom I forget the name ATM. We took some ground targets out while the rest of the 77th kept the AI planes off our butts. I remember getting hit by a SAM and landing on a road with no engines. IT was the best time I ever had playing LOMAC online. Those guys are a bunch of really good guys in S77th. Glad you had a good time. cheers fs845

I'm thinking of buying another BFG6800 Ultra for SLI. I can only run 1280X1024 with my LCD but I wonder if it will be worth it. The price is coming down on video cards and I am thinking if I can get one for around $300 in a few months it might be worth it. I already have top notch CPU, memory, etc. What do u think? Is SLI even working yet with LOMAC. cheers

There is also one big disadvantage - TFC makes so much money selling the engine for producing real military simulators that they say the heck with making games and we're out. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but it could happen.

I made a short video with Lock On of some F-15 dogfighting. It's only my 2nd time messing around with video making so please bear with my learning curve. Constructive criticism is welcome. enjoy Many thanks to lockonskins for hosting. http://www.lockonskins.co.uk/index.php?page=downloads&cat=84 look for "Come and Get It" by firesoldier845 enjoy cheers firesoldier845

I would agree 100%. The thing for me is that it gives a whole new different weapons to deal with as well. yeah missiles are missles but would be nice to fight with or against MICAs and 550s and Super530s instead of just AMRAMM vs R77 vs R27. Plus it just gives another country into the mix. I'm with a lot of others though, I don't really care what the next fixed wing aircraft is as long as we get something, and the decision has already been made - F-16 so what are we all crying about anyway? But yeah FWIW I wish for a Mirage 2000 and then next would be Mig-25, F-18, and maybe even a Mig-23/27 would be cool. I wonder what they will do after the F-16?? Truthfully maybe our input is good, after all they do read these forums quite a bit. Even the guy that mentiond the SU-24 would be really cool, but it's 2 seater so I don't know if they will ever do 2 seaters anytime soon. I also thing they will fix the avionics in F-15 for those of you that want to see that. If I were a betting man I think my money would be on F-18 for next add-on after the F-16 - I don't really care much about it myself but a lot of others want it and I think from a marketing stance ED will do it. Things are looking good, they just take time. I'm not really enthsiastic about the KA-50 add-on but will buy it just so I can play online and support ED for the next project. cheers

Just wondered if there was an overcast cloud mod for FC 1.1 that improved frame rates? I remeber the old ones were nice but every site I go to download them says they not compatible with 1.1

Yeah I am leaning towards this and I won't have to spend any money to do this. But I am concerned about the rendering times and also I've read a few issues about file size of the AVI file problem if it's larger than 2 gigs. I am not clear on this issue though - is it true or not that if the file size is 2 gigs or more that it won't work? I have DVI-AV files on my computer that are 12 gigs that play fine and edit fine in Sony Vegas but I've read that 2 gigs or more with LOMAC that are problems. Is this true or not? I'll probably use the AVI render in LOMAC, but what kind of times are we talking to render a ten minute clip? Is it better to break the movie up into small tracks and render them individually? Is there a way to even break up tracks using LOMAC? I sure wish there was a rewind button or way to save tracks mid playback. I like the convenience of FRAPS very much but again, I have those issues with dropped frames at higher resolutions. The ingame render times I mean how bad are they for a typcial track like 5-10 minutes of gameplay - will it finish over night in like 8 hrs or are we talking even longer times? I guess worst case scenario could create many seperate missions for tracks and render each scene seperatley in the renderer?? Also one other question about tracks. I noticed (and I only tried this a few times) that if I setup a mission with certain settings for graphics and then go back and try and change the graphics settings in the track and set them higher that it reverts back to the old graphic settings. Is this a bug or is my install nerfed or maybe I am just doing the procedure incorrectly. For example, I recorded a track with SCENES MEDIUM and WATER to MEDIUM and then tried to set SCENES HIGH AND WATER VERY HIGH and when I play the track back it reverts back to SCENES MEDIUM and WATER MEDIUM. From what I have read here it seems that it should not be doing that but it does that for me and can't figure out why. cheers firesoldier845

Just wondered if any of you A\V computer gurus out there could give me a hand with a few technical questions. I've been really gettting into making flight sim videos, it's a lot of fun and has helped me a great deal with making home movies of my daughter that has helped me score big time points with the wife. Anyway, I've been using FRAPS but I have some issues. The main thing is that my videos are choppy because LOCK-ON is very demanding on hardware. Even though I can get 40-50fps while flying or playing back the saved track in LOMAC, once I turn on fraps my fps hits down into the teens and the movies are choppy as hell. I've found a nice cheat and that is that I set the resolution in LOMAC to 640X480 and it looks like hell at full screen but then my movies are smooth as heck in fraps cause I am getting over 100+ fps in the game at that low of a resolution. They look great when played in media player and are smooth as silk. This works nice and seems like I have the issue solved BUT I really would like higher resolution videos so I can go to DVD or even HDTV format. So, a potential workaround was to use my S-Video output on my video card and send it to my camcorder and record LOMAC in DV-AVI format - and totally bypass FRAPS. Great idea, but I found out when I bought my camcorder cheap that it doesn't have S-Video IN, only S-Video OUT and not even A\V in only has firewire IN\OUT. If I spent a few more bucks I could have got a camcorder with S-Video in and problem solved but I didn't so I am screwed. I wondered if there was a driver and program that would allow me to send the game video through my firewire port out to my camcorder but no luck. Is this even possible? Anyone ever here of something like that? Maybe even a convertor box that would take S-Video IN and output to firewire??? On the other hand too I see these video capture cards for less than $50.00 online - would this be what I needed??? I also thought that if i got a 2nd HD and used RAID that maybe FRAPS would be able to capture at higher resolutions without dropping frames?? Or if I got a firewire HD and saved the FRAPS screens to instead of the HD LOMAC was running on it would it work better?? The last thing I could do is use the in game video render AVI tool. I mean I could use this because I could set FULL graphics to incredible levels and render a kick ass movie but that means time and I am very happy with FRAPS if I could get it to not drop frames. Like I mentioned before I found a method that works half ass but it works. I know I provided my own solutions above but I don't know which ones will work or not work and I have to spend money to find out if most of them work or not and don't want to spend $$$ if I ain't sure if it will do what I want or not. In conclusion I am buying a laptop next month and can get windows media center edition with it that has S- video IN which I guess could solve my problem- the thing is that it's $199 more for the S-video in and if I could find a $50 solution or even a free solution I could save $199 on my laptop. Sorry for the long post, any suggestions???? cheers

Also, if I use the built in render AVI, which I am leaning towards using, is there a way to set it up so that I can only render small sections of the track - i.e. can you cut out track sections from the beginning or end and create a new track that only has a small part so I can do it in pieces or sections rather than rending the whole thing? Also, is it possible to rewind in the track or have a save point or something a long those lines? One other thing, I noticed that some of the missions I flew I set everthing to medium or low and then when I was getting ready to video edit I set everything back to high so that I could use the AVI program but everything got reset back to my original settings of medium or low. Is this is a bug or am I doing something wrong? or do I have to keep the scenes on HIGH for the original track and then can boost everything else up for the render? thanks again - i sure hope someone reads this forum cause I am eager to get started just need some help in getting in the right direction. cheers firesoldier845

I made a couple of movies at home using Microsoft Movie Maker and Fraps. I was quite happy with the results considering it was my first two movies but noticed a few issues. Also, I'm totally new to video making of any kind so I'm kinda lost as far as taking my movie making to the next level. First off, I love FRAPS, it's very easy to use but I'm losing some frames with it and it's hurting the quality of my movies. So what can I do to improve the capturing so I don't do lose frames? I've been capturing at 30fps should I try lowering it to 25fps or increasing it to 40fps?? Maybe I should try lowering my settings in LOCK-ON?? Also I have another issue with FRAPS and MS movie maker. I absolutely love the quality of the movies that FRAPS grabs. I mean the movies are almost as nice as the original - ALMOST. I'm quite happy with the FRAPS quality if I could get that same level of quality in my final product but I can't. I drag the movies into MS Movie Maker and when I render the final movie the quality is just SO-SO. I really could care less about file size to a certain point. I'm looking for quality and MS Movie Maker just compresses them too much. I even tried creating a custom profile and using larger bit rates like 4000kb a sec for video and still the quality is no where near what the original FRAPS movies are. Is it because the FRAPS movies are already compressed somewhat and when I recompress an already compressed movie it looks like crap? FWIW - I even exported as DV-AVI and still noticed degradation of the movie as compared to what FRAPS put out. So I tried Sony Vegas with FRAPS and even those clips when I rendered them with DivX still looked worse than the original FRAPS clips. So what gives?? I've read a few posts from you guys that are using the built in render AVI thing in LOMAC. I tried it and was impressed. But it is very slow. So what I really want to know is how can I get the best quality movies that look at least as good as what I could get with FRAPS?? That's the bottom line. If I use the built in render thing, which I really don't want to but might be forced to use is there a way I can break my tracks up so I don't have to render the entire track if all I need is a few seconds here and there? If I stick with FRAPS what program (i.e. Sony Vegas, Movie Maker, Premiere) should I use and what codec should I use so that I can retain at least the quality of the original FRAPS clips in my final product? Again, I don't care too much about file size to a certain point cause I want to eventually go straight to DVD and TV. thanks, I know it a lot of questions, but I'm learning this video stuff and still got a lot to learn. thank you for any help cheers

I've been getting into making LOCK ON videos and wondered what CODEC I should use for the final product? At first I used the MS Codecs in MS Movie Maker but I was not happy at all with the compression and quality of the final moving. I recently got Sony Vegas and wondered what CODEC I should use? I'm not even happy with the FREE divx encoder and was wondering if I bought the Pro version of divx if I could get higher quality videos? I'm not really that concerned about file size - I want quality. Mpeg-2?? My DVD player will play divx files though so I was thinking of using divx - is the pro version that much better than what you get for free? thanks