SwingKid

Wouldn't the such haze obscure the terrain surrounding the building, as well as the building itself? How would you aim a Maverick or Karen without any references? -SK

That's Kacha, just one of several airbases not modelled. On another topic - have you seen what Groznyy looks like in those satellite photos? Some big fires burning there. -SK

Making the object semi-transparent does not improve FPS. Making the object "invisible" (i.e. not drawn) beyond a certain distance is what improves the FPS. What making the object semi-transparent does is to smooth the sharp transition between "visible" and "invisible". The pop-up effect is something you can't see in a screen-shot, it only becomes apparent when you are actually moving over a city and suddenly see these numerous 3D buildings seeming to pop out of the ground one by one as you move towards them. I tend to agree with you though, the pop-up effect never bothered me and I preferred it to all these semi-transparent buildings, because it actually let me see my targets out to the maximum possible "drawn" distance. The fade is by comparison a purely cosmetic effect, at the cost of combat effectiveness IMHO. But it seems we have a lot of people who like to do cosmetic "look at the scenery" flying in this sim. -SK

Map improvements! Thanks for asking. :) -SK

That's what I would think from the description, but... all aircrew, manuals, everybody I've talked to that should "know"... all unanimously agree there is not, and never has been any "zoom" display. So I'm at a loss to understand how this mode works. Which book is it? Davies/Thornborough? -SK

Where did you read about it? Was there any description of the "Expand" radar mode that was added to APG-63psp after AIM-ACE? -SK

In order to let the scene be drawn quickly enough to permit acceptable frames per second (FPS) performance, objects beyond a certain distance are not drawn. This once caused a problem of buildings "popping up" into view when they came into the drawing range, that looked very distracting and unrealistic for many users, especially when flying over a city. So, to alleviate this problem, now the objects "fade" into view. Cosmetically, it's less distracting to the eye. What you see in the screenshot is a "zoomed view" manipulation, like looking through binoculars or a telescope from a large distance, so that distant objects look much larger and closer. These distant objects are still partly transparent. This is not the default view for the simulator and it is usually not so noticeable. -SK

The original APG-63 used in AIM-ACE had a manual rotary switch to "Pulse" (i.e. non-Doppler) mode. AFAIK this mode has since been removed in APG-70 and APG-63V1. I'm not sure if it explains anything but it may be another factor to consider. -SK

Can you copy this to the F-15C avionics sticky thread? -SK

Pardon me I didn't quite get that - this is a SkyWars bug report, or a Lock On bug report, or something you observed that didn't interfere with your mission but I should be advised for the future, or how it works in real life? The diamond appears and disappears during the same mission, or its presence varies between different missions? The "caret" is the Pave Penny target designation diamond in the HUD? -SK

HUD target diamond should appear in SkyWars anti-tank CAS mission only. -SK

It's a question if this is a SkyWars problem or a Lock On problem. There's a button in the Lock On Options menu labelled "Global". I would assume that this gives the player the choice to override whatever the mission settings are, with his own settings. But, after testing, I found that it doesn't work with classified missions. Should SkyWars be changed, or Lock On? Isn't it better to have the ability to over-ride any mission with the "global" button, even non-SkyWars missions? Part of my reason for classifying the SkyWars missions was to call attention to problems with classified missions that didn't seem to get fixed before release. E.g. no ability to change payload, greyed-out "declassify" menu options, etc. This label issue may be another one. I'm hesitant to switch to unclassified missions, and let these issues go ignored. As for monitor visibility, I have an alternate idea. Instead of having the label of an aircraft be a "dot" at a long distance... have the aircraft model itself be a dot! Then the dot is actually IN the right place, instead of beside the right place. Labels are always overlapping my targets and spoiling my aim. -SK

You're not alone. Out of curiosity, what do you guys use labels for? Is the ground vehicle target not designated by a diamond marker in the HUD, like in the real jet? I didn't intend to lock them off, I thought I had just set them off by default, so I wouldn't have to manually switch them off every time I start a mission. -SK

Be warned that the campaign won't let you continue if you've tampered with the generated .cmp file. SkyWars generates a ten-letter password at random, but it checks the password when you try to resume the campaign to make sure you didn't cheat. You will have to: (a) open the .cmp file in Notepad, (b) figure out where the password is, read it off and write it down, and © after declassifying the SkyWars-generated .cmp file, re-classify it with the same password before saving. You will also need to know what is Lock On's scheme for encrypting passwords, but that is easy enough to figure out that I won't give any clues. I think AndyHill already figured it out without help. Hope this helps, -SK

And if it were possible to change the payload while the mission was classified..? -SK

AI is manageable for now. A trigger system would be nice, but that's icing on the cake. Both of these (together with Eagle avionics) are areas we know already have the developer's attention - and are seemingly a lot of work. On the other hand I never heard them acknowledge the idea of having destroyed buildings in single missions - and yet, the feature's already been there in the scripted campaigns for the past 7 years. Just out of our reach! -SK

Bash away. :) No worries. My priority is my dynamic campaign, for which I need this feature. Avionics bugs are not preventing me from getting it done - this is. -SK

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to S77th-GOYA again." ...whatever that means. Wait a second... aren't you the guy who said rep was stupid?? -SK

Hmm, what if we ALL in this thread gave reputation points to each other? Surely, ED would HAVE to listen to us then... :) -SK

I decided to use my phenomenal cosmic Reputation Power to give points to anybody who replies to this thread. 3 easy, free, shiny new Reputation Points! You reading this right now, you know you want them - Just sign in and say hello! :) -SK

Ooh, I love it when we all agree on something. :) I think the easiest way to implement this would be through the "Mission Goals" button, since it's the only one that can independently designate any object on the map. Give it a third state - "SURVIVE", "DESTROY", "(destroyed)". I wonder how often I'm going to bump this one... -SK

Are you interested to create a new theater? It's a lot of programming work. We cannot simply place mountain and objects where we wish, it's necessary to organize those objects into an heirarchical "grid" for the graphics engine. Too much work for me, but I can provide you some hints to get started if you know how to write software. -SK

Oh everybody agrees on that, we discussed it before and it's one of my favorite topics: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=6290 One problem is that people can't agree what the new theater should be. Just when we seemed to conclude on a logical best choice, people seemed to lose enthusiasm when it didn't turn out to be the one they personally wanted. Which theater did you have in mind? How does it compare in square miles to the one that took ED ten years to build? -SK

-SK

I think ED's tools are just commercial software (e.g. 3DMax, which they can't distribute) plus some source code (which you need VC++ to use). That's what my own tools are like - always a work in progress, very user-unfriendly. If anyone wants my tools they are welcome to them, need only to ask, but I doubt they will be able to use them. An earlier discussion: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=6450 -SK