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Awesome mod. Now this will prompt me to learn to fly the Russian aircraft in this sim; because up until now, I had been staying away from even bothering to try and learn to fly the Russian planes. Rep points added Teka Teka.

I too hope they make the Apache flyable!

I'm more amazed at the thought that people believe the rotors are not spinning. Of course they are spinning. It is a nice visual effect, I bet that guy got home and when he watched what he recorded, he freaked out. :)

Do the same for the cougar software as you have to with installing LockOn. Right click the exe, go to properties, install in admin mode and run in compatibility mode for XP-SP2. Then after it is installed this way, then also go to the foxy.exe and hotasccp programs executables and do the same thing.

I actually get more FPS with Vista than in XP, on the same system ( Dual boot XP Pro and Vista 32 bit). Which why I kept working at it. thereminqblank posted the driver version that fixed all of my graphics in LockOn:FC 1.12a...I'll be updating to 1.12b tonight just in case.

I see your point IguanaKing, and no I know it isnt personal to me. But in all honesty, I can get lost in my own workplace if the lights are all out, haha. At least leave the lights on. Agreed Arthonon. As for me , I try and keep a healthy look at it and recommend to others, fly both sims, learn both very well and enjoy the merits that each bring to the table, then most importantly, YOU will be happy.

The biggest difference I see in the two sims is in the cockpit realism to the user, for example in Falcon4, if you learn to ramp start it from a dead engine without using the keyboard at all or any HOTAS "special" (non flight standard) mapped buttons, but using the mouse as if it were your hand as you rotate around setting your controls in this manner, flipping switches, etc..., and then do the same setting your munitions on your MFDs just after takeoff based upon the intelligence received during the briefing and your own intuitions, as well as the rest of the items in the cockpit... all while using the mouse as if it were your own hands in a real jet knowing where to go to set everything, turning knobs etc... in this sense this is where the Falcon4 crowd do have a valid point in realism. Once you learn to do this in that sim, then you can do it in a real flight simulator (because I have many times) as well as in a real jet. Compared to LockOn where we map our controls to the keyboard and the stick to turn the lights on, off, set munitions, turn the jet on, etc... The method that we do this in lockon is not similar to a real flight simulator or real jet, example: if we sat a person that has a perfectly mapped keyboard and HOTAS from lockon in any of the jet simulators, most likely if the instructor said, Please turn the lights on or turn the jet engines on, we would be looking around trying to find a keyboard most likely. This is not to belittle LockOn, I love it and it has great graphics, but compared with a workable, clickable 3D Pit, it just adds fuel to what they say about Falcon4 compared to LockOn. This is just my personal opinion. Basically it becomes a difference of opinion, and as others have said and we need to remember it is a game. Both are fun, and one may feel more "real" than the other to different people for different reasons. What matters most is how you yourself feel about what you choose to fly, and to be thankful that we all have choices we get to make. Flight model discussions are out of my league since I have never flown anything real except a Cessna, and to me some people that say/act like they know of flight models have barely flown on jet airliners commercially it seems from the way they conduct themselves. So I can't judge who has THE better flight model.

Works perfectly if done correctly. I have shared this with approx 7 other people, not one of them has had a problem with it. The trick to getting it to run, is to delete the trackir,ini file each time you start the game. Try doing it manually, deleteing the trackir.ini file in the directory path I posted.Then go into lockon and it should work. If it does, then the bat file you made isn't made correctly or something you did is wrong, because the bat file does the same thing... deletes the trackir.ini file, waits one second and then starts lockon.

I personally have had nothing but good luck so far with Vista I believe. The games are faster and by just following logical steps to get legacy games ( yes Lomac is considered legacy) to work in compatibility mode... everything is working great. LockOn: FC, Hotas Cougar with FSSB-R2 mod, CH pro Pedals, TrackIR, etc . etc. Other than the sound issue of the jets engine in the background all the time, its real good. All I can say, is so far so good, I have Vista 32bit on 3 systems and no hair raising nightmares to report.

The problem on many many threads is explained here in layman's terms, regarding DirectSound (DX9 API). Basically it is the change in the audio stack within Vista. They did this to prevent crashing and BSOD's, etc... but this has created an issue that will be fixed soon, with 3D sound. That seems to be a big problem I and others have had with LockOn and Vista so far. I hear my normal engines, but the 3D sound effect is what you constantly hear. So hopefully they will fix this with drivers and such soon. http://www.techwrighter.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=42 After reading this I am extremely happy I never invested into some high end sound card, and was more than happy for years to use the onboard audio, built into motherboards. Those of you with an X-Fi card are in luck. Creative has come up with a program they call ALchemy that converts your old DirectSound games to the new AL audio standard. (Get it, ALchemy? You see, it converts , you know, like an alchemist used to convert....oh forget it, why do I bother?) You can pick up a beta version of ALchemy here: http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx. Some people it appears have gotten around this on some games by installing DX9 drivers on Vista per this quote: "Answer: It appears some legacy DirectSound files built into other versions of Windows have been pulled in this release. HOWEVER. While I know this does not make some sense... if you grab the DX 9.0 redistributable files from Microsoft, and install this on Vista, the missing DS layers are returned.... " Another great article: http://pc.ign.com/articles/759/759538p1.html http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=435538

So far I think it is a LockOn issue since other games have no sound problems at all. Something with LockOn sounds engine staying on all the time.

I use the onboard audio built into the BFG 680i SLI motherboard, which is the RealTek High Definition Audio. Drivers are loaded and working great, but that jet sound persists even when only one plane is in the sim, on the ground, with the engine off... and it is quite loud. I wonder if it has something to do with the sound codec and DX10 due to Vista.

TrackIR works perfecty under Vista as it does under XP. Just make yourself a bat file that will first delete the trackir.ini file then start your game up. I made my own, it is basically just a LockOn.txt file that you then rename to be a LockOn.bat file ( please note you must be able to see the extensions for it to work, otherwise you are naming your file a LockOn.bat.txt file, but you dont see the "txt" at the end). The first line deletes the ini file, the second puts a 1 second delay after that (for a longer delay change the 1 to a higher number), before the 3rd line which starts your game. This bat file must reside in the LockOn root folder to work as I have written it, and just make yourself a shortcut to your desktop from it. Del "C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Eagle Dynamics\Lock On\Input\trackir.ini" ping -n 1 127.0.0.1 START Lockon.exe

After installing Vista and LockOn:FC on my gaming laptop ( ATI9700 256Mb Pro Sager System, P4 3.4 Ghz, 2Gb ram, Raid-0) with no problems at all, and Flaming Cliffs running very well... I decided to try my hand on a brand new desktop box I just built. This new one is a Core2Duo 2.66, 2 Gb SLI High Speed Ram, BFG 680i SLI motherboard with currently dual nVidia 7900's (later 8800's). I have to admit, things were not as easy as the laptop, but I have everything working great (HotasCougar, Ventrilo, TrackIR, CH ProPedals, etc..) and LockOn:FC running great except for one thing, a weird sound problem where I hear the engines really loud...even when they are off. Has anyone else encountered this sound issue and have a workaround? The sound starts from the time you jump into the plane ( engines off ) until you get up to approx. 200 knots then it fades away, only to return later during normal flight. Sounds as if the afterburners are on all the time. I will keep researching areas to see if I can resolve it.

Google for SLIZone and go there. They have a step by step. Thats where I got my info from.

I don't know if this may help anyone, but after installing Vista on my Sager 8790 laptop that has an ATI mobility radeon 9700 pro (256Mb of ram), I then downloaded the latest drivers from Mobility ATI's for Vista and have huge improvents in fps. I am currently running my laptop in higher graphical settings than ever before and have on average about a 20 to 30 fps increase from XP. I took some screenshots in the default settings at 109 fps. I then upped the resolution to my max of 1680x1050 and upped the graphics alot ( I have never been able to use settings like this in XP and gotten over 27 fps) and using 2xAA and now have an avg of 39-47 fps. I hope others who try it have the same good fortune as I have just encountered.

As another FYI to many: I successfully installed Vista alongside XP Pro on my Sager Gaming Laptop that runs LockOn: FC very well. We all know how finicky laptops are and this one has dual hard drives in Raid-0. Everything installed perfectly, and Lockon works great. So far so good in these initial tests. FYI: Check out EASYBCD 1.52 for boot manager control in Vista.

Agreed. For those that can wait , please wait on this OS for others who don't mind experimenting, to work out issues, etc... WinXP SP2 seems to still be the best bet. Eventually for those that want the DX10 power once games start to come out it is necessary to try Vista on test bed systems that are not primary systems to work out issues, as we will be moving to Vista for this DX10 functionality. My post is for those presently moving to Vista, that at least LockOn:FC works with the new OS, and quite well too! Just make sure you follow the steps in the 1st posts on this thread to run the exe's in compatibility and admin mode. For reference: I put Vista on an old system I had here that was not being used for anything. The system is an AMD Sempron 2800+ (2Ghz) with 1Gb of DDR, Sata HDrive and an nVidia FX5200 (128Mb), so it works very well on this old horse.

Works like a charm guys, so no problems upgrading to Vista. As far as Sata drives, read here: http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t375782.htm Sata drive here worked perfectly.

Just have to right click the AutoRun.exe and Install.exe on the flamingcliffs CD and set them both to run in Compatibility Mode for XP SP2 AND check the box to run as administrator. Then after the install is complete, right click the LockOn.exe in the install folder and do the same to it ( check for compatibility mode and admin mode). It appears though on the reboot that there is a problem with the SF driver and Vista. Just googled for Vista and SF and found the updated driver for Vista.

Got it working. Just had to add to both the autorun and install executables both compatibility and run as admin settings. :)

Thank-you! I will give it a try now.

All I see is "Default" in the profiles. I see from the SLIZone that I have to create my own profile for LockOn. Any suggestions on which is better to use, split-frame rendering, alternate frame rendering 1, alternate frame rendering 2, etc. ? My dual core cpu handles LockOn like a champ so no worries there.

Only places I have seen it sold in is CompUSA and Circuit City ( LockOnGold), the manual, only online so if they are out , then I guess that's it.

Seasonal Pack and Movie pack are only required if you have purchased the web download version of the game. If you have the CD version, everything is included already. If you have the CD version, then it should be LockOn, LO_Flaming Cliffs, then LOFC_1.12a Patch