Fahhh

Looking good so far, the Flogger is a gorgeous birt. By the way you know you're modelling the bomber variant MiG-23BN right? The fighter versions have a totally different nose, accomodating a big radar antenna.

There always is... Sneak up on him, close and when he is well in range of your missiles, turn your radar on just for a sec to IFF, and if it's a bandit, fire and extend. In 99% of the cases, he won't be able to detect you fast enough to engage and fire back, and you will be sure you shot an enemy, not a friendly... One more thing, always try to stay out of his line of sight(be it visual or radar). Try flanking, or if he is low, you stay high and vice-versa.

Now this is exactly what i meant in my last post. :)

This only tells how well the dev team has worked to simplify the model and yet keep it at a high level of realism. And I'm quite sure it's a lot of work, time and consequently a lot money to be spent on this...

You can very well determine this yourself. Engage and lock a bandit and start pointing your nose off him slowly. The moment you break the lock, you've reached it...

I'm not aware of the way Lockon simulates the FMs, but as a part of scientific project, I have been simulating other planes through the Matlab software for quite some time now. Simulating 30 seconds of flight could take anywhere from 5-6 minutes to an hour CPU time, depending on the complexity of the model. And I'm talking here flight model only, no fancy graphics or anything, pure calcultaions. And this is performed on a 3Ghz dual-core CPU. So if you want a good FM, I think ED could implement it, but the hardware cost would be too high for the moment. And when you start simplifying here and there you always lose model and response information, but still retain the main characteristics. And that's what it counts in a commercial simulator made to be widely available...

You are right, in real life, the SPO-15 cannot be considered as a reliable source on bandit or missile distance. I've been told by people operating and flying the real thing that it can only be used as relative guide on enemy activity against you, and can in certain cases also interpret other radio(non-radar) signals as warnings and thus confuse you even more...

If you are flying a russian plane, in the search phase it's better probably to use the ППС mode on your Radar. This gives you a better range of detection. You also need to scan the entire area in front of you. Point your antenna to the left, check the elevation, then center, and right in a contineous loop, so that you don't miss any targets that are not exactly in front of you. When you see a target, first you should make sure if he's alone, or there are more in close proximity. So you don't lock the bandit just yet. But try to remember his position/spd/alt. Look out for other bandits, and when you're already close enough to engage and fire you're weapons, then you should lock and fire. Depending on the weapons you use, there is a different strategy you may employ, but basic advices are: - After firing, point your nose off the target(but try to maintain the lock), don't just proceed ahead at full speed. - Watch your SPO warning system. It will give you valuable information on what's the enemy doing and the weapons he may be using against you. - Don't get too close if you're not sure what is happening, better be safe then sorry. My personal advice is to disengage and extend at a range of 15km or more to the bandit. This keeps your escape window open, any further and it shrinks significantly. - If you're alone, do not engage multiple bandits, you may hit one, but you'll probably also get shot down. The best advice is to join a well established online squad, flying the type of plane you fly. They'll probably teach you all about Air to Air Combat.

One more thing, which i'm sure most of you have already done, but just a note: If some of you have other Cockpit mods installed, you should uninstall them (especially if they install their textures in the TempTextures folder).

Good work Ricardo, and congrats on the release! Another fresh breath for the aging game :)

That was an awesome surprise... I even re-checked if it's not 1-st of april today :)) Thanks for the heads up, I'm looking forward to january :)

hahaha great! :D And what's that missile on your wing? The newest AIM-9XXX(size) :D

For me, as a fan of as-realistic-as-it-can-get, the last statement in AirTito's reply is just great... And i' have a question that is concerning probably a lot of the future players of Black Shark...there are System Requirements given in the FAQ...but AirTito, could you as a part of the test team give us some more information on the subject. How does it run in comparison with FC 1.12? What's your configuration, and how the game is running on it? The answers are just to give us some orientation about possible future upgrades...in a way, should we start collecting money for new VC or CPU ;)

I just bought an Ultra-Low-Power AMD X2 3800+ @ 2ghz, 1.1volts/35Watts, and i'm quite happy with it, Lock On runs much smoother, but this could be due to the fact that I upgraded from an old Sempron 2300+, and an old Geforce Fx5200 to an all new system with new VC/RAM...etc..