Caretaker

Not necessarily a bad move for Lock On overall, as it can never hurt to get more people in contact with the game. BTW one of the most underrated features of 1.1: the Ubi logos are gone from all loading screens :P

Hi, did some tests about that yesterday. Blast radius modelling seems ok to me in 1.1 - unfortunately my 1.02 installation doesn't work anymore so I couldn't do a direct comparison ;) There's quite a difference between the destructive radius of an Mk82, Mk83 and Mk84 - and even the Mk82 can destroy trucks and tanks that are several meters away from the impact point, while for the Mk84 it's rather dozens of meters. Similarly an FAB-250 has a lower destructive radius than an FAB-500 or an FAB-1500 (which is quite a killer, as it should ;)). I can't give you any exact figures, but maybe I can post some screenshots tomorrow to demonstrate this. Keeping in mind that Lock On cannot model damage to ground units in more detail (as explained by Dmut above), but only shows the difference between "ok" and "destroyed", the results looked fine to me overall :)

Hmm and from what I heard, ED has the rights to develop as much as they want to - however they only have the rights to publish one addon that is using the Lock On brand name outside of the CIS markets independent of Ubi... how a download fits into this would be interesting to know though :) I'm pretty sure this is what Stormin once said, although I'm not 100% sure anymore - and as Stormin hates being quoted incorrectly (okay, who doesn't...), I apologize if I mixed something up :)

If it's well-known then I assume the multiplayer testers know about it as well and have tested and reported to ED accordingly. I wasn't aware that this is a multiplayer issue, sorry - and as I didn't do any multiplayer it seems reasonable that I didn't encounter it :)

Hi, I had that problem with the trees before the beta test as well. Unfortunately I can't recall if it was with 1.01 or still with 1.02. Never encountered it with 1.1 though, so I hope this is a good sign ;) Is the "matrix effect" with the rain purely a multiplayer issue? I think I've read that somewhere... anyway, I do know that some changes have been made to the rain/snow animations because there were some issues with it - but again, whether this affects this very problem I cannot say for sure.

I've never encountered it with 1.1 - but as I've never encountered it before either, I have no idea if anything was changed there.

Wow. I love it when such things seem to pop up out of nowhere :) Very nice model! Yes it's a render so far (you can clearly see the different resolution of the Jaguar and the rest of the scene), but it looks like something that Lock On could use :) 1.1 does not and will not contain any new planes besides the Su-25T; it's too late in development to integrate new objects now. But it's quite possible to see this, maybe along with the Mirage F1 (and whatever else people may have produced until then) in another addon. Fingers crossed...

I cannot comment on ED's plans here; I'm pretty sure they'll consider it for the future. To my understanding it hasn't been a consideration for 1.1, and it was revealed only recently anway and thus a bit too late for some dedicated support in FC. And, as with some other sims, there are problems with how well it would actually work. Lock On's cockpits are not so much a polygonal recreation of the real objects, but use a lot of flat surfaces with textures that look three-dimensional, but aren't - these look fine from a certain point of view like currently, but might be pretty underwhelming once the view is shifted. The issue of missing polygons for parts that aren't normally visible might also come up. The HUD rendering would also need to be changed - shifting the view would currently offset any targeting symbols like the pipper, as the HUD wasn't programmed to be a virtual image in the distance like in real life (there simply was no need for that). It is still possible that this 6DOF feature will work for Lock On, but to use the full potential of that technology will require remodelling various aspects of Lock On, and I personally don't see that happening too soon.

I too don't want to fuel release date discussions and estimations. Beta testers certainly have some more insight into the process, but in the end neither we, nor the developers can predict a definite date as to when the code is considered finished. That is just the nature of software development and hasn't changed since 1.02 either. So even if you got somewhat more info about the testing process, that wouldn't get you the release date any faster, let alone the final product ;)And I can also guarantee you that the current testing process isn't overly exciting and thus worth reporting about.

Normally the Z-buffer would be used to determine which parts of an object are visible or not. Apart from the gear, there are few areas of the model for which visibility can easily be determined before the rendering.

Don't ask me about the details as I only had a brief look, but apparently you can extract information about both the threat warning system (i.e. radar sources) and the weapons stations (number and type of weapons and which one is selected). Not sure about ripple interval settings, delivery mode etc. But I have a feeling, if it isn't in yet, it will come some day ;)

More complex missile and bomb physics are on the list - but only after 1.1 ;)

I'm not complaining, I'm explaining. Of course Lock On's AI objects have greatly simplified avionics - that has been the case in any flight simulation so far for good reason, and anything else would be pretty stupid design ;) This was however about flyable planes anyway. And while Falcon4 certainly goes into much more detail with the F-16 than any other sim has ever done with any plane, it is still a fact that the F-16 is the only plane for which this is the case, right? The original plans of Microprose to provide more flyable planes unfortunately never saw the light of day after the team was disbanded :( As I said, for some planes - F-15 or F/A-18 variants - the use of tweaked F-16 avionics and flight models are fair enough in my view. For others this approach is obviously a bit more problematic (an A-10 with full AA and AG radar suites is questionable). This is neither criticism nor a complaint, but an observation for someone who asked about this topic. There is no doubt that a lot of amazing work has been done for Falcon4 over the years despite such limits of the engine.

Re: the ground war....... This was often done with captured Russian tanks, so that a T-34 in German service wasn't attacked by other German forces. Otherwise though camouflage was considered more important, and probably still is. Correct target identification is a problem in real life as well, as some unfortunate friendly fire incidents in recent times have shown. But of course the additional restrictions of a computer monitor only make it harder. I agree that additional briefing options like images of the target area would be very nice, but they require additional work when designing a mission and cannot be integrated into the game (at least currently ;)).

It is a tweaked F-16 flight model. Falcon4 has never received a "true" implementation of other planes' flight models, although I certainly cannot judge how true to life this F-15E flies in the end. The same goes for the avionics, they are F-16 avionics with a different range limit - again a limitation of using a sim that was only developed for the F-16 in detail. However using tweaked F-16 avionics in the Strike Eagle can probably be considered "close enough" for practical purposes ;) Not nearly as misplaced as F-16 radar images on a MiG-29 MFD... :P

Yes, Falcon4. Very nice work, although of course it's only a 2D cockpit ;) Yes.

The differences between the Su-25T and the F/A-18 model can only be noticed if you do real close-up shots. They are there however, believe me - the former does look better. Whether it's worth it is a good question - sure you don't notice this while flying around, but I guess a lot of people actually do enjoy looking around in external views, or recording tracks. Also, a high polygon limit simply makes it easier to produce a model. Modern graphics cards are quite good at pumping out high polygon numbers. It's not that the Su-25T makes that much of a difference compared to the Hornet; certainly it's not 4 times slower :) Yes, if you watch three or four of those close enough on the runway or in formation, you see a slowdown (similarly to the Hornet currently). This doesn't happen too much while flying a mission from the cockpit though, where framerate is most important. You may also be happy to hear that apparently, the Hornet has received an LOD update with 1.1. Much better now :) I have a P4 3GHz and a Radeon 9800XT. A good system for sure but certainly no cutting-edge 3000$ setup. And I have no real performance difference when flying a mission with a Su-25T or any of the other planes. The TV monitor takes some frames away when turned on, but there's no way around that - but that isn't critical either.

New terrain regions will probably have to wait for a new product from ED. Given that it takes a lot of time to model new terrain, I'm personally undecided what the best route would be: extending the current area to model places like Turkey, more of the Caucasus region and maybe part of Poland to the west - or starting with a completely new spot like Taiwan for a change... Any "naval-oriented" product would probably be set in a different region anyway, to allow for true naval operations. Personally I'd die for a Norway/Murmansk theatre like in Jane's F/A-18 or EF2000, but in Lock On quality ;) But for sure all of that is beyond the scope of 1.1, just like the addition of new AI objects or new countries.

Sounds like the heat blur problem. If you have heat blur enabled and this happens, pause the game and ALT-TAB to desktop and back into the game and see if this helps. I'm not sure what exactly causes this, but it seems to be related to available video RAM running low, resulting in frame buffer operations being performed off the card, which is considerably slower.

You got that the wrong way. They'd need the budget first to develop a Hornet or another "western" plane. Since Ubi threw the towel, they don't have a publisher in that markt anymore, so yes of course they're concentrating on the Russian market for now as this is where their money is currently coming from. They may have made more money with an F/A-18, but if they don't have anyone to pay for the development, nor the infrastructure to sell it in the target markets, that wouldn't be a very sensible choice. Again not so much a question of creativity than of manpower. Also remember how Falcon4 has bunkrupted Microprose, so I'm not sure such an over-ambitious project is the way to go for a developer - even if the resulting game was certainly great some years after the release. You may have noted that EA has quit the whole simulation market for years now, so I'm not sure they are the experts to consult for that ;)

Re: 2 minor bugs? Changing the menu resolution in Lock On up to 1.02 has been an "unofficial" feature and always resulted in distorted loading screens; otherwise I do not know of any bad effects so if you don't mind that (and the small fonts), there should be no problem. This can also help with disappearing cloud shadows (a problem that seems to happen frequently when menu and in-game resolution are different). In 1.1 this has been corrected, and both the menu and in-game graphics are set to the same resolution, without distorted loading screens. Not sure about this - are you talking about the game crashing, or are you just waiting for something to happen that doesn't? Also, do you mean saving a mission in the editor to reload it later on, or the save option after having flown a mission?

Drako_MDx, from what we've been told the dedicated server is not a current development, but rather a possibility for the future. It will not be released with the 1.1 addon.

Tank aiming doesn't seem poor to me in 1.1, but they do miss some shots. From what I've been told there is also a factor of battlefield smoke involved, what isn't really modelled but would still reduce the aiming capabilities of tanks (does that make sense? ;)). Improved missile physics should be a big part for the next development step, but unfortunately for 1.1 they remain pretty much unchanged in this area. Various parameters have been tweaked but I don't know the details here.

Realistic night lighting is a complicated issue; most sims fall somewhat short here. I'm a big fan of pitch black nights when it applies myself, but I acknowledge it's quite some work to get it right. It would also be nice if AI units had the same visibility problems then as the player does ;)

Lock On's cockpit models are not designed to incorporate free head movement. While they are 3D, they are optimized for one view point, so I guess it would look strange in many areas if the view was shifted. The HUD rendering would have to be changed as well. So while it's a very interesting development, I have my doubts that it will be feasible in Lock On. It's not as important as in a WW2 sim either in my opinion, although of course it would be nice to have.