Caretaker

Just disregard i185's posts, he's spamming the forum since a few days now with senseless messages. Needless to say there won't be any A-10 addon coming out in May.

No offense to Strikemax, he certainly made some good progress. But there is no way the model could have been finished for 1.2. Look at the process of Il2/FB's 3rd party models, there's a whole bunch that took several years to get done (the Tempest that was just released finally was first shown when Forgotten Battles wasn't even available). There are also dozens of beautiful looking models that were abandoned when tweaking and adjusting was the only thing to do, which is just as time consuming but not nearly as exciting as the initial work, as you don't seem to make any real progress anymore. The same is true for the damage and LOD models, a lot of people just gave up at that stage. And that's a basic problem with 3rd party models, you cannot rely on them to get finished. So when ED want to have a revamped Flanker model in the sim one day, I think it's only fair that they announce this right away. Better than having someone work on the model for years, only to tell him then that they'll do it themselves.

Missile models are much easier to create because they aren't animated and don't need a damage model. The cylindrical base shape also helps a lot. And finally, some of the models are made by 3rd party developers. No question though, a new Flanker would be very welcome...

Since Flying Nightmares II was cancelled, life still owes me a flyable Harrier and Cobra. The Harrier may come with Jet Thunder, but the Cobra isn't in sight yet :( It could be an interesting alternative to a flyable Apache, but I'm not sure if there's more information about the avionics available.

The chance that any US carrier would sail through the Black Sea isn't very high either :)

Most probably because it's a bug with the Nvidia drivers. Normally it's not practical to develop workarounds for bugs in drivers, which may very well be gone again in the next version (like it happened with the ATI water bug that has disappeared).

First, I don't think it's appropriate to discuss here the way they are moderating their forums over at fighterops.com. I'm sure that if you have issues, it's more productive to take it up with them, maybe after sleeping over it again and maybe working on your diplomatic skills a bit ;) As to the point about the 25$ exclusive access deal, while I personally have no interest in that at the moment, I still fail to see how anyone could complain about this. It's not like the game is already out and customers have to pay to get important information or even help. Nope, it's absolutely the developer's right to do this, and as it seems the vast majority of people who are subscribing to that exclusive area (which, just to point that out, makes the information there definitely "non-public" :p) are happy with it. Now whether overall this is a good idea I cannot say; it is also tricky to control communities and their expectations and I don't agree that it's always better to give out as much information as soon as possible - usually some of that will backfire later on ("they promised a Hornet addon!!!" etc.). Unlike bflagg above, I also see major signs of "hype" in some discussions about the Fighter Ops project already, as if plans and good intentions alone would already guarantee the ultimate package. But it's their decision about how they handle all that, and that includes how they distribute information - it is their money and time at risk here after all.

There are rumours about a possible Apache in the future, most probably not as an addon to Lock On but rather as part of a new sim (which some refer to as the "Tank Killers" project). No release date yet :p Seriously, it's a possibility but whether it will come true depends on a lot of factors. Such plans tend to change with time.

Will do :) I checked yesterday and indeed, it seems the Su-25T's FOV is always more narrow than in all other planes, which can be adjusted in the view.lua file by using bigger values, but is still incorrect. This affects all screen formats by the way.

No question, Jane's F/A-18 was one of the best sims ever. The only problem were the really steep system requirements, but otherwise it had pretty much everything a good combat sim needs. And in addition, it worked fine out of the box without requiring years of patching.

Hi, it was all revealed in this thread, and some people have also reported on some SpeedTree tests there: http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=13480

Stumbled over this video at SimHQ: http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=32;t=009605 Really reminds me of Top Gun: the flying scenes are stunning, the rest is stupid :D Still worth a look; some short but great scenes, and I'm sure there must be more of the original footage somewhere...

Looking good - glad it worked! I'll hopefully test the 2405FPW with Lock On myself soon, I have a feeling the sense of speed down low shouldn't be too bad with that setup ;)

That's not a contradiction ;) Of course ED shouldn't dump everything and start from scratch, that would be stupid. But transferring all the flyables over to a new sim, even if the engine is built on the current one, is not really an option. Think about the Il2/FB development; there are more than a hundred flyable planes and still more coming - now a lot of people are wondering why those couldn't be transferred to Maddox' upcoming BoB sim. That one will use a new engine that is probably also building on the current one in many parts, but in the end there will be too many differences to include all of the old content.

Actually the US Air Force uses the F-16 primarily as an AG platform. The various (mainly European) air forces that also fly the Falcon have more interest in its multi-role capabilities, and by all means anything that can fire AMRAAMS should be considered a capable AA platform. But the US has better planes for that job ;) As for the question at hand, I would recommend the proven "wait and see" approach. What will be released when and with what features is not set in stone, and will most likely still change from the current plans. We've seen that with most sims, Lock On included :p And while I'll miss the current planeset in any future sim, sometimes you have to leave stuff behind if you want to move forward.

No problem, just put the US and Russian side in the same coalition ;)

...and I have to admit, it's one of the very few legendary sims that I did not play :( And when I made the transition to 640x480 and beyond with USNF and then EF2000, there was no going back... pity as from all I've heard, it was truly an in-depth sim. Oh well, maybe in 2012 or so we'll have a "historic" sim with a flyable Tomcat... :p

Hi, actually as I just recalled, you can change the FOV limits right now with 1.1; go to the /Config/View/view.lua and look for the section -- Camera view angle limits {view angle min, view angle max}. There you can adjust the min/max FOV limits for each flyable plane individually. The default max angle is 120 degrees; with 145 you should have the same vertical FOV again as before with a 4:3 screen, but now with a wider horizontal FOV. Note that performance usually decreases with a higher view angle as more objects are visible at the same time, even if they're smaller. Guess you just have to find the balance, as with most settings :) Be careful though, this is what happens with 175 degrees (I didn't go all the way to 180, which is the limit and I'm not sure how the engine would cope with that... ;)):

Effectively an issue of how Direct3D works. The field of view setting refers to the horizontal dimension. The vertical one is then scaled according to the given aspect ratio. That means if your screen is wider, giving a higher aspect ratio, the same FOV setting will actually show less of the vertical FOV. As the overall max FOV value is fixed, the max vertical FOV value is thus lower than with a 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, even if the resolution is the same. If you tilt your screen 90 degrees and set a resolution of 1200*1920, you should see the opposite effect: now your vertical field of view will be set to more than what you could achieve on a 4:3 screen. Usually though that will lead to major distortions when zoomed out ;)

Can't have enough F-14 movies. Also, F-14 models are never ugly. They may lack detail or resolution, but they are still beautiful nevertheless. All of them.

It's not accurate. It's an F-16 made to look like an F/A-18. Which, within certain limits, is still a good approximation I'd say, and the flight models and avionics have also been adjusted to reflect the Hornet. But they're still based on the Falcon. Look at Aeyes' recently released MiG-29 cockpit and you will note it still displays the F-16 MFD screen: http://www.cockpits.nl/prodgalMiG29.htm The same is true for all other cockpits, including the Hornet. It is certainly not a replacement for real reference material. Even for the F-16, some stuff remains unknown as far as I know - the HARM employment procedures for example are quite simplified in Falcon4 as well. What those cockpits truly provide is an excellent visual reference of course. They are extremely detailed and accurate in that respect after all.

Hmm you're right, just checked again - looks like something has changed. In fact, it's the opposite now, with the average AI having the lowest reaction time. The attached screenshot shows 4 Strelas with excellent, high, good and average skill from left to right; all with the target in range when the mission starts. The difference is small though and probably negligible in any non-artificial mission setup.

What skill level did you assign to the units? Reaction time is the main difference here, so if they're on average, you may pass over them before they have time to react. Otherwise, try a Tor ;)

Like GGTharos said, there's unfortunately not much to be revealed about the Tomcat, even when it's retired. In fact it seems the Navy is about as tight-lipped about its equipment as possible. Personally I'd love a detailed Tomcat sim as much as anyone, even more so now that it's being phased out. But there's simply not enough information available - unlike with the F-16, and that one is also a quite popular plane (for whatever reason ;)). Don't forget the many countries besides the US which use it - not quite the same with the Tomcat, which is only flying in two countries (and quite soon, only in one).

CGI, stunt or mishap...? ;)