Caretaker

Actually this is giving me flashbacks about the very first "concept art" renders of Flanker2, when I thought how great it would be to really have such a quality in-game one day... must be some 10 years ago ;)

argh Jens... me want model... now!! ;) ...if the popups didn't work for you either, try these: http://www.cgtalk.ru/exc/sds/1.html http://www.cgtalk.ru/exc/sds/14.html http://www.cgtalk.ru/exc/sds/15.html

Great stuff. I remember back in the 80s here over Germany, I could still witness low-level flights frequently - and the French were contributing a lot to that ;) These are also nice videos to counter the popular "rooster tail" myth: ...there is certainly an effect on the water surface, but not quite as cheesy as in these images ;)

I don't believe in balance, and I'm more into the standard models anyway. Now I certainly would enjoy flying an SMT or K model as well, but not at the expense of the vanilla MiG-29.

Depends on the campaign system... Falcon4 for example artificially adjusts the performance of friendly and enemy units based on the player performance, and gives a penalty for people who don't fly. AI problems are also frequent in many sims and make the player's role exceptional, simply because his plane performs much better than everyone else. An optional feature, although necessary in some DC systems because they produce senseless missions. That can be quite annoying though for people who simply want to fly and not play supreme commander at the same time. There are lots of different DC systems with very different approaches. Not all of them have been great IMHO only because they were dynamic. Still in principle, a DC is the ultimate goal, hopefully for Lock On's successors as well (once the AI is up to the task ;)).

Have some imagination... the classic WWIII theatre is by no means the only possible scenario. And who says a conflict without any NATO involvement can't be enjoyable as well? Remember Jane's F-15E, which had a totally fictional storyline derived in a very plausible way from the real situation, and added another conflict into the storyline to make it plausible that only a limited asset of US forces was present in the Gulf region - a clever trick to provide more challenging gameplay. It is absolutely possible to have such fictional but still believable scenarioes for Lock On's theatre, even if it's indeed not the most suited map setup overall. Or take Longbow II's campaign: questionable in some ways (basically the whole US air force appeared only in the form of the occasional A-10 or F-16 flying by), but that didn't keep people from enjoying it. And Falcon4's campaign and mission setups don't always have much to do with real life either - but ask people which sim has the best campaign system, and I guarantee you that one will come out on top. And even though I don't quite share the enthusiasm about that one, I'd definitely trade it for our linear static missions any day ;)

Hmmm I just got one of those lovely Dell 24" widescreen TFTs... only at work though ;) I'm currently thinking if I should just buy one through the company, could get it for some 800€ which isn't too bad. But after working with it for a few days I'm not so sure anymore. It's hard to say why, but somehow the image quality just isn't there for me. I played around with the colours and contrast and still something feels wrong... and there are some strange effects like "ghost shadows" for text, that I only see at a certain distance... and that's with a TFT that is said to have very good image. Working on it is great, and I'd love to fly a sim with that format and resolution (1920x1200); maybe I'll take it home with me over the weekend and see how it does with Lock On. But I think I'll still stick to my 21" CRT for now, I really prefer the image and also the flexibility with changing the resolution. I think it's really a very subjective issue, and you have to try it out for yourself somehow. Many people prefer the crisp images of a TFT, and of course there's also the weight argument. Fortunately I also have a large desk and don't carry the screen around too much, so that's not important to me ;)

The problem with such cards is that nobody buys them if no game supports them, and no game will support them as long as nobody has them ;) I doubt that such cards will become a widespread standard without a dedicated API first, maybe as part of DirectX. Which is certainly a possibility; how much that would benefit the more specific flight model calculations that each sim developer does in their own way is another question. But even if it's only for parts flying around after crashes or explosions, smoke or whatever else, it's still a benefit.

That's quite wrong. The majority of people have no interest in multiplayer. And besides, what's wrong with a dynamic multiplayer campaign? It's not that singleplayer and multiplayer modes are in any way exclusive - except for the pure dogfight (read: airquake) modes :p I also don't see why Lock On would not profit immensely from a dynamic campaign, quite the opposite. How well Jet Thunder's campaign will work in the end we will have to see, just as with the rest of the sim. Don't see how it's "looking arcade" though in any way; not as polished yet here and there but it's not a beta version either. I'm certainly looking forward to what it will hopefully become one day. BTW, note the part in the interview about the clickable cockpit in the interview, pretty much the same situation as with Lock On (which doesn't exactly have a huge development team either).

I still get the banding artifacts in windowed mode. They lines actually seem less pronounced but I assume this is more of a placebo effect.

Yes the Ka-50 is in service, although in very low numbers, and has apparently seen combat already in Chechnya. As usual the estimates differ a bit, I guess overall the number is in a similar range as with the Su-25T.

DOS still, good old 320x200 glory and the boot disk dance to decide if the mouse driver could still fit into memory :) There was also an Amiga version, but the standard 7.14MHz CPU was already too slow to really run it. DI's approach to focus on a plane with limited popularity and mission profile, instead of going with another "everyone's darling" Falcon or Hornet, and model that plane in as much detail as possible for that time, was what earned them a place in flight sim history. That and the mission planner, which has still not been surpassed in any sim since then.

The real question for me is still, is the F-22 l33t enough so that it could even kill an F-22...? :p

Nope, the cancellation is not confirmed officially from my perspective. Cutting such features is always a possibility of course.

Because those videos were rendered with a program like Maya or 3DSMax, and not in a realtime 3D engine. This is simply no in-game graphics, just "animated concept art" :) It's quite similar to Lock On but without the Su25, A-10 or F-15; instead a flyable MiG-29K in the Flanker2.5 version; much worse graphics, less realistic avionics (including a "fake-ground radar" and extensive AG-weaponry that never saw service with these planes) and the Crimean peninsula as the only part of the map modeled in detail.

It's the same Flanker 3D model that was used in Flanker2 and that we still have now, it just looks better because of the shading used (Phong instead of Gouraud). But sure, some more "immersion-enhanced" features would always be welcome ;)

Good article if you want to dig deeper into the subject: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2377&p=1 Note this statement on page three from one of the Unreal3 developers: "Implementing a multithreaded system requires two to three times the development and testing effort of implementing a comparable non-multithreaded system." My understanding is that is is not so much a question of programming for multi-core CPUs as such, but a general issue of multi-threaded applications (I've had my share of deadlocks and races in some of my own code for sure, and it's not nice ;)). Distribution of threads onto the system resources (CPUs) should actually be a task of the operating system, not of the application; I guess that's a rather idealized view though that doesn't hold true in "real life" ;) And in addition to the complexity that multithreading always brings about, you also have to design the application in a way that the threads are seperated enough so that they can operate independently as much as possible. We may be luckier than we think with Lock On (and flight sims in general) in this regard, as there seem to be at least two main threads already: the graphics rendering and the sim core engine doing all the world state calculations (flight model & object behaviour/updates). The sim engine seems to have absolute priority here, running at a fixed rate as much as possible, while the graphics part may suffer from not having enough resources to complete calculations. I guess everyone already was in a situation where the screen just wasn't updated anymore, but the game itself still ran on more or less normal speed (classic case: heavy smoke and explosions during ground attacks, and when the graphics finally come back, you've already crashed). Theoretically this would be a classic case for a dual-core system: one CPU handles the sim engine, updating the world state which the second CPU uses to render the graphics. Still, don't expect this to be an easy task to implement (and test...) in the end.

Indeed, and the reason is that plane was just too ugly! ;)

The link doesn't work for me, but I guess I know what you mean. Encountered this as well, but could never really track it down. I think I had it with the US carrier too, still very rare overall though. The good news is your system should be fine :)

Only the download version; LOMAC Gold has a CD check included. For obvious reasons, the download version cannot check for the existence of a CD, which is why there's a limit on how often you can install with one key. The 1.11 patch for the CD version also changes the check so that it only requires the CD to be inserted once a week, not everytime you start it.

fas.org is a bit contradictory, as often: "The AIM-7M, the only current operational version, entered service in 1982" "The AIM/RIM-7P was introduced to the fleet through GCS retrofit and GCS new production contracts. The AIM/RIM-7P retrofit program began deliveries in November 1993. Because the upgrade from AIM/RIM-7M to AIM/RIM-7P did not impact Carrier Air Group (CAG) operation and maintenance procedures, a unique Fleet introduction was not required." http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/aim-7.htm If the P model was mainly introduced by replacing the guidance units of M-model units, that could explain the apparent confusion here.

Indeed, but the CFS4 cancellation info came more or less from "insiders", at least from what I remember... ;) If the screens that were shown back then (late 2004 I think) still haven't resulted in a new product, with MS I think it's safe to say they pulled the plug. There were also rumours (probably out of desperations) that MS would indeed simply merge the CFS line into the standard Flight Simulator, but that was never a very realistic expectation.

I'm waiting for a Cobra sim since Flying Nightmares 2 was cancelled... and I was just out of school back then! :p Same with the Harrier, but at least there's hope with that one in the form of Jet Thunder... hope it won't take another 10 years! :)

Anyone else here with a strong déjà vu? Subsitute Su-25 with FW-190 and you get a classic Il2 topic :D Viewpoints in sims have traditionally been put a bit lower than where the head is in real life, for the simple reason that this makes it easier to keep the main instruments in view. Only now with TrackIR is it a practical option for people to quickly glance down on the instruments and MFDs. 6DOF should make this even easier. Remember Jane's Longbow II? (ok rhetorical question...) The 2D view was also very low, while the 3D virtual cockpit was placed in a realistic position: The 3D view was very immersive, but not really practical unfortunately. Not sure what the latest word is about 6DOF for the "old" planes in 1.2, but I don't think it will be very useful even if it's enabled - seeing gaps in the cockpit, texture misalignments and the HUD at the wrong place will probably make this rather unlpeasant.

1280x960 here on a 21" CRT Sony (got it for 50€ from my company where all those huge monsters were replaced by TFTs ;)). 1600x1200 makes the text a bit too small for my taste as well, and I can't afford any FSAA with that resolution in Lock On. In general I like the flexibility with resolutions that a CRT provides, and I still think the image is a superior (but not by much anymore these days). I didn't like carrying it around though when moving last year :p