Moa

My point was not that learning BFM is a waste of time. Far from it. What I was trying to say was that learning WVR fighting should not be prioritised over learning BVR fighting when a pilot is just starting. Obviously, once they have some time up they should work on their WVR. The lesson of Vietnam is less relevant than it used to be. Unfortunately, many new pilots seem to concentrate on practicing snap-shot gun and heater kills when they should be working on honing their BVR tactics. While WVR skills are excellent in training situations and the TCL arena, in multi-squad tournament games they are required far more rarely than BVR skills (it took me a long time for this to sink in). The newer players never get close enough to use their gun an heater skills in such events. I just didn't want those that are new and with limited time taking away the wrong lesson from history and this discussion. Thanks for sharing your insights on the new flight models.

In Vietnam the mission technology was far behind that of Desert Storm. Also the Rules of Engagement prohibited use of BVR weaponry until a target was positively identified as a hostile. The Rules of Engagement had far more of an effect on the combat than anything else. In Desert Storm the US military made sure that the Pentagon and politicians were able to dictate what should be done, but not how to do it (in Vietnam the Pentagon tried to direct platoon-level firefights via radio, simply madness). I only point this out because many people think that WVR combat made a comeback in Vietnam means that this will be true for all time. This is simply not the case. WVR combat is fun, good training, and makes great movies, but is far less common in LockOn than it used to be (as in recent real-life engagements). It is a good thing to learn but I would recommend working on your WVR first (which means the minutae of a particular aircraft's flight model doesn't matter so much, so no need to get worked up about it).

I don't know about this chart but a Gnomonic projection is used between LockOn internal coordinates and polar coordinates (lat/long). I have given Java source code for this projection and its inverse (based on some C++ code supplied by ED, thanks!) in the following thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=44427

There is a project preparing a map for printing. Please see the following thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=51163 Why not create such a map yourself and share it. Yes you are capable of doing it. That's how things get done around here.

I run LockOn on Mac under Parallels for testing work (I have another machine for my 'real' flying) and that works well enough at lower resolutions. Let me guess, FSX runs like a dog when the options are turned up? It runs like that everywere.

Have you applied the LO 1.2.1 patch? If so then 1.2.0 tracks won't work. I have a new version of lottu in the works. Will post here when it is released. It may not fix the bug but will give you more information about it.

I'm guessing you installed lottu in the non-standard location. Version 1.2.1 allows you to select the location of the player (simulator.exe). You can download lottu 1.2.1 directly from this link: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/2010/4/lottu-1.2.1/lottu-1.2.1.exe You can check the latest version of lottu from the following (very spartan) page at: http://stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu ps. Thanks Crunch for pointing this thread out.

I think the scripted stall in the flight model kicks in below 60 km/hour. This means hovering doesn't work (except with 60 km/h headwind).

default (too lazy/not enough time to set up TacView/LEAVU2+ERI etc).

Fantastic. The following thread might be useful if you haven't seen it already. It gives code of convertion between LockOn's rectangular coordinates (x,y) from Gnomonic projection into (lat,long) which are useful for Google. The code for the reverse projection is also given. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=44427&highlight=coordinate+conversion&page=4

Excellent! Thanks for getting those mirrors up guys.

Keep 'em coming. As I've stated I'm working hard on mission generation/dynamic campaign software for LockOn2. Knowing the loadouts people prefer is useful, since these loadouts become bound to the mission. It doesn't matter so much for single-player generated missions since the player can select their desired load-out just before the mission is written to disk. For multi-player missions I want to create a mission 'merge' function so this can also be done. Unfortunately you can't really do this for multi-player missions that are run routinely on servers since the mission is already loaded when you join. Hence, knowing people's prefered loadouts is a useful thing to know.

If people hadn't stupidly grabbed one of the two sets of 10 we could have used those downloads to seed other sites. But no, people just don't think. I could have easily have hosted all the files from stallturn.com but now I have no access. Thanks for all your efforts little-dog.

Sonic boom should be heard in external views only (is this not the case?). Inside the cockpit you are outrunning your own sound.

The various versions of Strela ("Arrow" in Russian, IIRC) are infra-red seeking missiles. You won't get a radar warning on your TWS display since they don't use radar. You need to keep an excellent visual watch - don't fixate on your instruments or one target. This is very hard to do, of course.

Thanks for recommending the 104th Phoenix ZQuickSilverZ. We have an excellent BlackShark Academy - to get through you'll need to be truly dedicated so it is not for everyone (casual gamers). The entire community is great with very few exceptions and all the squadrons and players cooperate a great deal outside the online tournaments (inside, well that's war!). I hope you get a great deal of enjoyment from this wonderful sim (and Flaming Cliffs 2, which you ought to also consider).

Not true. Compression can be lossless, in which case the compression merely replaces repeated bit sequences with a replacement that has a shorter length. Sure mp3 etc are lossy, but that is not the only way that sound can be re-encoded. Choose a different codec and you get lossless compression - the best of both worlds. Compression can cause a significant speed up because even if you use more CPU (or DSP time on your sounds card) this is often *insignificant* to the savings in more limited resources such as the hard disk transfer rate (significantly smaller files take less time to get from disk, which means your CPU/operating system doesn't idle doing IO waits while the file is being read, so you can actually improve CPU utilization). It also saves on memory bandwidth/contention. You want uncontended memory bandwidth since textures are moved between disk, RAM and your graphics card's texture memory. The WAV format is the sound equivalent of the BMP format for graphics. A very simple format that ends up with huge size as it contains a lot of redundancy. Other formats (eg. PNG for graphics, JPG for photos, ogg codecs for sound) do a much better job and are either lossless or the loss is negligible. You should avoid WAV and BMP whenever other lossless formats are available to you.

This program can't control playback. The controls you want are described in the LockOn Docs directory, in the file "LOCKON_FC2_Keycommands_FreeCamera_EN.pdf" (assuming you have the english version of LockOn). Here are some commands: Time accelerate: Z-LCtrl (fast forward) Time decelerate: Z-LAlt Time normal: Z-LShift End Mission: Esc (That is, rewind to beginning) Pause: Pause

The manual says that frame counter is RCTRL + Pause. Does that fix it? If not try mapping to a custom key. I have software that can set all the options, including those not shown in the LockOn GUI. One day I might get around to writing a GUI for it, but at the moment it is a low priority for me (have other stuff to do, like player statistics and mission generation/dynamic campaign).

Great idea. Lottu doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself, it is just supposed to be a more convenient way of doing it. I'll implement this so it is less of a PITA. Lottu 1.2.1 is a bug-fix release fixing a playback path problem for some users: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/2010/4/lottu-1.2.1/lottu-1.2.1.exe As always, please let me know (this forum or Private Message) if you have any issues with this version of lottu.

Thanks. Much appreciated and I'm glad it is useful.

Lottu 1.2.0 beta released. Improvements include: * ability to set path to LockOn 2 track player (simulator.exe) * path to selected track player is saved in preferences file (lottu.properties) in each users home directory and read at program start-up. Please let me know if it doesn't fix your problem 2IAE_Fahhh. Download links: http://stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/2010/4/lottu-1.2.0/lottu-1.2.0.exe JAR version (works on Linux) at: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/2010/4/lottu-1.2.0/lottu.jar

lottu is semi-retarded at the moment (although not completely retarded). It doesn't care where it is installed so you can run it from anywhere (I like 'monolithic' utilities like this, putty SSH being a great example). Currently lottu scans all the drives on your system looking for a file that matches either of the following paths on each drive: <drive> \Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2\bin\x86\stable\simulator.exe or <drive> \Program Files (x86)\Eagle Dynamics\LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2\bin\x86\stable\simulator.exe I didn't add the ability to manually select the location as I was trying to avoid storing any persistent data as this can cause users complications. Clearly there is the need for some of you to do this so I'll add this feature tonight. Look for a new version of lottu tomorrow that'll solve your problem. It will write a simple text file "lottu.properties" somewhere in your user directory (exactly where depends on your operating system). Thanks for you feedback Fahhh, I know that if you are asking for this there are probably a few more users also needing something the same thing who haven't asked yet.

lottu version 1.1.0 is available. Changes include: * fixed size window (resizing confused some people) * added play button to start playing the selected track * accepts the name of a track to modify on the command-line, this allows Windows to associate lottu with the track file type (*.trk). This version can be downloaded from: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu Direct link: http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/2010/4/lottu-1.1.exe ps. apologies USSR_Rik for the cross-posting, didn't know it was prohibited.

The 104th Phoenix Squadron is proud to bring you 'Lottu' - the LockOn Two Track Utility. Lottu 1.3.2 allows you to modify LockOn Two tracks (automatically recorded during each flight) so your tracks: * can show external views * can show unit labels * can show map views * allow switching between aircraft, and * enable TacView (global exports) during playback. Lottu can start playback of tracks when running on Windows with LockOn 2 installed (the path to the LockOn 2 player, 'simulator.exe' can be selected). Lottu can be used to modify tracks on Mac OS X and Linux (but cannot start playback). Lottu is inspired by the Lotu (Lock On Track Utility for Flaming Cliffs 1.12) and provides similar functionality for LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2. Hopefully lottu will ease the continued creation of LockOn videos by the community. Technical information: Lottu requires Java 1.6 or higher to run. Java can be downloaded freely from http://www.java.com. Java is developed in Java under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) v3 or later. We don't want you to ever have to re-invent this tool, so use the source code in any of the ways permitted by the GPL. The development home page of lottu is: http://stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu Direct download link for lottu 1.3.2 (released 2011-02-20): http://www.stallturn.com/wiki/upload/lottu/lottu-1.3.2.exe Additional versions, source code (licensed under GNU GPL v3 or later) and more information are available from the lottu page at: http://stallturn.com/wiki/en/lottu Features are still being added to lottu, so please check LockOnFiles for the latest version (this may take a while to be uploaded so may be a few days behind the version in the 'stallturn' link). http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&cid=268&lid=1741&title=Lock%20On%20Two%20Track%20Utility%20LOTTU#dldetails Credits: Developer: 104th_Moa Testers: * 104th_Crunch * 104th_Dredd * 104th_Mastiff * 104th_Mustang * 104th_Rock * 104th_Tyger Feature suggestions/concepts: * 104th_Route * 51st_Case * 159th_Viper * 159th_Shallow_Grave * 2IAE_Fahhh * AldoUSMC Concept: Lottu was created using the following information and discussions: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=870614&postcount=2 http://www.104thphoenix.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=11718#11718 http://www.104thphoenix.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2087&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 Note: The original post was was updated (2011-02-20) to link to the latest lottu version (and webpage with source code).