Trident

LOL, that's what I get for being too much of a coward to try a night refueling ;)

Speaking of AA refueling, don't Flankers with refueling probes have extendable spot-lights on the fuselage side to assist in night refueling operations? That would be a nice thing to model too :)

The F-2 looks great, better than the original F-16 infact (and that's saying something, think what you want about the Viper but it DOES looks cool). However, it's actually not particularly well suited to its intended role - maritime strike (no, actually it is not supposed to be a fighter!). Inspite of being enlarged it's just too small. You know, sometimes I think the US should have let them base their FS-X on the F/A-18, basically creating the F/A-18E as a joint project. This would have resulted in shared costs for the USA and a better aircraft for Japan.

Given the pressure at 1100m I don't think there will be that much left to blow up (or look at, for that matter).

Yep, seems we can scratch atleast the FARP from our list. I'd like to know more about the AI improvements, the description isn't very specific here and mentions nothing about wingman control. Anyway, sounds very promising indeed :)

Now that a helo is coming to the LOMAC universe I've started to ponder which useful features from existing helo sims would be handy in the Ka-50 expansion. One of those that come to mind is the hold-position/pop-up combo from EECH: lead your wingie to a safe (masked) position within engagement range of the enemy, tell him to stay put, seek an attack position of your own and once established there tell him to pop-up and fire for a coordinated attack. He should then remask (!) rather than continuing to attack. Another nice thing to have would be a FARP object that could be placed manually in the editor like the bunkers and pillboxes. The ultimate implementation of this feature would naturally be to allow aircraft to use it if it is located near a suitable road :) I can see the problems in making fixed-wing AI aircraft land and take off on them though. Can anyone else think of features like that (not just communications related, although that is of course an important consideration)?

No I don't think so. New missile physics are scheduled for v1.2, what Wags is talking about is probably improved seeker logic. Good news none the less, looking forward to the patch!

The buildings and trees were transparent in 1.0 aswell, but they only became so at longer ranges. AFAIK it's possible to edit the graphics.cfg (don't quote me on the filename!) to achieve similar settings in v1.1. I have no idea which lines to change and to what values, though. Like you said it will negate the FPS gains that later versions of LOMAC offer, but if you really want to get rid of the transparency you can.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/B1-B-Bomber-Systems-Familiarization-manual_W0QQitemZ6557302220QQcategoryZ66528QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Just kidding ;)

Agree, and in LOMAC's case the effort definately shows. I much prefer a relatively small but highly detailed theatre to one that contains entire continents but looks bad below 3000 metres. OTOH, it should be possible to create a somewhat larger theatre for the LOMAC sequel without sacrificing too much detail IMHO. There certainly have been technological advances in the meantime that should make this viable. Just how much larger this theatre could be and where it should be located is debatable, and on this forum atleast it's actually an old debate ;)

I hope you're not disappointed, but there will be no fundamentally new campaign features and there will be no new map in v1.2. Both would take far too long to develop for an add-on. Unfortunately, only a minority would by the game with 'only' a new theatre or a better campaign system and no further additions. For most people a new aircraft is the main selling point.

Yup, that was the source I had in mind when I made my claim about the Flanker, but I couldn't remember where to find the article. Thanks for reminding me ;)

Just to get this straightened out for me - is this v1.2, Tank Killers or what? Now for the screenies: excellent! Infact, the MiG can really smoke that badly, but this only happens with certain throttle settings, as others have mentioned. Sometimes it doesn't smoke at all and the pictures seem to reflect that, actually. The third one in the first post looks pretty convincing already :) This is probably redundant because it's rather obvious, but here's my list of aircraft in LOMAC that could use engine smoke: Su-24 B-52 F-4E Su-22 MiG-23/27 Il-76/78 and A-50 E-3A MiG-25 Tornado (this one is tricky: it doesn't usually smoke at all, but there appears to be one specific power setting where it smokes *heavily*) Then there are a few possible smokers, I haven't seen enough photos to be sure but they seem like they may smoke: E-2C C-130H Su-25 An-26/30 Tu-95/142 MiG-31 (the D30F is based on the D30s of the Il-76 family, as the name implies)

For 1.2? I assume they're 3D trees, if so I can't wait to see them! I just hope the FPS won't suffer, I currently run LOMAC on fairly high settings but this also means that even slightly worse performance will force me to turn off some options as I have a pretty slim margin before it affects playability.

I think one of the easiest solutions to making ground attack a little more harrowing would be to have all vehicles with MGs shoot back. Apparently this was taken out of LOMAC at some point because the AAA AI (how's that for an acronym?) was used and proved to be unrealistically accurate. However it shoudn't be too hard to fix that, should it?

Ok, it's not totally impossible. However it's a pretty good way to get yourself killed due to patchy SA. Using the Su-25 method means aquiring the target visually and in any half-decent defensive environment this is hard enough to do in broad daylight. You will have great problems at night even with NVGs and I'm sure noone would take that risk in a real life situation (in otherwords it's rather unrealistic). About the Ka-50 at MAKS with bort 25, interestingly it appears to lack the experimental laser blinding system (?) that was visible on one older photo (the circular attachment points are still visible) while it does seem to have IR missile approach warners.

The Hokum has either the Shkval or the Mercury (or Samsheet AND Shkval, but that one came later), not both. AFAIK Kamov didn't like the Mercury (which led to the Samsheet) and thus the system never made it onto the few operational Ka-50s anyway. It does seem strange to model the NVG's just for night-flying and not for night-fighting (not possible due to the lack of a night-capable targetting system, as outlined above). LOMAC is a combatsim, so you're not likely to be flying when you can't fight. OTOH, if that's what the real Ka-50s in Russian service are like then I suppose it's alright.

Apparently they want you to just start working and post a WIP here on the forum. Once the model is finished, just send it to them and see what they think about it. That's how all the other modellers, (Mig-Mag, MBot and several Russians) have done AFAIK. So, get cracking ;) EDIT: The unanswered e-mails may be connected to a recent technical problem that affected other modellers too. Should be fixed now.

Well, the clickable cockpit technology will come with v1.2 and will be readily available for the next project. Better AI and better comms would be a precondition for a successful dynamic campaign though, correct.

That's a prototype Ka-50, probably configured for export. The Ka-50s in Russian service look very much like the one ED is showing us here. Although I must admit that I'm surprised that the Abris MFD should be considered standard equipment.

Who knows, ED may be getting some serious money from a contract like that. Here's hoping they have unprecedented resources (financial and technological) at their disposal for that project :) Anyway, the Indian MiG-29K should be sweet! EDIT: But military training tools need dynamic weather :D

That NVG-effect looks really well done, do bright light sources cause a streak when moving the FOV quickly?

Any comments on the clickable cockpit?

Nice! One thing that interests me is why the engine exhausts lack the larger exhaust IR-shields installed on most Ka-50s. AFAIK the exhausts as seen on the model were mostly found on early prototypes. Compare http://www.forum.lockon.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=2018 with http://www.foxbat.ru/maks/syzran/index.php?picid=syzran059 Just curious why this is modelled the way it is, I'm sure there's a reason :)

AFAIK the MiG-29 uses a brake lever on the stick for braking, the Su-27 has toe brakes. I don't know about the Su-25, you could probably tell by looking at the stick in LOMAC but I can't recall what it looks like right now ;) EDIT: I think it was Andy Bush over at SimHQ who mentioned that the A-10 has an axis for the airbrake. He remarked that the standard landing procedure was to have them half-way open IIRC.