Starlight

thanks! Actually the file are /config/view/view.cfg AND view.lua, but the lines you told me were correct ;) thanks again! another question: is there a way to get the camera closer to aircraft (active objects, i.e. non static ground objects)?

Hi One question: how can I get the camera at this level? By default it seems limited some feet above ground, thanks

I agree there are things which need to be fixed first. But one thing that would be quite easy to implement and is also the most critical among the "effects", is the engine smoke. It's critical in A2A combat because it's much easier to spot aircraft which have this dark trail, and it's critical because there are aircraft that are smoky, and aircraft that are not so. The smoke feature could be made similar to the one already modelled smoke for damaged engines, but a bit lighter and/or more trasparent. BTW smoky engines are already modelled in "a sim with ancient graphics" like Falcon 4 ;)

I'd like to see more effects in LockOn in the future. In particular I mean aircraft smoking and more realistic vapor effects, and apart from the graphics/scenic reasons, I think they could also affect air combat in some ways.... aircraft smoking are much easier to spot during A2A, and in LockOn there are some aircraft which are very renowned to be heavy smokers, first of all the Fulcrum, which is also a flyable.... And then also the vapor effects could help spotting an aircraft in A2A combat. And the huge cloud that sometimes builds up behind an aircraft pulling a lot of Gs I think also limits backward visibility from the cockpit. I mean effects are great for realism, not only as eye-candy, but also because they can be a factor in combat. And another effect which is already modelled in LockOn but maybe could be improved is the heat blur. From some pictures here we can see that heat blur usually covers a much larger area. The pictures here are from their copyright owners, I've pasted them here just to show what I mean in my own post. Some F-15 pictures with vapor effects: F-4F Phantom with vapour and smoke trail http://www.airliners.net/open.file/486195/M/ Tornado takeoff: notice how large is heat blur! http://www.airliners.net/open.file/336497/M/ Tornado in flight, again see the heat trai from engines F-18C, vapor and huge heat blur http://www.airliners.net/open.file/718069/M/ mig-29 smoking http://www.airliners.net/open.file/371758/M/ mig-29 smoking mig-29 smoke effect

This model is absolutely wonderful and I hope that the folks at ED consider to take it into LockOn. The basic AV-8B has simple avionics and is without radar, and even the AV-8B+ (plus) has the same radar of the F-18 Hornet so it shouldn't be a huge work in the avionics department either... ;) As far as the 3D model, it's really very good, but IMHO there are a pair of slight imperfections that can be noticed in the frontal view. The glass of the cockpit seems a bit smaller than the real one, and seems also to be placed a little lower. Also the jet intakes seem much more similar to those of the first Harrier series (AV-8A, GR.1, GR.3, Sea Harrier). The 3D model seems to have a kind of heart-shaped intake geometry, while the real Harrier II has more circular-shaped intakes. That is in the frontal view the 3D model of the Harrier II reminds me a bit the Harrier I To make a comparison and understand what I mean take a look at the last picture of the 3D model and compare it with the original pictures that follow. BTW, I'm talking about details, or maybe the model is already perfect and it was just that view that deceived me. Anyway I love this model and I hope to see it soon implemented in LockOn! Great job man!!! http://miscmp.narod.ru/img/AV-8_Eexplode.jpg http://www.airliners.net/open.file/594736/M/ http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/av02.jpg http://www.wpeu.net/web/wallpage/EN-AV-8b-15C.jpg http://www.highgallery.com/carrier-av-8b-011.jpg and this is the older Harrier I http://www.airliners.net/open.file/513341/M/ [/url]

a further problem is that you can't see a SAM launch made behind a building. so this is a huge advantage for SAM units.

I absolutely agree with you From a very very quick search it appears that F-15C based at Keflavik, Iceland, used to carry the FAST packs more usually than other squadrons. The fact that they carried out long-range patrols and intercepts is probably a good reason for this kind of configuration.

the problem is that it's hosted on the slowest server in the world! It's taking hours to load 6 pictures :shock:

The FAST packs should be allowed for all F-15C.... they can be installed on any aircraft in a quite short time. The USAF did test it, but for some strange reason it has never been used as a standard store. There are also pictures of F-15s with slick bombs, agm-65, agm-84 and other A2G weapons. I also partially disagree on the air-to-ground capability. All F-15s should have a basic a/g mode, and AFAIK the 1st TFW at Langley (FF), for a short time used to train also in the A2G mission, which was later abandoned because it was felt that the F-15 pilots should have been highly skilled and specialized in the A2A role. So adding some basic bombing ability on the F-15 won't do much harm. It's not much realistic but it could give some fun to the NATO mud movers in the LockOn community.

I agree, the branching will "kill" any campaign designer because the complexity of this thing grows exponentially: ((B^D) - 1) / (B - 1) where B is the branching factor, i.e. the number of choices after a mission and D is the number of missions that one would have to make to complete a campaign. Just to make an example, if you wanna make a full campaign with 10 missions and for each mission you can have 3 conditions (win, lose, "draw"), you would have to make about 30.000 missions (((3^10) - 1) / 2) :) This is an "upper bound" because when designing a campaign with maximum X missions, it doesn't mean that all the paths of the "campaign tree" must have X missions: the tree can be cut and thus can be very unbalanced, because the result of some missions can lead to an early end of the campaign. But still the upper bound gives a rough estimate of the complexity of this problem, which is not linear, it's exponential. That is why AI is often called into play in this kind of things ;) I'm sorry, yours was a good idea, but the truth is that unless you build very very very very short and quick campaigns, this thing is gonna turn into a huge problem ;)

I was searching on the Internet for some tests about the latest video cards and I found this review which has also a Lomac benchmark!!! It has been made with a custom Mig-29 track demo. Hope you find it useful! http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x800/page19.asp BTW, this has been done with their own config, it's not intended to be the last word about Lomac graphics tests. But it may give some useful hints if you're gonna buy a new video card.

In any case, look Falcon 4 with the latest official patch (1.08 of 1998). and then take a look at Freefalcon 3 or at Falcon 4 Sp 4.2. The community made it at least 50% better. (but I could have said even 100% better) Given that dev community, even if it produced some X-Wing mods, I would still love it! They did so much for that game... I wish LockOn could be enhanced as much as Falcon 4. Even with the current LockOn version, soon after having it installed and patched to 1.02, today I would feel it a bit less involving without the mods that I usually fly with. I'm not sure how many people here fly with a 100% standard (not tweaked) Lockon version... Anyway, always remember my words.... if the community produces a mod NO ONE is forcing you to download it... NO ONE!!!! It's better to have more choices than have absolutely nothing!

I think it's time to change this way of thinking. Falcon 4 and Strike Fighters for example allow a lot of 3rd party mods/addons (in different ways, but still they do it). Well there is no X-wing in any of these sims, instead there are plenty of flyable aircraft and 3D models, some with lower quality, but also some wonderful ones. And, the biggest thing of 3rd party addons is that if you want you can download them, if you don't want you're not forced to do so. so it's up to you. I'd love if LockOn could be a bit more tweakable. I mean more skins for each aircraft, more countries, maybe a tool to build AI aircraft (which need a basic FM, some basic avionics, a 3D model and some skins) or to mod existing ones. I've recently installed FreeFalcon 3 after a long time away from this community. Well, 3rd party mods made it a definitely new simulation, a breath of fresh air for a sim which now has 7 years. Today Falcon4 (with appropriate mods) has amazing graphics, good AI, realistic weapons parameters and a quite working dynamic campaign. It has lots of aircraft (from 60s fighters to todays last generation ones) which can be flown in campaings from Korea to Iraq, Bosnia and Central Europe (just to tell some). LockOn is much more a modern sim (mainly in the graphics), but still lacks many of these features. Surely no one here is asking ED to release source code. But thinking that user addons or SDK kill software like these, IMHO puts you in the wrong way. I think ED is slowly becoming aware of this and the first step (at least I hope it's just so) of allowing other 3D models to be built for future lockon expansions gives the picture of today's world of simulation. Building a sim today is much a harder experience than building it some years ago. The effort done by a team to do it is so huge that it looks quite a waste to use it with just one aircraft (or any other machine). Therefore it makes more sense to build a sim which is much more comprehensive and can later be used as a general sim platform.

Today I tried the same mission, I flew an A-10 placed very close to the SAM site (Buk). As soon as the search radar was destroyed the SAM ceased any activity, and no SAM was fired. I also went away from the site, thinking that maybe I was too close to be engaged... still nothing. Hence I concluded that the entire SAM site depends on the central radar. At this point there are some problems that should be addressed in Lockon. The first is that aircraft with antiradar missiles should really engage first the most immediate threat (in this case the radar, not the launchers) Then, if the SAM lanchers in lockon are not implemented with their own radar, they shouldn't be treated like targets for ARMs... And if the Sa-11 Buk in RL really has those indipendent TELAR with their own search/track radars, these should be implemented. Today the Sa-11 acts like any other centralized SAM unit (patriot-like). Once the main radar is gone, the launchers are just metal scrap.

But in LockOn the search radar is always active, and it has a longer range than the guidance radars so it must be the first threat detected Yes, I know, but bombing or marking is different from strafing with a gun :) And SEAD in VietNam was a lot different matter, if you think that in the early years it was carried out by non-dedicated platforms like A-4 skyhawks with rockets and dumb bombs. Later came the Shrike and the Standard ARMs, but they were far from being deadly as todays weapons. That is why early Wild Weasels also carried other weapons than just ARMs. strafing means you have to descend and maybe slow down. Today very few aircraft strafe, in general they go for bombing runs, which have a different and less demanding procedure. And, AFAIK, the main task of platforms like F-4G was to kill immediate threats flying in "biscuit" or "8-shaped" patterns. They did not have to completely destroy radar sites, they just were tasked to make them switch off (by destroying them or forcing a shutdown) I have a really good book about SEAD, called "IronHand - Smashing the enemy's air defences", I'lll try to finish it when I have some time because I've always been interested about these aircraft doing this damn dangerous job. Yes, I know you can't just turn it on and off, yet if you read reports from real action, you will know that they most of the times the operators switched the radar off. As I told in my first post (it's an extract from a pilot report in "F-16 Viper" by squadron signal) after a few days of war in 1991, the Iraqis learned what ARMs were, and they actually shut down their radars just when they heard the call for an ARM launch, even when it was a fake call made by F-16 pilots who didn't have Wild Weasel cover! And during later ops SAMs were mostly fired with optical guidance (or without any guidance at all, just to scare pilots) That is why I think that including some kind of shutdown procedure would be a good idea. maybe in future developments...

Ooops! sorry to write about something already discussed. I lost that thread. I also didn't know that about the Buk (I still call it SA-11 Gadfly ;) ). Anyway the main radar of a battery is the search/track radar.... the radar mounted on each telar seems to be purely for missile guidance purposes. So the first unit to be engaged in SEAD missions should be the search/track radar, then the telars, if they guide some missiles. But if they don't guide missiles, I think the telars should be silent, or at least in some kind of standby-EMCON mode. I'll investigate when I'll have some time about the other trucks... on a mission I thought they were killed by HARMs, but I may be wrong, maybe they were just strafed. Anyway also this thing of strafing the remaining units (CC & reloaders) is quite stupid, and even more stupid if other threats are still present nearby. The other questions of frequency-hopping, radar shutdown and EW aircraft is also still open.

hi, I'm sorry but I have another request to the devs: today the only way to assign an airbase to one side is to place a flight over it and to schedule its takeoff in some future. Are there any chances in the future that there will be a more user-friendly option, like airbase assignment or FLOT definition, for example when you assign countries to each side? Furthermore there is another issue, that often AI aircraft don't follow their original flight plan, and land to a different airfield, without the real need to divert there (bingo fuel, damage, emergency). Is this issue being addressed? thanks, Matteo

Hi a question to the devs: are there any chances to see in the future a better modelled EW environment in LockOn? Today the situation is a bit sad... I've made a mission to test the "new" F-4G (an F-4E with a new skin and AGM-88 :) ) and the results were not really exciting.... - The worst thing was to see the Wild Weasels firing HARMs against all the targets of the enemy SAM group, including the launchers and the support vehicles... the HARMs, like all ARMs home on radiation sources, they are not like mavericks... also their warhead is not designed to kill vehicles, but more in general to inflict damage on fragile radar antennas. The further problem was that the Wild Weasels engaged the SAM launchers before the search/track radar.... with the result that until the last SAM launcher was killed that SAM group could engage at will... as a general rule ARMs would engage radar vehicles, and if they lose the EM signal they try to remember the location to inflict damage on personnel and vehicles with their shrapnel. - In Lockon the SAM batteries don't make anything to avoid being shot at. There is no frequency-hopping nor any radar shutdown. They just make a barrage fire with the SAMs available. Most of the latest conflicts depicted a more complex environment... even the Iraqis back in 1991 monitored US radio frequecies and shut down their radars whenever they just heard a call Magnum-X from a Wild Weasel aircraft (where X stands for the NATO SAM designation). So both over Iraq and former Yugoslavia, a large part of the SAMs fired were optically guided and/or their launchers adopted many other tricks to avoid being sitting ducks for ARMs. - In Lockon there is no EW aircraft. Ok, modelling a modern battle area is very hard.... but if we want realism on radar modes, ECM burnthrough and other things like that, we can't ignore the fact that EW plays a major role in every modern conflict, like do AWACS and GCI. There have been very few missions in the last 20-30 years which were carried out without some EW aircraft flying cover somewhere around the fighters/bombers package. Simply because survival in a well defended area without an EW umbrella, today is quite impossible. So if we set up a mission against some SAMs like Patriot or SA-10 there are really few chances to survive if the SAMs are correctly modelled. Deceptive jamming and chaff are not enough to allow aircraft penetrate enemy airspace. If you add that there's no way to tell AI to fly nap-of-the-Earth, nor to use ground masking or terrain following, the situation get even worse! What do you think about that?

In fact we can't edit existing aircraft and we can't add more CLSID.... but ED can do that! What I'm saying with this post is that IMHO ED could release tons of new aircraft without much effort. Given that they're not being modelled in high detail (as far as their systems and FMs), they could edit a lot of existing aircraft to get new ones.... just few examples: F-15C -> F-15E Tornado IDS -> Tornado ADV F-4E -> F-4G, F-4 FGR.2, F-4S, RF-4C C-130 -> AC-130.... Plus the activation and improvement of already existing "Flanker 2.0" aircraft which are now available with some mods like Mig-29K and F-111 IMHO it would not require a tremendous effort to make these new AI aircraft (anyway much less than modelling physics for Su-25T landing) and it would bring a lot "fresh air" to LockOn. That's is the part most concerning ED. If you think that also many fans are building 3D models from scratch for other aircraft (some of which don't even have a radar) I think we could really have tons of new aircraft.

The old fashioned SAM hunter/killer team of the 52nd TFW I feel much safer now with those F-4G! ;)

thanks a lot ;) To be honest I was hoping to gather a bit more of interest towards this topic... hell I'd love to see more non aircraft in LockOn... they would even have much more appeal to me than this flyable Su-25T actually does. but that's just IMHO, I don't want to start a flame here. Well that Il-76 was damn good at bombing... the funny thing was that after loading it with a single 2,000 pounds bomb, LockOn told me that its maximum weight was exceeded! A transport aircraft that has less than 2,000 pounds of payload? what the hell is that? :)

I want to stress once more the main point of my original topic. The main point on my initial post is that the differences in flight models and avionics are not so important in the AI controlled aircraft in Lock On. Lock On is a simulation, and therefore represents a model of reality, not reality. The detail of the model represented in LockOn (in particular when talkin of AI controlled aircraft) is not so high to notice such differences. I am 100% sure that if today ED added an F-15E with the same FM of the F-15C telling that it was a brand new one, no one could even notice that. I previously described my experiments (the transport-bomber one) because I wanted to point out that AI controlled aircraft in LockOn are not modelled in high detail. Those aircraft can fly at terrain level at night even if they don't have TF radars. They can bomb targets day and night (with pinpoint accuracy even with dumb bombs) even if they don't have targeting systems nor even any bombing system at all. We can tolerate these things and we can't tolerate to see a tweaked F-15C flight model applied to the F-15E? :) The other general point is that I'm the first person to say that some of the most needed features of LockOn are a smarter AI and a Dynamic Campaign (and maybe some other flyables). But while these things need HUGE time, money and effort to be developed (and ED seems not to have some of them), some new aircraft can be done in a few weeks, maybe two or three months. And will bring a lot of new missions, situations.... today for example LockOn lacks a tactical US bomber... as an example IMHO the addition of the F-15E or F-111 would be easy and useful. I don't want this thread to become a wishlist for aircraft ("I want this and I want that" style...), and I don't want to talk about different versions of aircraft which could be implemented. I just want to hear if you agree with my simple model analysis of LockOn and if you could be possibly interested in buying a cheap expansion pack with some new aircraft (obviously not flyable). If you are interested, this could become an idea for people at ED. If you are not interested, I just gave a try ;)

First of all, yes, I mean AI controlled aircraft (I thought it was clear from the subject of the post) to answer: not much different in flight model. Sure the F-15E is heavier, but it's also higher-powered. The wing/fuselage/tail sections are aerodynamically identical to the F-15D, the two seater, which is very similar to the F-15 single seater (otherwise it wouldn't be used to train F-15 pilots!) with added conformal tanks on the jet intakes. Those tanks add about 20% more drag, plus their weight. The F-15E empty therefore has a FM very similar to that of the F-15D with two external fuel tanks, but it has quite less drag. The conformal tanks can be easily treated as external stores (in fact they are such, being detachable on the ground but not jettisonable in flight). I don't think that any flight sim has a different flight model for each store carried, so to have the FM of the F-15E we should just have the FM of the two seater version F-15D which, again, is VERY VERY similar to the already existing FM. in avionics yes, the F-15E is just another thing. However the avionics system of the F-15E is currently based on that radar and the Lantirn. The radar APG-70 is very similar in A2A functions to the APG-63 radar of the F-15C modelled in LockOn. The F-15C however lacks A2G capabilities. The lantirn system is already included in LockOn. Since I'm talking of AI-controlled aircraft we don't need an implementation of A2G functions of the radar (which are not even modelled on the Tornado included in LockOn) nor we should need a more detailed implementation of the Lantirn.

There's been much debate on every Lomac forum about the introduction of new aircraft both as flyables and as AI-controlled. Related to the introduction of new AI aircraft, some of the main problems pointed out were that new A/C would mean modelling new flight models and new weapons systems. Ok for the first one, but the second one IMHO is not a real problem in Lockon. Today I took the F-15, I enabled A/G stores on its pylons, I flew a mission and I found no way to enable a ground attack system... sure, the F-15 is an interceptor, and ED modelled just its A2A modes. Ok, same mission, but this time flown by AI. The AI was able to drop the bombs and to hit two targets, both at day and at night. And CEP=0!!!! This means that the AI has available a generic (and really effective!!!! :) ) bomb system even on aircraft which shouldn't have them. To have the final proof I added a pylon to carry some bombs on a transport aircraft, and the result was the same: targets hit with pinpoint accuracy! I have always thought that even if some systems (in particular those of the flyables) in LockOn have been quite realistically modelled, some other systems are quite generic and may rely on generic parameters. IMHO the same thing seems to hold true for flight models. The flyables have quite accurate FMs, the non-flyable seem to rely on more generic ones. Given these facts I don't see why should be so difficult to add some more aircraft (as non-flyables) to make the game more interesting. Furthermore there are some aircraft which are just modded versions of aircraft already present in LockOn: the Tornado ADV and the F-15E Strike Eagle are quite good examples. The purists will say that their FMs are different, and in real world it may partially be true, but given the degree of realism of some "unmanned" aicraft/systems in LockOn I think that a slight tweak of some existing FMs should definitely be more than enough. And also the 3D models shouldn't be so difficult to develop if they were built over existing "airframes". Obviously that applies mainly to the non-flyables, because for flyables it would require a more in-depth systems modelling. But a small addon featuring some quite needed aircraft would bring some fresh air for the LockOn market/sales with minimal effort (no new bugs to solve, no tracks to be made compatible...) Just to give an idea, some aircraft that IMHO would be quite easy for ED to implement are the F-15E, the Tornado F.3, the F-111, the Su-30 (plus export versions)

Tiramisu? - isnt that an Italian cake? Tiramisu is my favorite cake, it's THE CAKE, but it's also the name of a small DOS program to recover data from partitions. Problem is that it manages only FAT partitions and it's limited to small disk geometries. The large disks which are in use today are out of reach of Tiramisu. The Ontrack company which did Tiramisu now offers a recovery service at payment, with analysis being done by its program EasyRecovery. IMHO GetDataBack is the best utility to recover data from partitions. Unless you have phisically overwritten the deleted files, you have some real chances to recover them. NTFS or FAT32... you only know what you had. Windows XP supports both, older 9x and ME support only FAT32.