Starlight

Hi. why don't you try some programs such as GetDataBack (for FAT32 or NTFS). They can recover deleted files, even after re-formatting, partition crashes and some disk failures.

Re: DC Soon after release the campaign was definitely playable, it had flaws, but was playable and most AI aircraft did their job. Falcon 4 was patched up to 1.08, about one year after its release, and most problems were solved. Keep in mind that the complexity of a dynamic campaign and of a good working AI can make bugs grow exponentially. In Lockon problems with AI aircraft begin when taxiing on the runway and end when they land *somewhere*. And they're just doing single missions, without any unit moving on his own, but just following strict plans.

If a dynamic campaign was to be applied to LockOn today, it would be a near disaster. This is because the AI is absolutely unable to properly execute missions and it has no ability to behave as a trained force. For example, if you issue a strike package of 20 aircraft to attack a target, they will take off separately, they will fly and attack in single ships, slowing down in their attack run. Then, instead of returning to their home airfield, they divert to random airfields. And if the same package is supposed to have a counterair or sead escort... well forget it! And, the second issue is the framerate. Today LockOn is slow on most PCs while displaying half a dozen aircraft above a vehicle column, maybe in a town.... can you imagine having 20-30 aircraft over a 50+ vehicles (plus a real-time AI working for the dynamic campaign)? And can you imagine LockOn manage the Day One in a Central Europe scenario, with at least a couple of hundred aircraft in flight at any time?

Central Europe, late 80s, would definitely be THE SCENARIO. But to model its complexity will be really hard, and would probably need a mammoth effort as well as a mammoth budget. If any software house can afford both of them it would surely be worth it! The reason for this scenario is THE CHOICE is very simple, and it's that 90% of the weapon systems designed in the last 60 years have been done thinkin about such a hypothetical conflict. But I also think that the main field where LockOn needs improvement is that of AI and dynamic campaign/missions. Without an effective AI, really capable of executing missions, tasks and orders even a new wonderful scenario would be pointless. And a dynamic campaign would also be needed. But can you imagine to manage a dynamic campaign in a Central European scenario? Just to give a rough estimate, there would have been about 2500-3000 NATO aircraft and 7000-9000 Warsaw Pact aircraft. Plus ground troops and at least their SAMs and AD to "interact" with air forces. And, at least a couple of hundred airbases, EWR, GCI and various military installations. Given these facts I don't think today we can ask ED to build such a scenario. So my wish list to ED is "just" about a better AI and a dynamic campaign. If talking about scenarios maybe a desert terrain would be easier to implement. even if today we can see some real fighting in "desert terrain" just watching tv :( If you are familiar with Falcon 4 there is a project in progress: Europe Theater homepage

it's an online auction site, you can buy both new and second-hand items. You can really do cool deals, but you also must be careful to avoid swindlers. You can pay the items with whatever the seller accepts, cash, money orders, credit card, bank transfer, paypal and so on... but it's up to the seller to decide what to accept. But I'll say that again, be cautious when buying! Make sure the seller has a good feedback, check item's condition and beware of low item prices because they're sometimes coupled to high shipping fees or, worse, to a poor or non-existing item! Just a few tricks that may help you when bidding for an item. cheers!

look on eBay. I got my X36/X35 system for 10 euros!!!! it's the gameport version, not USB, but with new freeware drivers it works fine and is fully programmable even under windows XP/2000/NT (usually gameport joysticks do not work under these systems) It's very smooth to fly and I guess there are 200+ programmable combinations!

LockOn's AI is quite poor compared to other aspects of the game and compared to the AI of other sims, even if they're much older (F4). And with the AI it has today I think it would be hardly able to manage any dynamic campaign too, if this was to be added. The first problem is in mission planning/execution. The mission planning is very far from being precise and flexible. You can just assign waypoints with simple actions to perform, but, even if they were accurate, you're not sure that the AI will perform what it's supposed to do. I'm talking about simple things... today I started a mission with 4 flights of four F-16s each (16 A/C together), starting from shelters. To have all of them in the air they took 10 minutes, and when the last aircraft was taking off, the first one was really close to its target. How could this be possible? Why the leader of each flight does not wait on the runway or loiter in the air for its wingmen? Then, the attack phase was awful, with the F-16s slowing down to nearly minimum speed to drop their bombs.... mmm... the mission editor doesn't let you choose which attack profile to use, but this is nonsense anyway! Even the RTB was a problem, because at the first try all aircraft dispersed in different airports, instead of returning to the one they took off from. Still wondering why, since it was fully operative... The second time I tried the same mission all the aircraft returned to their home airfield, but when landing they had troubles in loitering and in the final leg, so some diverted to other airfields (even if they didn't hit bingo fuel). To sum up, LockOn has serious problems with the mission planning phase, both because it's limited (it doesn't allow formations, ROE (rules of engagement), attack profiles, weapon delivery type and things like that) and because the execution of the orders is really bad, and it's really hard to have the AI units do what you really want them to do. LockOn has great graphics and great gameplay but it really lacks the sense of "real thing" given by Falcon 4. The devs of LockOn really cared a lot to convey realism through graphics, realistic weapons and FMs. But without a good AI which uses them, the single player part of the game is much like an "airborne shooter", not a realistic sim.

Re: Landing and flight path marker in 1.02 The problem is that the AI flies the F-15 straight down its path at about 126-130 knots. Do the same with a human pilot and even placing the FPM on the runway your aircraft will fall short of it. I managed to land at about 140-150+ knots, with a technique which was much more similar to that used to bring down cargo a/c in tricky situations or fighters at airshows.... not the kind of landing typical of the F-15 and of any other fighter SOP (standard operating procedure). And, ok if the F-15 has problems at 120-130.... but what about the A-10? And again, the FPM imho has definitely some problems. In Falcon 4 I used it all the way down to the runway (except the final flare) and it definitely worked every time!

Hi, Since I've recently installed patch 1.02 I've been "grounded" for a while, I've flown short missions, most were to test textures and other things... the problem is that I made my first landings with LO 1.02 just these days... I have to point out one thing before telling my problem: I always landed without problems in LockOn 1.00, 1.01, Falcon 4.0 and with any other flight sim I played with. With Lockon I also made an arrested landing with a SU-33 at my very first attempt. Then, I tried some landings with LockOn 1.02 and I had quite a hard time to land all planes. I had to do several attempts and I noticed some things - The behaviour of many aircraft below 130 knots seems very strange. Since AFAIK the Eagle lands at 120-130 knots and the A-10 at a much slower speed, so I don't understand how can I make a realistic landing. - The Flight path marker (FPM) seems to fail at very slow speeds. To land I've been taught to place the FPM at the start of the runway, to fly right there... well it doesn't seem to work anymore... I've got the Eagle at 3-5° descent, FPM on the end of the runway, speed about 140-160 nm, and when I go below 140 for the final touchdown, the aircraft starts to fall to the ground like a brick... and it crashes some hundred feet before the runway! Now I managed to land with Lockon patched @ 1.02 but I don't feel the aircraft behave in a very realistic way at such slow speeds. Am I the only one to experience such a problem? Or is it just some "rust" on my hands?

Hi, what do you mean for "surge effect"? if you mean slowdown, I think the problem is heat blur or something like that. Solution (I must admit it's a great advice from Caretaker): pause the game, press ALT+TAB, go back to desktop and then switch back to Lomac. Then it should run fine.

GCI, Ground Controlled Intercept, è il termine corretto saluti, Matteo

A Soviet Guard tank skin and a desert skin (with Iraqi-like markings). Both these skins are quite fictional, however based on some actual features on real T-80 and T-72 tanks. They are obviously based on the T-80UD skin/model. The layered template (.PSD format) is also available on my site. Get them here!

Re: not only paypal And what about a "true F-18 fund"? We raise $ 5-10 million and we buy a second-hand F-18 from AMARC (they should have some). Half a dozen flights per day, one for each Lomac fan, and we're done! Real HUD, clickable cockpit, realistic FM, no FPS issues, no need for TrackIR... :partyman:

Re: not only paypal I'd like to get the PayPal option. I've used it for two years and I've never had any problem (both with eBay users and with online shops). It has quite low fees (at least compared to international bank operations and/or money orders) it's fast and is quite secure (you don't have to put up a secure site to get credit card payments on your own) If the credit card is a problem in most countries there should be debit cards which are treated exactly like credit cards, with the advantage that you don't have to put your whole account at risk. You just put the money you need. And then you register to PayPal, which is free, quick and simple.

Merry Christmas everybody! And also the best wishes for a happy (and "Flaming") new year! ;)

I hope so.... but I don't understand why companies and associations have to worry about computer games. Copyright for real players on sport games, copyrights on world championships for racing games, copyrights and restrictions on other racing games, copyrights for flight simulations. Why? Just money? I remember that on the car racing game for PS2, cars could not be damaged after crashes because some companies didn't want to see their cars "discredited".... :) If we continue in this way of thinking, sooner than later we'll have aerospace companies worry about flight sims, because an Air Force could be influenced by the performance shown by an aircraft in a computer game. That's nonsense! If that thing about the F-104 is true, it's another nonsense.... The F-104 is an aircraft which has first flown 50 years ago!!!! Do they want to sell it again? Are they worried that an F-104 against a Su-27 can lose and so Lockheed can be discredited? C'mon guys!!! My humble opinion is that games are artworks, made by artists. The games are representations of the real world (the definition of "simulation" is a very similar one) and one person can be free to represent what he/she wants. If I write a book with a story worked around a Formula1 pilot, I don't have to pay any copyright to the FIA, Ecclestone or any one there. Same thing should hold true for a computer game that does not want to be an official endorser, but just wants to describe something that exists in the real world. Then, when talking about the computer games, did you notice that many games avoid copyright restrictions by using stupid names? But the games are fully editable so after 5 minutes you have the game with the correct names? Isn't that a stupid method of making things right? I really hope that copyright issues won't bother the already unstable flight sim market. Companies don't have much money to make here, and it is already very hard for us to have some decent flight sims here. I'm scared that in a near future we will have some sims with the FF-151 Eggle or the CY-270 Flinker. That would definitely be disgusting!

I don't have precise data about that. But, if we talk about the Gulf War, they did completely different missions. The F-16/18s were used as bomb-trucks, and were also sent over Baghdad in broad daylight, while the Harriers were loitering in generally safer areas and were also not used as much as the F-16/18s.

I've read about the use of VIFF maneuvers in a joint exercise held many years ago in the Indian Ocean by the Royal Navy and the US Navy. Tomcats had a hard time to "shoot down" Harriers in mock air combat. Ok, they were flying old underpowered F-14As, but at knife range the VIFF can make some difference, I think. I also read in some papers that VIFF was used against Argentine fighters in the Falklands, but I'm not sure of that. The problem here is that the Harrier is usually going to operate very close to the FLOT, performing CAS or BAI. In that environment it's quite exposed to small arms fire, as well as Manpads. There seemed to be two major shortcomings in the Harrier II: the first one is that the airframe is not very damage-tolerant, like many other aircraft of the same size (Hornet, Falcon...); the second one is that the location of the exhaust nozzles seem to attract IR SAMs quite well. And, since the hot parts of the Harrier are placed right in the middle of the airframe, an IR-homing missile launched against a Harrier is much more likely to cause critical damage to the airframe itself. In other aircraft IR-homers usually fly towards their tailpipe, and so they're more likely to be spoofed with decoys or to achieve achieve a non-direct (proximity) hit instead of a direct one. The risk of manpads is very common for aircraft operating in that role, and this is why many CAS aircraft have one-of-a-kind designs or just some "field modifications": the Israeli A-4N Skyhawk has a much longer exhaust nozzle (to "suppress" IR signature). The A-10 has widely spaced engines. The Su-25 has an armored plate between the engines (and both A-10 and Su-25 have a huge load of flares) . The Harrier lacks a feature to reduce vulnerability, and when compared to other mud-movers such as Hornets and Falcons, it has the further disadvantage of being quite slower. And many fighter pilots just say "speed is life"...

JJ Alfa some time ago told that he was developing a four-countries addon, that added Italy, Hungary, Portugal and another country, with their own skins and things like that. But as far as I know he's now busy as a Flaming Cliff beta tester, so I don't know if and when he will release his addon.

The original idea comes from a french inventor. He tried to sell his idea to Breguet but it was (stupidly :? ) rejected as an utopic concept. The V/STOL concept had been long sought by many countries between late '40s and 70s, but no aircraft was good enough to go beyond the early prototype phase, at least before the Kestrel (which was the Harrier concept prototype). So it's not very easy to say "the French invented the idea of the Harrier or the V/Stol concept", because aircraft often involve many technologies which come from different sources. Another example could be that of the stealth aircraft. Early figures about radar reflection were from a Russian scientist, but without US supercomputers of the 70s and the brains of the folks at the Skunk Works there would hardly be a stealth fighter today. Sea Harriers were aircraft from the 80s (they just entered service before the War) Mirages, Daggers and Skyhawk were aircraft of 20-30 years before! You really can't make such a comparison. The US became interested in the Harrier in 1970 and the first AV-8A for the USMC arrived in 1971. The development of the Harrier II (the AV-8B) by McDonnel Douglas started in the mid 70s. So the US interest for a working V/STOL solution is much earlier than the Falkland conflict. The Harrier perfomed well in the Falklands, but Argentine did not own a sophisticated IAD system nor an efficient SAM "umbrella" and not even a first-line interceptor force. Later conflicts (like Gulf War of 1991) revealed many weak points of the Harrier (such as a high loss rate due to failures and SAM vulnerability, especially small IR SAMs). Instead the Harrier's strong point could have been appreciated in the case of an all-out war, when Western airfield would have likely been knocked out by Warsaw Pact forces and so the Harrier could have used its ability to operate from "dispersed" locations (at least until logistics could keep the pace with operations....) Another advantage of the Harrier is the ability to use VIFF (Vectoring in forward flight) maneuvers, which proved very useful in knife-range air combat. But I don't think we could see the Harrier in Lock On, even as an AI aircraft, because building from scratch a flight model with VIFF support would probably be as hard as building a working/flyable multirole as the F-18 with its full avionics array.

... who do you think invented the Harrier ... the US attempts at VSTOL a/c were complete failures, worse than the Soviet Forger!! James The Britons invented the Harrier (and the Kestrel V/STOL prototype), but the current Harrier II is made by McDonnel Douglas. If you have doubts, read any aviation book and you will find "McDonnel Douglas AV-8B Harrier" Now this is an extract from "Modern Air Combat" written by Bill Gunston (who is a Briton): << Until 1975 it had seemed obvious that further development of the Harrier would be either British or a 50/50 partnership with the USA, but unfortunately in that year the British government said there was "not enough common ground" for collaboration. The inevitable result is that the Harrier II is a US programme, but because of its purchase for the RAF, the UK has a share (40% in US/UK aircraft, 25% in sales to other countries) >> It's clear that the Harrier II IS a US aircraft purchased by UK. This does not deny the fact that the original Harrier was made by UK. But now things are different. Since in this thread we were talkin' about companies and their rights over aircraft, the Harrier currently being flown all over the world is the Harrier II by McDonnel Douglas - a US company. That's all.

The Harrier is by McDonnel Douglas, at least the latest versions (AV-8B-C-D-E) and Gr.5-7. If BAe is involved in building them for UK I think it's just because it's been authorized to do so. But can someone please explain that thing about the F-104? An aircraft built in 1958 has really been canceled from a flight sim because of copyrights? If this is true in a short time we will have to resurrect Julius Caesar to ask him if we can use his character in a RTS game about Rome. :toimonst:

Sorry, I've been away for a while... What's this story about? Did it really happen that to the F-104???? Are flight sims gonna be like sports and racing games?

Is there a way to turn laser tag off in A-10 ground attack missions? I was trying to simulate a ground attack without laser-FAC support. thanks in advance

I'm just saying that labels take people many steps back if they're trying to achieve realism. Even the most realistic military sim won't get you involved as in real world, simply because when you're "flying" with it you're not risking your life. And, when talkin' about PC simulations you are probably sitting on a chair not experiencing roll/pitch/yaw and G-forces on your body. Your view is limited, restricted and sometimes not consistent with the simulated world (think of "object pop-up" issues). So I'm not talking about the perfect simulation, I'm just saying that we're worrying about more realistic flight models, 3D aircraft with more polygons, weapons and other things with real parameters.... I don't think we should worry about labels. Sure I'm free to deactivate them, but that was just me expressing my humble opinion.