Starlight

--- warning: this is a cross-post ---- I simply don't understand why people here strive for getting the best realism possible on this sim, and then they say they want labels, which is the least realistic feature ever seen in a sim. Use your sensors to detect the enemy, and most of all, use your "Mark One" eyeball!

I simply don't understand why people here strive for getting the best realism possible on this sim, and then they say they want labels, which is the least realistic feature ever seen in a sim. Use your sensors to detect the enemy, and most of all, use your "Mark One" eyeball!

It's not a good news this one, if the developers are still working hard on the game code, well the release seems not very close. Keep in mind that this is not a patch which can be quickly uploaded to some FTP servers and made available. This is a new game, which must be also packaged (for the Russian market) or put in some form to be downloaded on the Internet after having been bought on a secure server. It's much less trivial than a simple patch. Given the fact that there could be at least a week between the end of coding and the availability of the game, I don't think the game will be released very much before Christmas. And since few people actually work between Xmas and the New Year's Day, well I'm expecting Flaming Cliffs not to be out before January. Just IMHO.

I'm not so confident. Patch 1.02 has been many times very very close to the release but was later delayed due to last-minute bugs.

what's for? to ask for a flyable F-18? :)

polygon count=65,962 maybe it's actually a lower detail level than Lock On. Flaming Cliffs' Su-25T alone is said to have about 52,000 polygons and also look at these specs of the pc they're using: # Intel Pentium-4 3.0GHz Processor w/ 1MB Cache (800MHz FSB) # 2GB PC3200/DDR400 DUAL CHANNEL RAM, (2 - 1GB), 2 Slots 2 GB of dual channel DDR400 is not common in our PCs. Nothing special, but it's not very common. In a similar scene I can get more than 20 FPS with a Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB RAM, Athlon XP 3200 and 1 GB (not dual-channel) DDR400 RAM (Cl 2.5). Keep in mind that this simulator may have a more optimized code, and if it wanna sell it must be smooth! Quote: "MetaVR VRSG and WorldPerfect are multi-threaded applications that take advantage of the hyper-threading virtual dual CPU mode for enhanced performance" http://www.metavr.com/ig-cube.html 12,260 $ USD??????? What the hell is that???? I can buy one for about one tenth of that price!

Maybe I'm wrong but only the flyables in LockOn have their own equipment and FM simulated in a realistic way. That is, other AI aircraft IMHO have a generic avionics suite tweaked for their own capabilities. For example I don't think the AWG-9 radar is properly modelled. The A2G radar functions are not even implemented in any aircraft... And also for the FM, I think that the non-flyables also share a generic FM tweaked for their own purposes. Not to mention that many actions are scripted and sometimes your wingmen actually get out of the flight envelope to do some things... And this also seem to hold true for AG equipment (SAMs and ship defenses). Maybe I'm wrong but this is the feeling I get with Lomac. So this is why it makes me smile when I hear people complaining about F4 models not being original but simply the F-16 one tweaked...

This is a military sim, i.e. a sim which could be operated by military pilots (the A-10 version is currently fielded on many US bases) First, when complaining about Lomac's low FPS, look at these requirements: http://www.metavr.com/vrsgsystemrequirements.html These are the ground vehicles: http://www.metavr.com/products/vrsg/VRSG3Dcontent-mil-land1.html These are some screens: http://www.metavr.com/products/vrsg/vrsgoverview.html http://www.metavr.com/casestudies/fwa10followup.html http://www.metavr.com/casestudies/CASNET.html http://www.metavr.com/products/vrsg/IG.html It's really good (i'd love to give it a try!), but compared to LockOn sources, resources and costs, I think I could say that LockOn RULEZ!!!!! ;)

http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_048a.html this is a good reading for CAS in the A-10 About the nazi flag, yes it was carried also by German tanks, not only captured Russian tanks, because there had been many friendly fire cases. Also the "invasion stripes" were put on allied aircraft before the invasion of Normandy. And, more recently, Israelis put huge black/yellow triangles on the wings of their Mirages, to avoid them beign mistaken with other Arab Mirages. During some operations, mainly when you suppose your own forces are superior to enemy forces, you are glad to trade camouflage for identification. About CAS there are some things to say. - It is well known that if ground objects can be seen from a great distance (if they are in open ground), it's also true that it's very hard to actually identify them. It's hard to identify if they're friend or foe, and it's sometimes hard to identify if it's a civilian or a military target - Pilots involved with CAS missions in general have a good knowledge of the terrain where they're gonna operate and where friendly and enemy forces should be (even if also in the Gulf War this lead to some friendly-fire accidents). - Those pilots often can rely on ground support for target ID, with actual pilots or well-trained FACs teamed with ground troops. Such FACs can ID more easily the ground targets and can also place laser tags or smoke shells to mark the enemy forces. - If the situation is more "dynamic", FACs can be implemented with other aircraft, helicopters or even drones (UAVs). The A-10 has often carried the OA-10 designation because of its FAC role (sometimes carried out over former Jugoslavia). The A-10 in Germany were sometimes teamed with Army's OV-10 Broncos or with helicopters.

wanna fly the F-15E? simple, check this out: http://www.simmersworld.com/ss2.php?sl=F15Epit1.jpg http://www.simmersworld.com/ss2.php?sl=F15Epit2.jpg http://www.simmersworld.com/ss2.php?sl=F15Epit3.jpg

Some new tails for the F-15, mainly for mid-late eighties US squadrons (Bitburg, Kadena, Holloman, Keflavik) You can grab them HERE!

Yes, you could already use Durandals, and this is one of the few aircraft which has them as a default load

Sorry, I didn't explain my thoughts very well. They are bomblets but they are not dropped in a ballistic way, they are fired horizontally to cover a pre-set area, they are spread over a precise pattern. They really aren't rockets (it would make no sense to lauch a rocket that way!!!!) but they are bomblets fired like rockets, so their path is not so straightforward to implement. But it's up to the devs to tell if it can be done in some future. Furthermore, it would make no sense to implement the MW-1 without fully rewriting the attack profiles used by AI pilots. Have you ever tried a runway attack mission with some bomb (free fall or CBUs)? The AI aircraft pop up long before the runway, they deploy speed brakes and at an extremely slow speed they set up their attack against a runway. I think this is absolutely the opposite of what happens in real procedures. Aicraft in antirunway missions come in extremely low fast, from multiple directions if the target has many runways, drop their weapons and run away. Just one single pass, and possibly at full speed.

I agree with some things said here. LockOn is one of the best sims in the market, and for little money you can but a sim which, at least graphically, is much better than many military sims worth billion dollars. I don't know why its price has fallen so low. I bought it original for less than $ 20.00 USD this Summer, in boxed US version (just because I liked more the US cover than the "rest of the world" cover). Now here in Italy it can be found at less than 13 euros, the same price of Rogue Spear Platinum Edition (rogue spear is five years older than Lomac)!!!!! Even though LockOn (1.02) still has some bugs, today I would still buy it even if it could only be found at full price (30-40 euros), like I did for Falcon 4. Having said this, I must admit that after a bit of "serious" playing I got a bit frustrated by the low quality of the game dynamics. I found AI pilots really dumb and useless, and many missions simply fail to be realistic. Today LockOn is good for taking screenshots and videos, is good for "blast'em all" missions, but it falls a bit short when you want a pure simulation. The lack of a dynamic campaign is already a huge gap, and the lack of smart AI is another blow to the "single" player. I don't know anything about marketing a product, and even if I'm a programmer I've never been involved in a complex project like a flight sim, so I don't know how hard it could be to modify some parts of LockOn code. But IMHO if the LockOn team could find time and money to give us a more realistic sim (even without getting to the ultra high technical fidelity of Falcon 4), I think that this game could draw to itself many flight enthusiast that today don't care much about it. I remember another good game, "Gunship!" by Microprose, which had excellent graphics but poor AI and it didn't sell very much either. I hope LockOn will soon get a good refresh on its AI part.

I hope so, there were really lots of ugly AI bugs. BTW, I agree that the devs haev done a great work with this game, I think Lomac it's one of the best sims out there in the market. It's the most beautiful, I hope to see it being the "smartest" too. That's not the most important thing, of course, it would just be a "nice to have" gadget ;) About FPS issues, I've wrote those things because there are some reasons that made me think they were caused by bugs. This is because at a random point in some missions, Lomac starts to get really low FPS (I mean 4-5 FPS). I'll make a few examples. If someone who knows about the stuff (the devs) reads this post, maybe he will notice something to correct in this game: - In the default A-10 mission where you have to attack two convoys near an enemy airfield, when I switch to the external view to watch the Tornado on SEAD escort, the FPS drop to 4-5 FPS. If I watch the A-10s or any other thing there, no trouble. - When I have missions with overcast, if I fly over the clouds at the beginning of the mission, it's quite ok (around 20 FPS). After some time if I pop back over the clouds I will get only 5-10 FPS, not more (see the AWACS screenshot with 7 FPS). - I built one mission with 6 Flankers taking off to intercept a flight of 4 Hornets and 2 F-15. The Flankers take off from a quite crowded airfield (parked aircraft). When the first two pair of Flankers take off everything's ok, but with the last pair I get again low FPS (always talking of external views). When I switch back to other aircraft again, higher FPS. Whenever I came across the last pair of Flankers my FPS dropped to 4-5, both on external views and from F-15 cockpit. But the most strange thing is this (see screens): watching one of the last Flankers from some distance I had good FPS, zooming in the view I had low FPS. Same angle, same aircraft, simulation stopped, just changed the zoom level. In the first screenshot you can notice 36 FPS, which is normal, in the second one 4 FPS, which is NOT normal. What can you tell me about this?

Re: Devs: Tornado MW-1 I agree with you, having flown a LockOn Tornado with an MW-1 which wasn't working (it was just the 3d model hung under the belly) I don't know if the devs are working at this thing too, but I think there could be a problem because the MW-1 submunitions are rockets fired to cover a pre-set area, they aren't dumb bomblets as those dropped by the Su-25T. Same thing holds true for the Jp-233 used by British Tornadoes.

I think this thread has gone a little bit further than what it should. Mayhem, if you think that the A-10 gun is overrated in LockOn, you could just say that. In LockOn I think there is a mix of percentage of hit/ percentage of kill, to determine if the A-10 gun has destroyed a tank: you could just tell the dev team that in your opinion those percentages are "overmodelled", they are unrealistic. Anyway I have flown the LockOn A-10, and I don't see the Avenger gun as a really infallible tank buster: many times I placed my gun-pipper on enemy tanks, hit a half-second burst and they weren't destroyed. So I think the gun is quite well-modelled. However if the aim of this thread instead was just pro-Russian propaganda, I don't think this is the right forum. This forum is just about an aviation sim. Next thing, Mayhem, is that LockOn is a simulation, which, like all other simulations, is based on some models, which are simplifications of the real world. Evaluating and modeling how weapons behave in a real battlefield is really tough, and many times even armies and state departments failed in this sector. Simply because the variables involved in this process are simply too many to be found and to be properly modelled. And, finally, even if the A-10 gun is overrated, I think LockOn has more serious AI and performance issues than the one you raised. Simply because weapons parameters are not well known, and many of them are just *guesses* made by designers based on their data. And probably just real pilots know if these parameters are true or not.

Something like this? I've done a Keflavik F-15 skin (tail) some time ago. And I was planning to do some more things for such a scenario. But I don't have much spare time right now :( (I'm still finishing other F-15 tails, like Kadena ZZ, Holloman HO and others) As far as the books, Red Storm Rising has some interesting air battles (were planned with Harpoon boardgame) but there are some other books that cover NATO air ops in high detail: "Fighter Missions", by Bill Gunston and Lindsay Peacock "Air Battle Central Europe", by Alfred Price

Thanks for your reply and for your info.

Hi, if you're in the Beta team can you please tell us if 1.1 will be released before the end of November? ED said that 1.1 was planned for release in November. In my post I just said that maybe "Q4-2004" was a more adequate extimate of the release date, so I think we're pretty much saying the same thing ;)

Seriously. It's November 22nd. In one week November will be over and there's still no word about the release date. They could make a big surprise or they could release later than planned. As usual with Lomac. I'm not gonna crazy for this but I'm a bit disappointed. Because Lomac community is small, ED will live with the game copies that we will buy, so what's wrong in keeping the users up-to-date about the game. What's wrong in telling "we're releasing the game in Q4-2004 but we can't give a precise date" and then updating people about the game development? This new english forum started very well, with the site itself loaded with screens and with some new movies, beta testers and devs writing on the forum. Now there's just silence about 1.1. The release date will probably be delayed to December, but the only way we're gonna know this is when November will end without 1.1 out. I'm not saying ED *must* do a bit more comms with ist community. They just *should* do it. At least because they'll need to sell 1.1 copies to continue their job. Hope to see it out soon Cheers

it's quite an interesting thread. It would be nice to hear something from somebody who was really involved in this thing (maybe an A-10 pilot). However I don't think there can be much up-to-date info for A-10 performance against T-80. Simply because the A-10 is still the mainstay of USAF CAS force and T-80 in the mainstay of Russian and former Soviet-aligned countries. I don't think the US is gonna say "Hey my tank killers aren't really able to kill any more tank at all" even if it was true. Second. The GAU-8 gun is the same of 1979 (year of the tests you reported). But the ammo may have changed and made more efficient. I don't think the US would have kept in service something that simply didn't fit for its job. And if you remember when they were searching a substitute for the A-10, it was just because the USAF felt it was slow and underpowered, not not because it was unable to kill enemy tanks. In fact the proposed substitute was the F-16 CAS, which was to be armed with the same Avenger gun but mounted in a pod (ANG F-16s from Syracuse, NY trained for some time with this gun pod) And, another thing. When you said that the T-62 used in the tests were combat-loaded, I'm not sure this does really mean with shells and fuel and I'm sure it doesn't mean with the crew. The heat caused by a DU shell penetrating the tank armor is gonna cause so much heat that it's gonna injure or kill the crew. And again, this mean the tank is disabled. Modern tanks can be awesome war assets, but today they are also vulnerable when hit in weak points. This holds true for both NATO and Russian tanks. For example a blast nearby the tank is gonna damage optics and comms, making it much less capable. And when talkin about disabling tanks, remember that M1A2-HA tanks (where HA mean heavy armor), the most invulnerable tanks in the US inventory, were put out of action by RPGs, which were designed to counter 60s tanks like M-48 and M-60 Patton tanks.

AFAIK there are few dedicated weapons (anti-tank) that can actually *destroy* a tank. Most of the weapons are designed to *disable* a tank, that is to make it unable to move and/or to fire. If some DU shells can penetrate the tank armour, with fuel and ammo they're probably gonna blow it up. If a shell hits the track, the tank will stop and it could take some time to make it drive again on its own tracks. If a shell destroys the optics, the tank isn't gonna fire anymore. Some Iraqi T-72 (which were assembled in Iraq) in the Gulf War of 1991 were disabled because the gas which was to be sprayed for 0.1 seconds after the tank was hit (to extinguish fire), it was actually sprayed for some seconds. This is thought to have injured or killed some crews. So there are several ways to disable a tank. Then, as far as armor, T-62 is different from T-72 and T-80, but not that much when you talk about penetrator weapons. The T-72 and T-80 carry a more advanced armor and also reactive armor, which are effective against other types of weapon (such as HEAT and shaped charge). DU penetrators were built for the specific role of penetrating and blasting new types of armor. The NATO APFSDS tank ammo is based on the same concept. Just a story. During Iraqi Freedom there was an M1A2 Abrams tank disabled by fire and some well placed RPG shots (!). The US forces wanted to destroy it to prevent hi tech fall into enemy hands. They needed more than two direct hits from Maverick rockets and many other shots to have the tank really *destroyed* and useless. And, another story... there were reports of Gulf War of 1991 that said that APFSDS rounds of the Abrams 120mm gun were far more powerful on T-72 than expected. They were said to enter from one side of the tank and exit from the opposite, blowing it up. And, back to the GAU-8, there are many reports of GAU-8 kills on the Iraqi Republican Guard T-72s. So I think the Avengers would have worked against WarPac armored forces.

I have a problem with thrust-vectoring in the Su-37. And my Su-34 AI co-pilot is unable to fire backwards AAMs

are these screens from 1.02 with the su-39 mod? :oops: :lol: