Trident

Interesting choice of scenario, talent and passion for the cause - all the makings of a quality product :) It seems that the flightsim genre is finally growing again, while the market was probably too small for the numerous developers before the crisis there's now actually room for newcomers to compete with the few survivors. One question, will the map include Ascension Island (for the Vulcans)? I don't recall seeing it mentioned on the homepage anywhere.

Well, I don't think we'd really need the brazilian mainland, the incident you mention is really rare and should be irrelevant for the sim. So my question would be: does the map really have to be perfectly rectangular? I'd suggest including Ascension on the same map with a generous 'chunk' of ocean to connect it to the actual theatre of operations. I mean, the sea is probably based on a low-res mesh with a tiled texture, so that shouldn't affect performance that much. Alternatively, if the map indeed has to be rectangular, I don't think it would be that bad to use only low-detail, generic terrain for Brazil (no elevation, tiled low-res textures). LOMAC utilizes this approach, the entire Black Sea region including the northern parts of Turkey is represented, but only a small part is actually modelled in detail and usable for the player. What do you think?

The latter is probably true. The Soviets learned the hard way how vulnerable combat helos are to MANPADs in Afghanistan. Based upon those experiences they (like the US) went to great lengths to reduce the IR-signature of their newer helicopters with specially designed exhausts that mix hot gases from the turbines with cold air.

If Flanker is anything to go by you can make the AI fly basically any mission as long as you choose the right plane. This includes selecting their payload from several pre-made load-outs. I see no indication that this was dropped from LOMAC.

Well, now the demo is out you can take a look at the frame-counter in person. Just press CTRL-Backspace. I don't know but the number in brackets might actually be the average FPS.

The engine is D3D only, that's for sure. If Flanker2 and some development-screenshots are anything to go by there will also be a frame-counter, however without average FPS displayed so its use for benchmarking is limited. No idea about the rest. I think LOMAC would make a great CPU-benchmark rather than a GPU-one since it is most likely CPU&RAM-limited and 'only' uses DX8.1 graphics-hardware.

Thanks but I can't seem to find a screenshot that shows the system in action here. Maybe I'm blind, could you point out the screens you meant? Thanks in advance!

MrMudd: on that 4th picture, is this signal-system functional in the game?

As De Janitor has already pointed out in that thread, it's a real one. It's relatively old, which might explain why so few have seen it. Gamespot, PCArena and some others received this shot along with a bunch of others. At around 150Kb the screenshot is also quite large for a 1024x768-res picture which suggests that little detail was lost in the jpeg-compression. Apart from that, I see nothing on that shot that doesn't appear in other LOMAC-screens aswell, what makes you think it's fake?

As a matter of fact not even FB's damage-model is 'dynamic'. If you get hit on say, your right wing by a single bullet the damage-textures which will appear are always the same (for a particular aircraft). What makes FB so great (and Flanker2 and LOMAC :) ) is that there's no hit-bubble (the collision-model corresponds more or less to the visual shape) and that there are so many degrees of damage for so many different aircraft parts. That, and the fact that only parts which were actually 'hit' are affected, not a random selection of parts/systems. I'm not sure if LOMAC offers the same large number of possibilities for damage compared to FB (bullet-penetration? :shock: ), but the basic technology is the same.

He probably wasn't, it says 'Pilot2' not 'Me' in the info bar. Might have been his wingie. I love the damaged tail-cone in this shot!

I don't have FS2004 (yet) so this is all educated guesses on my part but I think you really need to do something about that graphicscard of yours. It's a bottleneck in an otherwise adequate system. My suggestions regarding the settings would be to turn off 'transform and lighting' as the Vanta does not support this AFAIK and reduce the 'Global max texture size', you can only do so much with a 16Mb card. Maybe reduce some other texture-related settings aswell. Hope this helps!

I'd like to know if you can engage and destroy ship-radars with ARMs. The Su-25 with Kh-25MP missiles is the likely candidate for this test. You'll probably have to experiment a lot regarding the target ship though. As the Kh-25 is relatively slow you will have to find one that is pretty ineffective at intercepting missiles while still having a SAM system (and therefore a radar). A Kara-class destroyer might work, its SAMs are crappy and it doesn't have a CIWS to speak of IIRC. Going by what was in Flanker2: - you land on an airfield (any airfield) and hit CTRL-W - there is an observer mode (your country was United Nations then :) ) - No - Yes, the flight-deck will catch fire. I think ops cease once this has happened, but I'm not positive as I haven't had the nerve to experiment any further after such a crash ;) - the only carrier you are going to take off from in LOMAC doesn't have any cats - no idea