zzzspace

That is weird MrMudd, because I use a system a little better spec than yours and I would not even consider turning heatblur off, because it seems to have absolutely NO impact on FPS. (I noticed the same thing in the demo to)

What a cool thread. :D

Yeah ,that's it, when I 'fly' an aircraft in LOMAC if really 'feels' like, and most definately looks like I am flying--that is priceless ... that is unmatched, full stop.

"Their forums are just as self explaining as their game interfaces." -- LOL! Exactly!

You say, "Lomac is a brilliant game, perhaps it just needs a little time to grow on me.", but IL2FB is a fully mature, patched then redeveloped and re-patched again sim. And that sequencial process made it as it is today; truely great. It's not that Lock On has to grow on you, it just has to grow, become fully mature, be patched, then redeveloped, and re-patched again ... it will then be a truly "all time great" combat flight sim. I for one am enjoying Lock On very much, and it is a bit better than I actually expected; but the missions and campaigns lack a convincing structured outlook or goal, nor any really serious tactical and strategic thinking about how to take down the opposite side with all the amazing tools and potential tactics possible. Those sorts of things have yet to be strung together for Lock On. Until then Lock On will remain bit one dimensional--it has not grabbed me yet at that level (as did sims like the classic and very addictive Tornado series). Add to this the present clumsiness and non-ideal lay out of the mission planner, plus no levels of undo if you change your mind, or have made an error; plus the very discouraging 64k file size upper limit for multiplayer mission files ... and it all makes developing the deep potential of Lock On that much more difficult and slower. I hope they intend to review the layout of the mission planner/editor, because options that are commonly used should be much more accessible (and definitely more intuitively findable and self-explanatory!!). What I know is that in a year from now LOMAC will be a much better and smoother sim for most people, and behave significantly differently than how it does today.

If you look at the recent bug fix list for the up coming patch you can see that most of what is being fixed up was not reported on the UBI forums; it appears to be mostly the remnants of late beta testing fix-ups, and a few specific fixes for the more serious (and bitterly complained about at length) bugs in the release, which really detract from Lock On's playability. Work on the patch needed to really polish and sweeten Lock On has probably not even begun yet in ernest.

Actually, the game works absolutely fantastic most of the time on a top-end PC, and I see high 20's FPS with EVERYTHING on high, exept the water which I always have on LOW (Can't stand the shiny water; I use a custom sea texture which works much better for supplying all the necessary visual cues) and the "Viewable Distance" set to medium, with 1280x960 resolution and 4x FSAA and 4xAA. (Yes, it is of course a Sapphire ATi RADEON 9800XT 256 meg DDR card) When it gets extremely busy it will sometimes drop very briefly to as low as 13 FPS but the estimated average FPS is around 26 - 27 (which is a higher FPS rate than the U.S. television standard @ 25 FPS!) You need a very new and high performance computer to run Lock On smoothly, and it definitely DOES NOT 'suck'--I've never enjoyed any sim more than this (but holy crap, it costs a fortune to get smooth performance). -- P.S. If Eagle Dynamics would just address/comment/rectify the 64 kilobyte files size limitation in multiplayer I'd be much happier with that aspect to (yep, that's my pet gripe)

Wow! I feel your pain, you sure are keen to be perservering with it given all that. Once the controller is patched, you need to get atleast an ATi9600XT (best performance/value) and install Win XP, and most of your problems will ... well ... will be replaced by entirely new ones ... lol A squad mate was in a very similar position to you (and he was very displeased with both Lock On and his computer and threatened to dump it onto the Freeway!) then he installed XP and an FX5600 Ultra 256meg .... and they all lived happily ever after. ;) :D

I love the new color/theme of the BioHaz forums--much clearer than the previous--but why restrict the text to a centered (800 pixel?) column? Looking good anyway. :D

See here for a test report of this mission's effect upon top end hardware: http://forums.ubi.com/messages/message_vie...mac_gd&id=zrtja

That would be fine by me ... lol .. this is a great site, pity is is a bit on the quiet side at the moment, but that will change soon enough.

I tried to post this to the UBI forum; but it is in such a state of dysfunction that I could not even get it to post; so I'm posting it here so that perhaps some one might answer it, because UBI LOMAC forum is effectively inopperable. Here is the post's text: -- The entirely predictable is of course occurring: i.e. "Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e31' [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired /messages/message_view-topic.asp, line 121" This UBI LOMAC forum has become practically unusable! It is sssooooo sssssslllllloooooooooowwwwwww!! ... it continually gives errors, regularly stalls entirely, and even when you persist with all this, and make a reply to a post, it then generates a whole new level of frustrating error messages, which effectively prevents you from posting to it! (other people I communicate with are reporting the same thing) It has been getting worse each day, to the point where for me, it is practically UNUSABLE--and I'm pretty persistent--even for simply loading and reading content. There were plenty of indications that this would occur as soon as LOMAC was released, and yet the much needed upcoming UBI LOMAC forum upgrade was left until it was FAR to late! A few people, more than six weeks ago (including myself), posted that this was almost surely going to happen unless the forum was overhauled. I'm now forced to rely on other LOMAC related general forums (such as BioHaz etc.) for important LOMAC related information, because the UBI general forum is effectively completely buggered for practical usage; which should not be the case! I use the UBI forums as my primary source for gathering important information with which to help sort out various issues for our m/p squads and members, but all of the constant errors and unbearable slowness (if it works at all) means it is no longer practical to use for that purpose. So my question is; how long is left until the forum software is replaced? P.S. And yes, I had major trouble getting this one posted as well … this is post attempt #23 ... I wonder if this one will work??? ... eventually it might ... i.e. "Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e31' [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired /messages/Includes/display_common_ubi.asp, line 1506" ---- I eventually gave up after failed posting attempt #24 ...

The last I heard (from Shepski yesterday) testers are using beta 13 now ... one has got to be bit of a silly tool to prematurely and ardently rubbish LOMAC per sec, based upon flimsy and relative personal impressions gained from a mere limited extract of a pretty damned good fun and very functional, thank you very much, beta 5! Maybe I'm just too easily pleased, and should wise-up/wake-up, and realise that I've been completely duped by ED and UBI? ... BAH!! .... I played the Kamenka A10 mission with my trusty but somewhat battle adverse wingie yesterday, and had the most fun in that silly beta 5 to date; and I can't wait to explore the possibilities further over the coming days and weeks ... and it cost me ... WAIT FOR IT! .... NIX!!! … not a sausage mate! lol :D Yep, I’m pretty damned disappointed with LOMAC … … and I’m not going to by it either! … humph …. ROFL!!!

I love the look of the highly reflective water but there is no scale or depth of field perception whilst dogfighting over it. You can’t judge how high you are via looking out of the canopy during a dogfight, so you can easily end up striking the water if fighting vertically (where the MIG29 does better). Also, the water’s horizon is often too hard to visually discern, so a sense of ones aspect and orientation, relative to it is missing, leading to regular losses of situational awareness. It needs long wavelength swells included, plus their shadows, with a few white caps mapped in to break up the mirror-like be-calmed effect and to give a better sense of height scaling, and ones relative proximity to its surface. I love what you’ve done but a few more refinements and tweaks will make all the difference to its visual appeal and practical utility.