Lock On: Modern Air Combat

Rating:
Summary: good enough
Review: I wouldn't recommend Lock On unless you're a real pilot or are already adept at other hardcore sims (Jane's F-15, Falcon4). Without a decent knowledge base, it'll frustrate you. Still, LockOn's fun to play once you learn it. And when you consider that it simulates 6 jets, its realism is pretty remarkable. Avionics, radar, missles, etc. all seem to be done well. I have several complaints, though.

The visuals, while photorealistic, aren't smooth enough. Even if you knock down the settings and average 60 frames per second, you can expect frequent hiccups that detract from the game's feel. It's not horrible, but don't expect a fix since its predecessors (the Flanker series) had the same problem for years and were never fixed. It also seems unusually taxing. I only have a Radeon 9600, but I've seen it run on a $3000 alienware desktop, and it still had problems.

The feeling of flight is conveyed fairly well, but that's thanks to the graphics more than the flight models, which can feel artificial at times. Transitions from normal flight to stalls are not seamless -- your nose will sometimes pop back and forth as the sim decides which flight model to use. The rudder feels especially artificial, starting and stopping every yaw on a dime. And while LockOn's programmers tried really hard to account for every situation, they apparently left a few out...I was able to make my stalling A-10 float to the ground when it should have fallen over backwards. This is why flight models should be physics-based!

My other complaints aren't as major, but it sure would have been nice if:
-if they had included a no-cockpit mode with the HUD, radar, and RWR still showing.
-if they had put more thought into the keyboard layout... examples: "i" = activate radar, "d" = cycle weapons, and "shift+numlock" = lock next enemy air target. Sure, you can re-map every button to suit yourself, but you won't.
-if you could use your mouse to click the cockpit buttons instead of pausing to look up keyboard commands.
-if you didn't have to hit "ctrl-t" to "cancel trim settings" and keep your jet still every time you deactivated autopilot
-if there was a dynamic campaign. You feel no incentive to go out of your way to destroy enemy bombers unless it's part of your mission.
-if it wasn't so buggy. Options don't always stick, certain keyboard controls occasionally don't work, and I've heard over and over that it crashes on Windows 98/Me.

I could go on, but it's all to say that Lock On needs more work. I think I would have preferred a later release date if it would have meant having dynamic campaigns, more complete flight models, and fewer bugs. If you like flight simulations, you'll probably like it anyway.

Rating:
Summary: The best modern combat sim ever!
Review: Installed a demo. Don't know what the guys who posted below are talking about but im running demo on my rig with following specs:

Athlon 1700+
ATI Radeon 9500 moded to 9700
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
513MB of SDRAM

Game settings: resolution 1600X1200, 2x AA, 4x AF

The game is smooth. Geting on average 30 FPS. Physical model is great, graphics is great both environment and landscape (i come from Ukraine so i know how landscape is supposed to look like there:)) The only thing i didn't like was the damage model. But i think it's going to be fixed by the release date.

Of course it is not an arcade game. It is a hard core flight simulation with everithing that this entails. You gotta learn how to fly.

Everyone who is passionate about aviation should get this game!

PS. If your demo isnt running great, check out ubisoft's forums. You can learn how to set up you hardware, drivers, and the game right so it is playable.

Rating:
Summary: lock on air comat
Review: I don't think they make any bombs bigger than this,what a waste of money.Graphics great but that is all.I have a loaded new SONY pc but found this lacking any excitement or challenge.flt sim 98 as archaic as it is is a gem compared to this piece of crap.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Flight Sim - Can only get better!
Review: LOMAC is not perfect but which flight sim is/was? it can only get better - Pay attention to the requirements and try to fly it on Win2000 and WinXP - it does not work (well) with Win98 - ...

The graphics are amazing - the community is great and the developer of the game (Eagle Dynamic) listens and answers on the forums...Again, you need a modern system to run it *unless* you're willing to tune the settings - which is fine too for many players.

... - All the planes are excellent - 8 ones - all with different dynamics!

People complains (Falcon 4 dudes mostly) that there is not a clickable cockpit - what gives! I prefer using a joystick such as a configurable cougar or X45 (best price/performance) along with the keyboard to actually feel my hands reaching somewhere rather than using a mouse in the middle of some dogfights...

There are already many great mods from the community including a Mod Manager/Installer tool named LOMAN ...

Anyhow, you don't have to be an experienced flight sim pilot to fly lomac but it helps for advanced manuvers and such - This is a great sim to get if you want to know more about Jet Fighters in general - The russian fighters are well modded as well as well the US ones...

Patch 1.01 fixed a lot of issues and patch 1.02 is in Beta test - again developing a modern jet combat flight sim is very COMPLEX and it takes a bit of time to stabilize it...

When Falcon 4 was released it was buggy as [can be] - a lot more than LOMAC - many folks remember that.

This SIM can only get better.

P>Get that SIM if you haven't already - I don't mean to say it is a replacement for other sims - I have both Falcon 4 and LOMAC - love them both but LOMAC is something one should get if you see yourself as a flight simmer...

Rating:
Summary: First thoughts running lock-on
Review: LOMAC is one of the best flight sims to come out after IL-2:FB. But be warned- you have have a decent system in order to truly enjoy this game(at least a P4 2.4Ghz/AMD 2800XP+, 1GB ram, 128GB DirectX9 AGP 8x card. Graphics are compelling with attention to detail for terrain textures, reflecting water and ground shadows. 8 Flyable aircraft in this sim makes for months of enjoyment. Campaigns are not 'true' dynamic but fun to play regradless. THe ability to create highly-detailed missions will add to a large libary of online sites hosted by fans. My current favorite is the A-10 Warthog and even though it's known as the BUF it's a beauty to me! The flight modeling is highly accurate for a sim and should set the standard for some time to come. My only major grief is a lack of a hard-copy manual (they could add $10-$15 to the price if they did this and i'm sure no one would mind) but instead a PDF on the CD. A keyboard reference card is not even included. UBI Soft should send out a hard-printed manual or at least a keyboard reference card to the people who bought this game. Minor bugs are regular for a 1st release so that's not uncommon. Overall, i would have to say i pleased with my purchase.

Rating:
Summary: Great graphics, lousy stability
Review: First the good: The game is beautiful. Fully rendered trees, buildings, and water. The physics model seems great, too. It's a joy just to fly around. The Bad: Horrible stability. The game freezes and crashes constantly -- and I have a three-week-old, top-of-the-line, Dell workstation running XP. The most recent patch made some things better, but made stability worse. It literally crashes 9 times out of 10, invariably just as you are doing well in a mission. Technical support is nothing more than a user forum, where know-it-alls think that the fix for everything is to buy more hardware or reinstall the game. The manual is a joke. In fact, it is non-existent -- nothing more than a pdf file on the CD. As you can imagine, it's kind of hard to go look something up while you are playing. Even the keyboard reference card is pdf-only, and left off a large number of keystrokes -- including how to start the engines!! If they release more patches that deal with these issues, consider buying this game. Otherwise, save your $40 and a ton of frustration.

Rating:
Summary: Should have spent another month or two in the hanger.
Review: The combat sim market is one that has been steadily shrinking for the past few years, as have the number of gamers willing to put the time and effort it takes to understand fully and enjoy realistic flight simulations. Being such a person, I looked forward to Lock On: Modern Air Combat with much anticipation. Lock On certainly has it sights aimed high; a detailed, realistic simulation of six aircraft, the F-15C, the A10, the Su-27/33, the MiG-29 and Su-25. Unfortunately, while the developers managed to accomplish this goal, Lock On is beset by numerous bugs, performance issues, and questionable code.

Let's start with what is good. I have never flown any of the aircraft featured in Lock On, but the flight models are convincing and "feel" real. For those unaccustomed to flying aircraft, there is an option for an easier, more forgiving flight model, although if you're like me, you'll want to dive in head first with full realism. In addition to the six flyable aircraft, Lock On also models in detail hundreds of ground and sea based vehicles, and you have a large selection of weapons to choose from as well, from the deadly AIM-120 AMRAAM to the awesome SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missile. Reading through the in-game encyclopedia, a hardcore flight simmer could be excused for wetting themselves at the sheer amount of stuff to blow up and bombs and missiles to blow them up with.

Modelling both fighter and ground attack aircraft, Lock On provides you with a good variety of missions to undertake, while other "study sims" often limit you to one type of role. There is also the differing design philosophies of the Russian and American aircraft; Russian aircraft have rather low-tech cockpits, with analog gauges and rather limited radars, while the Americans go for a more high-tech approach. The Russian fights also have the unique helmet-mounted sight, allowing you to simply look at a target in front of you and send a missile its way. The real joy, however, comes in flying the A-10 "Warthog" and busting tanks with the 30mm GAU-8 "Avenger" cannon and wiping out entire convoys with cluster bombs. There's enough variety crammed into Lock On: Modern Air Combat that a dedicated simmer will never get bored.

The graphics engine is a thing to behold as well. Making heavy use of programmable pixel and vertex shaders, you can have water that ripples naturally and reflects things above it perfectly, the heat blur from a jet engine, scratches in the canopy glass that only show up when the sun hits them at the right angle, and countless more graphic details. Explosions and pyrotechnics are similarly spectacular, making your close-range air-to-air kills all the sweeter. Without a doubt, Lock On is one the most visually appealing flight sims out there, and will likely remain so for some time.

Unfortunately, if you wish to play with that level of graphic detail, and more importantly play with a high, stable framerate, you will need a computer that has not been invented yet. And if you have a video card that's not fully DirectX 8.1 compatible (that means you, all you Geforce MX users) then don't even bother with this game until you upgrade. However, even with the graphical details set to the lowest level, the framerate is still unstable and often widely fluctuates, going from 30FPS to about 3FPS when another aircraft flies into view. It seems to be a problem with A-10; whenever there is another A-10 in your field of view, no matter how far away it is, the framerate slows to a crawl. Move the A-10 out of your field of view, and the framerate returns to normal. There are other FPS issues with effects that cause the game to stutter and hang, particularly annoying when trying to blast away at a tank with the A-10's Avenger cannon. These sudden drops in FPS seem to happen regardless of CPU or video card, and Lock On is quite happy to bring your Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with ATi Radeon 9800XT Pro to its knees. While these FPS issues may be resolved in future patches, it makes me wonder if Lock On were pushed out the door before the developers had a chance to fix some of the glaring problems. Ubisoft certainly has a record of doing just that. (Destroyer Command, anyone?)

The bugs and problems aren't limited to the graphics engine, though. Air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles seem woefully underpowered, and weapons like the AIM-120 AMRAAM actually perform WORSE than the AIM-7 Sparrow it was designed to replace. I've seen a Soviet S-300 SAM system fire off at least twenty missiles at my aircraft and all of them exploded three seconds after launch, and I was doing nothing to evade them! Worse still, the American naval units are horribly undermodelled in comparison to their Soviet counterparts. The Slava-class cruiser can launch multiple missiles at targets at great distance and shoot down almost any anti-ship missile fired its way, while the American Ticonderoga-class cruisers, with their Aegis radar system, will never fire at anything further than 20km away and are basically sitting ducks. In addition to all this, sometimes Lock On will crash with a "light blue screen of death" at apparently random intervals. It all adds up to a game that should have at least another month or two in the shop.

The packaging of the game is just awful as well. There is no printed manual that comes with the game, (you have to order one online for an extra $30 or so) just a PDF file, where some of the diagrams are so low-res you can't see what's what. There were also supposed to be series of printed keycards, but these were mysteriously not included.

Truth be told, there is a great simulation tucked away in here. Unfortunately, it's all obscured by a multitude of bugs, design flaws, and unoptimized code. I would strongly recommend that you wait until Lock On is patched up before purchasing it, and as a bonus, it will only cost about $9.99 by then.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly Designed, many flaws.
Review: Lock On: Modern Air Combat is not worth the money and even if it were free, it wouldn't be worth your time. I bought my first FS software to fly the number one freeware aircraft simulator on the Internet - The TR-3B Flying Triangle.

I flew fighters for the Air Force in late Vietnam, specifically the F-111 and am rated commercial also. The TR-3B Flight Simulator for Microsoft's Flight Sim, is based on the writings, lectures, and TV interviews of Edgar Fouche who wrote "Alien Rapture." (See amazon)

Why? This is what the genius who developed it wrote: "For the experienced flight simmer on FS2002 PRO, I have developed this complete exotic amphibian TR-3B package, which is now available as freeware for download. It includes 3 models - the purple Astra, blue Locust and white Hellas - and as an extra 4th model the TR-3X with its own speedy attacker flight dynamics. The package includes TR-3B panel & gauges, noise cancellation sounds, fsuipc and special lights effects.

This TR-3B is a heavy tactical reconnaissance aircraft equipped with a magnetic field disruptor that reduces the weight by 89 percent (it is not the same as anti-gravity, though). It has been created for Microsoft Flight Simulator. All gauges are included.

The TR-3B can float like a speedboat at Mach 1.5 over water, fly like a heavy helicopter, like a bush plane, a business jet, like a military jet and lift like a rocket. Cruise speed is approx Mach 4.7 at FL340 and above, and approx Mach 2 at sea level. Service ceiling approx 69,000 feet ASL. Super stable. FSFREEWARE, SURCLARO, FSPLANET aircraft simulator sites have reported as many as 5000 downloads in one week!
I searched and read many many web pages about his book and the author, Edgar Fouche including; startfinish(put in the dot com.)biz/wise Click on links for Fouche and Flying Triangle. You will find his full presentation, and the download links for the TR-3B. Great Top Secret aircraft simulator which I recommend, and fantastic details on it. So try some of the free aircraft simulators instead of the poorly designed Lock On: Modern Air Combat.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute Dreck
Review: These are sad days for flight sims. Gone are the days of Jane's F/A 18 and Falcon 4.0, the days of the truly hardcore sim. What few flight sims we do get are often dumbed-down arcaded shoot em' ups that bear more resemblance to Star Fox than a real simulation. Enter Lock On. It's the latest in what might be considered a dying genre, a fact made all the more shameful by its utterly inferior quality.

Lock On models six aircraft, The A-10, the F-15, the MiG-29, the Su-27/33, and the Su-25, (although the MiG 29 and Su-27/33 are not much different from one another) so one cannot expect the level of avionics fidelity encountered in study sims like Falcon 4.0. Indeed, there are many simplifications in LOMAC, most notably with the radar systems modelling, and that fact alone might turn off many hardcore simmers. Diving deeper into the game, however, the lack of fidelity becomes almost a moot point, because even if LOMAC were as detailed as Falcon 4.0 Jane's F/A 18, it would still be a dull, buggy mess.

Upon starting LOMAC, one will doubtlessly comment on the wonderfully beautiful and detailed graphics. Soon after, one will surely comment on how the game runs like an absolutely dog. Even with the recommended 2.0 GHz Pentium 4, 512 RAM, and Geforce 4 Ti-4200, the game chugs and wheezes its way along like a flabby marathon runner with its horrible stuttering and wildly inconsistent framerates. It's rather difficult to capture a sense of immersion when the game pauses for almost a second to load the explosion effects after scoring a hit on an enemy fighter, or how flying through smoke reduces your FPS to the low single-digits. In order to get the framerates to an acceptable level, one has to go through needlessly convoluted steps such as going in DXDIAG and turning off hardware accelerated sound just so LOMAC doesn't use positional audio (which is quite CPU intensive). The game was clearly designed with only higher-end hardware in mind, and almost no provisions have been made for those with lower-end systems. If you don't have a fully DirectX 8.1 compatible card, you're hardware is not supported, and you can look forward to frequent crashes and Blue Screens Of Death.

Graphical problems aside, LOMAC suffers from one crippling flaw: its utter lack of a campaign system. Oh sure, there's a series of dull, sterile missions canned together that purports to be a "campaign," but LOMAC's not fooling anyone. There's nothing like Falcon 4.0's dynamic campaign here; there's not even anything like Jane's F/A 18 campaign that, although it was not fully dynamic, at least made an effort to be interesting and involving. In LOMAC, you have a series of thinly-linked missions that play out exactly the same each time until you get it right. This has the profound effect of killing whatever replay value the game had, and after the initial "wow" wears off, LOMAC will be quickly collecting digital dust on your hard drive.

There are other gripes, such as the wonky landing physics which allows even the most ham-fisted pilots to put down their aircraft unscathed, the ridiculously useless AMRAAM missiles, the pathetically weak Aegis cruisers, or worst of all, the utter lack of acceptable documentation. LOMAC is perhaps the first flight simulator to come with NO printed manual. There's a little quick start guide which focuses primarily on the mission builder; one has to look on the CD for the, yes Virginia, the PDF manual. The PDF manual that Ubisoft created by copying most of the information from Flanker 2.5. The PDF manual with blurry diagrams that are nearly impossible to read. These days, how can any flight sim that pretends to be "The King of Military Flight Sims" (gag!) ship without proper documentation?

All in all, LOMAC is a frustratingly disappointing product. Don't be fooled by the lack of flight sims on the shelves today. Go find an old copy of Falcon 4.0, or check out the vastly superior IL-2 Sturmovik series. Whatever you do, don't waste your money on this garbage.

Rating:
Summary: Not yet finished - Support will tell all.
Review: Potential to be a 5 star sim. Now a 3 star. This is due to the following:
1. The game was released with many bugs and even the inability to run on some systems. Win 98SE for one.
2. To run the sim at a reasonable frame rate with the graphics cranked up you need a very powerful system.
3. The interface and key commands are taxing....not the most user friendly.
4. It's really only for the hard core simmer but it doesn't always live up to "hard core".

It can become a 5 star sim if there is GOOD support and comprehensive patching. It has that potential.
This is mainly a graphic upgrade of Flanker 2.0 with additional aircraft to fly, but that's not bad because F2.0 was quite good.
I do wish they had taken us away from the Crimea....I'm getting real tired of flying over the same areas over and over.
I'm looking forward to both a good patch and additional aircraft
but for now it gets rather little play time....