Megahurts

Flankerbanker, I picked up LOMAC gold for £10 in my local PCWorld.

I agree, my first introduction to lock-on was through an ex-work friend who had most of the demo movies on his USB keyfob and spent most of coffee breaks showing them to us. At the time I was into IL2 in a big way but really looked forward to a modern jet sim. The first time I played it I hated the game, playing on the same guys PC without having read the manual or done any of the training tracks I just got splashed repeatedly whilst trying to figure out how to use my radar. It was a huge dissapointment, I was looking for something I could just sit down with and start playing whilst slowing increasing the realism, but LO was either all or nothing and at the time required a monster rig to get the best out of it. MSFS was bought for me as a - unwanted - present, and tbh I played it just enough so as not to appear ungratful. On the subject of software being availiable in stores, I picked up a copy of LOMAC Gold for £9.99 (~$6.50) at my local PC World a few weeks back. The only other FS titles they had were MS2004 and a couple of shelves of add-ons for it, although I have noticed that PC World seem to be ditching their games section on favour of high-end LCD TVs and MediaPCs. The situation in stores like Game and GameStation is even worse, shelves of console games and if you are lucky one small section devoted to PC Games, 99% of these FPS or RPGs.

Thats probably a glitch in the code although I havent tried it to see. I'm guessing the game calculates the amount of air available at any given alt and uses this to compute the power generated by your a/cs engines based on your current airspeed. The slower you are going the harder your engines have to work to produce the thrust required to keep you airborne, and vice-versa if you have a high starting speed then you have more air moving into your intakes to allow you to sustain this speed. So for the challenge, should we start from sea level at 300kts or can we abuse the mission editor? ;)

I spent a couple of hours playing PREY at a mates last weekend, To me it was just Doom3 with less demanding AI and annoying puzzles. After spending the last couple of years playing pretty much nothing but FPS I'm sick to death of them. I spent £30 on HL:EP1 and played it through the same day, It's got absolutley no re-play value to it. BF2 is fun for about 10 minutes online, unless you have a ping rate in the low teens and reactions like a cat, or are lucky enought to join a sqaud that plays together. SP modes get repetative really quick. The market seems to be split between FPS and RTS games at the moment with a small spattering of MMORPG as well, like GuildWars (which - in case anyone is interested - is good fun if you like D&D type games without all the character rolling). Hopefully we'll start to seem more inovation in games soon instead of the "cram more bells and whistles into the graphics engine" markets we see at the moment, although I'm not hold out much hope as thats all it seems to have been since I got my Commodore64 when I was 12..... Personally I'd like to see something like an updated OFP/BF2/LOMAC cross with persistent online dynamic campaigns etc but what are the chances of that?

I've messed around with the USB power saving setting but its not made much if any differnce. Thinking about it, I think its a fucntion of the wireless and the avail. bandwidth. I've raised a question in the saitek forums but have had no response as yet. Depending on their response I'll consider asking Saitek to swap it for a wired unit instead. When/If I get the USB Gold modded I'll post some pics etc. I've just moved house and all my tools are buried under boxes at the bag of the shed so it might be a while....

I purchased a Evo wireless after my USB gold devoloped dead spots in the pitch axis. Given then choice I would have gone for the wired version but as I'm C-Cardless as the moment, it was a choice of PC World or PC World and the only choice they carry are the Evo wireless or a RH'd logitech without a hat switch. The action is a lot smoother than my old USB gold but I'm having issues with "lag" on the throttle - I'll have to move it anywhere from 30-50% of its motion to get "wake it up". Having said that I've got a cunning plan to recycle the USB Gold as a HOTAS throttle by locking the Y-axis, removing the spring and fitting some sort of friction lock and remounting the stick at 90 degrees to the base using some copper pipe. This *should* give me a poor mans hotas......

Just to un-hijack the thread slightly ;) I'd suggest reading "Bravo Two Zero" by Andy McNab, "The one that got away" by Chris Ryan and "Tornado Down" by John Nichols and John Peters if you think E&E is boring. Or playing the E&E mission in OFP - that one had my blood pumping more than the standard "shoot the bad guys" missons. A CSAR option would be cool - BS missions maybe? and to be able to hook that up in MP would be better still. If you didnt want to include an E&E phase you could perhaps have a time limit (before you are either captured or returned to base depending on where you eject) that the CSAR team has to recover you.

Pilotasso & GGTharos The same here, I'm still at the "missile fodder" stage, and being able to see who and how is splashing me has improved my missile evasion tactics from a sucess rate of 1 in 10 to 5 in 10. Regarding the sharing of files, 32mb is obviously a bit large to share for post-op debriefs, but having just checked my own /temp folder most of my SP A2A 1on1 1on2 etc tracks are less than 1mb in size (probably because I'm hitting the silk after less than 5 mins....). I was thinking more of sharing training tracks for engagement from different aspects etc and missile evasion techniques which - assuming each track dealt with one topic - should keep the file sizes down. Of course this is all accademic if the bianary file sizes are going to be small

This would be invaluable for newbs like me to see.

9/10 times assuming the kids/wife/dog isn't demanding my imediate attention :) 8/10 times as long as trashing the nosewheel on the 25 doesnt count ;) Runway = the wide thing with numbers on Taxiway = the thin twisty bits off to one side Using and loading them I can manage, actually getting them to hit my target is a slightly different matter, and its taking a while for the russian types/models to stick in my head.

Thanks for the advice guys, looks like I'll be taking a trip over to PC World to invest in a headset - <sarcasm>can't wait to hear the wife and kids comments when I'm wearing it tho</sarcasm>.:music_whistling: Any pointers on how I should have the difficulty options set in SP to replicate a MP environment (labels, view etc)? And what other hardware I should be putting on my birthday/xmas lists? Seems like a trackIR is invaluable, but being a leftie I'm a bit limited on HOTAS options.......

HI all, I'm new to Lockon.ru and also new to LOMAC MP and would like some advice; I purchased LOMAC Gold a couple of weeks and I'm enjoying playing the SP missions and campaigns and would like to start playing MP. I've got several years of flight sim experience (going back to Microprose Gunship on my Commodore64.....) but have never really got into the whole online gaming thing (getting fragged by 12yr olds on Quake and BF1942 etc got really old really quick....) apart from experimenting with the original Falcon on the Atari ST and null modem cable. I'm still getting the hang of LOMAC combat in SP mode and dont really know what to expect from the MP mode, for instance are the missions co-op or head to head? I'm still low on the learning curve, and dont really fancy embarassing myself in front of a bunch of LOMAC veterans as I nose plant the runway at 350kts, can anyone suggest a good place to start where I'd be flying with/against other newbs?