Lock On - Modern Air Combat was the long awaited sequel to Flanker 2.0. In many ways it can be considered to be Flanker 3.0 as in many aspects it's the same product, with the same theatre, almost the same plane set, and many of the same issues. Flanker 2.0 went through a long after retail patching process, which never fully completed some of the simulations features, especially the multiplayer aspect. Will or intent is never the question. It all comes down to one thing.

Development costs money - and this is a large reason LOMAC is the way it is.

In the real world those funding development are unlikely to give much extra time to patch after release. Their product is out, the investors have received the majority of the return they are to expect. Any extra costs are monies the investor would prefer to keep.

LOMAC - the past 18 months

Just after the release of the demo I was approached by one of the beta testers, and asked my opinion of it. I gave it and we started what became an interesting relationship. He would discuss issues the beta testers had been experiencing with me and I would throw a few suggestions out of possible causes. We discussed the sound engine problems, as well as the nforce chipset multiplayer issues. He mentioned that even though he considered the problems serious, a culture of 'it's better than it used to be, it'll have to be good enough' was pervasive, and popped up it's ugly head a few times later.

This was clearly not acceptable from a consumer's perspective and with his information I began asking questions of the developer on the official forums that would eventually allow me to steer the conversation to the real subject and allow the developer to see how the consumers felt about the issues - without the consumers being aware that these issues existed. In this task I had the assistance of a few close simming friends who were aware of what was happening, my source of information, what the information was, and what was being done.

With LOMAC development running very late and publisher patience running out, the 'it's good enough, we'll worry about it later' mentality is understandable, if not excusable. If the community found it unacceptable, with the publisher off their backs ED could always take care of it during the after release patching they were contractually obliged to perform. Unfortunately they severely underestimated how big a task that was.

In the days immediately proceeding the retail release it became apparent that LOMAC was not a finished product. Analysis of multiplayer performance showed that the net code was barely functional - placeholder code that would be patched later - as it was - selection of bandwidth settings had no result at all, with communications choking resulting in warping and other oddities that made the sim unplayable. The game's AI would ignore it's tasks and engage enemies there was no way it should logically know about. Framerates dropped to a crawl when any effects were present, and when coupled with a sound engine that struggled with multiple sounds being played at once - anything other than airquake or very simple missions with a half dozen entities became a slideshow, as well as a warpfest. Mixing owners of motherboards with nforce chipsets with others resulted in unplayable warping. With the christmas rush LOMAC had to be released, ready or not.

Upon release, LOMAC reached a new level. It did not even run AT ALL on windows 9x systems - contrary to the system specifications on the box. A patch was hurriedly released that fixed the issue, but broke other things.

The result was a lot of anger directed at the developers and the publisher. For months prior to release the marketing machine had posted movies and screenshots that showed off LOMAC's best aspect, it's beautiful graphics. Information on features or functionality was very thin even until release despite requests from the community. It may simply have been that no information was released simply because those portions hadn't yet been completed. A demo was released that was very limited. There were no full missions and no multiplayer. If either had been included they would have highlighted just how bad a shape the simulation was in.

Consumer anger was met with thuggery from 'fanbois' who were blind to the issues and were unwavering in their support of the developer. Before long the blame game was being played with many explanations being offered by various parties and downright hear, see and speak no evil by the fanbois. Even now, those fanbois have been forced to agree there are big problems with the simulation - even if they can't do so gracefully. Their last resort is 'Falcon4 was just as bad'. Yeah Falcon was bad, your point is?

Yet many missed the point altogether. Difficulties experienced by the developer or pressure from the publisher may explain WHY the product is broken, but does not excuse it.

More and more things started to get noticed, and before long consumers were told not to worry, Eagle Dynamics have all intentions of patching the simulation up. The consumer community began it's own testing with volunteers who began to find and isolate issues. Some beta testers began to enter forums where these issues were being discussed adding their information and explaining that many of these bugs were known pre-release, earning a rebuke from the producer for not helping the situation.

One of the beta testers posted that there was a 12 month agreement between the publisher and the developer for all serious bugs to be fixed. This went a long way mollifying consumers. When this was questioned prior to the 12 month agreement being up the official response was that this agreement never existed, or that an agreement between developer and publisher had been reached. Good news for the developer as they could get on with another retail product that may result in some income, but bad news for consumers who were left with literally hundreds of bugs to be worked around or ignored.

Post release ED produced two patches that addressed many issues, one serious memory leak that was deemed unfixable by the producer was fixed after the publisher's intervention. The simulation went from unplayable to playable, though far from fixed. As of today, nothing has changed.

After the 1.02 patch was released, the squad I had formed purely for LOMAC with over 30 members who ate, drank and breathed lomac prior to release shelved the simulation, removed it from their hard drives, and played something else. With countless hours spent tweaking, testing, mission designing and doing the groundwork for an online squad vs squad LOMAC league we all gave up and decided that at the moment, it wasn't going to work.

If anything is clear, the development of LOMAC was a nightmare for all involved, developer, publisher and consumer. The publisher went as far as to say they were getting out of the 'geek game business'.

14 months after release - with an expansion on the way - is where this review begins.

LOMAC - as it is NOW

With the flaming cliffs expansion to be released shortly, the time is right to show where LOMAC is at the moment, it's good and it's bad. A seperate flaming cliffs review will be done as soon as possible, but would be meaningless without having a baseline to judge it's improvements upon.

Features:
directly from the game's official website:

• Eight flyable aircraft, two US and five Russian, and one German (A-10A Warthog, F-15C Eagle, Su-27 Flanker B, MiG-29 Fulcrum A, MiG-29 Fulcrum C, Su-25 Frogfoot, Su-33 Flanker D, and German MiG-29).
• The Black Sea region, which includes the Crimean peninsula and the eastern Caucuses, is the setting for the hypothetical, present day air conflict.
• Stunning 3D objects and terrain create the best looking world ever created for a flight simulation. Everything from aircraft, to tanks, to buildings, are recreated in unmatched detail. An incredibly detailed area with dynamic lighting effects featuring, more than 180,000 buildings, 50,000,000 trees, 21 cities, 1,700 towns and villages, 500 bridges, 18 airfields and 8 naval bases.
• Realistic sound effects and audio environment that includes communication with wingmen, AWACS, tankers, and tower/approach controllers.
• A range of player missions including training, quick start, fast battle planner, and at least 36 individual missions, each with its own background and story.
• Multiplayer for up to 32 players via LAN or at least six over the internet, go head-to-head or take part in cooperative missions.
• Scalable realism and difficulty levels for the beginner and expert pilot are included. For example, options for extra-powerful engines, anti-spin control and easy landings make it more accessible for beginners. For the advanced flight enthusiasts there will be ultra accurate rates of acceleration, fuel consumption flight range and others. Even the famous "cobra" move will be possible in the Su-27, Su-33 and Mig-29 aircraft.

Installation:
Upon inserting the installation CD you are presented with a splashscreen. Upon selection of install, you are presented with the usual 'it's ours, can't copy it' type license agreement. One thing that caught my eye was the 'It is not permitted: to create or distribute unauthorised levels and/or scenarios'. O..K... One thing to keep in mind is that in many countries, you are legally entitled to create a single backup copy of the installation media - obviously these local laws overrule any license agreement stipulations.

After the installation is complete you are prompted to install the ubi game service, followed by registration. Installation is processed using a standard installshield installer and is painless. After install I download and run the 38 megabyte LockOnPatch100to102.exe, which patches the game to the current official release version very quickly with no fuss. After the patch I check the version number on the executable and find that it is 1,0,0,1. A minor thing but it would be nice for the game's executable to reflect the 'version' of the game in it's metafile info.

Before launching I read through the readme file, there's quite a bit of manual erata (inclusion of an updated pdf manual would have been nice). There's a few things about graphical settings, defrag, firewalls, virus scanners etc. Two suggestions stick out, use 16 bit color and if you are having sound issues turn down the directx sound acceleration.

First Impressions:
Once the sim is launched, you are presented with a collage of eagle pictures supplied to ED and after a very short loading time, to the main interface. One of the things that stands out in this sim is the artwork. You are blasted with sirens and engine noises, followed by radio chatter in russian and english.

Interface:
The main interface is uncluttered, with a selection of twice labelled buttons (3-4 characters imprinted on each button, plus accompanying label besides each) - the second labelling is a necessary touch as the use of three characters is insufficient to adequately convey what a button's function is until you are familiarised with it.

It takes a moment to find the version number of the simulation, as it is sitting in a cluttered area of the screen rather than prominently displayed where it is easily visible. It's small things like this that differentiate between a good interface, and a superb interface.

Graphics configuration: I configure the graphics resolution to match that of my flatpanel. Fortunately a resolution of 1280x1024 is available. I immediately notice that the graphics color depths is set to 32bit, even though the readme suggests using 16bit, which I switch to. I switch between low, medium and high setting buttons a bit and then decide to go back to default. It's then that I immediately note that the 'scenes' setting doesn't default to default, but stays as set by the prior button.

Control configuration: Next step is to configure the controls, and here is where the interface design begins to tumble downhill.

The controls interface is a mess. Something as complex as a simulation requires a well designed interface with a planned workflow at minimum.

One very dubious feature of the control assignments interface is the ability to bind keystrokes to functions dependant on what 'mode' your aircraft is in. There are 8 'modes' you can be in, and about 10 pages of controls per mode that you can configure. The controls are however identical. There is absolutely no value in allowing a user to bind a key for a function to other keys for anything less than all modes. For example. If 'G' is for landing gear in NAV mode, why give the user the option to make 'L' the landing gear if they are in GRID mode? This fragments your control structure, adds another level of workload for the pilot (needing to remember disparate keys dependant on mode, and further complicating keyboard layout displays) and just makes configuration more complicated.

There is an 'all modes' selection you can use to assign keystrokes to the same function across all modes - this should have been the only selection available whilst programming keystrokes. The idea however actually has a use when applied to joystick buttons, though it's redundant for anyone who owns controllers that have 'modes' built in such as Cougar, CH or Saitek HOTAS controllers.

The default axis bindings are puzzling to say the least, and I doubt the default bindings are useful for anyone. Setting an axis for the left engine whilst not setting an axis for the right is guaranteed to be unhelpful to everyboy. If you are going to bind a control for one engine, you must ensure you've bound something for the other. If not, don't bind either.

Each axis is further modifiable by using curves. This is an excellent feature that assists greatly in keeping your aircraft controllable. Unfortunately if you bind a new controller axis to the game axis you lose the curves and it switches to a slider mode, requiring you to change it back from slider to axis and put the curve back in. Just extra unnecessary work.

Difficulty settings: Quite easy to setup, nothing much to worry about here.

Training section:
The simulation includes comprehensive training missions to teach you the basics that do a very good job. Instructions are displayed in text, a mouse pointer is used to hightlight features being discussed. Recorded voice would have been an excellent addition but the text does the job well.

Mission Editor:
The mission editor is fully functional, but very very awkward and unpolished. For example - Say you want to make a mission for yourself and a couple of your buddies and wish to fly in the same flight. In the mission editors of other simulations you create the flight and set the number of aircraft, outfit the flight with weapons, set the flight's waypoints and that's about it. In LOMAC - you need to do everything again for every human pilot. With 4 players, you multiply the workload by 4.

Further annoyances include things like:

• Flight creation - if you create a flight of F-15's, and then select a task for it, if the aircraft cannot perform that task, the mission editor changes the aircraft to one that will. If there were multiple aircraft in the flight who's task you are selecting, and that task cannot be done the mission editor not only changed the airframe, it may also change the number of aircraft in flight, requiring you to change the aircraft and alter the flight size back to what you wanted. A simple fix would have been to only display tasks that the aircraft can perform.
• Loadout system: The easy way - there is an easy way to assign weapons to your aircraft, if you do select a task for a flight, you can select from a list of 'filtered' loadouts. This small mercy allows the less masochistic a way of getting weapons on their aircraft.
• Loadout system: The hard way - You are required to assign a payload to any aircraft you add to the mission. One lacking feature is having a default loadout applied to the aircraft dependant on aircraft type and task. Further frustration is provided in the steps required to loadout the aircraft. You may select weapon types, weapon, and pylons, yet there is no way of putting these items on the aircraft. Until - that is, you click on the 'NEW' button on the left to create a loadout profile. I can see no point of giving the user the ability to select weapons and hardpoint if they can't complete the task.
  Once you have guessed that you need to hit the 'NEW' button, you may then proceed to select the pylon by pressing right to move the cursors highlighting the selected pylon left, or left to move it right. A simple thing would be to have had the pylons numbered 1 to (n), left to right, to match the pylon selection number being displayed above the pylon selection button. There's no way to select a pylon directly by clicking on it, so you are required to use as many as 11 mouse clicks just to select the pylon you want, then select the type of weapon you want, then select the weapon you want, then click add. Once you have done this, sometimes you can save them for use with the 'easy way', as for some reason the save box ignores the text you've typed in and returns it to whatever was there last time.
  
  A simple method would have been to simply use an approach similar to Falcon4, a matrix of weapons crossed with hardpoints that allowed you to click the square that added that weapon. Mousewheel to scroll the list, click on the pylon. 2 actions MAXIMUM required to load any one hardpoint with any weapon. Following the old 'never require more than 3 actions to perform a single task' design philosophy, you would still have one action left over to further break down the list of muntions to A-A, A-G, or other. Alternatively there's the JF/A-18 approach, drag and drop. Or EF-2000's system. All are FAR superior.

These are just a few examples of things that while 'functional' are almost a sadistic joke in interface design. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to make some of the tasks require more actions to accomplish.

The game engine:
Graphics: LOMAC has the best graphics I have seen in a simulation. About 20% of the theatre is detailed, with the rest water and flat terrain. The detailed areas look excellent and the terrain is sufficiently varied to allow mission designers to create interesting missions. There are some graphical issues for ATI card users, being flashing textures. One unfortunate issue the engine has is it's rendering of unseen objects - water in particular. Regardless of whether you are on the grassplanes with no water within hundreds of kilometers water settings effect framerates. I created a simple mission with a single aircraft flying to the extreme north of the map. All settings were on the 'low' defaults. The 'low' water mission resulted in framerates of 165FPS. Water detail settings were changed to very high and the mission was relaunched. Framerate was 40FPS. Changed the settings back and water was once again 165FPS.

The terrain is light years ahead of that of any other jet combat sim, the methods used - general textures with highlighted areas - result in a much more believable landscape than the fully detailed texture approach of Falcon4 or the rather bleak landscape in JF/A-18.

Sound: The sound effects themselves are generally good. The engine playing them however struggles with playing more than one sound at once. The more sounds played, the worse things get, and at times seriously hamper framerates. In tests done across a half dozen different sound cards, both onboard and addon - including the top of the line cards from various manufacturers - framerates dropped about 5% for each sound being played concurrently.

Multiplayer: Multiplayer should be the central core to every simulation when it is marketed as an entertainment product. Good multiplayer support is the keystone to creating a user community, and it's through the support of the user community, and their good will and free effort, that future success is based upon. Not including multiplayer or bad multiplayer will guarantee failure unless your simulation is very very specialised and there are no competitors doing a better job.

Before giving up in disgust, our squad spent a lot of effort attempting to fly LOMAC online. Many of our members were IT professionals, some with extensive experience in LAN/WAN environments. Through the use of external diagnostic utilities we did everything we could to tweak and troubleshoot the issues we were having to find a happy medium where we could have multiplayer work in the manner we were after - scenarios and missions beyond airquake or hitting a convoy. The networking code could simply not cope with it.

For the review I decide to try and play LOMAC online with the crowd on hyperlobby.

I jump on hyperlobby and join a server with a half dozen people on it, with my ingame connection settings set to their default, 33.6K. The resulting game is unplayable. Out of four attempts I have 3 lockups and one death due to flying 20 metres over an F-15 on the tarmac that is doing some sort of wierd pirouette. There's small moments of delight as I taxi behind another aircraft, form up on his wing, and takeoff in formation, until a couple of km from the game freezes. Tabbing out and looking at task manager I watch the memory usage of the simulation climb to 700MB steadily before dropping down to 60MB and repeating the cycle. The sim never recovers and the task must be killed off.

I check my internet connectivity through dslreports and it is good. I check my connectivity to the host and everything is good. There are no issues along the traffic route.

This is how the simulation behaves when you have settings different from the server and insufficient to handle the traffic. It just falls over.

I then up the bandwidth to meet the settings requested by the server host and things are much improved. I play an enjoyable 30 minute game playing cat and mouse with a couple of other players. We never come to within visual range, I lob a few missiles off, do a lot of beaming and dragging while someone else on the server bags them, and back to base. I didn't actually SEE anyone else, nor missiles incoming or anything else that would show me warping, but as far as Electronic Warfare at BVR ranges is concerned, it seemed to work well.

I then do a co-op versus a small convoy protected by Shilkas. With 4 players, all with identical settings, it seemed to work ok.

For low intensity missions LOMAC works ok on the network code side of things. Add more than a couple of AI flights and AAA/SAM units and things start to go downhill. Once you exceed the capacity of the network code the sim fails in spectacular fashion. With no user feedback (such as a netgraph) figuring out whether you are pushing the code too hard is impossible.

Artificial Intelligence:
The dogfighting AI is very good. Providing a good challenge. The 'other' AI is a bit iffy. SAM sites at airfields shooting down friendly aircraft that are taking off, or aircraft ignoring their tasks and attacking things they have no way of knowing about, or aircraft landing at enemy airbases. Creating a mission with AI units in it is often a case of put it together and see what happens as it's difficult, if not impossible, to have units do as they are supposed to. The air traffic control system, in the opinion of an active military ATC I know, shares nothing with real life ATC. AWACS information is scant.

Flight Modelling:
Flanker 2.0 possessed what many simmers feel is the best flight model of the jet simulations of the same period, Falcon4 and JF/A-18. However, a comparison between computerised fly by wire systems that control the aircraft in a very precise manner so that the pilot isn't compensating for inertia or pushing the aircraft out of it's flight envelope versus a fully manual flight control system is not a judgement of which has the better flight model, but one that feels more 'natural' to the player. That said, the 'feel' of flying in LOMAC is superb for the most part. Originally the simulation was to contain High Fidelity flight models, but this was dropped.

Longevity:
As it stands, there really isn't much. With no dynamic campaign generator users are left to playing hand created missions, and due to the serious AI and network code performance issues the missions tend to be limited.

Conclusion:
The initial condition of a simulation is the best indicator you will get of what the sim's final shape will be. Janes F/A-18 was released in a very good state, some minor patching was required, and it remains the most functional modern jet sim available. Falcon4 was released in a terrible state, and despite years of community effort is still incomplete. Flanker2 fell somewhere between the two. LOMAC was terrible.

LOMAC is essentially an unfinished, unpolished, badly designed product with hundreds of remaining bugs. However it does have potential to be much much better, given sufficient resources for the developers to do so and a bit of thought.

The flaming cliffs addon may breathe new life into this simulation. The developers report that they've fixed over 200 bugs, added an extra aircraft - with a high fidelity flight model, and improved just about everything else except the sound engine. With a publisher change and staff changes, there's reason to hope.