Games - Lock On: Modern Air Combat

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	Games - Lock On: Modern Air Combat

Lock On: Modern Air Combat is a popular modern fighter simulation developed by Eagle Dynamics and published by Ubisoft that is widely regarded as one of the best simulators in its class. It contains 8 flyable aircraft and dozens of AI controlled planes. In the game you can take either fighter jets up and use very realistic tactics and radar to find enemies, or fly ground attack jets and attack tanks and buildings. The game models AWACS (also known as AEW&C) and in air refueling. The game has over 180,000 buildings, over 50,000,000 trees, 21 cities, 1,700 towns, 500 bridges, 18 airfields, and 8 naval bases in the Black Sea region modeled. You can fly as either Russia, USA, or some other countries such as Germany and Georgia. The 8 flyable aircraft are MiG-29A, MiG-29S, Su-27, Su-33, Su-25, MiG-29G (a German MiG-29 variant with a native board-computer), F-15, and A-10. A full mission editor is included to allow you to make missions of the same quality as the 20 missions included with the game. You also can make campaigns of the same quality as the four included.

Disadvantages

The initial version of the game was quite buggy. Even after upgrading to the current version (1.02) not all the bugs are worked out. The latest version (of Lock On: Flaming Cliffs) is V1.12a. This version is very stable and most of the bugs have been fixed. However, the game tends to run extraordinarily poorly even using the latest hardware, bearing in mind its original release date. But with tweaks gleaned from the community forums, the game can be run very smoothly.

Lock On: Flaming Cliffs, and patch 1.12a contain a copy protection known as Starforce. This copy protection has been reported by many users to cause disruptions of CD/DVD-R/W drives and software. Some theorize it has hurt sales of LO:FC dramatically, but at this time no word is available on its further use in the Lock On series.

Upgrades

The developer of the game, Eagle Dynamics, has an add-on version 1.1 (named Lock On: Flaming Cliffs) which works out more bugs and adds another flyable aircraft, The Su-25T is added and some upgrades to the games missile modeling are included as is an Advanced Flight Model (AFM) for the Su-25T. The latest version of FC is 1.12a.

The Next project for Eagle Dynamics is Lock On V1.2 Black Shark, containing the KA-50 helo as a flyable aircraft. Lock On: Black Shark will contain many more updates to Flaming Cliffs. This has a current release date of March, 2006.

After Black Shark is completed, Eagle Dynamics is going to create a new flightsim called TANK KILLERs, which will feature the A-10, Su-25, Su-25T, KA-50, and possible, the AH-64 as flyable aircraft all with AFM (Advanced Flight Model) and improved avionics.

In addition, Eagle Dynamics is going to start work on an F-16 flight sim called F-16 DESTROYER, possibly featuring an advanced MiG-29 variant as a flyable aircraft. Although these last two projects seem promising, don't expect them to be out anytime soon.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Lock On: Modern Air Combat ]

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