Цитата:
(5) The sim is VERY taxing on anything other than cutting-edge pc platforms. It ran fine on mine with little stuttering, averaging ~20 FPS, which isn't bad but not great and to get even that I had to disable the mirrors and crank down the water detail (neither of which are show-stoppers I grant). I also noted big time FPS hits when on the tarmac, no doubt due to the activity modeled at the airbase. As with Flanker, though, I found that if you wait a few seconds before hitting “S” to start the mission, the FPS improve (which is recommended in both sim’s documentation). Fortunately, unlike Falcon 4 which is very CPU intensive and not overly video card centered (at least where DX is concerned), LOMAC (being newer) will obviously scale well and take advantage of robust video cards.
Now on that note, I must allow that when choosing whether to serve the needs of current pc hardware or give a new sim more longevity by coding it to scale well with future hardware, the latter course is preferable IMHO. So I don’t fault the developers here: in a year or two LOMAC will play fine on all systems. (Sadly, hyper-threading came out after LOMAC's code base was set in stone and Carl has said a code rework to use HT is not planned unless in a new product.) Now as for apparently not optimizing/testing it for W9x, again I don’t blame UBI/ED because, really, what serious gamer/simmer is still using W9x? Heck M$ doesn’t even support it any more. If gamers/simmers are using W9x they ought not to be IMHO: the premier pc gaming OS for stability and resource optimization is WXP. If you're still using W9x, for whatever reason, get used to new games not working on this decrepit OS platform. So far as system lock-ups and graphic anomalies go, I haven’t seen much of that, less so since I patched to 1.01. Regardless, for those who disagree with me about the OS issue, I concede that it is usually advantageous to encompass as many OS’s as possible to maximize your consumer base; I therefore factored that into the grade. GRADE ON SYSTEM SPEC REQUIREMENTS: B+.
(6) Graphically, LOMAC is said by many to be gorgeous and, while I agree it looks good, it resembles very much the graphics of Flanker 2x IMHO, which I was never overly found of. I always felt, and feel with LOMAC, that its visual presentation borders on cartoonish in that it appears a little "pastally" and a little too...vibrant. Clouds are well done and inclement weather, such as thunder storms, adds broad tactical challenges. The 3d models, in particular the jets, are very nicely done, with accurately articulating flight controls etc. Dynamic lighting, shadows, heat blurs are very nice touches and definitely add to the suspension of disbelief. Fiddling with the FSAA has provided smooth model lines (though somewhat less detail – always a trade off ya know) which is satisfying for screen shots but of little consequence for a realistic combat flight sim whereby most of your time should be spent in the cockpit flying and fighting the virtual jet. Even so, the sense of speed at low level and NOE is exhilarating. GRADE ON GRAPHICS: A-.
(7) Sound…apparently much of it is sampled from real sources and, while buggy in the initial release, seems okay now after 1.01. 3d sound seems good as I pan my (v) around the pit, as are external fly bys etc, and I even heard a sonic boom as my Eagle ripped past the camera. Really, nothing to complain about and indeed quite well done. GRADE ON SOUND: A+.
(8) Which brings us to the cockpits. First off, I must say I am not overly disappointed by the exclusion of 2d pits. Normally it may have required an adjustment for someone like myself who spends most of his time in one, but given the level of avionics fidelity modeled, there would be little advantage to a 2d pit since the number of switches and buttons to interact with would have been relatively sparse. Besides, my HOTAS is usually mapped to most of the crucial switches. So why spend development resources on a superfluous item? If the level of avionics fidelity was much higher, I would have insisted (oh the arrogance here!) upon a 2d cockpit to manage the switchology. The visual modeling of each pit is of great detail, but I have found some of the gauges hard to read -- an issue that a 2d pit might have resolved. I have to admit also that the relative anarchy of the analog instrument clusters of the F-15 and A-10 pits are difficult to adjust to after being in the “glass” pit of the F16 – different. The options to adjust the (v) seat position (i.e. “zoom”) and peripheral views were good ideas too. I have to admit that I find the mirrors of little tactical value on a 2d monitor so I do not use them, but the option is nice for those who do. A note on the metric versus Imperial measurements: for the Russian jets you have that option of course though I prefer not to use it since all of my “flying” is done in American fighters. Some instruments need a better explanation for the uninitiated, for example the HIS in the F-15. And, frankly, since the Flanker sim days, I’ve never liked the Russian fuel gauges nor the RHAW (Radar Homing And Warning), I find them awkward to read but they are of course realistically modeled AFAIK so not a debatable design point. As a side note, it is curious that the US Armed forces use metric (like the rest of the G7) yet American citizens prefer not to. While on the topic of HUDs I wish there was an override switch for the FPM wind indicator like there is in Falcon 4 since I only really need that distraction when landing or delivering unguided bombs. One nice touch (or annoying depending upon your perspective I suppose) is the plane-dependent language of the VWS between English and Russian. GRADE ON COCKPITS: A.
(9) Flight modeling? Well, I'm no expert and do not speak from RL fighter jet experience -- oh my I've been cheated in life! -- but I was a little surprised. As a long-time Falcon junkie, I've been spoiled by fly-by-wire (FBW) and the very forgiving nature of the flight envelop it provides ... ok "cocoon" is more apt. Older fighter jets like the F-15 and of course the Su-27 (as I recall from Flanker 1/2) which only have a rudimentary FCS (or the Hog which has none), are very light to the touch and can depart controlled flight very easily. From my long prop time with EAW I already knew this, and was aware of it intellectually, but it certainly takes an adjustment when the spaghetti starts to fly. As well, one must pay close attention on the jets to the trim settings, especially the Russian fighters, though the Su-25 handles well and is stable at low airspeeds so far as I’ve seen. My HOTAS setup also needed some tweaking for pitch, roll and rudder control curves and the like, but no big deal here (thanks to George for his settings which work well).
The upside though is an increased feel of responsiveness, especially from the Flanker – though the Crane seems to carry over an inherent “twitchiness” (i.e. propensity to easily depart controlled flight and the nose to bob up) from the Flanker sim days. (And hey, given that some have described LOMAC as Flanker “3”, in a way it’s no surprise, eh?) I was never able to ascertain if that a RL characteristic or a FM design decision or even uncorrected design flaw. As an aircraft that might be expected to be involved in the occasional knife fight using the cannon, a propensity to pourpose like that would be most undesirable for a steady tracking gunshot so I have to think that the RL Flanker does not have this nasty tendency. (At least in LOMAC you can work-around this with the controller sensitivity settings, in Flanker you never really could.) An especially sleek, deadly bird, the Flanker is much like a woman in that it needs a gentle, easy touch to nudge it where you want her to go. With respect to the F-15 I’m not sure if its FCS is properly or completely modeled: it seems a little too easy to depart controlled flight with excessive stick deflection while assaulting another axis – it’s almost as though the elevator or flapperon deflections aren’t being inhibited when they need to be as in the FBW F16 for example. Yaw control and stabilization seems okay though I’ve noticed un-commanded slippage in normal flight regimes. For either jet, but especially the Flanker, it’s almost akin to riding a horse in that you’re really authoritatively “asking” it to go somewhere. But then that could be my Falcon FBW handicap in play too whereby I can just “demand” what the jet has and let the FCS system decide what to give me.
