Lock on: modern air combat

[FSPilot 0]

And this one's just too beautiful not to post  

How did they get that shot?

edit - from the RK english webpage

Quote[/b] ]http://www.knights.ru/pers_tkachenko-e.shtml

Possesses the "Military pilot-sniper" qualification.

What's a military pilot-sniper? They snipe from airplanes?

Maybe he's a pilot, and a sniper.

[Tovarish 0]

How did they get that shot?

Dunno, but if that wasn't done with a good zoom lens and that was the actual distance, I'd be pissing myself instead of taking pictures.

Quote[/b] ]edit - from the RK english webpage

Quote[/b] ]http://www.knights.ru/pers_tkachenko-e.shtml

Possesses the "Military pilot-sniper" qualification.

What's a military pilot-sniper? They snipe from airplanes?

Maybe he's a pilot, and a sniper.

What's a "Top Gun" pilot? does he have the highest-mounted gun on a plane?

Same thing basically as a top Gun in the West, i forget the criteria you have to meet, I have them listed in a Janes book at home, but thousands of flight hours are required, and yes, Air to Ground and Air to Air gunnery scores with the gun are part of it.

[FSPilot 0]

Ahh, so you have to be able to hit things with the cannon? That makes sense.

[Tovarish 0]

Ahh, so you have to be able to hit things with the cannon?  That makes sense.

Among other things like I said, Weapons delivery is part of it (not just the gun) But overall is a recognition for being the "Best of the Best" pilots in the VVS. The best being 1st Class Classification (which is the minimum requirement for being in the Swifts or Russian Knights).

[FSPilot 0]

Ok, I think I get it, thanks Tovarish.

Off topic: (click the smiley)

[Tovarish 0]

Ok, I think I get it, thanks Tovarish.

Off topic: (click the smiley)

Lol

Anyways here's  some info on Russian pilot classification:

Quote[/b] ]Russian pilots graduate from training with about 230 flying hours and 550 sorties in their log books, and wear wings with a plain blue shield as a centerpiece. On a frontline regiment, unrated pilots are of little use, and are not capable of flying as productive members of the unit.

To become a Third Class pilot the young officer needs a total of 350 flying hours and 600 sorties, usually achieving the rating within a year of arriving at the frontline. Qualified to fly combat missions by day, in weather conditions which include a 1.5nm minimum visibility and a 750ft  minimum cloudbase, the Third Class pilot can fly in formations between four and sixteen aircraft (from a zveno, or flight, to a full squadron).

Pilots gain the Second Class pilot rating after a further three years, with a minimum of 450 hours and 770 sorties in their log books. Gaining the coveted wings with a red '2' is recognized as a particularly difficult step, involving written examinations and practical testing of night and instrument flying abilities. A Second Class pilot is a fully-rated combat pilot, qualified to fly by day or night, able to stand alert, qualified to fly ground attack and 'maneuvering combat' missions and fully instrument rated (with the same day minima as a Third Class pilot and with night minima of 3nm visibility and a 1500ft cloudbase). Second Class pilots recieve salary bonuses (effectively flying pay) ranging from 15% to 25% of basic pay, paid adter one year's qualified service. In days gone by, this was the stage at which Soviet pilots tended to  become Communist Party members. Soviet regiments in East Germany included a much greater proportion of higher-graded pilots than other Frontal Aviation units

The First Class pilot rating requires a minimum 550 flying hours and 1200 sorties, and is usually achieved after some six years of frontline service. First Class pilots have weather minima (day and night) of less than a mile visibility and a cloudbase of 450ft. Most frontline pilots can expect to eventually become First Class pilots, but only a handful get to the next step of the ladder, wearing the coveted wings of the Sniper Pilot

My source:

[FSPilot 0]

That's less than a half hour per sortie on average. Isn't that short to try to learn things? I usually flew for around an hour on my training flights.

[Tovarish 0]

That's less than a half hour per sortie on average.  Isn't that short to try to learn things?  I usually flew for around an hour on my training flights.

Those are listed as the minimum guidelines, not the standard.

*edit* though for the first step of flight training I see what you mean. I guess that's what simulators are for.

[Dark Knight 0]

hey.. just so all u no

i have started a squad for LOMAC.. to be ready for when its out

it is 101st Squadren known as Guardians of the Sky

[Tovarish 0]

Some good news and some bad news....

First the good. a very nice 3 minute video (31mb) featuring the Su-33:

ftp://ftp.ubisoft.com/games/lomac/media/LO_video_31_07.zip

And this is the bad news:

Quote[/b] ]As posted today at forum.lockon.ru by Igor Tishin, the head of Eagle Dynamics, the release of LOMAC will not feature the new high fidelity flight models, that already were in the development at ED for some time by now. According to Mr. Tishin this is because "they require unproportionally high amounts of time and resources to debug". In other words LOMAC will have a "good ole" F2.5 FM, maybe a little bit modified one. Although as Mr. Tishin says there's some hope that the hi-fi FM will be introduced in the future addons, but IMO this hope is very faint.

There's also an opinion of a beta tester of the new FM, "Having flown a Su-25 with the advanced FM for half an hour I don't even want to look at Su-27 with ordinary FM, let alone fly it."

[Dark Knight 0]

well that sux

[Tex -USMC- 0]

NOOOOOOOOOO I'd be willing to wait another 6 months for those puppies- I say let them get it right, not to mention it will give me the chance to build myself a new system tailor made for LOMAC.

And you can bet that UBi-Soft is behind this one- they want Lomac on shelves in time for the holidays...

[Shashman 0]

Ah well let's not focus on this but on the innumerable other features of this so far, great looking sim

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Ah well let's not focus on this but on the innumerable other features of this so far, great looking sim  

Yeah, but what happens if this ends up reducing Lomac to "just another pretty face" status?

[edc 0]

*sigh* Lets see now, what have they taken out of LOMAC, this, su-39, and I think a dynamic campaign. And the release date seems to be moved back practicly every day.

[FSPilot 0]

I don't think they've given us a solid release date.

But this is sad.

What do they mean by flight model? The visual model that we look at or the plane's characteristics in flight?

[Tovarish 0]

I have to say this is making even me take pause....from what I understand the Su-27 and MiG-29 FM's from Flanker 2.5 were excellent (some people said they felt better than the one in Falcon 4.0), but what does this mean for the A-10 and F-15?....oh well, worst case scenario....the Forgotten Battles patch should be here soon.....and I'll still buy a new CPU if it means I can run it at high graphics settings.

*edit* characteristics in flight FS

[FSPilot 0]

Well, I've never seen simulator plane can "feel" like a real plane anyway. i usually keep the two experiences seperate.

[Tovarish 0]

From the head developer on the subject:

Quote[/b] ]"Dear Sirs

Let me put some light to this subject

We are always working on improvement of Flanker(LockOn) FM and we have two approaches.

First is based on the existing concept which uses

few but very complicated dependencies, requires relatively small number of initial data. This approach is a very good since it was developed in a way that it can be improved any time we get more information. It is very convenient in situation, when whole product is complicated and we need to develop many aspects of it at the same time. We are using this approach in LockOn, improving flight models of all flyable planes as soon as we get the new information.

The second approach is an attemption to use much more aerodynamics data with bigger set of equations. This approach is normally used for professional simulators and it requires a lot of suphisticated initial official data. As soon as we got such data for one russian airplane we tryed that approach as well, but unfortunately found out that official initial data very rare suite to each other, in other words, that approach needs a lot of work to preprocess the initial data with no guarantee, that result is good. As a result for one year of work a very first tryal version of one airpalane was developed, but was not tested enough, and even nobody could say yet is it better than FM developed by old approach or even worse. So, not everithing what is complicated necessarily better . Very often genius is in simplicity. But we continue working to provide you with the best of what is only possible on PC."

So it's not exactly a "dumbed down" sim, not if you consider everything else out there "dumbed down"...they simply tried a new approach in coding FM's and found that it wasn't practical. Seems reasonable. Also keep in mind that the data was only available for one Russian plane....this stuff is usually sensitive if not classified.

*edit* and a response from Stormin, an American consultant and executive producer:

Quote[/b] ]Yet another example of the online simulation community pulling a Chicken Little Maneuver based upon a rumor or having only a few of the facts.

Thanks for spreading rumor, and thanks for making the bold statement that Lock On is "getting dumbed". All of us working on the project really appreciate your making things more difficult for us.

As my friend Igor has explained, the other approach to flight models was something we have been working on as a possible way to bring more detailed fidelity to the simulation. It doesn't mean the current method is bad or flawed. The second method used a different process. In the efforts to take this new method to all the aircraft in Lock On we discovered that we could not get all the data we need and that using it exclusively would take more time and resources than we had for the project. It doesn't meant that our current models are less, the new method would have given us more flexibility by using a broader set of parameters.

Those of you thinking that we have now "dumbed down" the current flight models are incorrect. As Igor states, we have been improving on the flight modeling of this product constantly.

The allegation that all aircraft use the same flight model is yet another example of Bovine Scatology.

I am not going to waste any more time in pointless debates about the quality of the flight models.

You all have Igor's explanation on SimHQ which someone has pasted in a thread above.

I spoke with Igor this morning and he tells me that there are plenty of things being posted on the Russian forum that just are not true by people that have not flown Lock On.

Look at this thread. The first word is "RUMOR".

Cheers,

Carl

Seems all is well after all

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Hey, on the upside, that truly is an incredible video The terrain, the carrier ops, the water (!!!), the... the... everything! I was just a little bummed about the FMs due to the fact that the Flanker FM's never really wowed me- I guess I'm just a little spoiled with flying WWII sims- the planes of that era have entirely more character than more modern aircraft. I was hoping maybe that new approach could bring some of that same character to a modern sim.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

And at the end of the video- the Flanker's wheels are chocked after they've parked

[Tovarish 0]

@ July 31 2003,16:52)]Hey, on the upside, that truly is an incredible video    The terrain, the carrier ops, the water (!!!), the... the... everything! I was just a little bummed about the FMs due to the fact that the Flanker FM's never really wowed me- I guess I'm just a little spoiled with flying WWII sims- the planes of that era have entirely more character than more modern aircraft. I was hoping maybe that new approach could bring some of that same character to a modern sim.

Yes, but the fact that it took them one year to model one aircraft using this approach...and they haven't even started testing it yet...coupled with the fact that they're having trouble getting the same data for other planes - It seems the one plane they did manage to get full data of was the Su-25.(Gee I wonder why the US might have reservations about handing over complete flight test data of F-15's and A-10's over to a game developer....a Russian game developer), I'm actually surprized they didn't drop that idea a loooong time ago. Guess I got caught up in the "dumbed down FM's" rumor

[edc 0]

Quote[/b] ]And at the end of the video- the Flanker's wheels are chocked after they've parked

That happens in Flanker 2.5 too.

[Shashman 0]

Ah well let's not focus on this but on the innumerable other features of this so far, great looking sim  

[Tovarish 0]

Ah well let's not focus on this but on the innumerable other features of this so far, great looking sim  

 

For all of Lo-Mac's other virtues, if all the planes had the same FM, or the FM was the quality of Novalogic's sims, I would still avoid it like the plague. That's what we were afraid of, and the responses from the developers show that clearly this is not the case.