Lock On Mod ?

[VladAlex 0]

Hello to the comunity.

 Arma engine is able to have 100km Maps ! It's a great news because we can also have good aerial engagement. My idea is to make an island of 100 km with very low detailed objects for dogfight.

 The lock on textures are very good for create building with just 4 faces... The tree will be in 2D with only two or three planes.

 And we will use .dem to create the environement and maps and satelite photographies to create the roads and other things like that.

 In lock on the small town and village have a generic satelite texture: an interesting idea to decrease the weight of the map !

[smiley nick 51]

Very possible to do, Arma as default caters for the infantry aspect and slower moving aircraft. It would be lovely to fly for 30mins just to get to a mission objective. (Hardcore realism players only)

You might be able to get away with placing a few objects on the Afghan island, its fairly big and offers great options for flying in jets, epically for Laser guided bombings.

[opteryx 1562]

You can make 200 x 200 km maps!

I tried flying diagonally across the PCM 204 km desert map and after 20 min I crashed because I was too busy looking on the map to stay on course, what's even worse is that I hadn't flown half the map!

Anyway, it would be awesome with a combat flight-sim mod, more complex avionics, flight model and weapons system would sweet.

Also I think the engine can allow you to SetViewDistance up to somewhere around 20000 meters, that pretty good and runs fairly smooth on a terrain with low object count, sadly the maps are very unstable with that high VD at the moment so we willl have to wait for Visitor 3

[VladAlex 0]

Yep... We alway need to wait visitor 3 and do a lot of testing... But for the begining of my project I have 322 textures from lock on in now in Jpeg format and ready to be convered to .paa

All those textures will not be very usefull... But you can imagine that it's an hell of work to make aproximatly 200 new buildings ! Even if they only have 4 face !

So I need people ! Before the launching of Visitor 3.

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Very possible to do, Arma as default caters for the infantry aspect and slower moving aircraft. It would be lovely to fly for 30mins just to get to a mission objective. (Hardcore realism players only)

I rather think "hardcore realism players" would just prefer

playing Lock On.

[BraTTy 0]

But for the begining of my project I have 322 textures from lock on in now in Jpeg format and ready to be convered to .paa

 

 

Importing textures from other games is frowned upon ,besides being illegal

[echo1 0]

Im not sure if dogfighting is improved in ArmA, but in OFP it was atrocious. The enemy AI would try to fly behind you to shoot you, and as you chased it the end result was that the two planes would just be flying around in a circle. I have to agree with Col. Faulkner on this one, but for multiplayer dogfighting it would be fun.

[franze 196]

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing big maps and detailed jets, but one also has to understand there are still some limitations:

- Radar modeling. A key feature for any modern jet; the radar we have in ArmA is a simplistic system that works the same for every unit. You can get away with this but it stinks.

- Flight model. Currently the flight model for fixed wing aircraft is wonky at best; it does what it needs to do and that's about it. Getting some serious flight dynamics would take a lot of work!

- Avionics modeling. While what we can do in ArmA is great, there are still things missing here. We lack the capability to do items such as picture-in-picture, self guidance for various weapons (IIR/TV Mavericks, laser guided weapons), and so on.

- As mentioned, AI stinks big time at flying. Maybe not an issue with humans, but look at how hard a time LOMAC already has getting the right players.

These are just a few things I think are holding back a truly realistic flight simulator in ArmA; they do not prevent the creation of aircraft or workarounds, but they don't make it easier either. I think it's best to keep making aircraft into a second line role and make them good at doing that job above all else.

I will say this though... We can really make aircraft look real with ArmA.

[BraTTy 0]

I think that Arma (OFP) Bis etc (lol)

has the most featured aircraft

For example you can have a multitude of animations,somewhat realistic fuel usage,most full gauges,all sorts of effects,realistic loadout, etc...

many many features

I of course prefer the prop planes and its better dogfighting

[nephilim 0]

technically possible but

a) arma doesnt use proper avionics

b) too much work..

c) why dont you just play Lomac?

[USSRsniper 0]

technically possible but

a) arma doesnt use proper avionics

b) too much work..

c) why dont you just play Lomac?

c) Maybe its too hard, if for some people controls in ArmA are hard, i bet they are impossible for them in Lomac...

[Hunin 0]

I think the overall idea of this is pretty cool.

The scenario you suggested doesn't fit into the game though.

A modern AAM ( Amraam,Meteor, Adder) is capable of taking out targets flying up to 140 km away from the weapons carrier.

What would really make sense would be such a map in connection with a WWI, WWII or Korean War mod, were it's still "guns & turns".

[MehMan 0]

IMO ArmA doesn't fit this role because it can't simulate 1/4th of the things LOMAC can. ArmA for dogfighting, well haven't tested it out yet, but I'd guess it wouldn't reach LOMAC by a mile. The flight controls and flight model is way too shabby for a LOMAC mod.

I think it'd be best if you rather played LOMAC. I found it pretty kickass for those couple of times that I could get my joystick angle just about right.

[VladAlex 0]

I think that you dont understand well the concept. I will not make aircraft. RKLS mod is working on that and this work seems to be very good ! Even if it will never reach the simulation level of Lock On.

No, my concept is just a map concept. Big, and complex. Imagine flying in a UH60 with a assault team during 30 minuts, with a lot of air menace and land to air menace... Then you arrive in a Hight detailled zone (with arma elements...) and you fight then extract.

I'm testing this concept creating the low poly models. Screens will come soon.

[FischKopp 0]

... as i said before on the australian map thread ...

you not only have chance to simulate long range missions with dependence on air transport, you also will have, i suppose, to wait up to 5 or 10 minutes to load the map in SP. I think Mp would take longer. Maybe it is my PC but the Example maps (without any real looking vegitation, citys or road systems) took for me 2 min.

Maybe a boring and without love and dedication made (?) desert style map will be possible without bigger loading time problems. But this counts only if you want to make it also interesting for ground force missions. If you olnly want to simulate air combat and air support, i think, a less detailed map will be okay.

But i can be wrong. This is just what I suppose from what i´ve figured out by testing the example islands and a quick view on this topic.

[andersson 285]

PMC islands, ~40min flighttime between malden and kolgujev?

[Commando84 0]

i like the idea thoug i don't like lock on that much, i like dogfighting in ofp and arma and i loved throwing in bas blackhawks with their AA warning systems and flares / counter measures against a su-25 or mig-29 or random groups of ground troops and listen to the sounds , the fray the panic when you heared that beeeping noise and was trying to evacuate the friendly ground troops while all hell broke loose around ya played lan with a friend last saturday and had a blast harrier vs su-34 , i totally suck at flying the jets in arma but its still fun to mess around and try to lock on and fire missiles and instead end up crashing into each other

[Hunin 0]

PMC islands, ~40min flighttime between malden and kolgujev?

You must be using a different ACE island then I do.

[Maddmatt 1]

technically possible but

a) arma doesnt use proper avionics

b) too much work..

c) why dont you just play Lomac?

c) Maybe its too hard, if for some people controls in ArmA are hard, i bet they are impossible for them in Lomac...

The controls are not that hard, it just takes a bit of time to learn them. Playing through some training missions in Lock-On was enough to teach me how to use the A10 properly.

Nice idea, but I think it's better to just play Lock-On when you want a proper flight sim.

Anyone who finds the ArmA controls hard is an idiot

[NoRailgunner 0]

@VladAlex

If you will make an big "desert" island with only a few cities, towns and villages it will be playable. When you put in more woods, vegetation, big cities and towns then you have to say that other "minimum requirements" are necessary.

Dogfight with modern aircraft - only done BVR

[VladAlex 0]

@NoRailgunner

Do you make any test ? The only thing I know is that PMC 204 km x 204 km work with massive city... (even if the biggest part of the island is desert...)

[Hunin 0]

@VladAlex

If you will make an big "desert" island with only a few cities, towns and villages it will be playable. When you put in more woods, vegetation, big cities and towns then you have to say that other "minimum requirements" are necessary.

Dogfight with modern aircraft - only done BVR

Dogfighting is hardly BVR mostly.

Only a hand full of all kills made after the second World War were achived beyond 10 km range.

Sidewinders kill - Amraams hardly do.

The reason why I brought the range aspect to this in my first post is that even a 500*500 km map is hell small for modern air warfare.

But a huge map with low details is a great idea for realistic combat all over - how many 3 km tank engagements have you seen in ArmA?

And about the load time thing;

The PMC maps take that long to load because their format doesn't allow streaming.

They'd load as fast as Rhamadi once they were converted to the new file format ArmA utilizes.

[.COMmunist 0]

I think this is a good idea. Arma is in no way a very good realism game. Still has ton of problems and often doesn't resemble the reality at all, but we all still play it... Same with the arial battles here. They will never be as good as LockOn, but we can still fly in Arma. Make a map for it! If you build it, we will come (fly)!

[BraTTy 0]

The maps in Arma are larger than we think.

Like OFP you could start the mission 10k out to sea

[franze 196]

Of course, flying jets in ArmA is a lot of fun. I don't think anybody is denying that.

But to have a real simulation, it comes up shy. Some things are still a pain in the butt - carriers for example - so while we can have these things, we won't be getting the same experience.

What I think ArmA would be capable of doing quite well would be pre-Vietnam combat. No fancy computers or anything like that, just steam gauges, a gunsight, and whatever else you could carry!

P.S. @ Hunin

"Sidewinders kill - Amraams hardly do."

I think you'll find this is wrong, unless you mean the Sparrow. The AMRAAM has been one of the best missiles deployed today.