Non MS Flight Sims: Falcon 4.0 vs LOMAC

[Chris_F]

I'm going to buy a modern air combat flight sim.  I know the expertise in this forum is heavily MS related, but can anyone here offer experiences with these two?  Right now I'm leaning heavily towards the updated Falcon 4.0 Alied Force.

I'm looking for something with extremely deep complexity and a steep learning curve.  Basically I like learning about systems and how to operate them.  For this I've heard Falcon is the best (plus I'm concerned about being able to run LOMAC on my 2.4 GHz 128M video RAM machine).

Anyone have a compelling reason to stay away from Falcon 4.0 AF?

Another plus: I can get a copy for only $20.

[BFMF]

Never played either, but get the cheapest that will run the best on your system

[Mobius]

You pretty much just described the aspects of F4:AF that are better than LOMAC.  The only bad things I have heard about Falcon are the AI isn't too great, and the graphics don't look the best.  In your situation, I would say you should get Falcon, but LOMAC does have pretty complex systems if you actually want to dive in, and there are 7 different aircraft, with 7 different systems to learn.  So I would recommend getting LOMAC once you master Falcon, and by then you would probably have a computer to run LOMAC at full settings.

[Sasquatch]

I have played LOMAC since it first appeared on shelves several years ago.  I am an enthusiastic fan of the game.  Below I will explain why I enjoy the game so much and why I believe you should purchase the game as well.

The graphics in LOMAC are incredible, even at low settings.  Until very recently, my computer consisted of a 2.0GHz CPU, 768MB of RAM, and the All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600: Pro 128MB graphics card.  At low settings LOMAC averaged about 20fps in a typical battle environment. The only scenarios the machine could not handle were those included heavy clouds, heavy rain, and lightning.  Everything looked great.  There is no need to run LOMAC with display settings at their maximum, it looks fine as it is.

The systems in LOMAC are very advanced, considering that multiple aircraft are included.  The radars are somewhat simplified, but this does little to detract from the game.  They still take a long time to learn.  Lock On

[Mobius]

/\ I agree, I haven't played Falcon in quite a while, and I really love LOMAC and its systems are complex enough for me, but they are not really modern systems, more mid-80's systems, so they aren't exactly like the systems used today, but I would assume they are very close.  The systems in Falcon are extremely detailed in functionality, down to using the mouse to push buttons and flip switches in the cockpit instead of just using the keyboard.  I've even heard people say you could probably train F-16 pilots on it, but if you are just looking for a modern combat sim, go with LOMAC.

But again, the way you described the learning curve, and complexity, and as long as you don't care about graphics, I would still have to recomend Falcon, or if you want, get both, then you can have the best of both worlds.

[2992]

LOMAC, without question

[Mobayrasta1]

I have been playing both for a long time. I like LOMAC the best. BUT THEY BOTH KICK ASS!

[Gary R.]

I also am interested in a modern jet sim.  I have the old Falcon-4 and I liked it except that I can't use it with my Thrustmaster Afterburner stick and throttle AND my CH-pedals.  The sim knows the CH-pedals are there but it can't process their axis channel because the Afterburner has the twist stick and a rocker axis on the throttle grip for rudder control.  I have never found in fact a jet sim that can process more than 4 axis in-puts.  Why can't those publishers do like MS and plan that the end user might have upteen gillion controllers to use??   If anyone can tell me whether either sim can support and process up to 6 axis in-puts that would help me make my purchase descision.  Also, why can't the LOMAC people do like the IL2 people did with Pacific Fighters and develope a naval variation of LOMAC to include carriers, tomcats, and hornets.  Now, THAT would be cool.  Anyone can fly from a runway, it takes a real pilot to do it from a pitching deck.

[Mobius]

You can fly from a carrier in LOMAC.  You can fly the Su-33 of the carrier, and if you do a little tweaking, I believe you can fly F-18s and F-14s off carriers also.  But you can't make new aircraft or anything like that for LOMAC, because they haven't released the code, or something like that, I'm not a programmer, I don't know.  But they are coming out with another add-on where you can fly the Ka-50, if you like that.

Also, does your controller come with some sort of programming software, if so you can program an axis to be some button, instead of an axis.  I can use my Cougar and my rudder pedals both in LOMAC without a problem and the Cougar has 6 axes and the pedals have 3 (with toe brakes, but LOMAC doesn't have a toe brake axes), and I have downloaded a profile that allows me to use all the axes I can.

[Chris_F]

Well, I was all set to buy Falcon but found a used copy of LOMAC at my local game store.  I got it working nicely, tweaked the settings so things run smooth enough on my PC, and I'm up and flying.  

Took but a minute or two to learn to fly the planes.  Unfortunately my joystick isn't co-operating too well: it's kinda noisy and injects random stick movements every now and then.  It's not too bad with enough dead zone but it's annoying.  I'll have to see if there are driver updates.

So far I've learned to fly all the aircraft and I'm learning to fight the A10.  I love ground attack.

I grew up on Falcon 3.0 and I'd say that the system complexity is about what it was in that old game.  Enough to be intersting but it doesn't break new ground for me.  The good news is that the learning curve should be pretty shallow for long time flight sim junkies.  You just have to learn the keystrokes.

I do have to re-map everything since the controls are not well laid out as default.

Graphics are just fine, the theater they chose is exellent: great terrain variety.  The playable aircraft are interesting, definately biased towards the old Soviet-bloc.  I've always flown NATO aircraft in sims so learning about the Iron Curtain hardware has been interesting.  They're crude, effective, beefy, and masculine compared to the high tech NATO planes.  If the planes were people the Soviets would be boxers and the NATOs would be accountants.

Still learning weapons deployment, then I'll venture in to some real missions and see what the game is made of!

[Mobius]

Great Choice and good luck getting everything sorted out.  I have to highly recommend getting Flaming Cliffs, here http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/02- ... kOn11.html, it fixes alot of bugs and it adds the Su-25T which has an AFM and lots of new systems.  It also adds quite a few new campaigns and mission creation options, and new ground textures for all four seasons.  Good luck with that, and pick up Flaming Cliffs, it's a steal at $14.95.

P.S. LOMAC has alot of Russian aircraft, because it was developed by Eagle Dynamics, which is based in Russia.

[Gary R.]

I'm suprised Uncle Bill never fully entered the Jet Age yet.  I would like to see the next CFS edition support ALL air combat with theaters and missions covering WW-2 to Iraqi freedom and weapons covering guns all the way to amrams and aircraft covering wildcats to F-22's.  That would be way cool. and the huge hard drives and latest generation vid cards and 64 bit dual core processors could support that sort of sim to.  If it were produced in a multi disk set a person could install whatever parts he wanted.  A base install which would give you the world and the essential DLL's and and an era package from which you could select the planes and missions/campaignes.  

[Katahu]

The multi-cd idea is pretty clever. If you look at X-Plane v8.21, it comes with a DVD set. Each DVD represents a certain continent of the globe. You can install either parts of the world to save up space or, if you have enough room, install the whole world.

[Chris_F]

[quote]I'm suprised Uncle Bill never fully entered the Jet Age yet.

[Gary R.]

Well, Austin Meyer has had the secret for realistic flight modeling for years now.  "Blade Element".  I find it hard to believe with the money and resources available to Microsoft that they can't find one very talented software engineer with the same avaition background that Austin Meyer has who could design a very passable rip-off of X-plane's "Blade Element" dynamics.  Not many people know this but Austin Meyer was involved in the very genisis of MSFS back in the wireframe days.  He had a parting of ways with Uncle Bill and took his ideas and technology with him and the existing result is now X-plane version 8xxx.  He also does all of X-plane design and coding on MAC's.  X-plane is one of the few softwares where the same disks work in both IBM and MAC platforms.