any good modern air combat sims?

**Hooahguy** · 10-03-2010, 04:56

Im looking at other air combat sims in case LOMAC doesnt work out for me. Im looking at Falcon 4.0: Allied Force as a possible one.
Im also looking for modern flight combat sims, so no WW2.
Does anyone have any good recommendations?

**Fragony** · 10-03-2010, 09:12

Jane's F15 is your bible, comes with one actually, 250 or so page manual, US army still uses it for training apparently

**edyzmedieval** · 10-03-2010, 13:29

Falcon 4 is definitely to get. BUT ONLY if you have A LOT of time on your hands. It's a difficult game.

**Raz** · 10-04-2010, 11:13

Perhaps you'd like DCS: Black Shark. Although it's a helicopter simulation at the moment, they're the same developers as Lock On and they plan on adding further releases onto the same engine for a variety of both fixed-wing and rotary-wing vehicles (I'm assuming); their next addition will be the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

**Whacker** · 10-04-2010, 14:18

Don't play any of the DCS games, LOMAC or Black Shark. They all use Starforce.

Edit - The original LOMAC (not Flaming Cliffs) does not use Starforce. Even patched it's still extremely bug riddled though.

**Raz** · 10-04-2010, 16:21

What issues can arise from StarForce copy protection? I'm rather unfamiliar with it and after reading the wikipedia article, I'm still somewhat clueless.
It simply says "instability", "crashes" and difficulty in its removal. It doesn't tell much more than that, though. Any further info?

**Whacker** · 10-11-2010, 17:10

Originally Posted by Raz

What issues can arise from StarForce copy protection? I'm rather unfamiliar with it and after reading the wikipedia article, I'm still somewhat clueless.
It simply says "instability", "crashes" and difficulty in its removal. It doesn't tell much more than that, though. Any further info?

It's basically the worst copy protection scheme I've ever encountered in my 20+ years of PC gaming, and that's saying a lot.

It causes tons and tons of stability issues, and outright breaks a lot of older games from about 1998-2005ish that use older versions of Securom (and lots of other copy protection mechanisms) due to the way it inserts itself into your driver and kernel stack. The most infamous one, which I experienced directly, is that due to how it forces your optical drives to operate (PIO mode I think) which is an ancient, ancient slow setting, it can cause them to wear out hundreds of times faster and die. In hindsight, I thought it only killed one, but now that I think about it it actually killed two dvd drives in my old PC. I tried everything, from manually realligning the lasers to cleaning them out, you name it, but they were dead. To put this in perspective, those are the ONLY two optical drives I've ever had die on me, and I've gone through a LOT of them, hell when I was cleaning out my "history of computing" parts bins I found the very first CD drive ever ever bought 17 year ago, and it still worked like a champ. Optical drives are hard to kill and last ages.

I'd recommend googling "Starforce Sucks" for the biggest anti-starforce site and a list of games that use it, I avoid them like the plague. The other thing to keep in mind is that for every guy like me who's had tons of problems with it, you'll find paid shills spreading "Oh you're full of nonsense that's extremely rare" FUD right alongside the discussions and complaints. Unfortunately a lot of the LOMAC diehard fans fall into this category, so beware when spelunking into forums for those games.

**Fragony** · 10-21-2010, 15:15

Truly Sim, with an S, will probably want this http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ Takes 8 minutes to take off, lol. There is such a thing as overkill

http://www.gamert.nl/nieuws/u_wilt_h...jgt_hardc.html

**Husar** · 10-21-2010, 16:23

Originally Posted by Fragony

Truly Sim, with an S, will probably want this http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ Takes 8 minutes to take off, lol. There is such a thing as overkill

http://www.gamert.nl/nieuws/u_wilt_h...jgt_hardc.html

That's the evil StarForce protected sim Whacker is talking about, I'm not sure the complexity is a bit hyped anyway though, looks good, but no thanks with that copy protection.

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-21-2010, 18:02

Originally Posted by Fragony

F15

US army

Does Not Compute.

Also, there is a huge difference between Jane's civilian simulators (the games) and the military simulators. My father used to work as an aeronautical engineer for the DoD (Department of Defense), and he noted that the games are nothing like the simulators used by the various military branches for official training. Just like there is a huge difference between Operation Flashpoint and the official military simulator built on OpF's game engine.

**Fragony** · 10-22-2010, 13:02

How I would love to get my hands on that OPF-based sim. And from fan to fan, avoid OPF2.

**Raz** · 10-22-2010, 15:12

Originally Posted by Fragony

How I would love to get my hands on that OPF-based sim. And from fan to fan, avoid OPF2.

You mean Dragon Rising?
Already played it, it was mediocre at best for either an arcade FPS or military sim FPS. It really doesn't excel in the realism department, nor in the run-and-gun super-fast department - it's this awkward in-between arcade and sim. I'd only recommend it if: you have time to waste; you haven't played a sim shooter before; and you want to ease yourself into the genre. Otherwise, save your numbered paper rectangles and buy ArmA 2.

**Fragony** · 10-22-2010, 15:58

First was awesome, not for everyone, you could die without it being your fault just bad luck. Had the best mission generator ever with an weather and cycle system that was years ahead of..... ehhhh it still reigns surpreme wth??? Most complete package ever an infinite amount of awesome, and than we loyal fanboys&girls get that, if they do that again I swear I'll blow up a place of worship.