Lock On: Modern Air Combat
I want to thank Matt Wagner and Clint Hayashi for getting me a Gold Copy of LOMAC for the TrackIR2 Review. I was pleasantly surprised to see a manila envelope with a copy of the game on my porch two days after asking Matt. I can’t get an alternator for my car that quick, and although I had two copies on order already it was nice seeing such a quick response from a request.
I delayed on the review of the TrackIR2 simply because I needed to wait until the patch for LOMAC came out. The original release of the title suffered from a bug causing the player’s view to center on his or her virtual crotch while in enhanced mode. There were tricks to get around this but they were of limited success in my observation.
The LOMAC v1.01 patch corrected this problem (among others) and I got a chance to fiddle with it. I must say that my opinion of the TrackIR2 and LOMAC is still somewhat mixed.
In mouse emulation mode I think the game is near perfect. The game allows the individual the opportunity to adjust the speed of the panning (3 different levels). So if you want a fast peek verses a slow turn you can do that. This is very nice on those approach patterns to the airbase when you are just trying to adjust your head a little to get a better view verses the combat scene where you may want quicker head movements. In all honesty, I am surprised that this feature has not been done before in simulations, it is a very creative and useful item in the game.
In enhanced mode, I wasn’t quite as happy. It works fine, but unfortunately the panning is much too fast in the game for my taste. There are some profiles which help to a degree, but I still don’t feel like I have the head control that I have when in simple mouse emulation mode. Since the cockpits are non-interactive, unlike Falcon 4.0 or Jane’s F/A-18, the need for a separate mouse to click on items is moot. Even in IL2:FB the enhanced mode is more important when having to interface with the map.
In other words, I don’t like the enhanced mode, even after the patch but in regular mouse emulation mode the game works very well and I am quite happy with it. Like IL2:FB, it will give you an advantage over your virtual enemies and will make the game feel much more realistic.
