Athlon 1700+
ATI Radeon 9500 moded to 9700
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
513MB of SDRAM

Game settings: resolution 1600X1200, 2x AA, 4x AF

The game is smooth. Geting on average 30 FPS. Physical model is great, graphics is great both environment and landscape (i come from Ukraine so i know how landscape is supposed to look like there:)) The only thing i didn't like was the damage model. But i think it's going to be fixed by the release date.

Of course it is not an arcade game. It is a hard core flight simulation with everithing that this entails. You gotta learn how to fly.

Everyone who is passionate about aviation should get this game!

PS. If your demo isnt running great, check out ubisoft's forums. You can learn how to set up you hardware, drivers, and the game right so it is playable.

22 of 25 found the following review helpful:

The end of dumbing down  Feb 01, 2004
By M. Bhangal "S"
If you are not technically minded, don't buy this game. If you dont know the difference between a directX 9 card and a directX 9 compliant card (one works with DirectX 9 but does some of it in software and is useless for many modern games), dont bother. If you have a computer that is not correctly configured, don't even think about it. If you expect to run the game and play well within an hour, stop reading now.

Now for the rest of us, the ones who are sick of console games and know how to build their own machines so that they run well, irrespective of the age of the components. The ones who are prepared to sit down and actually learn how to use a program, and know that a third party manual is the only way to even begin to do justice to this simulation (it is *not* a game)... This one is for you.

Runs well on my 9500 pro (heavily overclocked, with an artic cooler mod), XP2000+ processer and 1Gb RAM and with all of the simulation settings set to high except water quality and view distance (set to low and medium respectively) - as per the manual recomendations (hint for all the folks with low frame rates!). Mine is not a high end machine, but I took pains to work out what the most stable drivers were for everything before installing this game (catalyst 3.7 for the video, plus latest VIA sound drivers for my onboard audio), because I knew it would be a demanding game... not on hardware, but on software configuration. Mid range hardware seems okay on all the latest games, but it is drivers and general software config that causes problems, ddespite what some of the other reviewers seem to think.

Know what? It worked first time, and it worked well. I'm enjoying going through the LOMAC manual (the one published by Digital Aspirin), learning how to play this beast, and when you get into the zone it is absolutely great.

For example, in one mission, I am tasked with shooting down a valuable and well protected AWACs plane that is patrolling off the coast. It is protected by a pair of F4s and there is a patroling squad of F16s nearby.... all of which totally outclasses and outguns my pair of MiGs. So its a case of tactical flight - flying undetected with stealth (passive non-emitting sensor modes), and a BVR attack on the AWACS from behind, placing the F4s in a position where they are furthest away from my escape vector when I de-cloak and initiate the attack. Following my stike on the AWACS, I head for the deck running, using the mountains as cover and using the low level air density to significantly cut missile range (yes, it even models that!). A long chase follows, with the two F4's and my wingman buying it in a short but fast dogfight, when the F4s elect to cut their altitude for speed and catch up. But I make it home, low level all the way to avoid lock-ons by the F16s, who were following at high altitude taking BVR pot-shots.

Exhilarated is the only word I can use when I made it to my side's air defences, and watched the F16s turn and sulk back home... Mission Accomplished!

Now that's gameplay.

S

15 of 18 found the following review helpful:

System requirements grossly understated, game suffers from an infestation of bugs  Jan 05, 2006
By GordonF238
While the system requirements may claim that a Pentium 800 processor is sufficient to run this game, take it from me (and from an avid community of Lock-On fans): You will need at least a 3Ghz class Pentium and the best video card money can buy to have this game perform smoothly. With that aside, strap in and ready yourself for a tour de force of corrupt textures and random game crashes (and believe me, there will be lots of those). And when you do happen to see a peculiar artifact (such as a string of out-of-place polygons coming from the sky, or the ground) rest assured, it's not some superweapon of the future; It's just yet another doodad that shouldn't be there; A result of Eagle Dynamic's saddening execution of game that was compiled with an underpaid pseudo-programmer and grossly undertested.

As for the missions and gameplay, it's a proven combat simulator. Don't expect to jump in and start firing missiles away. It will take a few hours to learn and effectively use the weaponry on these aircraft. While I have personally only trained on the A-10, I can say that the few times I managed to finish a mission (in those rare cases when an unexpected game crash didn't reboot my computer) the attention to detail paid to avionics, flight dynamics and damage models was accurately modeled. This is by no means an arcade-themed shooter. Training sessions are thorough enough to teach you the basics needed in effectively using each airplane to the best of its abilities.

While Lock-On comes off as a promising title, its wide array of bugs that plague the game keep it from becoming an memorable gem amongst combat flight-sim enthusiasts. Eagle Dynamics (the game's developer) has been slow in turning around patches in hopes of fixing some fatal flaws (as of 2005, four years after the game's launch, only 2 minor patches have been released).

With such a unlucky combination of flaky code, (forcing the player to re-play some of the missions time and time again due to crashes and freeze-ups) Lock-On should remain in its developer's shop until it matures as a product worthy of a public release.

11 of 13 found the following review helpful:

Worth the effort  Jan 15, 2005
By Kanishka Ray
I bought this game about a year ago, and had a really difficult time mastering the learning curve. Since the documentation was so sparse, I mostly laid off trying to master the avionics and just flew it like a dogfighter, flying Sues, MiGs and 15s in "guns only fights, and then just marveling at how beautiful the game was. Mastering navigation and landing was itself a challenge, but I just loved staring out from the cockpit during a descent and feeling very much like I was in a real cockpit in air....the illusion and immersiveness was that real.

Eventually I moved onto other games, but I never removed this game from my hard drive. It felt like a keeper. Now a year later, I've patched it, put some of the add-ons in, and I'm still learning new stuff! I've finally mastered the Su-27 BVR mode and CAC mode. I've also learned how to effectively use EOS and have successfully won missions with it. This is one of those games that you have let grow on you.....at this point I have virtually no doubt that LOMAC is going to be the Falcon4 of the next 5 years. It is going to be slowly patched and modified while hardware grows around it.

I am running an Athlon 2600, with 1GB of PC3200 RAM, and a Radeon 9700 on Windows 2000 SP4. There are a few graphics options I have to turn down, but the game is extremely stable (0 crashes) and gives me playable framerates about 90% of the time at a resolution of 1024x768. Overall the game is very scalable and needs to be tweaked to get the happy medium between performance and eye candy depending on the capabilities of your machine.

I literally can't wait for my next upgrade, and wonder how great this game will look and fly with a fast 64-bit CPU and a next gen video card.

This is a great simulation, and one which will reward you with priceless satisfaction if you are willing to invest the time and effort in learning its intricacies.

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