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

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’s A.I. is extremely advanced.  For comparisons with F4, check out the many “Lock On vs. F4” threads on LockOn.ru for more information.

Another thing I love about LOMAC is the mission editor.  It is extremely powerful, easy to use, and a lot of fun.  The only thing missing is dynamic events like those in CFS2 missions.

My only complaints with LOMAC are the occasional bugs and the lack of a dynamic campaign.  The theatre in which the simulator is situated is also small, but this a minor inconvenience.

If you decide to buy LOMAC, I also suggest you purchase Lock On 1.1: Flaming Cliffs.  For only $15 it adds a lot to the game, including a new aircraft (Su-25T), terrain textures for all four seasons and many avionics updates, particularly for the Su-27/33 and F-15C. Many bugs are also corrected.  Lock On 1.2: Black Shark is due in March 2006.  It will include the Ka-50 attack helicopter.

I have never played F4, but I am considering purchasing it.  It sounds like a good game as well.  I hope my advice will prove useful.



Sasquatch

P.S.  I wrote the above response quickly and don't have time to proof read, so excuse any spelling and grammer errors I may have made.

LOMAC, without question

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.

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!

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.

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Unfortunately with the current MSFS/MSCFS flight model I don't think this would be a compelling game.  Update the flight model and it would be awsome!  MSFS graphics engine and real world environment (VORs, ATC, etc, etc) along with realistic battlefields?!?! Sign me up!

I've never flown X plane but I have flown plenty of other sims with compelling flight models.  Remember the old "Flight Unlimited"?  That flight model was just fine.  LOMAC has a good flight model.  The old Falcon 3.0 had a really nice flight model.  I think some of the best five to ten year old flight models are just fine.  I doubt MSFS's lack of a good flight model has anything to do with MS's inability to create a flight model.  Instead I think it's more a lack of attention in an area where most customers frankly don't care.

That said, MSFS's flight model feels REALLY good during normal, within the envelope flight (where most real world pilots, acrobats and military excepted, spend all of their time).