Lock On: Modern Air Combat

What works

Installation went fine from CD1 and after doing some workarounds, everything works well.

What does not

Out of the box:
- The game would not start.
- All effects (clouds, smoke, rain, explosions etc.) were missing.

- Mission Editor was not working (could not save or load scenarios).
- Aspect ratio was fixed 4:3, even in 1920x1080 resolution.

Workarounds

Game not starting fix:
You have to install directx and vcrun6 (contains msvcirt.dll) through winetricks to be able to run the game.

You will be not able to install DX9.0b that is included on CD1, but you do not need it anyways, except for the d3dxof.dll (see below).

Effects missing fix:

Extract the 'directx / DriectX.cab' file from CD1 and copy the d3dxof.dll file from it to the main directory of the game.

There is a d3dxof.dll built-in version in Wine, but the game did not work with it (freezes every time I try to load a scenario).

Mission Editor fix:

Install msxml3 through winetricks.

Widescreen fix:
Set all options as you need them in the games Options menu, then edit the 'Lock On / Config / graphics.cfg' file.
Check the 'DisplayMode' -> 'Simulation' -> 'aspect' value and add your aspect ratio to it.
Example for an 1920x1080 resolution 16:9 aspect ratio: 1920/1080=1.777777778.
This must be done every time you change anything in the Options menu!

What was not tested

Multiplayer, for obvious reasons (everybody moved on and plays DCS World now).

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

I encountered some small FPS drops from time-to-time, but it is rare and (if I remember well) this is due to the game engine, not wine.
Also I run the game in full graphics settings and did not see any texture or other issues (GTX GF 1050Ti with 430.14 driver).
I tried to patch the game to 1.02, but some options (like using the mouse in cockpit view to look around) were disabled and the game started to freeze upon exiting, thus I  do not recommend to download and install the patch.