Video summaries of new features can be seen in the following brief YouTube clips: 

• Version 1.23 Initial features and general summary Click HERE
  
• Version 2.98 new features Click HERE 
• Version 3.18 new features Click HERE
• Version 3.42 new features Click Here
• Version 3.51 new features Click Here
  
• Version 3.64 new features Click Here
• Version 3.72 new features are hard to describe with video, but here's a sample video showing online fun with similar version 3.64.
  
• Version 4.16 new features Click Here and  Click Here
• Version 4.77 new features Click Here
• Version 5.01 Review Click Here Cockpit Tour Click Here Advanced RADAR Training Click Here
• Version 5.63 Comprehensive Video Review Click Here
  
• Version 5.80 Online Mission with commentary Click Here
  
• Version 6.03 new features Click Here
  
• Version 6.19 Comprehensive multiplayer mission demo Click Here
• Version 6.28 new feature Click Here
• Version 6.38 new features Click Here
• Many video clips from versions as recent as 8.95 are found in the Lac22022 YouTube PlayList. CLICK HERE
• Many video clips from versions as recent as 9.55 are found in the Lac22023 YouTube PlayList. CLICK HERE
• Major improvements from Spring 2016 were

• Multiplayer mission supporting six players (beta test).
• Improved compatibility with NAT routers.
• Fixed bugs in the interpretation of IP addresses. (The few IP address ranges that failed are now working.)
• Improved network diagnostics.
  
• Improved network architecture. In addition to the original "Peer to Peer" mode, we've added "Client/Server" mode in support of multiplayer missions.

Major improvements in the October 2016 release were:

• Improved hardware compatibility
• Improved program stability and cleaner source code
• Improved use of "Mouse" flight controls for players without a joystick
• Improved sound effects
• Improved flight models
• Prettier cockpit graphics with fewer "jaggies".
  
• Performance is more uniform across the spectrum of fast vs. slow. vs. medium-power CPUs.

Major improvements in the December 2016 release were:

• More Aircraft. We now support P38, P40, P47, P51,  F6F, F4U, B17, Spitfire, Hurricane, A6M, Ki-43, Fiat G-55, Me109, JU87, FW190, a whimsical jet fighter, and Polykarpov I-16.
• Bigger Network Missions: As many as 10 alpha testers have simultaneously flown on our new, free, test server at LacServer2.LinuxAirCombat.com.
  
• Three different types of network missions.
  
• New Desert Terrain in addition to the prior Island and Mountain terrains.
• New "High Definition" aircraft image models. New A6M "Zero", Fiat G-55, and JU87 "Stuka" take visual detail to a new level. (Work in process. Special thanks to Stefano Peris.)
• Airstrips, landings, and takeoffs are now possible in all terrains and in all missions.
• "Talking Cockpit" can verbalize information about the selected target so you can hear it ("Target two is at five O'clock, angel's twelve").
• Improved User Interface during network missions to aid in identification of participating players.

Major features of the January 2017 version were:

• Persistent missions that you can join in process at your pleasure, on your schedule.
  
• Team affiliations within the multiplayer, online missions. All three of the online missions now divide players into "Blue" and "Red" team affiliations.
• RADAR now displays Blue team members with blue icons, and Red team members are displayed with red icons.
  
• Increased RADAR range. Although RADAR's accuracy and timeliness diminish as range increases, it is now highly effective out to 100 km, and even tracks the general location of targets as far as 500 km away.
  
• Improved cockpit user interface for better support of online, multiplayer missions.
  
• Innovative new cockpit "Mission Router Panel" features blinking LEDs that act like your home router to reveal telemetry and communication packets from other network players. A glance at the router panel can tell you how many other players are participating in the current online mission, their numeric IDs, and a general indication of their proximity and resultant telemetry vigor.
• Audio prompts call out numeric identity and team affiliation of selected RADAR targets within about 50 miles.
• World-class Voice communications. We now offer a free server for the well-known, free, open-source "Mumble" voice application. Our Mumble server is optimized to support a future LAC community, with channels for all of LAC's missions and teams. This server is now available at LinuxAirCombat.com, and each of its channels displays a prominent link to online help associated with related details of LAC through our website.
  
• World-class Mumble integration. LAC and Mumble work hand-in-hand. Ten of LAC's keyboard "hot keys" switch your Mumble voice comms channel instantly among missions and teams, and cockpit messages immediately announce the resulting channel name to all networked mission players within reasonable radio range. Mumble pop-ups inform all players whenever anybody enters or leaves their current Mumble channel. Two more keyboard "hot keys" can be dedicated to "Channel Push-To-Talk" and "MultiChannel Push-To-Talk" functions. When any network player presses either of those "Talk" keys, the cockpit comms panels of all nearby mission participants announce the identity of the transmitting player, and his network comms packets light up corresponding LEDs on the new Mission Router panel.
• Mission communication heirarchy. Each mission has a Mumble "Main Channel", a "BlueTeam" sub-channel, and a "Red-Team" sub-channel. Voice communication sent to a single channel via "TeamCast" within "Red" and "Blue" sub-channels is always private, but multi-channel "MissionCast" transmissions can be heard by both teams. Jumping back and forth between channels is instantaneously triggered by single hot-keys, whereupon your cockpit display immediately confirms your channel settings, and networked players flying nearby in your mission see a cockpit instrument panel message alerting them of the results of your Mumble channel change.
  
• Mumble usernames can be coordinated with LAC usernames for consistent display on LAC's cockpit panel and in Mumble's "Popups".
• Mumble's well-known, optional "Overlay" is fully compatible with LAC, so you can see the names of all channel users even when they are not transmitting.
• Expanded standard keyboard layout is now conveniently arranged to add sixteen new, comms-related hot-keys in addition to the 45 flight-related hot keys that have long been offered.

• New network "smoothing" code significantly decreases network jitter. Maneouvers performed by remote, network-connected aircraft are now displayed much more clearly, more smoothly, and more immediately.
  
• Network ID configuration is now automatic. If a mission is full, an appropriate SystemStatus message declares "THIS MISSION IS FULL. TRY ANOTHER" within about 60 seconds.
• Flight models are significantly improved. They still need more work, and although climb speeds and dive speeds still accelerate too quickly, they are much closer now. Performance at extremely high speeds is greatly improved so that the onset of "control heaviness" and/or "compressibility" is much smoother and less shocking. Compressibility effects now model roll rate degredation too.
• Added the Russian Yak 9 fighter.
• Added the Japanese N1K1 (Nakajima George) fighter.
• Added a new "Mumble Panel" to the cockpit in network missions, immediately below the "Mission Router Panel", significantly improving voice comms and essentially perfecting our Mumble integration. It constantly displays the name of any standard Mumble channel that is selected with any of the standard Mumble Hot Keys. It also dynamically displays "TRANSMITTING" or "RECEIVING" as appropriate to Mumble voice traffic.
• Improved Mumble event notifications. When used with our standard keyboard macros and with our free Mumble server, our Mumble integration is now so good that there is little need for Mumble's standard "pop-ups" or the "Mumble Overlay". We have the best voice comms and the best Mumble integration in the industry.
• Acoustic volume of sound effects, background music, radio banter, and training narration files have been balanced optimally.
• The "SystemStatus" message area of the cockpit has been expanded from a single line to three scrolling lines so that the pilots have more time to read messages during online missions.
• Cockpit target identification has been made more consistent with the team affiliation logic described in our January 2017 release, so that targets are now labeled with strings like "RED-1" or "BLUE-2", etc.
• Players flying with a "Mouse" now experience proper stall and compressibility effects.

•     Added the B24 Heavy Bomber.
•     Improved the aircraft selection menu for all missions.
•     Players without a joystick, using a mouse for primary flight controls, now experience the same realistic stall and compressibility effects as joystick users.
  
•     Improved the Flight Model math and coding for all aircraft. In particular, the old logic that was responsible for excessive climb and excess dive rates has been rewritten, and now aircraft climb and dive at appropriate rates.
•     All Flight Model parameters for all WW2 aircraft have been carefully adjusted so that their flight characteristics are now much more accurate. (Above 25,000 feet flight characteristics are less accurate than below those levels, but are still close enough to the recorded performance of the simulated aircraft to support immersive, credible fun and to appropriately represent the relative combat strengths.)
  

• Bombers now have "autogunners" that shoot at hostile fighter aircraft within gunnery range
• Airfields are prettier, longer, and wider to facilitate easier landings and takeoffs.
• Some airfields are now equipped with defensive guns that shoot at hostile aircraft within gunnery range
• A new 10-player, networked, strategic combat mission arranges players in two mutually hostile teams, each with three airbases. Win the battle by destroying the opposing team's HQ airbase while defending your own HQ airbase! Land at any of your three airbases to re-fuel, repair, and re-arm your aircraft, but beware of "vulchers" while you're on the ground....
• After each network mission sortie, aircraft are re-fueled, re-armed, and repaired when landed on a friendly airfield.

• Improved support for players using a mouse instead of a joystick for primary flight controls
• Improved rudder responsiveness for users that rely on keyboard keys for rudder control
• Improved throttle responsiveness for users that rely on keyboard keys for throttle control
• WW2-era bombs
• WW2-era unguided Air-to-Ground rockets
• Two additional 10-player, online, strategic combat missions with various terrains and starting conditions
  
• All three multiplayer, online missions now feature strategic airfield-based combat.
• Improved explosion sound effects are louder with proximity, and the volume fades with distance
• Take-off logic is improved. It's now a lot easier to take off.
  
• "Norden" bombsight makes precision bombing practical from medium and high altitudes
• Aircraft flight performance is degraded while lugging heavy bombs, rockets, or missiles
• Aircraft flight performance is degraded by airframe or engine damage
• Airfield defenses have been significantly strengthened. Beware when flying near an undamaged, hostile airfield!
  
• Airfield defenses are degraded by damage from hostile bombs, rockets, missiles, and machine gun fire.
• Damaged airfield defenses are gradually repaired by surviving ground personnel.
  
• Airfield damage is persistent between sorties (so long as at least one player remains active in the mission).
  

Major improvements from September 2017 (Version Lac04p77) include:

• Improved visual appearance of the Yak9 to better resemble the general shape of the historic aircraft. Also found better data on the Yak9T's flight performance and tweaked the flight model's engine power and maxgamma accordingly. It now flies much faster and climbs much better than before, and flight at medium and low altitudes is now fairly close to that represented by the best available historic data. Now it is NOT WEP-capable.
• Increased the number of supported aircraft from 20 to 25 with the following five new additions:

• Bomber autogunnery logic is now more intelligent. Opposing players will need to approach bombers from tactically advantageous angles and/or they will need to "jink" to avoid the dangerous firepower with which bombers now defend themselves. Trying to attack a bomber with a simple tail chase is now a very risky proposition.     
  
• Tuned up the lethality and durability of bombers and airfields for better balance when airfields are attacked and for when bombers are defending themselves.
• Aircraft engines can now absorb more bullet hits before they begin to fail.
• Airfield and bomber autogunners now target all enemy aircraft within gunnery range instead of just targetting the nearest enemy aircraft. As a result, teams of allied aircraft attacking an enemy bomber or airfield now share gunnery risk appropriately, and they benefit from dividing the opposing firepower. For example, if an attacker has a nearby ally, both will suffer only half of the damage that would be likely if either was attacking alone, etc.
• It is no longer possible to land upside-down or sideways without sustaining extensive damage.
• Fixed a bug in the joystick's "hat switch" logic that was triggered by changes in 64-bit joystick drivers (versus the old 32-bit joystick drivers). Now joystick "hat switch" mapping works correctly in both 32 and 64-bit Linux installations.
• Fixed longstanding bugs in the logic of the "SETUP OPTIONS"->"GAME" menu so that it is now impossible to use those menus to misconfigure the values for "DIFFICULTY" and "PRECISION", which are now permanently hard-coded for "REALISTIC" and "SIMULATOR", respectively.
• Fixed a longstanding bug that was ignoring important differences in the firepower of the guns in various aircraft. Now, the guns of some aircraft are far more fearsome than other aircraft.
• Added an explosion sound effect to accompany the impact of bombs and rockets when they hit airfield facilities. The acoustic volume of these explosions is proportional to their distance from the player.
• Added new logic to the Norden Bombsight so that Bombsight icons are supressed unless bombs are available and unless the displayed tactical map is zoomed and centered appropriately. If bombs are available but the tactical map is not properly zoomed and centered, helpful prompts are displayed to inform the player of the need to zoom it all the way out and to center it in order to activate the bombsight.
• Added more new logic to the Norden Bombsight for players whose machines are not powerful enough to set "fog distance" to the longest possible range without losing frame rate. Experience has shown that fog distance must sometimes be set all the way out (to 200) in order to see the ground from bombing altitudes. Accordingly, this new logic sets fog distance all the way out to 200 temporarily, while using the bomb sight, and then resets it to the player's configured "fog distance" value two seconds after the view exits from map mode. Sometimes this logic does not work properly: If you cannot see the ground while using the bomb sight, try pressing <ESC> twice to toggle out to the menus and then back into the mission. After that you should be able to see the ground from bombsight mode.
• Found and fixed some bugs that had been preventing the immediate propogation of airfield damage from rockets and bombs within the same realm and mission.
• Fixed a bug in almost all of the missions that was needlessly resetting camera mode to "0" every time a bot was respawned. This has long been a minor irritation, responsible for changing camera mode to "forward" at inconvenient intervals when it ought to have remained looking at map mode or looking to the left, right, rear, down, up, etc.
  
• Improved the ending conditions for MissionNetworkBattle01, MissionNetworkBattle02, and MissionNetworkBattle03. Now, when either HQ airfield is destroyed, all participants hear dramatic music and a voice declaring victory for the appropriate team (Red or Blue), followed by a "countdown" message warning that the mission will end in 15 seconds. Every player then hears a count going down, second by second, until it gets to zero, whereupon all mission aircraft simultaneously explode.
• Improved logging of tactical events so that players wishing to research battle details during the prior mission can consult the "~/.LAC/logfile.txt" file to learn exactly how much damage was inflicted by or upon them at every moment throughout the entire mission, along with the source of the damage and an explanation of the contributing circumstances. (Note that this level of detail may be diminished in the future as this software stabilizes).
  

Major improvements from October 2017 (Version 5.02) include:

• Fixed bugs that were preventing easy configuration and mapping of keyboard keys to flight functions in the configuration menus.
• Increased intelligence of defensive bomber autoguns.
  
• Increased intelligence of defensive airfield guns.
• Fixed bugs that were preventing display of smoke trails behind rockets and missiles.
• Damaged airfield repairs are accelerated when friendly aircraft dominate nearby airspace, and those repairs are decelerated when enemy aircraft dominate nearby airspace.
• Better balance of strategic offensive versus defensive weapons.
• Strategic bombing missions are now more complex and last a lot longer. Opposing fighters are forced to choose from among richer and more complex options to defeat them.
• Fixed many bugs in offline missions that interfered with proper allocation of aircraft and weapons.
• Updated audio narration in all of the offline training missions.
• Added a "Gun Camera Film Request" key and a corresponding "Gum Camera Services Requested" indicator on the cockpit (note that although gun camera films can now be requested, the server must be updated before they become available).
• Enhanced network protocol so that player use of speed brakes and flaps is transmitted to network peers, resulting in better "smoothing" and further diminishing network "jitter". (Note that this change makes older versions of LAC incompatible with the latest server. If you try to connect an older version of LAC with one of our latest servers, you will see error messages and logfile guidance urging you to upgrade to the latest version.)
• Decreased the violence of aircraft shaking when damage is sustained. Now it's at a more realistic level.
• Optimized standard keyboard layout to make the controls even more intuitive. (See the updated keyboard illustration above.)

• Added three new aircraft, taking the total to 28 aircraft. The new ones are:  
  

• Improved structure of the comments within the LacConfig.txt file for better clarity.
• Improved visual effects associated with explosion of bullets, cannon shells, and rockets.
• Tweaked the "shaking" effect that is seen when flying aircraft take damage.
• Added another building near HQ airflields in two of the three of the online, multiplayer missions (those using the island terrain). It is on a hilltop and it can be strafed to destruction. Its destruction does not contribute to the strategic goals of the mission, but its position has been optimized to show off the new explosions associated with bullets, cannon fire, and rockets. It's a lot of fun to destroy these buildings!
• I increased the destructive firepower of WW2-era rockets. Now five rockets inflict approximately the same destruction as a single 500-pound bomb.
• I fixed a minor bug in the "Mumble Panel" that was not fully recognizing return to the "Root" Mumble channel after spending some time in the RedTeam or BlueTeam subchannel of the appropriate mission.
• I improved the pilot's ability to judge optimum sustained climb angle. Now, when the pilot attempts to climb more steeply than his aircraft's engine can sustain, the center cross that is projected on his windscreen switches to a dimmer setting. Accordingly, so long as that center cross is at the brighter setting, the pilot knows that his engines can sustain the current climb rate without losing speed. (Previously those brightness settings were reversed. The new arrangement is more intuitive.)
• I enhanced the cockpit's "TARGET ID=" prompts to display either "28 (BLUE HQ)" or "29 (RED HQ)" whenever any participant of an online, multiplayer mission targets object 28 (the BlueTeam HQ) or object 29 (the RedTeam HQ), respectively. This will help new players to better understand and manage the strategic goals of these three missions.
• I also found and fixed a series of bugs in MissionNetworkBattle01 and in MissionNetworkBattle02 that were causing run-time diagnostic messages to log some of their bomb loading activities as if the active mission were MissionNetworkBattle03.

• The "BETA TEST" notification has been eliminated. This is the first official "Production" version.
• The cockpit "SPEED" indicator is now much more stable in flight, and much more accurate while taxiing on the ground.
• Five new aircraft have been added, taking the total to 33 aircraft. The new ones are:

1.  The USSR Yak1
2.  The UK "Lancaster" heavy bomber
3.  The UK "Mosquito" fast bomber
4.  The UK "Typhoon" fighter-bomber
5.  The Italian "Macci C.202 Folgore" fighter

• (The flight model parameters of those new aircraft are not yet tuned up as accurately as the other aircraft, but they are reasonable, and will get more accurate as we gain experience.)  
• All of the previous flight models are significantly improved as a result of re-written inertia code and new code that handles "non-level" flight. Among the resulting improvements: It is no longer possible to roll an airplane and fly "sideways" without losing altitude appropriately.
• Seventeen additional, "generic" aircraft are available for test flight. All of them fly exactly like a Lockheed P38, but the visual appearance of each can be easily adjusted with "Blender" or replaced with a custom .3ds model of the player's choosing. This is intended as the basis for player-created aircraft to be given full support and accurate flight models in future versions.
• The visual appearance of most of the aircraft have been significantly improved. (In prior releases, several of the aircraft suffered from very primitive, silly visual appearance. All of those are now improved enough to look reasonably good. However, player participation in improving these .3ds models is still requested. I'm not very good with "Blender". If you are good with "Blender", your help would be greatly appreciated as you make these aircraft look better and better.)
• The drag effects of flap and landing gear deployment are now much more accurate.
• Heavy aircraft now accelerate and decelerate more slowly and more accurately.
• Descriptive text in the aircraft selection menus is now more accurate and includes many additional details, making it a lot more interesting to select an aircraft that's appropriate to the chosen mission and tactical situation.
• Armament loadouts of all of the aircraft have been adjusted for improved historic accuracy and better mission play.
• Fixed a bug that had been labeling some mission Player IDs with the wrong team color on cockpit instrument panels.
• Improved the automatic negotiation of "MyNetworkId" to minimize conflicts and to make it easier to enter an online mission without network ID conflicts.
• I fixed a bug in all four of the online, multiplayer network missions that was preventing vocalization of the player's "MyNetworkId" number for players 7, 8, 9, or 10.
• I removed all visual and vocal references to our old LAC Server and our old Mumble Server (both of which had been hosted at BoseNet.no-ip.biz). Now all of those references advertise our free production LAC server at "LacServer2.LinuxAirCombat.com" and our free production Mumble server at "LinuxAirCombat.com".
• I enhanced the Mumble Panel's user interface whenever the user is holding down one of the "Push To Talk" keys so that associated cockpit labels consistently advertise one of the following four transmission states:

1. "NARROWCASTING" (When transmitting on a single channel not precisely matching the player's current mission and team). This label is always displayed with white text.
2. "TEAMCASTING" (When transmitting to members of just one team of a network mission.) If the transmitting player is tuned to his own RedTeam mission channel, this label is displayed with red text. If the transmitting player is tuned to his own BlueTeam mission channel, this label is displayed with blue text. Otherwise, when the player is tuned to some other team or mission, grey text is used.
   
3. "MISSIONCASTING" (When transmitting to everybody listening on both the "RedTeam" and the "BlueTeam" subchannels of an online mission). If the transmission is directed at the player's current mission, then this label is displayed in purple text (representing the combination of red and blue). Otherwise, if the transmission is directed at some other mission, then this label is displayed in grey text.
4.  "REALMCASTING" (When transmitting to everybody participating in every mission of the current Realm, regardless of their team affiliation). This label is always displayed with white text.

• A new shell script, named "lac", has been added into the distribution, and the installation script has been enhanced to store that new "lac" script in the user's home directory. This new script starts Linux Air Combat, compensating for differing LAC version names. Accordingly, after a standard installation of Linux Air Combat, the user can start the sim by typing "./lac" into a command console, following long-standing LINUX and Unix conventions.
• The acoustic volume of "beeps" associated with RADAR sweeps has been adjusted because some of them were painfully loud in prior versions.
• In all three of the online, multiplayer missions, any player that uses the standardized "hot keys" to tune his or her Mumble Radio to their appropriate mission and team channel is now rewarded with automated, acoustic radio messages announcing the damage/repair state of the enemy HQ airfield, as if a "forward observer" carrying a handheld radio were within eyesight of the action. This technique has proven successful in motivating proper and optimal use of "Mumble" for mission and interplayer communication, making every online, multiplayer mission a richer community experience.
• Cockpit RADAR performance is diminished or stopped whenever the player's airfield becomes heavily damaged. RADAR performance is restored as soon as the corresponding airfield damage is repaired. Airfield repairs are accelerated when a friendly aircraft is overhead, offering protection to ground-based repair crews. On the other hand, airfield repairs are stopped when nearby enemy aircraft dominate the local airspace.
• After landing an aircraft on a friendly airfield, re-arming, and re-fueling is now much smoother, quicker, and easier.

• The sim has been expanded to support 54 different types of aircraft. The "DEFAULT AIRCRAFT" menu has now been re-titled "SELECT YOUR AIRCRAFT", and the available aircraft are now presented in alphabetical order by country, manufacturer, and model name/number. Grouped by country, the 54 aircraft break down into 8 national groups as follows:

1. France:        1 (fighter)
2. Germany:       9 (5 fighters and 4 bombers)
3. Italy:         2 (2 fighters)
4. Japan:         9 (6 fighters and 3 bombers)
5. UK:            7 (2 bombers and 5 fighters)
6. USA:          19 (11 fighters and 8 bombers)
7. USSR:          6 (1 bomber and 5 fighters)
8. Imaginary:     1 (jet fighter)

• Among the more interesting of the new aircraft we have the Messerscmidt ME163 "Comet" rocket-powered short-range interceptor, the De Haviland "Mosquito" bomber, and a variety of naval dive bombers. As it did in actual practice, the ME163 suffers from a cumbersome, time-consuming fuel loading process, which (when combined with its short, 7-minute fuel supply) helps to balance it out among the other choices.
• Aircraft are further subdivided into "Early WW2", "Late WW2", and "Post WW2" categories.
• The "SELECT YOUR AIRCRAFT" menu logic has been made a lot more interesting because it now displays additional information about each aircraft, including its primary historic role.
• Strategic combat has been enhanced. By damaging the enemy's HQ airfield below 50% effectiveness, players can now deny their opponents access to operable "Late WW2" aircraft. Although those aircraft remain available, they now take off with just 20% fuel, 20% ammo, and 20% ordnance load. Early-war aircraft are unaffected by this penalty.
• The self-defending guns with which bombers and some heavy fighters are equipped now more accurately reflect the lethality and geometry of the guns actually used by the respective aircraft. Accordingly, it is now far more dangerous to attack a heavily defended bomber (like the B17) than one with just one small-calibre tail gun like the Aichi D3A.
• Flight model parameters of all aircraft have been tuned up a bit, especially with regard to the presence or absence of dive brakes.
• The visual appearance of most of the aircraft have been further improved.
• The visual appearance of the HQ airfields has been improved. The two "parked" aircraft have been replaced with a prettier version that renders a little faster for better overall frame-rate.
• Various minor bug fixes.

• Better aircraft and airfield graphics: A new subfolder, named "Optional3dModels", contains more detailed .3ds models for some of the aircraft, and for the HQ airfields. Use of these files is optional. When none of these files are used, the visual appearance of the aircraft and airfields is optimized for maximum frame-rate, which will work best on older, or lower-powered LINUX desktop PCs, and which will always result in the smoothest graphics. On the other hand, users with sufficiently modern and/or sufficiently powerful Linux desktop PC hardware can replace any of the files in the old ~/models subfolder with the corresponding files from this new "Optional3dModels" subfolder, and the corresponding aircraft or airfield will thereafter look a lot better.
• Source code has been cleaned up a little bit more. For example, we eliminated every reference to the unused "<stdlib.h>" header file. The code has also been made more robust so that it is no longer possible to use misconfigured text fields within the LacConfig.txt or LacControls.txt files to cause "buffer overflow" errors. This was done by modernizing all of the relevant instances of "strcpy()" and "strcat()" within all of the code files, replacing them with "strncpy()" and "strncat()" as appropriate.
• Fixed a small visual anomaly that was causing a tiny "shimmering" effect along coastlines when flying certain aircraft. This has made visual effects even smoother when flying those aircraft.
• Two obscure name references were changed from "AIR COMBAT FOR LINUX" to "LINUX AIR COMBAT".
• Eliminated the redundant menu option that was allowing players to try to change their aircraft immediately before launching each mission. (The preferred way to do this is to use the prominent "DEFAULT AIRCRAFT" menu logic that is displayed at top of the list of missions.)

• Improved HQ airfield appearance. Now the RADAR antenna is animated, spinning around and around like a proper late-war Radar reflector array. It can be damaged and destroyed independently of the HQ airfields. When the RADAR reflector antenna is destroyed, it stops rotating, falls to the ground, and disappears, leaving only the supporting tower structure visible. All RADAR-related functionality immediately ceases for the affected Team so that they cannot see or select RADAR blips or change RADAR range. With time, surviving airfield maintenance personnel can make sufficient repairs to restore general RADAR functionality, but those repairs are emergency contrivances that never work as well as the original, and the spinning RADAR reflector is never visible again. The repaired RADAR functionality can be damaged, destroyed, and repaired over and over again as the battle progresses, until one side or the other completely destroys an airfield, achieving victory and ending the mission as in prior versions.

• Bug fixes: Prior versions suffered a segmentation fault if the operator ever attempted to select a RADAR target in any of the three online, multiplayer missions if his RADAR was off. Also, when RADAR was destroyed, even though the main RADAR display was blank, it was still possible to select RADAR targets and learn their altitudes. Also, when a destroyed RADAR was repaired, it would be destroyed again, automatically, within 2 or 3 seconds. All of those bugs have been fixed.
• RADAR destruction and repair cycle has been made more interesting: Now, at the beginning of any of the online, multiplayer missions, RADAR uses the large, rotating, reflector antenna with a range approaching 500 kilometers. If the RADAR is ever destroyed, all RADAR functionality ceases until ground crews can carry out repairs. However, those repairs are insufficient to mount the large, rotating, reflector antenna. Instead, a much smaller antenna is used, and maximum RADAR range is just 50 miles (instead of 500). The cycle of RADAR destruction and repair can continue indefinitely, but repairs are never able to restore RADAR range beyond 50 miles.
• Terrains have been beautified a bit more by eliminating the "trenches" that had been prominent near airfields in prior versions. As a result, many of the landscape and oceanscape areas look more natural (especially near the airfields).
• A new "Morse Code Radio" communication facility is now available. The keyboard's primary alphanumeric and basic punctuation keys are toggled into and out of this new "Morse Code Radio" mode by pressing the "Caps Lock" key. When the Morse Code Radio mode is active in any of the online, multiplayer missions, alphanumeric keys are encoded into Morse code and transmitted across the network to all players participating in the same mission and realm. As they are sent and received, those characters are displayed on the cockpit panel, just beneath the "Mumble Panel", in a small, single-line, text instrument, scrolling horizontally across its surface as necessary to make room for newer characters so that the pilot can always see the most recent 20 letters, numbers, or punctuation keys that have been sent. A single-character indicator above that instrument displays the Network ID of the most recent sender, and the color of that single-character is either red or blue, matching the "RedTeam" or "BlueTeam" affiliation of the sender. This "Morse Code Radio" works even for players that do not install the usual "Mumble" VOIP application for interplayer communication. However, the Morse Code Radio is far more primitive than Mumble's voice communication: Morse messages are transmitted quite slowly, one character at a time, and their reliability diminishes with distance. At short range, characters are delivered with nearly 100% reliability. However, as inter-player distance increases, character transmission is less reliable. At a distance of 30 kilometers, about 99% of the characters are delivered correctly. At a distance of 40 kilometers, only about 80% of the characters get through. At a distance of 100 kilometers, only about 10% of the characters get through. Users are highly encouraged to download and install "Mumble" and to use it to arrange missions and to communicate within missions. The Morse Code Radio is a poor substitute for Mumble's voice communication!

1. Realm
2. MissionId
3. Start Date
4. Start Time (GMT)
5. Approximate duration

• CommunityHandles: Users that enter a name for themselves in the "CommunityHandle" field of their LacConfig.txt file now benefit from LAC's automated transmission of those names among other players participating in the same Realm and Mission. (It's best if you choose a name that's likely to be unique throughout the emerging LAC community, and if it is the same as your Mumble username.) In flight, when using the "SelectNextTarget" and "SelectPreviousTarget" functions (activated with "N" and "P", respectively unless you've customized your keyboard), the CommunityHandle of each selected target is displayed on your cockpit panel. (This isn't instantaneous; After joining a new mission, it may take as long as 60 seconds for all of the CommunityHandles to propogate among players via the network.)
• Improved high-speed flight models: Extensive testing of prior versions has revealed a general tendency for aircraft to turn too well when flying at extremely high speeds. This version improves that situation. High speed maneuoverability is still better than it should be for many aircraft, but all aircraft now perform more realistically in this regard. Further fine-tuning may be necessary in the future, but those changes will be smaller and ought to characterized as "tweaking".
• Improved defensive airfield guns: Prior versions enforced an altitude limit of about 4500 feet on airfield guns, so opposing bombers were able to fly safely at unrealistically low altitudes when attacking a hostile airfield. With this version, that limit has been raised to 10,000 feet, resulting in much more realistic airfield defense versus bomber missions. (Of course, once airfields are damaged, the effectiveness of their defensive guns is diminished proportionately, so it can still be safe to approach a hostile airfield at low altitudes, but only after it has been significantly damaged.)

• Bug Fix: I fixed a bug in version Lac06p28 that was causing two of the three online, multiplayer missions to crash about 30 seconds after they were started. The affected missions were "MissionNetworkBattle01" and "MissionNetworkBattle02". Now all three of those "MissionNetworkBattleXX" missions are well-behaved again.
• Missile Warnings: In all three of the main online, multiplayer missions, whenever any player fires a missile or rocket, all other players within the same mission are alerted with a radio message so that they can take evasive action if necessary.

• Improved external views: Prior versions were only displaying the forward 75% of the player's aircraft when flying in the "External" or "Chase" view". With this version, the virtual camera is moved farther behind the player's aircraft so that the entire plane is now visible and looks much better.
• Improved graphical scaling: Prior versions were displaying all aircraft with the same visual size, so that small fighter aircraft looked just as big as heavy bombers when flying near one another in formation. Now all aircraft are scaled according to their historic size.
• Improved visibility when landed or parked on airstrips: Prior versions did not display aircraft that were on the ground. With this version, aircraft that are taxiing or stopped on runways are now visible. This improves realism and exposes players to a much more realistic risk of being "vulched".
• The F6F "Hellcat" graphical model has been significantly improved, thanks to Blake Williams (Thanks Blake!).
• Optimized visual appearance of black smoke associated with explosions when the player activates the "special effects" option. Now playes will see a lot more smoke during violent battles. (For computers unable to maintain high frame rates when smoke is present, this feature can be disabled by turning off the "special effects" option.)
  

• Fixed a bug that was causing bombs to explode several times each.
• Enhanced the appearance of black smoke associated with various types of explosions. (Note that this is only visible if the "special video effects" option is activated.)
• Improved all of the flight models in steep dives: Now steep dives are more exciting because the ground seems to "rush up" toward the player much faster. This makes the consequences and risks of steep dives more realistic.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing rockets from displaying smoke trails in the online, multiplayer missions.
• Improved the intelligence of "bots" in all of the offline missions, and in online missions when only one player has been active. Although bots are still not very smart, they are not quite as stupid as before and it is more fun to shoot them down.
• The "hit bubbles" associated with all aircraft were adjusted so that big, fat bombers are now a lot easier to hit with machine guns, while smaller aircraft are proportionately more difficult to hit.
• Network "jitter" has been further diminished.
• I created a new sound effect that plays five sequential beeps, used to warn the player whenever any opposing player fires rockets or missiles in his vicinity. Those beeps are very loud if the missiles or rockets are close by, but they are proportionately softer at greater launch distances.
• I created another new sound effect that plays some sad "mood music" for members that are flying any of the online, multiplayer missions when their team loses the battle. (At the same time, members that are flying for the winning team hear the same, exciting musical fanfare that both teams had been hearing in prior versions.)
• The menus can now be navigated with keyboard keys in addition to the mouse. This will be of great benefit to users whose LINUX PCs are equipped with ATi "Radeon" display adapters, because LAC has heretofore not handled mouse motion well within its menus on modern PCs equipped with Radeon hardware. (The keyboard keys that navigate the menus are the same keyboard keys that control view direction during flight. After using those keys to designate a menu button, the <ENTER> or <SPACE> keys will activate the corresponding function.)
• The visual appearance of the German Me163 "Komet" rocket plane has been greatly improved.
• Text messages from the LAC Server can now be displayed when directed to Realm, Mission, Team, and/or PlayerId.
• The startup "splash" artwork has been enhanced with an animated image of a Lockheed P38 "Lightning" fighter aircraft flying out of the display screen toward the viewer. Also, the previous sign-on "splash" image is now a lot prettier, has the proper aspect ratio, and features an F4u Corsair and an F6F Hellcat flying in loose formation over an airfield.
• Fixed several bugs that were interfering with sound effects when online missions end due to the destruction of one of the HQ airfields.

• Source code has been cosmetically cleaned up even more.
• Various minor bugs have been fixed.
• Airfield terrains were improved to remove small water textures from runway corners.
• Better reliability: The rare cases when prior versions would crash with "segmentation" faults are now even more infrequent.
• The initial sign-on animation is now much more exciting, and includes much better sound effects.
• Some of the audio banter messages have been shortened and sped up a bit, and the logic that activates those messages has been optimized to minimize interference among them. Now it is a little easier to get the full report from forward observers about enemy airfield status in the online, multiplayer missions.
• The Morse Code radio has been improved. Users transmitting messages can now type their characters a lot faster.
  
• LAC's demands for RAM memory are diminished by about 20%. As a result, the rare cases when prior versions would fail to load proper ocean textures are now even more infrequent.
• The following six aircraft are now prettier due to updated .3ds models:

• Additional, less prominant improvements have been made to the following aircraft: Dornier17, FW190, Heinkel HE111, Junkers JU88, Messerschmidt ME110, Aichi D3A, Nakajima KI84, and Douglas Dauntless.
  
• A "Makefile" is now included in the distribution so that people who do not wish to use "Codeblocks" can now compile LAC with the usual, customary, classic, command-line "make" command.
• The instructive text accompanying the three "Tutorial" missions has been improved for better consistency with the World War II historic period comprising LAC's primary focus.
• The four old offline practice missions (which all had various annoying bugs in them) have been eliminated, but all of their tactical features have been incorporated into the three main, stable, online, multiplayer missions. As a result, if a user enters one of those online missions when nobody else is flying, he has allies and opposition from locally generated bots like those that were available in the old off-line training missions. Because these online, multiplayer missions are all far more feature-rich and more stable, the overall experience is vastly improved even when nobody else is flying. (As soon as anybody else joins a mission in progress, the bots revert to their older, "dumber" behavior in order to encourage sentient, human-to-human interaction.)
• Dive brakes have been strengthened and adjusted on all of the aircraft that had them, making dive bombing a much more satisfying and effective tactic.
• I recalibrated the Norden Bombsight. It is now accurate when bombing from altitudes between 6,000 and 15,000 feet at speeds between 200 and 350 MPH, making "level bombing" a lot more effective.
  
• I increased the durability of all aircraft, and especially of the B17, B24, and B29 (heavy American bombers). I also increased the lethality of the Me163 "komet" rocket plane. As a result, fighter-vs-bomber combat benefits from a better and more realistic tactical balance, and all individual air-to-air combat incidents tend to last a lot longer.
• I increased airfield defenses. Now airfield gunners can hit enemy aircraft as high as 15,000 feet above them.
• I recalibrated the altitude indicator in MissionNetworkBattle02 so that none of the terrain features are now below sea level.

• In recent, prior versions, many of the aircraft have been able to climb far too rapidly. This has been fixed. I rescaled and recalibrated the logic that calculates altitude. This forced recalibration of all of the flight models, and as a result of these changes, most aircraft are a little more maneoverable, and all aircraft now enjoy much greater freedom to climb at steeper and more realistic angles. "Zoom" climbs now last longer and complete in a more satisfactory manner. It's notably easier for beginners to get the "feel" of flight when climbing. The recalibration of all of the flight models isn't yet quite as good as I would like, but most of them are correct so far as historic records are available, and all are in the right ballpark.
• "Bots" are a lot smarter. In prior versions, bots had spent a lot of their time rolled on their sides, struggling to fly more-or-less in a straight line, and consequently looked silly during most of their flight time. This has been fixed. Now the bots fly complex, energetic. elaborate defensive manoevers, making them ideal for target practice. They still aren't very agressive, so it is extremely rare for a bot to shoot at the player, but it is great fun to chase them and shoot them down. This exercise can now appropriately prepare beginners for the online, multiplayer environment (where competition, created by other online players, is smart and fierce). As a consequence of these new, smarter bots, the three online, server-based, multiplayer missions are now more robust and better behaved, even if no other online players are present, than the old set of "offline" missions. Within those three missions, the transition from flying alone, versus the bots, to flying with or against one or more other online players, is now seemless as soon as any other online player shows up.
• I fixed a bug that had previously allowed players to recieve full ground services (refuel, rearm, and repair) from hostile ground forces. Now any attempt to receive those services from personnel at hostile airfields results in confiscation of almost all of the player's fuel and ammo.
• I enhanced the "Startup00.wav" sound-effect file with much greater dynamic range. Now, when the three P38s fly close past the player's eyes, it sounds even more dramatic and exciting.
• I further enhanced the signon animation with a brighter, better scenery banner and with new logic that causes the VERSIONSTRING and the name of the primary software author ("ROBERT BOSEN") to fall to the ground, after the three P38s whiz by, in a more dramatic fashion.
• I modified all of the target selection logic so that it is no longer dependent upon RADAR. Accordingly, it is now possible to use the familiar "TargetNext" and "TargetPrevious" functions to cycle through all aircraft and airfield facilities, regardless of RADAR range, or whether the RADAR has been switched off, or even if RADAR is destroyed. When combined with LAC's long-present target vocalization logic, these changes make it far more practical and fun to pursue a mission when airfield damage prevents RADAR use. In those situations, the player can hear vocalizations, similar to WW2-style radio dialogs, revealing the general direction (in "clock-face" notation) and altitude of the selected target. Furthermore, the distance to online targets can also be estimated by paying attention to the Network Router panel. As a result, LAC's online missions now better emulate WW2-style encounters when RADAR is switched off or destroyed.
• I recalibrated the Norden bombsight for more accurate prediction of bomb impact points.
• Airfield defenses have been strengthened to give them a better chance of surviving sustained onslaughts from strategic bombers.
• The audio messages from Forward Observers have been made more reliable.
• Bombers taking off from the most remote airfields are now spawned in the air, with full fuel, full ordnance loadouts, and from an altitude of 9,400 feet. If the player selects a B29 heavy bomber, the "most remote" airfield is 35 kilometers farther removed from the HQ airfields.
• Aircraft that land on runways can now come to a complete stop instead of "creeping" slowly forward all the time.

• Each of the two HQ airfields in MissionNetworkBattle01 and in MissionNetworkBattle03 are now strengthened by a battleship moored just offshore, at right angles to the runway, adjacent the RADAR tower. Victory requires destruction of the battleship in addition to destruction of the airfield facilities. Once the battleship is destroyed, it cannot be refloated or repaired, and airfield anti-aircraft facilities are correspondingly weakened for the remainder of the battle. This enriches the player experience because strike missions are now far more likely to include attacks at right angles to the runway in order to destroy these ships (favoring dive bombers and other strike aircraft that are more accurate at delivery of their ordnance), and it is correspondingly more complex and more time-consuming to achieve victory.
• Also in those two missions, the bunker building on the hilltop adjacent the HQ runways is now of tactical importance. When it is damaged, the associated HQ airfield suffers some damage too, and IFF ("Identify Friend or Foe") services are temporarily disrupted.
• Dive Bombers with dive brakes have had their flight models tuned up for greater accuracy. Dive bombing is now a lot more accurate and more fun.
• Air Raid sirens now shut off after all hostile aircraft leave the area, even if the airfield is still damaged.
• The penalty for lugging heavy ordnance has been made more realistic. (Prior versions enforced no penalty for hauling more than 16 heavy weapons. Now that modest penalty is enforced for every heavy weapon that is lugged, and jettisoning any such weapon results in a slight improvement in sustainable climb angle, etc.) As a result, heavy bombers that sustain damage will more frequently and more realistically find it necessary and worthwhile to jettison some of ther bombs in order to maintain flight.
• .3ds rendering code has been optimized for efficiency and as a result, frame rate is increased for even smoother flight.

• LAC's Network Protocol version has been increased from "8" to "9". This requires updating by all players. Any attempt to use an older version while any other player is using a newer version will result in numerous "beeps", run-time diagnostic reports, and descriptive log entries in the ~/.lac/logfile.txt file as incompatible packets are detected.
• It is now possible to "squelch" any user that tries to jam the Morse Code radio channel. This is done by pressing "BACKSPACE" while the keyboard is in the Morse Radio mode, which activates a "squelch" upon the player that has most recently been transmitting. Once a player has been squelched, none of his Morse Radio transmissions will be seen until the mission is restarted. (Pressing "BACKSPACE" again will clear all active squelches.)
• The visual appearance of the following aircraft has been greatly improved:

• "Weight of Fire" logic has been improved to better represent differences between aircraft armaments.  
• Several long-standing (but minor) bugs have been fixed.
• The Makefile has been improved. Now it produces a highly speed-optimized version of LAC like the one that has long been produced by Codeblocks. It also copies the executable result into the ~/bin/Release subfolder according to the same pattern that has long been established. As a result of this improved makefile, developers that don't want to use Codeblocks can now more easily and more automatically use familiar, linux compilation tools according to long-established norms, and the result will be fully compatible with our "install.sh" installation utility.
• The well-established, standard linux command that invokes the new Makefile with all of this is simply:

• Running "make" as configured herein results in cluttering up LAC's main source code folder with a bunch of .o files and an extra copy of lac. All of this can be cleaned up with the following, standard command:

• All of these "make" procedures will be familiar to experienced linux developers but otherwise remains fully compatible with all of our longstanding tools, documentation, and production practices.

• All of the aircraft have been able to manoeuver too well, especially at high speed. Accordingly,  the "manoeuverability" attribures of all aircraft have been adjusted and as a result, all of the flight models are a little more realistic now.
• The visual appearance of the Bell P39 fighter aircraft has been significantly improved, thanks to the work of Blake Williams.
• Morse Code sound effects have been improved.
• Aircraft and rocket crash sound effects have been improved.
• Rocket aiming has been made easier because rockets now launch and fly straighter.
• The Norden Bomb sight has been stabilized and recalibrated for better accuracy, and the instructional prompts that it displays have been enhanced with additional details.
  
• Aircraft lethality has been adjusted for greater accuracy compared with the best available records.
• Sun glare and sunblindness effects have been improved.
• Visible surface textures have been improved for the Me110, Dornier, the airfield tower building, and the bunker buildings.
• Several serious bugs in MissionNetworkBattle02 (the desert terrain mission) have been fixed. It no longer suffers frequent segmentation faults at startup, and the terrain features are identically synchronized for all players. The terrain also benefits from improved appearance, with dramatic new cliffs and canyons. Bombs and rockets no longer cause multiple explosion sounds when they descend below the altitude of airstrips.
• RADAR has been made more realistic: Aircraft flying at extremely low altitudes are no longer detected by RADAR and are immune from airfield-based anti-aircraft fire. This has significantly improved MissionNetworkBattle02 because its desert terrain now features numerous canyons into which players can descend below RADAR detection level.
• Experimentation has demonstrated that game play benefits from battleships that are easier to destroy than traditional, heavy battleships like "Bismarck" or "Yamato" or "Iowa". Accordingly, I have decided to refer to LAC's "Battleship" as a "Pocket Battleship" (similar to Germany's "Deutschland", "Admiral Scheer", and her infamous "Admiral Graf Spee"), which implies a large, lightweight ship built for speed but armed with heavy cannons larger than the 8-inch guns generally used by naval cruisers. The "maxDurability" of LAC's battleship is now set at "120,000", which allows its destruction when hit by about 3 bombs and about 8 rockets. A B25 can even sink it with just its heavy, devastating guns and cannon (but that requires a lot of passes and is VERY dangerous unless the anti-aircraft guns of the adjacent airfield have been neutralized).
• The Morse Code radio has been improved so that the unshifted "\" key is interpreted as the "?" key, since Morse code makes no provision for the modern "shift" function of keyboards. Accordingly, whenever the operator wants to send a question mark on the Morse code radio, the "\" key can be used, and the resulting transmission, vocalization, and display operations handle it as a question mark, avoiding any requirement for "shifting" the keyboard.
• Some bugs were fixed in the logic that accumulates rocket damage versus battleships.
  

• Manoeverablity of all aircraft have been adjusted for greater accuracy.
• Bots have been made a little smarter, so that they don't crash into the ground as frequently.
• The LAC Server interface has been made more sophisticated.
• Two bugs that were causing severe network jitter under certain conditions within MissionNetworkBattle02 were fixed.
• A bug that was causing excessive network jitter immediately after any aircraft was destroyed in any of the multiplayer missions has been fixed.
• Some excessively "noisy" run-time diagnostic messages have been eliminated.

• This version remains operationally compatible with all versions since 7.56.
• Updated the tutorial prompting text in the LacConfig.txt file.
• Updated source code to fix many compiler warnings. This has fixed a startup "segmentation fault" that had been reported recently among users whose LINUX installations had been updated with new versions of the gcc compiler.
• Fixed a bug that had sometimes displayed a tiny white dot in the center of the screen when looking straight up.

• No functional changes. This version remains operationally compatible with all versions since 7.56.
• Source code cleanup has eliminated more than 1,000 compiler warnings. Now, when Codeblocks is used to rebuild all 80,000 lines of source code, only 19 compiler warnings are detected, and all of them are now individually documented in the source code and all are known to be harmless.
• As a result of this cleanup, the code is now more robust and more tolerant of configuration errors. Some of the compiler warnings that have been eliminated could possibly have caused occasional segmentation faults had they not been fixed.

• Only cosmetic changes. This version remains operationally compatible with all versions since 7.56.
• The cockpit instrumentation has been slightly optimized with the addition of an indicator revealing the rate of repair of the player's HQ airfield. As a consequence, where prior versions had been scrolling messages about that repair rate through the three-line "SystemStatus Panel", this version eliminates those messages.
  

• I fixed the long-troubling, poorly named "LAC Maneuver Segmentation Faults" bug, which had been causing segmentation faults upon startup of online missions when GunCamera "REPLAY" aircraft were active. This is the last known cause of segmentation faults in typical LAC situations.
• Mumble is now automatically invoked when LAC starts up. Consequently, the litttle "lac" start script has been simplified so that it no longer attempts to invoke Mumble. Furthermore, LAC is far more intelligent about invoking Mumble: If the user's "CommunityHandle" has been customized with an appropriate username, Mumble is directed to connect him to our Mumble server's "root" channel, logging in with that "CommunityHandle" as his Mumble username. On the other hand, if the user's "CommunityHandle" has not yet been customized (in his ~home/.LAC/LacConfig.txt file), then he is connected to a new Mumble channel named "NewPlayersStartHere" under a Mumble username commencing with "NewPlayer" followed by a 4-digit pseudorandom number.
• Furthermore, when a user that has not configured his "CommunityHandle" clicks the prominent "ONLINE DOCUMENTATION" link from LAC's main menu, a narrated, instructive video clip is automatically displayed, presenting detailed instructions to help him get his CommunityHandle set up. That movie is displayed on top of the browser-based, online LAC documentation that is also activated at that point.
• Then I enhanced the mission detail menus for the three online, multiplayer, server-based missions so that a user who has still not configured his "CommunityHandle" sees additional prompts to do so at the bottom of his display screen. Those prompts urge him to activate the "ONLINE DOCUMENTATION" link as described in the previous paragraph, resulting in automated launch of the aforementioned, helpful video training clip.
• The "SELECT YOUR AIRCRAFT" menus have all been enhanced with an additional button named "CHECK FOR MULTIMEDIA". As before, the logic allows the user to cycle through 54 different versions of this menu, each describing a distinct aircraft. Within each of those 54 separate instances, the new "CHECK FOR MULTIMEDIA" button quickly invokes the user's preferred browser and displays a custom web page associated with the referenced aircraft. Almost all of those web pages now display a relevant YouTube documentary video clip.
• As a consequence of these changes, selection of an aircraft from among the 54 emulated by LAC is now a much more immersive and educational activity, and users benefit from increased, natural enthusiasm as they consider each as a candidate for flight. Furthermore, online players are now much more likely to be properly identified to one another as they interact online.

• Additional missions and tools for developers: LAC's menus now offer 7 online, multi-user, server-based missions instead of just three. At this point, however, the four additional, new missions are functional duplicates of "Mission Network 01", so this is just a stable, interim release, anticipating further development in each of those four new missions. The client and server infrastructure in support of all missions has been significantly expanded in support of these additional missions: Whether in flight or from within LAC's mission menus, selection of any combination of either of the two distinct Mumble Command Modes, 32 Realms, 7 Missions, and two Team Affiliations results in correct display of the corresponding information, in the proper color, on the cockpit's Mumble Panel, and Mumble quickly switches to the corresponding channel if it has been created on the server, or to the nearest available approximation thereof if nobody has yet created that Mumble channel. All seven missions have been subjected to significant online testing and appear to be stable, well-behaved, and well-documented.
• The source code for each of the seven online, multi-user, server-based missions has been broken out of "mission.cpp" for better modularization, and EXTENSIVE source-code comments have been inserted into each of the four files corresponding with the four new missions. As a consequence, it will hereafter be fairly easy for programmers of elementary or better skill to customize the source code for the creation of new, more sophisticated missions. Two of those missions have already been "spoken for" as follows:

1.    Blake Williams is working on Mission #4.
2.    Hyrum Bosen wants to begin working on Mission #5 soon.

• Accordingly, Missions #6 and #7 are available for community experimentation and development. If you decide to participate, please read the extensive explanatory comments within the source code of "MissionNetworkBattle06.cpp" or "MissionNetworkBattle07.cpp" as appropriate to your choice, and follow the guidance therein given. Please avoid modifying any of the source code for the other files unless you negotiate something extraordinary with me, as primary developer, through email contact via "webmaster@AskMisterWizard.com".
• The missions are written in industry-standard "C++", but with the extensive source-code commentary that is now available, you really don't need to know much about C++. You can just follow and expand the well-documented, existing pattern. If you want to create an official new mission for Linux Air Combat, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE! Submit your modified source code for my evaluation. You have a lot of freedom to choose different aircraft, weather conditions, terrain features, victory goals, mission object locations, numbers, and dynamic positions, durabilities, weapon loadouts, timed or event-driven cockpit messages, text-to-speech messages, etc. I can easily visualize far more sophisticated missions with, for example, additional defended airfields, moving battleships, aircraft carriers, timed cockpit messages, timed audio messages, additional anti-aircraft guns, moving tanks, more complex victory conditions, etc.  Check in on LAC's forums for further guidance. A new forum area, for mission developers, will soon appear and I will populate it with YouTube clips showing exactly what to do to get started.
• This version also offers more multimedia and menu help for new users needing to configure their online usernames for use in the LAC community.
• A few bugs were also fixed, including yet more protection from the segmentation errors that have sometimes been seen immediately upon entry into online missions with active gun-camera player activity. Previous releases had been diminishing the frequency of these errors, but they were still seen from time to time. I HOPE they are all gone now!
• Users who have installed the popular "espeak" text-to-speech application will now hear brief text vocalized from time to time. At present this is used only for introductory or explanatory information in unusual situations.
• Users who have installed the popular "vlc" media player application will now see and hear brief new video clips from time to time. At present this is used only for introductory or explanatory information in unusual situations.
• Users are encouraged to install "vlc" and "espeak" if their LINUX distro does not automatically make them available. Both of these applications are popular, well-known, well-behaved, and ubiquitously available. Although their use in LAC is minimal and optional at present, we anticipate their increasing use within new missions, and new mission developers ought to be able to have a lot of fun inserting video clips and/or text-generated speech into their work.
• As configurable new options, LAC's automated use of "espeak" and "vlc" can be individually disabled by editing the value of "NetworkMode" within the user's ~home/.LAC/LacConfig.txt configuration file. This follows the same pattern that has long been used for optional disabling of LAC's automated use of "Mumble".

• Improved handling of Community Handles. Now, the user's configured "CommunityHandle" is automatically and consistently used as the Mumble username, and new users are automatically issued a randomized CommunityHandle commencing with "NEW" and followed by a four-digit random number upon startup. Thereafter, until that name is replaced with something NOT based on that pattern, users receive gentle but frequent reminders about editing their hidden ~home/.LAC/LinuxAirCombat.txt configuration file to change it. This aids everybody in the location of other players during our online missions.
• The cockpit now displays the user's Community Handle during all seven of the online, multi-user, server-based missions.
• Several minor bugs were fixed in the format and color of messages displayed on the cockpit's "Mumble Panel".

    https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/

• LacConfig.1279x600.GameConsoleController.txt:  Replace the text of your LacConfig.txt file with this text to configure LAC for use with a game-console style joystick controller and to operate in full-screen mode with 1280x600 resolution.
• LacConfig.1280x720.txt:  Replace the text of your LacConfig.txt file with this text to configure LAC for use with a conventional joystick and to operate in full-screen mode with 1280x720 resolution.
• LacConfig720x480.txt:    Replace the text of your LacConfig.txt file with this text to configure LAC for use with a conventional joystick and to operate in full-screen mode with 720x480 resolution.
• LacControls.LogitechExtreme3dPro.txt:  Replace the text of your LacControls.txt file with this text to optimize joystick button and axis mapping for use with the popular Logitech Extreme 3dPro conventional joystick.
• LacControls.LogitechGameConsoleController.txt:  Replace the text of your LacControls.txt file with this text to optimize joystick button and axis mapping for use with most analog game-console joysticks of the type that have become popular with "XBOX" and "Playstation" hardware.
• LacControls.Sidewider2.txt:   Replace the text of your LacControls.txt file with this text to optimize joystick button and axis mapping for use with the old "Microsoft Sidewinder 2" joysticks.

For those running Ubuntu 18.04LTS, things may be a little different from 20.04LTS as shown in the video playlist. You must still install the needed libraries, but successful compilation (Lac08p38) with 18.04LTS required a couple of tiny tweaks of the provided Makefile, as shown below. My 18.04 installation is using gcc 7.5.0, make 4.1, and glibc 2.27 on AMD64. The tweaks needed are to remove g++ PIE flag and that the linker requires libraries to be appended at the end of the compiler call.

Makefile:

OBJS=3ds.o aiobject.o audio.o cockpit.o common.o conf.o dirs.o effects.o fileloader.o FlightModel.o gl.o glland.o land.o loader_tga.o main.o mathtab.o menu.o mission.o model.o NetworkApi.o object.o objload.o pilots.o vertexarray.o

LIBS=`pkg-config --libs SDL_mixer` -lglut -lGL -lGLU

Lac08p38: $(OBJS)

    g++ -o Lac08p38 $(OBJS) $(LIBS)

    cp Lac08p38 bin/Release/Lac08p38

    chmod +x bin/Release/Lac08p38

clean:

    @rm -f *.o

    @rm Lac08p38

Changes in Lac08p42

1 of 2: Descriptive text in some of the mission menus is a little more detailed.
2 of 2: A subtle rudder-induced roll effect enhances the flight model. You will notice this when applying full rudder because your aircraft will tend to roll a bit. This is easily and naturally overcome with gentle aileron pressure as in real aircraft.

The little-used old "ConfigFileSamples" folder has been deleted from our standard distribution page because that information is now available online through our "Flight Control Hardware" forum.

The little-used old "Optional3dModels" folder has been deleted from our standard distribution package because it is now available online through a prominent "ENHANCED ART" link at the top of our main web page.

The little-used "KnownBugs.txt" file has been deleted from our standard distribution package because that information is now available online through our "LAC Bug Tracking" forum.

I found and fixed a bug that had been sounding an irritating noise when landing a damaged aircraft.

I fixed a bug that was causing bomber gunners to shut down their guns in preparation for landing whenever their aircraft was flying at extremely low altitude. This behavior is no longer desirable because so many of our new terrains include low-altitude canyons and valleys where aircraft like to fly low in order to avoid radar detection.

I balanced the acoustic volume of all of the sound effects. Now the engine noise levels are more appropriate among all of the other sounds that are active in flight. Computer-generated voice effects from the "espeak" companion application are no longer so disturbingly loud. It is now easier for users to "tune" acoustic volume levels to their liking, and to balance them with sounds emanating from "Mumble", "espeak", "YouTube" documentation videos, etc.

I improved the selection of aircraft 3d model artwork for a better balance between visual quality and performance. If you are unhappy with any of these changes, you can always download individual .3ds art files for any aircraft, choosing from our "optimized for appearance" or from our "optimized for speed" online archives instead of the "balanced optimization" set used as the standard for this version of LAC. It is easy to find the required web page from the prominent "ENHANCED ART" link at the top of our official web page here:

http://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LinuxAirCombat.htm

I improved "USB Console Game Controller" support. Now users equipped with a low-cost, readily available USB Console Game Controller can use it with good success instead of a joystick. They have easy access to all 23 of these functions:

   01 of 23: Elevator Axis
   02 of 23: Aileron Axis
   03 of 23: Rudder Axis
   04 of 23: Throttle Axis
   05 of 23: LookFwd (Dedicated Button)
   06 of 23: LookBack (Dedicated Button)
   07 of 23: LookLeft (Dedicated Button)
   08 of 23: LookRight (Dedicated Button)
   09 of 23: LookUp (Dedicated Button)
   10 of 23: LookDown at Map (Dedicated Button)
   11 of 23: WEP (MaxThrottle & click)
   12 of 23: Undercarriage (CenterThrottle & click)
   13 of 23: SpeedBrakes (MinThrottle & click)
   14 of 23: Radar Zoom Cycle (Dedicated Button)
   15 of 23: FOV Zoom (Click Elevator/Throttle axis while looking out a cockpit window)
   16 of 23: Map Zoom (Click Elevator/Throttle axis while looking at map)
   17 of 23: Target Select Cycle (Dedicated Button
   18 of 23: Target Vocalize (Dedicated Button)
   19 of 23: Flaps Up (Dedicated Button)
   20 of 23: Flaps Down (Dedicated Button)
   21 of 23: Secondary Weapon Cycle (Dedicated Button)
   22 of 23: Fire Primary Weapon (Dedicated Button)
   23 of 23: Fire Secondary Weapon (Dedicated Button)

Here is a picture of a typical USB Console Game Controller mapped to take best advantage of all of these functions:

Here is a YouTube "PlayList" showing exactly how to configure a typical USB Console Game Controller for use with LAC, taking full advantage of all of the new features recently made available:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bcpA8Uws8M&list=PL1IYes9MY6lLWfcNzU5acr9QWdXYY5KeS

All of this information about mapping a USB Console Game Controller can also be accessed through FAQ #53 from within our online FAQ here:

http://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacFaq.htm



Changes in Lac08p47

Version 8.47 has no new features. However, it is installed in a different location on your computer. As a consequence of its mature status since early 2021, LAC's published versions have been divided into two classes according to two distinct installation methodologies. Even-numbered versions (8.40, 8.42, and 8.44) are installed in your private ~home filesystem for your private use, according to LAC's long-stable, long-documented conventions. You don't need "root" privileges to install any of these versions.

In contrast, odd-numbered versions (like 8.47) are installed in the global /usr filesystem for use by ALL users of your computer.

In both cases, user-specific configuration and log files are installed in a new, hidden folder named ".LAC" in the home folder of each user.

For an individual user, it doesn't matter very much which of these two versions you choose to install. The even-numbered versions (like 8.44) are better described in our online documentation and forums because everybody has more experience with that "classic" installation technique. Our FAQ and other publications still assume you are installing LAC in that way. Odd-numbered versions (like 8.47) are intended for new LINUX Distros, for publication in official or semi-official repositories, or for system administrators that want to make sure LAC is available to all users of a shared desktop LINUX computer.

All of this is best discussed in our "LAC in LINUX Repositories" forum HERE.





Changes in Lac08p48 and Lac08p51

Both of these versions derive directly from Lac08p44 (bypassing intervening versions). All of the aircraft, flight models, and missions are unchanged, so competitive, multiplayer aspects remain interoperable with all versions since 7.92. Version Lac08p51 differs only as required to support the well-known "AppImage" packaging and distribution norms.

However, one bug was fixed, new guidance is offered to help new users configure their systems optimally, and improvements were made to each of the Menus that describe an individual mission.

Because LAC now has 15 missions, there are 15 individual, descriptive, mission menus, and the purpose of each is to illustrate the aircraft that will be used, to describe the asssociated mission, to allow the player to choose a Realm and Team in which he wants to fly the associated mission, and to select among available starting points on the associated mission map.

Three enhancements were completed in each of those 15 menus. They are:

1 of 3: A list of active Sentient Players and any active Replay Blokes currently using the network in the selected Realm and Mission is displayed. This makes it much easier for new players to find the most active missions and/or to locate participating friends. (Note that this list is always empty for missions that do not support network access.)

2 of 3: A new button, labeled "CHECK FOR MULTIMEDIA", is displayed at the bottom center of the menu, immediately beneath the familiar set of buttons that have long been present on those descriptive, individual mission menus. When the operator clicks that button, LAC immediately attempts to activate the configured "PreferredBrowser" and to display a related web page, for the described mission, from AskMisterWizard.com. (The intent here is to play one or more brief "YouTube" video clips about the selected mission, showing exactly what the player can expect during the first minute or two after he commences the mission for himself.)

3 of 3: LAC's mission menus now offer very detailed, powerful text guidance to assist in configuring "CommunityHandle" and "mumble". For example, if mumble is not installed in any of the usual filesystem locations, LAC urges the player to install it. If the "CommunityHandle" has not been configured, LAC urges the player to configure it. After the CommunityHandle is configured, if mumble is installed and active, the player is instructed about options to disable LAC's active management of mumble if any incompatibilities are discovered in the user's specific environment. In that case, the user is urged to use mumble's native management tools instead, or to install and use mumble on a compatible phone or tablet.

The Morse Code Radio was enhanced with a new administrative command. By transmitting eight or more consecutive 'H" characters, new logic is triggered and the user is prompted (by new messages on the cockpit's SystemMessage Panel) to enter the text of their desired or new CommunityHandle, which is saved in the LacConfig.txt file and used thereafter exactly as one might expect. This makes it very easy for new users to configure their CommunityHandle from within LAC, diminishing the need to edit the LacConfig.txt file.

We found and fixed a bug that was making it cumbersome to activate LAC's menu items without a mouse. Although the numeric keypad's arrow keys have long allowed moving the mouse cursor around enough to navigate, activation of a selected menu button (by pressing the "ENTER" or "SPACE" keys) was always executing the selected function TWICE instead of just ONCE. This made it impossible to select alternative values for any of the "toggle" functions. That bug has now been fixed, so users that find LAC's menus cumbersome to navigate with a mouse can now do so with the same keyboard keys that LAC uses for view direction in flight.

The "AUTHORS" menu was also enhanced. It now displays the current version of LAC at the top of the scrolling authors report.

The cockpit display was also enhanced so that the "FLAPS" position is now displayed with a negative number. This makes more intuitive sense to players, since the flaps are "lowered" to increase their effect and "raised" to diminish their effect.

The "map" display is enhanced so that it now displays the name of the current mission.

The "NetworkMode" attribute is set to "67" by default within the LacConfig.txt file. This enhances LAC's standard keyboard map to take advantage of formerly unused keys on the numeric keypad. Users of laptop computers (and other computers lacking a full-sized keyboard) will find this helpful because it makes it easier to zoom the RADAR range and field of view in and out during missions. As a consequence of this change, the default arrangement of LAC's numeric keypad now looks like this:

Version 8.48 is installed in the user's own "home" directory, according to our long-established pattern.

• 1- Binary executable for Raspberry Pi's "Raspbian" operating system.
• 2- Binary executable "AppImage" for Valve's "Steam Deck" portable console gaming PC.
• 3- Binary executable "AppImage" for all other popular Linux distros using "x86" hardware.
• 4- Published Source code for compilation on any popular desktop Linux distro.
  

• Steam Deck Improvement #1 of 5: With this new version Lac08p95SD, the Steam Deck AppImage can now automatically manage SteamDeck FlatPak Mumble as expected. Upon entry into any of the online, server-based, multi-player missions, if Steam Deck FlatPak Mumble is installed, it is automatically activated, connected to the LAC Mumble Server, and switched to the appropriate TeamCast channel according to the designated Realm, Mission, and Team.

• Steam Deck Improvement #2 of 5: The "Tap Menu" has been re-arranged and optimized for easier access to Map Mode and for larger automated Morse Code messages through the Tap Menu.

• Steam Deck Improvement #3 of 5: It is now much easier for SteamDeck users to communicate with other players because users lacking a keyboard can easily broadcast all of these preprogrammed Morse Code Radio messages through the Tap Menu:

• Steam Deck Improvement #4 of 5: The Tap Menu also allows players to switch Mumble back and forth in flight between the appropriate Mission Channel or the TeamCast channel according to the designated Realm, Mission, and Team.

• Steam Deck Improvement #5 of 5: The Steam Deck version no longer complains "MUMBLE NOT INSTALLED" if it cannot find the mumble executable in the usual places, because it is commonplace for Steam Deck users to have the sandboxed "FlatPak" version of Mumble instead.

• Redesigned cockpit Router Panel. Now the ten lights representing online players are colored red or blue according to the Team affiliation of the corresponding player. Following the same Team affiliation pattern, the ten lights representing Mumble voice transmission are also colored red or blue. Furthermore, instead of simulating a simple cockpit light bulb, each of those 20 colored indicators is now replaced with a numeric digit. The result is much easier to interpret during the heat of battle.
• The Morse Code Radio now automatically displays tutorial operating instructions for new players, instructing them to use their keyboard's "CAPS LOCK" key to toggle their keystrokes between LAC's normal flight mode and Morse Code Radio mode. This tutorial information scrolls through the cockpit's 3-line, scrolling "System Message Panel" whenever a new Morse Code Radio character is received if the player has a name like "NEW321" (indicating a brand new player that has not yet established an appropriate online CommunityHandle) and if he has not already demonstrated successful use of the Caps Lock key during the prior 5 minutes.
• The Cockpit's "Compass Band" is always displayed across the top of the screen even if the "HUD" ("Heads Up Display") is disabled. This gives a better simulation of a World War II aircraft, since pilots of that era always had access to a reliable compass.
• LAC's offline "bot" aircraft are now much less stupid. I wish I could say that they are truly smart, but that would be a stretch. Nevertheless, they have heretofore been so profoundly stupid as to be  embarassing. Now they are far less stupid. In fact,the offline tutorial missions with automated, computer-generated "bot" opponents are now quite fun to play.
• LAC's "TUTORIAL 3: FIGHTERS" mission has been cleaned up. Now it is easier and more consistent to target an opposing aircraft, and some of the opposition flies aircraft with tail gunners that shoot back at the player, making this mission far more fun and more interesting.
• Rocket launching has been made more accurate, and the risk of collision with your rockets within the first 2 or 3 seconds after they have been launched is significantly reduced.

We also fixed a bug in all of the online, server-based, multi-player missions that was leaving the RADAR antenna floating in space after its airbase was destroyed. Now when an airbase is destroyed, the associated RADAR antenna falls to the ground in a heap of rubble as it should.

The symptoms render LAC's menus useless. Although all of the menu items are displayed properly, clicking on displayed menu items never has any effect. Even when using keyboard keys to navigate LAC's menus, operators are still unable to activate any of the displayed menu items.

It has always been possible to edit LAC's "LacConfig.txt" file instead of clicking on menu items to configure most of LAC's options. In fact, the only obvious things that COULDN'T be configured this way are (1) selection of a mission and (2) designating one of the three possible spawn points thereof.

With this version 9.32, we enhanced LAC's "LacConfig.txt" logic to designate a "DefaultMission" and a "DefaultSpawnLocation". Following the established pattern for variables managed through LacConfig.txt, this is done by editing the file with a simple text editor, searching for "DefaultMission", and entering a small integer value (besides zero, acceptable values range from 8 to 32). When DefaultMission is set non-zero, LAC immediately activates the associated mission without ever demanding input to any menus. For users willing to edit the LacConfig.txt configuration file, this enhancement allows users complete control over LAC's myriad options even if their menu systems never respond to the usual mouse clicks or keyboard selection techniques.

To help new users learn about this change, several paragraphs of related, informational text are now displayed adjacent affected menus.

The explanatory text within the LacConfig.txt file has been expanded with extensive documentation of the new "DefaultMission" variable and comprehensively lists all of the acceptable values, making it easy for new users to designate any desired mission.

When "DefaultMission" is set to a value representing one of LAC's missions, LAC quickly and automatically cycles through all of the menus and automatically launches the designated mission. (If the user needs more time to read the mission menu before it is automatically closed to launch the mission, he can postpone its closure by keeping his mouse pointer in motion. The mission commences after six seconds without mouse motion.)

Realm = all. Timestamp:   Mon Aug 21 14:19:02 UTC 2023
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
Realm = all. Timestamp:   Mon Aug 21 14:20:01 UTC 2023
   Pilot REPLAY01 is Player # 1 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 03 
   Pilot GARFIELD is Player # 9 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot POLK is Player # 4 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 
   Pilot REPLAY03 is Player # 3 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot GARFIELD is Player # 9 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
Realm = all. Timestamp:   Mon Aug 21 14:21:01 UTC 2023
Realm = all. Timestamp:   Mon Aug 21 14:22:01 UTC 2023
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot POLK is Player # 4 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot GARFIELD is Player # 9 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot REPLAY07 is Player # 7 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 03 
   Pilot REPLAY01 is Player # 1 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 02 
   Pilot POLK is Player # 4 in Realm = 1, NETWORK BATTLE 01 

========== BEGIN EXAMPLE OF LAC'S HELP INSTRUCTION ===========

  Usage: lac [-aAUDIOLEVEL] [-bBACKGROUNDMUSIC] [-cCONFIGOPTIONS] [-dDEBUGLEVEL] [-eEFFECTSONOFF] [-fFOGDISTANCE] [-h] [-lLIGHTINGDYNAMIC] [-m] [-nMISSIONNUMBER] [-pPLANENUMBER] [-qQUALITY] [-sSCREENFULL]  [-tTEAM] [-v] [-xHORIZONTALRESOLUTION] [-yVERTICALRESOLUTION]

  -aAUDIOLEVEL: Set audio level for sound effects, where AUDIOLEVEL is from 0 to 100 (percent).

  -bBACKGROUNDMUSIC: Set background music level, where BACKGROUNDMUSIC is from 0 to 100 (percent).

  -cCONFIGOPTIONS: Set bit-coded configuration options (also known as NetworkMode. Read LacConfig.txt for more details).

  -dDEBUGLEVEL: Set debug level from 0 to 5, where 0=silent, 1= min, 2=low, 3=default, 4=log network details, 5=log all.

  -eEFFECTSONOFF: Enable visual Special Effects by setting EFFECTSONOFF to 1,

   or Disable visual Special Effects with 0. (Disabling may improve framerate.)

  -fFOGDISTANCE: Designate Fog Distance, or the distance that can be seen through

   atmospheric mist or fog. Set FOGDISTANCE between 30 and 230. Higher values look

   better but lower numbers yield smoother operation and better frame rates.

  -h: Display this help screen and quit

  -lLIGHTINGDYNAMIC: Set LIGHTINGDYNAMIC to 1 to enable dynamic lighting, or

    0 to disable dynamic lighting (default = disabled).

  -m: Request Mouse control instead of joystick.

  -nMISSIONNUMBER: Set DefaultMission for automatic activation, bypassing menus,

    where MISSIONNUMBER is one of:

      None (Disable DefaultMission and use Menus)     0

      Tutorial 1 (Getting Started with the Basics)    8

      Tutorial 2 (Ground Attack Basics)              12

      Tutorial 3 (Fighter Tactics)                   10

      Tutorial 4 (Free Flight with no opposition)    31

      Network H2H: (Two Players only)                32

      Network Battle 01                              20

      Network Battle 02                              21

      Network Battle 03                              23

      Hyrum's Mission                                24

      Blake's Mission                                25

      Peabody's Mission                              26

      Net Mission 07                                 27

      Net Mission 08                                 28

      Net Mission 09                                 29

      Net Mission 10                                 30

  -pPLANENUMBER: Configure default airplane, where PLANENUMBER is one of:

    Whimsical      jet   Hawk:            201        Fiat           G55   Centauro:        202

    Messerschmidt  ME109 Bf109:           203        Curtis         P40   Warhawk:         204

    Hawker               Hurricane:       205        Nakajima       KI43  Oscar:           206

    Supermarine          Spitfire:        207        Polykarpov     I-16  Horsefly:        208

    Junkers        JU87  Stuka:           209        Mitsubishi     A6M2  Zero:            210

    Chance Vought  F4U   Corsair:         211        Grumman        F6F   Hellcat:         212

    Lockheed       P38   Lightning:       213        Republic       P47   Thunderbolt:     214

    North American P51   Mustang:         215        Boeing         B17   Flying Fortress: 216

    Focke-Wulf     FW190 Butcherbird:     217        Yakolev        YAK9:                  218

    Nakajima       N1K1  Shiden:          219        Consolidated   B24   Liberator:       220

    Bell           P39   Airacobra:       221        Mitsubishi     G4M   Betty:           222

    North American B25   Mitchell:        223        Martin         B26   Marauder:        224

    Grumman        F4F   Wildcat:         225        Lavochkin      LA5   Fantail:         226

    Lavochkin      LA7   Fin:             227        Ilyushin       IL2   Sturmovik:       228

    Machi          C.202 Folgore:         229        Avro                 Lancaster:       230

    De Haviland    DH.98 MosquitoB:       231        Hawker               Typhoon:         232

    Yakovlev       Yak1:                  233        Boeing         B29   Superfortress:   234

    Dewoitine      D.320:                 235        Curtiss        SB2C  Helldiver:       236

    Grumman        TBF   Avenger:         237        Messerschmidt  ME163 Komet:           238

    Hawker               Tempest:         239        Aichi          D3A   Val:             240

    Nakajima       B5N   Kate:            241        Douglas        SBD5  Dauntless:       242

    Messerschmidt  ME110 Zerstorer:       243        Dornier        DO17:                  244

    Heinkel        HE111:                 245        Junkers        JU88:                  246

    Nakajima       KI84  Hayate:          247        Kawasaki       KI61  Hien:            248

    Generic        Fighter:               249        Mitsubishi     A6M5  Zero:            250

    Supermarine    MK5   Spitfire:        251        North American P51B  Mustang:         252

    Republic       P47B  Thunderbolt:     253        Messerschmidt  ME109F:                254

    Lockheed       P38F  Lightning:       255

  -qQUALITY: Configure video detail quality from 0 to 4, where 0 is lowest and 4 is highest.

  -sSCREENFULL: Activate or de-active FullScreen Mode. SCREENFUL = 1 or 0 (Fullscreen or NOT Fullscreen).

    (Do not activate fullscreen unless you are confident that both X and Y resolution are compatible

    with your display and display adapter hardware.)

  -tTEAM: Configure Team, where TEAM = r or b (red or blue).

  -v: Display version string and quit

  -xHORIZONTALRESOLUTION: Set horizontal resolution. Recommended HORIZONTALRESOLUTION ranges from 640 to 1920.

  -yVERTICALRESOLUTION: Set vertical resolution. Recommended VERTICALRESOLUTION ranges from 240 to 1080.

   For help configuring joystick and keyboard, we recommend launching LAC from a bash shell

   and avoiding full-screen mode, with resolution smaller than your bash shell, so you can

   see LAC's resulting debug/log messages while running LAC at the default debug level (3).

   Status messages in your main window will then show the value of keypresses and joystick

   buttons as they are detected. Use those values as you edit the file named LacControls.txt

   which you will find in your home folder's hidden .LAC directory. Edit that file with a

   simple text editor. Retain the general format of the file while changing the numeric

   values associated with keyboard key commands or joystick button commands. This will

   allow you to associate any keyboard key or joystick button with any supported flight function.

   Here are a few sample command lines. The first just launches LAC

   as previously configured. The next two examples just change the

   player's default plane before launching LAC. The next two examples

   just change the player's team affiliation to blue or red before

   launching LAC. The next two examples force LAC to bypass all menus

   and automatically execute a designated or Default mission before

   launching LAC. The next example disables the Default mission logic

   and reactivates LAC's normal menus before launching LAC. The next

   two examples illustrate how you can change several different

   configuration options with a single command before launching LAC.

   The last example configures LAC video to 1280 x 720 fullscreen.

   lac

   lac -p213

   lac -p215

   lac -tb

   lac -tr

   lac -n23

   lac -n21

   lac -n0

   lac -n23 -p219 -tb

   lac -n25 -p214 -tr

   lac -x1280 -y720 -s1

========== END EXAMPLE OF LAC'S HELP INSTRUCTION ===========

Changes in Lac09p61

All of the changes in this version 9.61 are purely cosmetic. None of the flight, tactical, strategic, network, sound, or mission characteristics have been changed. Two areas of cosmetics have been changed as follows:


Note the expanded cockpit panel with four additional round instruments. These new "WW2-style" cockpit instruments can now be displayed as a run-time option, instead of LAC's standard, "glass cockpit" instrument style..

1 of 2: You can now use the "1024 bit" of "NetworkMode" (available by editing your hidden LacConfig.txt file according to the usual pattern) to designate whether LAC will display cockpit instruments in the long-established "glass cockpit" mode or in a new, more graphically intense, more historically accurate "WW2" mode. If the 1024 bit is NOT set, cockpit graphics are unchanged since version 9.55, and the glass cockput mode is used. If the 1024 bit is set, the more graphically intense "WW2 mode" is used.

2 of 2: RADAR icons are changed. Airfields are now shown with a prominent diamond shape, and strategic bombers are now shown with a triangle.

Here are two YouTube video clips illustrating these changes:

 




Changes in Lac09p62

We cleaned up and simplified the Makefile. Now it is more compatible with evolving industry practice.

We cleaned up the logic that invokes the user's web browser to display web pages related to LAC training, aircraft, and missions. Now it tries much harder to use the preferred browser designated by the user in the "PreferredBrowser" of the LacConfig.txt file, even if the user designates a browser of unknown type. If the user does NOT designate a PreferredBrowser, LAC no longer defaults to "firefox". Instead, it now defaults to "xdg-open" which, as a consequence of evolving industry norms, will always invoke the default web browser in use by the user's current operating system.

We cleaned up the logic that has been displaying the following little block of prompting text accompanying LAC's main menu:

       IF LAC'S MENUS DON'T RESPOND TO
       MOUSE CLICKS, YOU CAN USE OUR OPTIONAL,
       EXTERNAL MENUS INSTEAD. DOWNLOAD THE
       LACMENULAUNCHER UTILITY, WHICH IS ALWAYS
       AVAILABLE FROM OUR OFFICIAL DOWNLOAD SITES.
       YOU WON'T EVER NEED LAC'S INTERNAL MENUS
       AFTER YOU TAKE THAT SIMPLE STEP.
       LEARN MORE WITH AN INTERNET SEARCH
       FOR:   LINUX AIR COMBAT DOCUMENTATION
       (EXIT WITH ESCAPE KEY.)

Now that text is no longer displayed after the user clicks into any of the main menu items (and no longer clutters subsequent menus).

We fixed a bug that had improperly positioned the RedTeam RADAR reflector in Hyrum's Mission, and in the "BETA TEST" missions.

We slightly diminished the violence of the burbling and shaking associated with accelerated stalls.