F-22 Lightning 3
Encyclopedia
Combat flight simulator
Combat flight simulators are video games used to simulate military aircraft and their operations...
computer games from NovaLogic
NovaLogic
NovaLogic is a software developer and publisher established in 1985 and based in Calabasas, California. The company was founded by current CEO John A. Garcia....
, produced only for the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
. It is based on the F-22 Raptor
F-22 Raptor
The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine fifth-generation supermaneuverable fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals...
produced by Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
. The third game of the series was released on May 25, 1999 and was successor of earlier game F-22 Lightning II (released in 1996), for the time, both games displayed very realistic graphics and some physics of flying a plane. The makers gained legitimacy by Lockheed Martin sanctioning their product, the actual makers of the real-life F-22 fighter.
Predecessor F-22 Lightning II was released on September 30, 1996.
Its minimum requirements were 486/100 MHz or equivalent CPU, 8 MB RAM and 35 MB hard drive space. It was released for DOS and was much more detailed in comparison to contemporary combat flight simulators like Jane's US Navy Fighters.
In Lightning 2 and Lightning 3, the aircraft is named Lightning II instead of the correct name Raptor. By 1999, the games release date, the USAF had officially called the F22 the Raptor. F-22 Lightning 3 also failed to come close to the physics modeling shown in DiD
Digital Image Design
Digital Image Design was a British video game developer founded by Martin Kenwright and Phillip Allsopp in 1989 and was originally based in Runcorn, Cheshire, England. The company had employed around eighty developers who specialized in areas of software and simulation...
's F-22 ADF
F-22: Air Dominance Fighter
F-22: Air Dominance Fighter is a 1997 PC game by Digital Image Design. The game is a flight simulator based on the F-22 Raptor, and features a "quick combat" mode allowing you to fly combat missions over the middle-east or choose from three different tours of duty. F-22 ADF was preceded by EF2000...
released 2 years earlier.
This has later been explained by NovaLogic since they never intended a 'hard core' military flight simulator, but an easily approachable multiplayer software.
The third game itself is not so much an all-out simulation but a combat flying game for more casual players and has gameplay that is easier to access than some of its rivals such as the Falcon series or games from Digital Integration. F-22 Lightning 3 features a host of real life weaponry such as AMRAAM
AIM-120 AMRAAM
The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM , is a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. Designed with the same form-factor as the previous generation of semi-active guided Sparrow missiles, it is a fire-and-forget...
missiles, Sidewinder
AIM-9 Sidewinder
The AIM-9 Sidewinder is a heat-seeking, short-range, air-to-air missile carried mostly by fighter aircraft and recently, certain gunship helicopters. The missile entered service with United States Air Force in the early 1950s, and variants and upgrades remain in active service with many air forces...
s, 20 mm Vulcan Gatling gun
M61 Vulcan
The M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically or pneumatically driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires 20 mm rounds at an extremely high rate. The M61 and its derivatives have been the principal cannon armament of United States military fixed-wing aircraft...
, HARM
AGM-88 HARM
The AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile is a tactical, air-to-surface missile designed to home in on electronic transmissions coming from surface-to-air radar systems. It was originally developed by Texas Instruments as a replacement for the AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard ARM system...
s, JDAM
Joint Direct Attack Munition
The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs, or "dumb bombs" into all-weather "smart" munitions. JDAM-equipped bombs are guided by an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global Positioning System receiver, giving them a published range of up to...
s, various types of iron bombs, and the B61
B61 nuclear bomb
The B61 nuclear bomb is the primary thermonuclear weapon in the U.S. Enduring Stockpile following the end of the Cold War. It is an intermediate yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon featuring a two-stage radiation implosion design....
10-kiloton tactical
Tactical bombing
Tactical bombing is the aerial bombing aimed at targets of immediate military value, such as troops, military installations or equipment. This is in contrast to strategic bombing, attacking enemy's cities and factories to debilitate the enemy's capacity to wage war, the enemy's future military...
thermonuclear free-fall bomb. Due to the stealth
Stealth technology
Stealth technology also termed LO technology is a sub-discipline of military tactics and passive electronic countermeasures, which cover a range of techniques used with personnel, aircraft, ships, submarines, and missiles, to make them less visible to radar, infrared, sonar and other detection...
capabilities of the F-22, the player rarely needs to worry about their plane's radar signature.
While the game is not developed as a full-fledged simulator, it has included the "emcon" issues. For example, mounting weapons externally will cause the SAM radars to track the plane more easily, with switching the radar on will significantly increase the ground radar's tracking range.
There are six campaigns, with a total of 46 missions split between them (each campaign features either seven or eight missions, which must be played in order). The campaigns cover various hot spots around the world (Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, Chad
Chad
Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, the Kola Peninsula
Kola Peninsula
The Kola Peninsula is a peninsula in the far northwest of Russia. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely to the north of the Arctic Circle and is washed by the Barents Sea in the north and the White Sea in the east and southeast...
, and so forth). The game can be played online with a host of other NovaLogic games at NovaLogic.net or on a network. As of March 25, 2007, the game requires a patch to play online, which can be downloaded via the NovaLogic website.
Games
External links
- http://www.novalogic.com/games.asp?gamekey=f22l3 -- NovaLogicNovaLogicNovaLogic is a software developer and publisher established in 1985 and based in Calabasas, California. The company was founded by current CEO John A. Garcia....
's official game page