While its existence is not really mentioned on the English site, Eagle has been developing a second add-on for LoMAC to follow up on the Flaming Cliffs. Titled Black Shark, this add-on is especially interesting because the new flyable aircraft it will add to the game is a helicopter- the Russian Ka-50 attack chopper.

Needless to say, this is quite interesting. Apparently the game engine proved flexible or modifiable enough to allow rotorcraft to be coded in as viable player vehicles even though it was beyond the scope of the original game. The question is raised- what else is possible? Discussions of what player aircraft/feature requests are reasonable have been dominated by the issue of what the engine can handle. However, the addition of a helicopter to this game's player arsenal seems to suggest the LoMAC engine is a tad more flexible than has been widely assumed in the forums. What other "fantasy features" are actually possible?

Could a working air-to-ground mapping and targeting radar be added to the engine? How about support for flyable two-seaters, with at the very least a competent AI managing the copilot/RIO/WSO tasks? How about the sort of flight engine dynamics necessary to make variable geometry planes like the MiG-27 and Su-17 flyable? Or the support for lift engines necessary to add in a Harrier?

All of these, of course, would individually take much time to code even if they were perfectly viable options, and I hardly assume much of this will be addressed before the next installation in the series is eventually developed. However, I'm simply curious as to what the Lock On engine can really handle. If helicopters are within its reach, what else?