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We would say we are a small company, around 200 team members, and not all devs. They are very dedicated and work very hard. QA found the issues during final checks, I am glad they did otherwise we would be complaining about broken patches. I understand you are upset, we are all disappointed, a 24 hour delay is necessary however. Thank you

No offense, really, I'm trying to get a civilized conversation here and I don't have any plan of software development at all, so I hope you don't mind explaining it to me: It's been planned for days, if not weeks (I didn't count tbh), and just today you found issues, weren't there some checks done before? Also, is there no possibility in still fixing them in the next couple of hours? It's been delayed, well, I don't have to tell you the story about it, you know it pretty well. But beginning in "we feel confident in a 2022 release, otherweise we wouldn't confirm it for 2022" and now at this, we're all pretty frustrated.

I can't believe grown-up people really took a day off because of this. Is this your first-ever anticipated release of a DCS module, or of a computer game in general? "You made a bad choice!"

From Polychop discord: State of multicrew in the Gazelle Dear Gazelle pilots, For the upcoming update we’ve implemented a completely new multicrew method that will be a huge improvement over the method we’ve been using before. However, I’m writing this to tell you we’ve royally screwed the pooch by prioritizing the release of this feature over proper quality control and testing as well as putting most of our time and assets in to the upcoming OH-58D Kiowa Warrior release. Even though most of the multicrew elements will see a big improvement with this release, with a much more stable and robust functionality, the rotor RPM synchronization in multicrew broke at a point of no return right before the final submission date. This poses an issue only in multicrew, as single player and regular multiplayer are not affected. In multicrew it means that the left seater will not see changes to the rotor RPM, which is especially noticeable in a cold start where the rotors will not start spinning as well as in a hot started aircraft where the rotors will not come to a halt on shut down. There is no way around it, we made a mistake in trying to push this out as soon as possible while we should have taken our time to thoroughly test it instead. We will be working on rectifying this issue as soon as possible and hope to find a way to get this fix out at the first opportunity, whether this will be a hot-fix or planned patch date. With this we offer our sincere apologies, Dan Polychop Simulations

A lot of people here act tough, as if the issue doesn't bother them. What angers me is the lack of professionalism. That's all. The problem isn't about delaying the launch by 24 hours. I think most of us here are adults with jobs and other obligations, and it's likely that delaying the patch by 24 hours won't have any impact on our lives. But the mess that represents the fact of having even released a trailer with a specific launch date within a 15-day margin and 6 hours before the launch is unacceptable in any professional environment. I'm not saying it's impossible, but if I present a project a day past the deadline in my company or in state administrations, I would end up in the unemployment line. It's this kind of errors, bad practice, and poor Quality Control that will end up ruining this video game. Fifteen days is plenty of time to notice an error 6 hours before. And on the other hand, if you have faith in meeting that deadline within 24 hours, how does the programmer know that it will take exactly one day to complete the task? They had 15 days to do it and didn't, so by that logic, a single day doesn't make sense either. Anyway. Another reason to stop pre-ordering.

This 100%. After spending nearly 20 years in corporate America, I'll say the unthinkable: a 23 year-old super-green recent college grad consultant from McKinsey would recommend better project management practices than what we regularly see with these patches. Whatever was done didn't work, and that needs evaluated, of course unless they just don't care about hitting dates. It sure sounds like they didn't test the final release candidate and leave enough time to either work through issues or not delay on the day of the planned launch. Yes, I agree with all of the crowd here that says "in the grand scheme, this isn't really a big deal". That's obvious. We're talking about a video game, hobby, whatever. On the other hand, the constant delays get annoying. It is clearly a pattern, and symptomatic of an issue managing product launches. It is not "normal" or "to be expected" to have last-minute delays for complex products, processes, or any other project, regardless of whether it is software, medical devices, brain surgery, aircraft manufacturing, or making orange juice. It's symptomatic of a bad management process.

Modules require the core of DCS to work correctly, if we release and it is broken it would not have been a good experience for you all. Best to delay one day to resolve the issues we found. thank you

"Oh noooo, what's going to be of me left with only my 10+ modules and 5+ maps along with all the 3rd party mission creation apps to entertain me without the F-4E?? :((( Dang...." Remember folks: It is a pixel plane in a videogame.....A healthy perspective is not 'acting tough'. Try it, it is nice. All the best for Heatblur and their endeavor of pushing the limits on DCS modules. Day 1 purchase for sure. 1 more day gifted to read the manual. Release it when it is ready.

I've been waiting for a FF F4 for so long, another day is nothing. Keep up the good work HB. Looking forward to getting my hands on it.

The F-4E deserves the best launch day possible, the delay is disappointing for sure but necessary. Heatblur have worked very hard, it will be worth the wait. thanks

ED really not winning over much favor with the customers right now. What possible excuse is there for only checking this last minute when they're about to release what is perhaps the most hyped and anticipated module that DCS has ever seen? I genuinely want an excuse. A lot of people gave up stuff today so they could play the Phantom and id hope ED shows them the respect they deserve and gives a proper explanation and apology instead of 'Whoopsy guys our bad we forgor to check it earlier, just a teensy snag on the update you've been waiting over 6 months for :3' Absolute joke, why am I not surprised

Now I finally understand. DCS stands for Delayed Combat Simulator.

Wow... I wouldn't want to be a moderator for this topic. Hats off to you, fellows!

Or watch the coldstart tutorial by Reflected.

Even if HB delivered on time with no incident and an expenses paid trip to a party at the Playboy Mansion, the first time a fellas PC stuttered they’d be lighting up the forums complaining about “flawed modules- why can’t they wait to release until they get it right?” People, let’s put this in perspective. It’s not cancelled, it’s not missing critical features, it’s just delayed ONE business day. For goodness sakes people don’t act like this when their Amazon parcel is late a day, but they’ll take HB and ED to task for QCing the release. Nobody’s gonna remember this thread 12 months after release.

Thank you sharing that valuable piece of information. I sure was wondering if you'd or not. lol

In all honestly, it's far more surprising when something actually releases on time than when it's delayed. Had it come out today, then there should have been all kinds of wild reactions of disbelief.

**State of multicrew in the Gazelle** Dear Gazelle pilots, For the upcoming May 2024 update we’ve implemented a completely new multicrew method that will be a huge improvement over the method we’ve been using before. However, I’m writing this to tell you we’ve royally screwed the pooch by prioritizing the release of this feature over proper quality control and testing as well as putting most of our time and assets in to the upcoming OH-58D Kiowa Warrior release. Even though most of the multicrew elements will see a big improvement with this release, with a much more stable and robust functionality, the rotor RPM synchronization in multicrew broke at a point of no return right before the final submission date. This poses an issue only in multicrew, as single player and regular multiplayer are not affected. In multicrew it means that the left seater will not see changes to the rotor RPM, which is especially noticeable in a cold start where the rotors will not start spinning as well as in a hot started aircraft where the rotors will not come to a halt on shut down. There is no way around it, we made a mistake in trying to push this out as soon as possible while we should have taken our time to thoroughly test it instead. We will be working on rectifying this issue as soon as possible and hope to find a way to get this fix out at the first opportunity, whether this will be a hot-fix or planned patch date. With this we offer our sincere apologies, Dan Polychop Simulations

Completely wrong and slander.

The best thing about threads like this is that they keep me up to date on which people I never want to fly with. LOL

So you just committed to paying a higher price for the same product. That really strikes at the heart. "Oh Noes, he is threatening to give us more money. Quick, push it out the door now to prevent even more doing this dastardly deed."

I disagree with you disagreeing. I'm an ex aircraft engineer, a pilot and an ex programmer, I've been working in the software industry for over 25 years at all levels. It's very rare any company I've worked for has had to delay a release on THE DAY OF release. The only way this happens is if you don't allow enough time for testing and final build checks, assuming you won't find any problems and not having any contingency time to fix them. This is a simple project management failure, for any serious software vendor this would be a PR disaster. If it was two weeks ago and they found a problem with the RC build that was very difficult to fix or had a huge risk then it's kind of excusable to delay a release, but not one day before.

I have a better idea...commit to a date and come hell or high water, just stick to it! There's a novel idea. I mean seriously, why are you doing final checks on something like this literally the DAY OF release? Couldn't this have been simply done the day before? If not, why not? What is the nuance here that prevents simple redundancy or getting ahead of an obvious possible problem before the actual day of release? This is another entirely self-inflicted wound that easily could have been avoided with just a little bit of better planning. This is the frustrating part.

Murphy's law for sure

NOTE: If you purchased the F-4E on the DCS E-shop, you can ignore this announcement. Your install will become available via the DCS in game module manager automatically once the patch goes live on May 21st. 1.After purchasing a key from the Heatblur Store, you will have received an email by Sendowl. The email will contain your license key. License keys can look either like this (early purchase): E370-E4F5-3D9D-A967 (example key) // or like this (late purchase): ED-26BSF-12V7M5F (example key). 2. Go to https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com and login to your DCS account. After that click on "profile" 3. Go to the left bottom of your profile page, and under "Licensing" select "Redeem Voucher." Then click "GO" 4. Paste your key into the field where it says "Enter voucher code" - then click "REDEEM" That's it! After doing so, you will get a message telling you that you have successfully redeemed your license key. You will then be able to install the F-4 Phantom II module tomorrow via the DCS in game Module Manager, as soon as the DCS update goes live. Should you have lost your email or key, please do not worry. Simply write support@heatblur.se and we will send you your key again. Please include your order number. If you run into issues redeeming your key, please contact ED customer support. We thank you all for your purchases, for your support and for sticking with us on this long road. We hope you all get to enjoy the Phantom tomorrow! Your Heatblur Team

The last time I checked, pre order was still voluntary.

I was playing around with the Skynex on HX truck and recorded some.

I just looked on my account in the DCS E shop.......3 pages of it.....58 purchases.....If you average £30 per product ( some are more, some less) Thats over £1700..... I would say I am a good customer and have a right to be pissed off.....

Meanwhile I'm studying the manual. you should do the same. time will pass faster. https://f4.manuals.heatblur.se/

One of the thing that bothers me is that patch delaying has become the norm (and not an exception). Not later than this morning I was exchanging messages with friends and said that ED this time would not be delaying the patch (as usual) because of the F-4 announcement. I was wrong. Something in their quality control system is clearly not working.

There would be less complaining if they managed to stick to the date they picked. And there'd certainly be less complaining if these delays were rare and isolated not the rule as they have become.

Lesson for all those who are mad at ED & HB because they took a day off to play this module: Don't plan a day off to play something before it has actually been released. Release dates are often at risk of changing last minute. Hence ALWAYS plan your days off AFTER it has released. Besides first day you pick the thing up is mostly going to be spent learning the systems anyway. So relax on the FOMO.

Just another reminder to never ever preorder anything.

The base game must be patched in order for the Phantom to work. You can't separate those things. Last moment delays for 1-3 days are not uncommon for DCS-patches. I get the frustration about the day off, but that the way the cookie crumbles...

Type 42'...there's 3 different batches, the model I have is a Batch 3 which is considerably longer than the Falklands war Batch's .. It still needs a bit of work, no promises, but will see if I can get one out for release in this quarter.

Well HB seems to be sure the F-4 launches tomorrow:

There are quite a few posts in this thread that make me feel embarrassed. Brilliant example of why decent dev's from other sims won't touch DCS World. That's not just an assumption, either.

Nonsense. It’s not a “disaster”. Only someone very young or very immature, living vicariously staring at screens all day would say something like that, especially after ED has taken responsibility for it. It’s not “normal” behavior to melt down over entertainment, which comes from a strange groupthink dynamic that feeds on itself. The longer you subscribe to it, the more miserable you will be.

One learns a lot about a person’s character when they are under duress, but this? It is a trivial annoyance at most. I get the sense that a lot of these people struggle to deal with the ebb and flow of normal life. There certainly is a lack of perspective.

Thank you ED and Heatblur for the hard work. Another day of waiting or even a few days for quality is fine.

Being a long time DCS supporter this delay does not bother me one bit because it happens so often. I was joking to myself just before checking the forums that the update is probably delayed lol I just don't understand why they actually announce release dates, just drop the patch randomly when it's ready

At least I could have saved my day off. And in my surroundings if you schedule a date, you have to stick to it. And not change it. Again. And again. Aaaand again. I love ED and DCS, but this is just not professional.

As a pilot and a programmer I can understand the complexities of both sides of the equation so I'm afraid I would have to disagree. Just as mechanics find something 'extra' wrong as they tear down a jet engine which delays the repair yet further, software engineers discover errors or performance hits as their software gets distributed to a wider range of hardware. My 'guess' is that the early release to the content creator community has show a few performance issues/bugs on a wider range of hardware. The love that PC builders have of chucking ever more diverse bits of kit into their already over stressed boxes of RGB leads to an almost infinite number of hardware configurations that software, even through the abstraction layer, has to deal with. It's another day or a few more days. Big deal. This forum will explode exponentially more if/when bugs are found.

Yep, you get a patch release that doesn't have a showstopping issue

Hi folks, had a little tidy up in the thread, please stay on topic here, and discuss DCS F-4E only. Exciting day today, final checks in progress CDN being prepared, so keep your fingers and toes crossed. thank you

I look forward to the next delay.

Out of curiosity, how does that help you when the next module you are waiting for also doesn't meet the scheduled release date? You want it, you have to pay for it, right? Only pre-order saves you a few bucks. But you will have to wait in both cases, and your money will go to the developer at some point, so where is the advantage for you in boycotting pre-sales?

DCS Patch status Current versions: https://updates.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ Change logs: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/news/changelog/stable/ Stable Version Current version number: 2.9.4.53990 Next planned update: Delayed until 22nd May 2024 Dear all, during final checks some blocking issues were found and we will require some time to resolve them. We want the F-4E launch to be the best experience it can be so delaying for one day is the best option, thank you for your understanding and patience.