SimFreak

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year, Io Saturnalia,whatever you’re celebrating, hope your new year brings you lots of joy and happy new experiences! For us, 2014 is looking to be a momentous year. We’re working hard to make sure we release a solid new title next year, a title that will thrive in 2015, 2016, and beyond. Most of our employees are based in Russia or in the former Soviet Union. The wonderful thing for employees, and a horrible thing for employers, is the fact that most of those countries are officially off from December 31st to January 10th. People in that part of the world love to celebrate the New Year, and they celebrate hard. Many businesses do not return to full working capacity for another week or two after the official holidays end, but we are of course different. Some of our employees are even planning to work from home over the holidays to ensure deadlines, but that’s purely their personal choice. I as a project manager obviously cannot ask anyone to do that unless it’s their own personal choice. Having said that, we probably won’t have any significant work done on the project for the fateful 11-day period. December was a difficult month for me personally with some unexpected events jumping out when least expected. One of our employees ended up in the hospital. Russian healthcare being what it is, waiting for the ambulance for two and a half ours almost led to a bigger tragedy. Not one but two of our married employees had their wives end up in the hospital. Finally, another valuable team member slipped on the ice but thankfully his face broke the fall. He now looks like a B-movie monster, and has to continue modeling with one eye swollen shut. Finally, I know many of you are very concerned about the state of kickstarter rewards fulfillment system. The work has not been progressing nearly as fast as we needed. We’re still not there. Including paypal with kickstarter ended up adding a huge layer of complexity because we can no longer just use kickstarter’s features. Programming everything together, bringing the lists of kickstarter and paypal backers, and integrating it with DCS forums and other site features just turned out to be a nightmare. At this point, it almost seems like it would have been easier for me to manually do the reward surveys via email or something basic like that. At this point, looks like the roll-out is not going to happen until at least the end of January 2014. For this I sincerely apologize. I should have planned this out better. In hindsight, I should have stuck with kickstarter alone. Anyway, I was really hoping to end 2013 with a bang: a couple of screenshots of the Bf.109 cockpit in-engine, flying around, and we still have a couple of days left in the year. If that does not happen, we’ll do a consolation update on the 31st. For now, here’s the current state of the P-47 cockpit. Looking to be completed by late January. We’re actually well ahead of schedule on cockpits with the project, which I guess is the best news I have to offer at the end of 2013. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/508681281/dcs-wwii-europe-1944/posts

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/508681281/dcs-wwii-europe-1944/posts/694456?ref=activity

Yeah, but I see moderator has something else in mind. Why wouldn't you want own thread for dev update? People do not like checking huge thread for new update....this is easy to see.

WW2 update #22 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/508681281/dcs-wwii-europe-1944/posts/686163

Haven't seen this posted. So here's own thread about it.

Does this cockpit look familiar?

If you say you're going to do something, do it. If you're unable to do it, say something. I do not think that's a hard concept to understand. Both Russian and English sides are silent which do not make anyone happy.

Only after Tue update ;)

I don't have access to this sim...can anyone try to release drop tanks and get him by them.

Very nice video. Thanks for posting it.

Here's a little extract of book by Colin Downes - "By The Skin of my Teeth" describing some of issues of Spitfire.

Decided to fish in Aces High community.

I'll throw two things in the hat. AI and Visual Damage model. AI behaves like ...well AI. They have no fear, do not care about damage and have all seeing eye. And then there is a visualization of a damage model that is rather primitive. Same old - hit section of a body - that section changes to "different" skin that shows few extra drawn on holes.

I'm going to go with slap own forehead smilie as well.... Not sure in what alternate history Brits dropped more tonnage....

That makes too much sense....lol

That's just sick. Why share such intimate things with us? ;)

What season is planned for terrain? Winter / summer / etc?

Given that we are 5% from base goal, I'm interested in how this will be implemented. Are we expecting everything released at once after +1 year wait or things will trickle slowly? Like release beta of an aircraft while terrain is developed? Please mention some ideas so we can have expectations.

As of when pilots got personal aircraft? So when that pilot is DNIF, that means aircraft grounded as well? Sounds like an awesome idea....

Nice post. Thanks for sharing this info.

Given that engine is already built, their efforts can be concentrated on stated goals. Plus I'm sure lessons were learned from disaster that was previously released. Not sure why we can't support both sims coming out. This is not like a relationship....there can be two....and three or even more. Not sure why people do not realize this.

Good for Saber pilots. That model is closer to 15bias so Mig will not have as much advantage in a climb and ceiling. I wonder about special nuances of this aircraft. Biography that I'm reading states that Saber had auto speed breaks that would extent right before reaching mach. Are there any other unique things to Saber?

Was there a chatter of which version going to be developed?

What I'm interested is how this is planned to be integrated. Given that World is here, we are missing terrain, aircraft and AI. Is the plan to release everything in one go or feed items as they become available. I personally would like a trickle and little by little get this project

Given that DCS is working on 190, I want allied aircraft that can do ground and be decent in air. I think P-47 Jug would be perfect. Next would be nice to have 109. It would be interesting if entire thing released in steps and not at same time so we can concentrate on one aircraft at a time.