Fromthedeep

That's not true in their early vids. Look at the navflir video from December, that's LITENING. They changed their minds about which pod to deliver first around late January/early February or so.

That doesn't really matter for the purposes of discussing the capabilities and system logic/PVI of the aircraft in the context of DCS. Why are you lying? When did I say that I was smarter than Boeing engineers? That's exactly how the airplane works. You do not need to go back and forth between the seats to conduct an attack. That's categorically false. While in the real aircraft, the crew does in fact have to work together do successfully conduct such an attack, there's also plenty of things that you've probably never heard about in your life that real aircrew have to do and we can still easily forget about them in DCS and still be very effective in game.

That's absolutely not at all how the aircraft works. You'd do all that stuff from the pilot's seat.

Unless Heatblur/ED decide to hold it back to avoid eating up sales.

Be glad if they actually make it this year, I suspect late Q4 is the earliest we may expect. Razbam CEO commented that they are only going to release it if it's virtually bug free and they are still hard at work to make basic functions available such as TWS or computed bombing modes. Based on this, 2023 is very optimistic and their release date estimates have been proven horrifically wrong before, so temper your expectations.

According to developer statement, F-4 is mostly done and they need to finish Jester 2.0 and some sound work before it's ready for EA. Apparently the release will very shortly follow the full reveal. The SE on the other hand seems to still require quite a bit of additional work on systems while they have reached fully art complete phase. Just because a developer doesn't start the tutorial series 1 year before the module release doesn't necessarily mean it's far away.

According to the 10 percent true interview, the ARN-101 required well over 10 minutes to align.

There are plenty of pictures of Block 50s with LANTIRN in the mid 2000s. That's just a hyperbole. Clearly inaccurate description due to a mistake, that can happen in an Early Access project.

How would it be accurate? The issue here is that they made a mistake and accidentally implemented LANTIRN symbology and LITENING video. They apparently have no data for the LITENING symbology specifically. That makes sense if whatever reference they are using doesn't clearly describe the pod or they are mixing together separate sources. That doesn't mean other functionality would also be inaccurate.

I think you're correct, the points you raise are the likely reason why these aspects of the game are inaccurate.

I guess the big issue is that they have no references for the proper LITENING implementation.

No, they will change the 3D model and remove the LITENING specific functions like TV imagery.

I would imagine the GCI system is going to be missing for sensitivity reasons.

Are you saying that they are making a professional version and we get that with all sensitive info removed or changed?

Why would it help if it was a German variant? Still the same combat related avionics.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

As far as I'm aware an early J-8II B would use the Chinese built Type 208 radar and I've seen no indication that any of its avionics would be Western in origin. Not like it matters though, because that would still much more closely replicate the actual PVI, capabilities, limitations and experience that comes with operating a historically relevant variant. Missiles are completely irrelevant to the discussion which revolves around PVI and avionics. And you believe this is not going to be made up? Please.

Not missing the notable features? How about the lack of Chinese avionics? It won't do things the others don't? It has an F-16 style UFC in it...

No, there will only be a J-8PP. Technically it is part of the game but in terms of quality and standards it isn't worthy of mentioning. The Ka-50 is also the first full fidelity product that really kickstarted what eventually became DCS, so I can't really use 2023 standards in good conscience when it comes to decisions by ED in 2009. However, this one and BS3 are highly questionable choices. Then again, it may be part of a strategy where developers move around the ever tightening regulations and political hurdles to make fictional variants and prototypes. Most people seemingly have no issue with that, so I wouldn't be surprised if the next big fixed wing jet by ED was an F-20. A DCS module shouldn't be reduced into its metagaming capabilities if one is interested in the simulation aspect. I suspect that's becoming less and less common nowadays though.

LOL, if that's what you think the problem is now I understand everything about your message. Have fun.

How can it ruin the module for people who don't care about realism and historical relevancy that other people do care and are disappointed? If you don't care then it doesn't matter what we think, does it?

You don't gain anything from expressing positive thoughts either. Expressing your thoughts is the point of a forum. (Within the rules) If all you could do is praise the developers you wouldn't have a forum, you'd have an echo chamber. That's also far from ideal, as you put it. It's a Legacy FC3 module, doesn't even deserve to be mentioned.

What's wrong with people expressing their thoughts?

Very likely hits the nail on the head. I highly doubt that detail documentation is available on a prototype, especially if integrating the avionics ran into all sorts of hurdles in the first place according to this article: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-15-mn-161-story.html

They probably don't want to announce anything in case something comes up and they'd have to delay.