mondo

Context is everything. I'm not going to sit here and argue with you about another conversation you've cherry picked from.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. That wasn't the conversation that was happening.

That still isn't a reason to hold content back so some YouTubers can drum up interest. Honestly though, Heatblurs cinematic trailers are a league above any YouTuber content. I was on a DCS break around the time the F14 came out. It wasn't a YouTuber content creator that brought me back, it was the F14 video produced by HB. The biggest DCS YouTube channel is sadly GR and they do almost zero promotional content and it they do it's stuck between 2000 videos of hypothetical comedy situations using dodgy mods.

MLYP. HB trailers are the best marketing they can do. They are always stellar. I don't think many valued viewers will buy something that doesn't win at air quake either.

The whole content creators getting it I feel is just frustrating, as it was with the F15E. I can muddle my way through a start up myself instead of watching some guy named potato banger or something, as always, muddle through it all even worse. If it's good enough for a content creator, it's good enough for customers.

Yeah, thats what they stated. Players are making out like them not delivering in April, when they said it could be May as some kind of misleading communication, then making up a June date. It's ridiculous drama over nothing.

HB never said April, they said latest May 31st back in March. The only people saying June are players making things up.

Speaking from experience, I'd be genuinely surprised if HB and ED didn't have shared repositories and the Phantom hasn't been tested as a module within internal versions of DCS for some months, possibly as soon as they had code available to integrate over a year back. ED obviously have a way of putting in placeholder aircraft and an SDK that allows functionality of modules to be mixed and matched as we've seen that in other modules under development. We haven't lived in a world of alpha, beta and gold versions of software for literally decades at this point. We just have incrementally higher version numbers with flags to denote what works and to what level.

I was going to quote and reply to that message but you beat me to it. The only issue I've encountered with E cores themselves was with DCS MT and that got fixed.

This is really awesome but as a very long time player of EDs sims, my most pressing issue has always been issues with ground AI, ground vehicles with impossible accuracy and situational awareness and the lack of either meaningful splash damage and/or simplistic ground vehicle damage models. The day when the BMP2, which in reality is so loud and has such poor vision for those inside it that it would have trouble hearing or seeing a B52 taking off next to it is fixed, will be almost as good as the day the Phantom is released.

You're literally using technology browsers use every time you play a game on the internet, every time you need to authenticate etc. You've probably booted up games and platforms to launch games with browsers embedded in them for years. This is such a non issue. HB make simulated aircraft, not PDF readers yo embed into them. The use of a browser in the way they've described is both absolutely fine and a cheap way of delivering information to the player without the need to alt tab or have a second monitor. I would take this for every DCS module if I had the chance.

I do think the E model looks the best, it's just more aggressive. If you asked me as a child to draw a fighter jet I would have drawn you the E without even thinking or knowing what a Phantom was, just like I would have drawn a chieftain tank if someone said draw me a tank.

I found the nearest thing for me is the Hind. Analogue computers, old school navigation systems, tables and charts for weapons, working with basic flight control systems to get the most out of it and also preventing myself getting into trouble and entirely analogue instrument flying. Flying at night is possible but absolutely terrifying without NVG and even with it's unfriendly.

It's a module for DCS, not a car you've paid thousands, tens of thousands up front for. Well, unless it's on credit. I'm happy paying a subscription. I know Nick said they won't do it but he also said that they can't make it viable without early access. I'd happily pay $15 a month for DCS and I don't have large sums of disposable income either.

With a 9 month lead time. I've only found a few business owners who are patient enough to understand the benefits of forward planning years in advance. I've literally seen millions thrown away trying to get teams to work with 20+ year old systems because investing in a new platform is deemed an expense or would take too long despite it would pay for itself after just a couple of years. It's insane but apparently the share price next week is worth more than the business being more profitable in a years time.

A decade long wait followed by a few months of YouTubers getting it while we all waited for the unannounced actual delivery? I mean this has been two years since it was announced and they've delayed by at most 2 months after they gave a vague release window.

I genuinely feel for you guys. Ran software development teams for near 20 years so did my fair share of expectation management. It sucks when outside influences disrupt projects and no amount of contingency can deal with issues like war and contagious viruses. I wish gaming communities understood a little better how these teams work, the distribution of skills, how pipelines work and how you just can't throw money at problems like this, that products like DCS have legacy code to navigate and peculiar undocumented quirks. When people used to ask me "just hire another developer" when we had issues with delivery I'd respond with "can 9 mothers make a baby in one month?".

They've literally said it's ready bar performance optimisation, which is the current focus. I'm really not bothered if they don't give it to people to fly early to make videos. I found the whole F15E launch incredibly tedious seeing all these videos appear on my YouTube feed.

From experience - I was at one point a QA manger and have worked on a few AAA titles - I would expect ED has had access and made builds with these modules for quite some time, even if they weren't testable in the way people assume. The earlier you can get code into your builds, the easier it is to pick up regressed issues elsewhere in the product. The easier it is to get your CI/CD process and associated automated tests in place so as they deliver more and more of the module it's easier to test and certify. We've already seen the F4E in many different videos anyway, so it's a bit of a giveaway.

The Syria map has British/NATO airfields on Cyprus and Turkish/NATO airfields. There's also Jordanian airfields.

The various GBUs dropped by F15E seem to not all work consistently at all. The only one I seem to get to work every single time, without error, is the paveway III with it set to Nose fusing.

I'm not sure I really see much comparison aside from they use the same targeting pod. The F14 feels like a classic point defence interceptor that can also dog fight and maintain air superiority. It has this added bonus tacked on of being able to drop a limited set of bombs (but lots of them) however it feels like a 3.5 generation aircraft in respect to avionics. The Mudhen on the other hand feels like a fourth generation aircraft in every way. A strike aircraft that can self escort and could serve as an interceptor or air superiority fighter but it simply can't dog fight like a tomcat. Modern displays, modern and intuitive navigation, wide selection of weapons, fantastic HUD, truly day/night/all weather capable and a crew setup that means they can truly divide the workload. The F14 in retrospect just seems like a much more capable Phantom followup. But then the SE Suite 4 is 20 years newer.

Oleg has so much to answer for.

It's not really how software development or game development works. ED will have been given builds from very early on and placed within the games code to deal with regressed issues affecting the wider game as a whole. They'll be testing each build as it's delivered. I would assume that Razbam is working to set milestones which match up with EDs development and integration of the Strike Eagle, signing off features as they are delivered. It's entirely possible there's Strike Eagle related code version of the Open Beta going back some time as it makes it easier to diagnose and test. Depends on how they do things - only ED will be able to tell you. ED is holding off release for a number of reasons only known to them but it's probably just fixing issues or it could be they have a release schedule they want to stick too and the next big feature is the next item that's actually ready which could be Sinai or the F4E. Only ED will know. As for demos - ED can just skip over features that don't work or are not properly functional. It could have been the Strike Eagle model using the flight mode of the C. Marketing events for games is smoke and mirrors.

But these aren't physical products. They aren't made by the same production team. There's no restriction on sales. ED will potentially lose sales in the short term by not releasing either when they are ready, despite a potential clash because there's going to be people who won't buy one but will buy the other. ED, Razbam and Heatblur will all have people investing and wanting that return on it.