Cobra847

Don't get me wrong; we're totally fine with nitpicking actually :D That's how we get a better product out the door! That said, we're in that weird place right now where we literally have zero time to properly communicate away concerns with people, and that's a big issue because perceived issues can fester somewhat. :) That's why we try to show off only what is (mostly) polished. :) That was a lot of sentences that started with 'that'.

I think everyone is very eager to get the Tomcat out the door and get everyone enjoying the product- and things are so hectic that some confusion may arise in desired communication strategies across both teams. Nothing to worry about, we're working closely with our partners at ED to make sure the rollout is smooth. We're very cognizant of the fact that first impressions are everything- and while perfection is completely unattainable in an EA release, we want to try and minimize the risk for any large last minute issues causing grief, hence the caginess. Hope that helps clarify a little. Our BPMs are at a constant 200 and will be until launch day.

We have an internal target set that we communicated to ED, but we were not prepared to make any public statements until we pass our internal QA and evaluations. Once we do so, you'll see the date communicated loud and clear. :)

If you don't enjoy the content - don't watch it. We can either be silent and get reamed for being silent, or share and get reamed for showing too much. For every oversaturated hardcore DCS fan - there are thousands of unaware casual flight simulation/ace combat/war thunder/et al. fans that have no clue about our F-14 coming out. Reaching that demographic is important to recoup 4 years of development costs. FYI: Every single CC we've pulled in has had access to our WiP manuals and direct access to almost every single developer to ask questions. They've also done multicrew/MP/RIO sessions multiple times and used the AWG-9. We're just asking them to not show it yet because every little error or issue gets nitpicked into oblivion if we do.

Thanks a ton Flappie! Mindblowing work. You rock. :)

Yes, that is a DCS issue/limitation at present. Hopefully we can fix this in short order, it is logged and tracked.

I'll keep this weeks update short and simple.

We don't (intentionally) ignore anyone. Aleksander will get to your request ASAP and process it.

:) Need to change it for the -B though! Forgot to do that when we did the A -> B cockpit rework.

Hi Everyone, Just wanted to give you all a bit of a quick rundown on where we are and what we’re working on. This update will be rather short and sweet despite my previous desire to make it more meaty. This is mostly because there really isn’t that much to say and the exhaustion is setting in after a really long week. The past couple of weeks we’ve been focused on completing the items outlined in the OP, plus some additional items that the extra time has allowed us to squeeze in. Some of the items we’ve been working on include: LANTIRN completion. Our LANTIRN integration will be very complete on day one of early access, instead of having large gaps in functionality. This system has been very complex and has taken us a lot of time to implement, but will make the F-14 a much more potent strike platform on day one. JESTER improvements across the board - we’ve been adding new functionality to jester, such as injury and incapacitation states, improving various callout functionality and more. If we are able, we hope to add some initial JESTER functionality for controlling LANTIRN before EA, but this may not be possible. Completion of the RIO cockpit integration. We’re now integrating the last of the RIO cockpit components together in our main development branch. This is one of the last steps before we’re “done” and build our first release candidate. Buuuugfiixeeees! Opening the Tomcat up to more content creators and drawing in a few more testers has yielded some great feedback and swelled our internal issue tracker. SMEs continue to weigh in on every aspect of the aircraft which continuously helps us refine our systems and FM modeling. Manuals, training missions, etc. It’s still unclear of how much content we will launch with; but we’re trying to squeeze in as much as possible on day 1. All of the above is pretty ambiguous, and not really new - but at this stage of product development, focus and effort is a little all over the place. Add some sound for that thing, fix that thing, animate that, implement that - while continuing work on existing functionality and the core pillars of the product. Most importantly, next week we will set our sights on a specific release window internally. Once we are confident and the date is set in stone, we will share and fuel up the hypetrain (because we totally need that, am I right!? :D ) More than anything, we’re looking forward to stopping your suffering and finally releasing. This will give us a chance to breathe (and live!) a little while we set out on our EA to Release roadmap. In summary; we’re at the height of our release push now and we’re working literally night and day. Release candidate 1 is just around the corner. We know it’s been a long wait- so thanks for sticking with us. Hope that sheds some light on where we stand, even if it’s (unfortunately) nothing concrete just yet. Nick

Nothing has changed - I'm planning to put together a post this evening. (hopefully with a new video - time permitting!) We're still in 'next week' :)

Thank you for having us!

That's just not standard operating procedure anywhere in the gaming industry. We've reached a lot of people who are completely unaware of DCS or DCS F-14 with our marketing roadmap. The downside to that is that those already in the know don't enjoy that as much.

Dogfights galore! Tune in :)

We asked content creators to hold off for a bit because people thought it was too much and we had a couple of videos lined up and wanted some breathing room for them. Unfortunately we got caught up in a few development items which delayed them and thus a bit of a gap has appeared. There really are no ulterior motives beyond that. Also, these guys spend a lot of time making each video. It's not a one click process :)

I understand your disappointment, but it's directly at odds with how development works (at least for us). It's not a zero sum game. :) Well, e.g.: LANTIRN went from being planned as barebones at EA to basically complete. JESTER might be able to operate LANTIRN (not sure on this one yet) New JESTER stuff (G incapacitation, injuries, more variation, more polish, bugfixing) De-weathering some stuff that was too extreme More custom foley soundwork ..etc The point is, we're using the additional time to add more stuff, fix more bugs, polish more things. That doesn't mean it will be perfect (far from it!), it simply means that we can squeeze more things in that we wouldn't have managed if we launched on Dec 21st, or whatever date. It's still EA - just shades of EA. You really really shouldn't expect that. Sorry. It's early access- there will be bugs. If we had marketed the F-14 as a non-EA release, then that would be reasonable. I'm not a fan of hiding behind the EA title - and I think we approach EA a little differently than the market does these days, but please keep your expectations in check considering it is EA. If we launch Mar 20th and will be crunching every day until then, it's only driven by our desire to make it as good as we can until launch day. The harder we work, the better it is. I'm not sure how to describe the sheer panic of launching something that is judged by thousands of people. It's not a nice feeling.

The normalmaps are different from the PBR overhaul (that will make the metal more.. metally :) ) The normalmaps dictate how the surface appears under lighting (bumps, crevices, etc. - "3D" effect, if you will). Those are implemented for sure :) PBR overhaul is part of RC1!

It's going to be cold.. gray, and it's going to last you the rest of your life. Believe it.

Because we're committed to quality (as clichéd as that now sounds) and making release decisions based on non-date factors. Our thinking is dynamic. If we have an allowance until March 20th, and we feel that we can do thing X that will have a more positive impact versus releasing earlier, we do that - despite it costing us goodwill and revenue (and development costs!) As long as, of course, that doesn't put us beyond Mar 20th. Hope that sort of makes sense, it's a little hard to explain. Beyond that, there's of course been bumps in the road - things that need revision. Rust needing removal (!) :)

Sorry for the misunderstanding! :( Hope you enjoy it sometime in the next 60d!

It does! :D Thank you!

Stickied a great group of people!

I tend to avoid jumping into stuff like this; We've said major feature complete. It's still early access, things will still be missing, and there will always be bugs. Even if we spent another 5 years polishing. Apologies if you misunderstood what we meant. We try to be as straightforward as possible to avoid disappointment. We never said they'll be available on day 0 of EA. The Tomcat will include two campaigns. We've definitely not "gone dark". We've released (ourselves and through our partners) 3+ hours of footage in the last couple of months. ..This thread turned out to be decidedly less fun than I had hoped. :D

Normalmaps shipped a long time ago.

No, not really. We just look at what feels interesting and immersive. If we went full realism; you wouldn't hear switches, or much rattling, or the engine whine - or frankly almost anything sans the ECS in the Tomcat. :)