Cobra847

Thanks everyone! A good way to put it is that it's part of a standardization process and a long term investment. Even if we grew by 2x we'd have difficulty executing our roadmap (of which only a part is announced). A holistic approach to being able to juggle the amount of (future) balls is key to maintaining HB quality. It's a bit vague and we'll go into more detail later. Yep! We're expecting it to end up very similar to the F-14 manual.

Dear All, The Heatblur Simulations team and our wonderful partners at TrueGrit would like to wish you a successful and joyful 2023! Have a great new year, full of joy, great times and awesome sim experiences. 2023 is a big year for Heatblur, and we’re grateful that you’re along for the ride. It’s going to be a great one! We’ve just wrapped up a very tough 2022. From a personal standpoint for many of our team, with personal tragedies and the invasion of Ukraine taking its toll on us and our timelines. Despite this, we look back at 2022 with pride. We’ve seen tremendous growth in capability and size, forged new partnerships and shipped features and improvements throughout the year. While still playing catch-up; we’re right back on track on finishing the first of our next generation of high fidelity simulation experiences, starting with the F-4E Phantom II and leading towards the Eurofighter Typhoon. While we missed our mark on the F-4E Phantom for a 2022 release; we’re now very close to full completion of all major elements: flight model, radar, weapons systems, and other key major systems- and even ancillary content as another full length Meteor album! You’ve seen a sneak-peek in the 2023 and beyond video, and we can’t wait to fully unveil the aircraft that we’ve built over the past two years. For the Phantom- and all of our new products- we’ve invested heavily into building our next generation platform and framework. This enables faster future development, intrinsic multithreading, more dependable multicrew synchronization, far less of a maintenance burden, and new standardized features such as wear & tear, aircraft persistence, mass dynamics, and far more. In addition to this; we’ve also had our sights on JESTER v2, a complete rewrite of the JESTER AI system which will enable faster AI development and developer ease of use for integration in future aircraft such as the A-6. On the Eurofighter front, we continue to lay the foundations of this module through application of our next generation framework. Soon, the majority of the work will remain in high level parts: radar, weapons systems, displays and flight control systems- all leaning and benefitting from the completed next generation core. As an incredibly complex aircraft and project, the Eurofighter will be a litmus test for our team to ensure quality and accuracy while avoiding excessive technical debt. These considerations are key for a project of this scope and size, as we strive to minimize maintenance burden and excessive sustainment resources. You should expect to see much more Eurofighter development progress in 2023 as we begin to approach an early access release and feature completion level. We also look towards 2023 with continued love for the Viggen and Tomcat. We capped off the year with another major Viggen patch, and now set our sights on another round of additions to both products. We’re working hard to get on target on the early F-14A, which remains the largest piece of the F-14 yet undelivered, among of course other outstanding and promised features, such as TARPS or FORGE. Further Viggen improvements are slated for the early part of this year as we continue product sustainment. It’s time to get rid of those Early Access tags and square these aircraft away. Quality, consistency and pushing boundaries are our top priorities, and we’re as excited as ever for all that we’ve been cooking. Stay tuned for the full Phantom unveiling and for other exciting announcements with new partners and beyond. Thank you all once again for your dedicated support and passion. That’s what drives and motivates us, and we’ll make sure your faith is well placed with each upcoming release. Sincerely, Team Heatblur

The naval variants are very important to us and not a distant afterthought, FWIW. We had to start with something - in this case we felt the -E was a great representation of the Phantom to begin with. That doesn't in any way diminish the importance of the naval versions though- do keep that in mind. We don't play favourites.

Planned for January. We've remodeled the fan and you'll see more geometric detail in there, incl anims.

Hey gents, Oliver, who built the cockpit model itself posted that on his own accord and it's of course blurred as our marketing and development update materials come through our and truegrit channels. Don't see it as a slight; Olli did a great job and is very proud of his artwork and involvement as a key member of TrueGrit. Updates to come, promise.

The main reason is that the changelog can still be in flux to just before the update drops - we don't want to give you a full list or details and then yoink it away.

Very unlikely- as we plan to start work on the Navy Phantoms very quickly and this would simply end up being a distraction

Eurofighter is well underway; and the F-4 is nearing completion. Temporary silence does not imply anything regarding development.

Gents, chill out- this thread is supposed to be for constructive, scientific discussion- not discussing our development priorities or analogies. A performance tweak pass for the remaining discrepancies will be implemented, we will get to it soonest. There is no point in whether or not it will happen- as it simply will. There are more pressing concerns across our product stack that we are working on first as the scale of the Tomcat FM issues is relatively minor. This informs and drives our prioritization. Keep this thread to discussing said inconsistencies and FM discussion overall.

Frankly- I was happy to discuss technical specifics with you and try to elaborate on optimization and technical choices made during the development of the Tomcat- alas you seem to have simply made up your mind and written us off as incompetent idiots with no respect for optimization or diskspace. I'm happy to argue against any solid critique here, but the fact of the matter is that the F-14 is mastered at a very standard texel density and does not use excessive amounts of VRAM, and the amount of diskspace it uses is absolutely trivial, relatively speaking. I seemingly can't stand by this point any more clearly. You have the texel density number above, feel free to do some independent research or even ask the industry (www.polycount.com is a great resource!) if you'd like further confirmation.

Thanks everyone! Further upgrades will come and of course we'll fix the pedal bug. The patches are rather inflexible right now so later on we'll try to add variations that can be triggered (e.g. triangle patches, etc.). Pilot wise, the next step is HGU-55 and equipable eyewear (sunglasses, et al.) with movable visors. We're working on this - but we are unable to do it presently due to a lack of engine-supported IK. Once added; we'll add animations for major movements (e.g. pulling gear handle, etc.) A decade of snark later... This is the natural movement required when the throttle is at or close to idle in the F-14 and the hand is on the stick. It's low and far back in the cockpit relative to the pilot. The body would likely twist slightly to straight on when firewalling the throttle, but this is not possible to add due to a lack of IK (the stick hand would float off the stick if throttle based twist was added).

This is a woefully imprecise way to measure texel density and, further, comparing to an older module built to an older density standard makes no sense either. Are we obliged to buy you a GPU to run the game too?

What, precisely, do you want? You seem to be arguing for having different liveries and not having different liveries at the same time.

The F-14's textures are not unreasonably heavy @XCNuse, you have repeated this assertion a fair bit in this thread without a proper understanding of your argument. It's simply untrue. Just remeasured now to refresh my own memory- it's pegged (on average) at 480 px/m for the exterior. This is less than a typical hero vehicle standard of 512 px/m in AAA games on console. We pick our resource usage very carefully. I can't recall the amount of hours I've spent planning and optimizing the F-14- but it's a lot. You're welcome to dump the F-14 cockpit into wireframe view and see how we've even stripped some triangles to avoid long and thin faces (super slow on the GPU). Every texture is sorted rather meticilously compression wise and we maintain relatively average industry average texel densities across the board. The main reason you are seeing significantly heavier total texture usage in the F-14 is because it's simply bigger. The total surface area to cover with textures in the F-14 is far far bigger than the F-16. It's a completely silly comparison. In the near future, some of the liveries that ship custom normals will be reduced in size as some liveries added custom normals for various fixes or special considerations. Because even the most expensive NVME m.2 SSD storage costs you 0.2c per GB, so at most we're "wasting" $2.4 worth of diskspace. Happy to continue discussing the technical specifics for any concerns you may have.

Fair and valid critique and much appreciated from you both! Apologies for the short message but currently unable to reply at length.

Sorry for the late notice on this- 2.8 has been a very difficult patch cycle and was a huge iceberg in terms of making both modules compatible. We unfortunately had to split the two patches apart because of this and decided to prioritize the F-14. We endeavour instead to ship Viggen additions and changes in the follow-up patch in November, while tomorrow's update simply updates the Viggen to be compatible with 2.8. This is disappointing, but we're not superhuman and can only do so much with these unforeseen roadblocks. Shipping only a maintenance update for the initial release of 2.8 is rather bitter for us as well, but we simply had to focus away the game breaking issues. For that I do apologize. We are pressing and trying as hard as we can on all fronts and trying to navigate this year as best as we can considering circumstances. There are some major issues, e.g. with damage modeling that are impacting gameplay and we are aware of how annoying they are and how they impact the grander simulation, and I am trying to puzzle together our planning to ensure the Viggen is not the runt of the litter.

Dear All, Another major F-14 update is about to drop! One of the biggest features we’ve developed since launch for the F-14 is coming with today’s patch; namely expanding and extending our radar simulation to encompass Jamming and associated EW effects and their impact on the AWG-9- but we’re also shipping more features such as new JESTER functionality for mission editors and the in-cockpit VR pilot with this patch. Lets kick things off with a deep-dive into the biggest feature to drop, namely Jamming and Jammer Tracking for the AWG-9 NEW FEATURE: Jammer Effects, Detection & Tracking in the AWG-9 This new feature will now enable accurate effects on the DDD and TID for jamming, tracking jamming targets and guiding missiles on these targets, as well as any associated ancillary effects that we feel make sense to model in the DCS environment. Here’s a breakdown of some of the things you should expect: In summary, noise jammers prevent the AWG-9 radar from ascertaining (and therefore displaying) range or range-rate information on a target, until burn-through is achieved (when the radar return signal is sufficiently strong to overcome the received jamming noise). The AWG-9 has several features which allow the aircraft to still be effective against such threats, which we can detail further below; The DDD will show noise returns over the range axis at the azimuth of a jammer in pulse search mode, which looks something like this: In Pulse Doppler modes, the DDD shows a jamming intensity trace overlaid on the lower one-third of the display. This is essentially a graph of received wideband power vs. azimuth, and thus also shows smaller normal radar returns. Where a noise exceeds a predetermined threshold, a JET (Jam Exceeds Threshold) vertical strobe is also displayed on the DDD at the jammer azimuth. Note that due to what we feel are justifiable DCS limitations in jamming fidelity, the JET (Jam Exceeds Threshold) settable knob is not implemented at present. Here’s what this kind of intensity trace can look like on the DDD: Jammers will show up with a jamming strobe (straight line in the direction of the detected jamming signal) on the TID in TWS and RWS modes, these can be toggled with the Jam Strobe button beneath the TID. If range/range-rate is not available for the jammer (beyond burn through), an angle symbol (<) is displayed on the strobe at 50NM from your aircraft. The jam strobes are also shared over Link-4C fighter-to-fighter datalink, allowing for eyeballed triangulation of actual jammer position, an example of which looks like this: The TID angle symbol is hookable, to allow the RIO to try to get an STT lock via the PD-STT or P-STT buttons. The HCU radar cursor can also be used in the normal fashion on the DDD to try to acquire jamming targets in PD search or P search. We’ve extended JESTER functionality to also allow him to lock jammers ahead. Practically speaking, when a jammer is locked in any of these scenarios, it leads to a special STT submode named Jam Angle Track (JAT). In JAT, the range/range-rate of the jammer is unknown, but the angles are known and can be tracked as such. Instead of the RDROT (Radar On Target) light above the DDD, the JAT light is displayed in this case. On the TID, the angle symbol (<) is displayed along the jam strobe at 1 inch from own aircraft position in STT-JAT modes. When burn-through is achieved, the angle symbol will disappear and be replaced with the normal target symbol at the correct position. Conversely, if an STT target starts jamming (and is beyond burn-through), it will automatically transition to STT-JAT submode. In STT-JAT sub-modes, both AIM-7 and AIM-54 can be employed in Home On Jam (HOJ) modes. Since range is unknown, lofting is disabled, and the missile guidance is similarly limited to only using angle information to intercept the target. HOJ launches are therefore limited compared to normal STT launches, but in the end, better than nothing. With this update, we hope to take another large step forward in our simulation of the AWG-9 radar and associated systems, and bring us far closer to a fully realised picture of what utilising and operating this radar system was like in a live combat environment. The effects described above and the associated functionality in the AWG-9 will have to be accounted for by all RIOs and JESTER, and significant changes in how you approach various situations may be required. We’re proud of our work on simulating this aspect of the AWG-9 and greatly hope you will enjoy flying and fighting not only enemy bandits but also their emissions. New & Expanded Feature: JESTER Custom Commands We love supporting all the wonderful and talented mission and campaign-builders out there in the community. One of the great things about multi-crewed aircraft is that it can bring a sense of immersion that single-seat aircraft can’t- and JESTER is a big part of that for the F-14. Over the past few months, we’ve invested significant time in extending JESTER’s functionality but also giving mission makers deep hooks into JESTER to enable you to control the RIO at a granular level and make this a key part of your narrative toolset. Succinctly, we’ve added a large number of commands which let JESTER perform actions on his own, at the behest of the mission designer, without the player’s input, which can help drive a scripted narrative or create the illusion of him being an autonomous RIO who both thinks and acts on his own in the context of pre-planned situations. These set commands can be triggered in the mission editor as actions, following the entire range of conditions provided to the mission creator in DCS, from unit inside zone, to flags being true, etc. The first major addition to these were the LANTIRN set commands, which we demonstrated in the mission “Training Day” - they let JESTER scan zones, track targets, designate and undesignate whatever is in the crosshairs, and thus help create the impression of the RIO pro-actively searching an area and fulfilling his mission to locate, track and engage a target. Additionally we gave mission creators the ability to make him go silent or talkative again, so that mission-based voice acting does not cross over with the normal JESTER comments that are situation-based and can conflict with scripted dialogue at any given time. We’ve also added the ability to make JESTER change channel presets for the AN/ARC-182, tune TACAN channels on his own, change steerpoints, create steer points from coordinates belonging to a trigger zone, to set the WCS to on, off or standby, manipulate the TID range knob, perform an RWR test and even have him eject on the command of the mission creator. With this latest update, we are introducing even more set commands to further the mission creator’s abilities. He will now be able to select weapon stations, set the weapon selector wheel to a preselect and desired weapon for air to ground missions, set ripple quantity and interval as well as all additional delivery modes, he can set attack modes like computer target, computer pilot and manual. Furthermore he can now manipulate the radar scan zone in elevation and azimuth, he can STT a specified target (and break lock again), and also perform a missile launch if the mission creator so desires. To give you some insight into a “on the ground” usage of these tools; here’s what the wonderful Reflected had to say about using this new functionality in the upcoming “Speed & Angels” campaign! To guide you through using these tools, here’s a tutorial video from Reflected himself running you through how to use these tools in your missions. We greatly hope you’ll enjoy using these new JESTER tools to craft immersive, guided and curated experiences for the Tomcat. Check out the full list of commands here: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/311033-jester-set-commands-full-list/ New Feature: In-Cockpit Pilot Last but not least; we’re finally implementing in-cockpit pilot bodies for both the Pilot and RIO positions. These new pilot models were sculpted for the purpose of not only serving as cockpit bodies, but will eventually replace the current lower detail bodies in exterior view and in the cockpit for the other crewmember. This will however be added at a later date. We’ll be adding more customization functionality as we go. null The non-exhaustive changelog for the F-14 in 2.8 looks as follows: DCS: F-14 Tomcat by Heatblur Simulations NEW: Introduced Pilot and RIO body for front and back cockpit. NEW: Added jammer detection and tracking functionality in the AWG-9, which adds amongst other features: Noise jammers will now prevent AWG-9 from ascertaining range or range-rate from a target. DDD will show noise returns over the range axis at jammer azimuth in pulse search. DDD will show jamming intensity trace overlay in pulse doppler modes. TID will display jamming strobe in TWS and RWS modes. TID jamming strobe can be toggled via Jam Strobe button below TID. Jam strobes can be shared over Link-4C fighter to fighter datalink, allowing for eyeballed triangulation of actual jammer position. TID angle symbol is hookable. PSTT or PDSTT on jamming target leads JAT (Jam Angle Track). STT-ed target transitioning to jamming outside of burnthrough automatically switches to JAT submode. In STT-JAT submodes both AIM-7 and AIM-54 can employed in HOJ (home on jam). Added jamming targets to JESTER STT options. NEW: Added new list of set commands for JESTER to be used in the Mission Editor. 10017 to 10033 are new. For a full list visit this post here. Reverted AIM-54 loft to state before looping hotfix to revert exceptionally poor performance (by ED). Fixed forward rendering for canopy sealant - will now not appear shadowed at odd angles anymore. Screens and other glass surfaces will now reflect sunlight again. Added non-gfx external args to check the status of JESTER tracking air targets (to be used with scripts): 1026: tracked predefined target; 0.01 - 0.99, same as command 10024; 0.0 - no predefined target tracked. 1027: range to predefined target (only when tracking); 0.xxx - three digits of distance to tracked predefined target in NM. Potential fix for mission freeze including F-14 AI. Made LANTIRN available as laser designator for the AI. Fixed ALT HOLD not working >36k AGL. Fixed flashbang-like sun glare on internal canopy glass. Fixed MiG-23s not taking off in PG Flogger Faceoff Mission. Adjusted all Quickstart BVR missions for new AIM-54s. Removed instances of “color” shader in cockpit due to deprecation Minor cockpit optimizations - fixed some visibility arguments not triggering LoD changes Thank you all for your support. We hope you’ll enjoy this update to the F-14 in 2.8; and we look forward to sharing more on the F-4, Eurofighter, Viggen and others very soon! Sincerely, Team Heatblur

Dear All, Apologies for the late notice on this; with our intense pace currently, we’re quieter than usual and time has flown since the AIM-54 update. Today’s patch does not include any changes for the Viggen or F-14. Recently, lead times changed significantly for DCS patches, and while we managed to ship our large Phoenix overhaul last update, there was only a very very small gap to contribute to this patch and so we focused on shipping a larger update for the F-14 and Viggen in the October patch. Major features which will release will be, amongst others, the new cockpit pilot bodies, Viggen art updates, a new free campaign for the F-14A, and the new full implementation of jamming and associated EW effects in the AWG-9 radar. We'll also be updating the Forrestals with various improvements and adjustments. We’ll do an in-depth dive on the last part soon to give you all an idea of what to expect, as with the AIM-54 as it’s a rather large update to the F-14’s radar and another massive step towards full completion. Thank you for all the support and stay tuned for the breakdown on the EW/Jamming effects! Sincerely, HB null

Gents, Appreciate the passion and discussion and thank you for the great feedback. A couple of notes and we won't really comment more in-depth on two topics: re the nozzle exit area: We are aware of this not being "correctly" set and this was (at least for now) intentional per the steps we took during development. We're revisiting this topic, but as of yet it's unclear whether this will change. Without delving into specifics, it's not as easy as setting it to the correct real nozzle exit area without more due diligence. Re guidance- we hope to make further improvements in this area, however it requires the help of our partners and moving the missile to the new schema. We'll be driving this topic forwards as quickly as possible. Guidance can have significant effects on kinematics, and over the years both guidance and our subsequent kinematics have changed. Right now, we've chosen to make a missile that is as close as possible aerodynamically - even if guidance isn't perfect yet. This to leave ourselves with the correct foundation for any improvements that should come from guidance, not aerodynamics, possibly at the cost of lessened performance for a time. Thanks again for all the wonderful discussion and feedback!

Dear all, As part of this patch, we are very happy to conclude a major overhaul of the AIM-54 Phoenix! This effort is intended to bring you significant improvements in realism based on new analysis and insights into the AIM-54, further enhancing realism and more accurately depicting air-to-air combat of this era. Regrettably, our journey with the Phoenix is somewhat long, owing to the difficulty of simulating even older ordnance. In the end, our goal has, and always will continue to be, to achieve a greater level of realism across all facets of our simulation, even at the cost of some inconsistency over time, investment and time. We are not afraid to take a step back, further analyze and improve upon our work to bring all of us, and you, one step closer to the ultimate simulation of the F-14 and its trademark Phoenix. Over the course of this overhaul we gained many new insights and new knowledge, through new documentation and SMEs, that has increased our understanding of the AIM-54 missile, ultimately helping us to improve the simulation of this iconic weapon. It is a continued journey of discovery and learning, and we appreciate you all being a huge part of it and helping us to expand our knowledge and insights through your outstanding and unwavering feedback. Thank you! With this update, we believe that we’ve reached a point, where both -A and -C variants are depicted as close to real life as is possible with the current API/schema. Any further updates to guidance and features will have to come as part of a renewed effort to fill any remaining gaps that may remain. On a general performance note, we’ve very thoroughly tested these changes, and have recreated all known test shots from 1972 and 1973 (with the -A) as part of our verification process. Every missile has strengths and weaknesses, and particularly with older missiles, one has to play to its strengths to not only make it work, but make it work consistently. In that sense- we will be very much looking forward to your feedback and results. We truly hope you enjoy the changes, both as F-14 drivers and otherwise, further detailed below: Motors Upon further in-depth investigation and consultations with SMEs, both the MK-60 and MK-47 motors were found to have somewhat incorrect performance. Of particular note is that with newly found data we’ve concluded that the MK-60 motor performance was too high, and this motor now more closely aligns with the other motors. Thusly, we’ve adjusted motor performance to levels which now more closely reflect real life performance as follows: MK-47 Mod 0: Reduced Impulse: burn time is the same but thrust is reduced. MK-60: Reduced impulse significantly: thrust is the same, but burn time is reduced to 20.6 seconds. MK-47 Mod 1 (originally the C motor): Impulse has been reduced to be the same as the MK-47 Mod 0, however this motor produces a reduced level of smoke. The MK-60 motor has been made available for the AIM-54C. Guidance As many of you have noticed, we’ve been working on guidance for the AIM-54 for the past several months- continuously improving tracking and terminal performance. In this update, we’ve continued this general guidance work, and all missiles have seen their proportional gain increased, yielding better terminal performance. Primarily as part of this overhaul however, we’ve made significant changes to both the -A and -C specific guidance models, which now gives a greater depth of simulation of both missiles, as well as differentiating appropriately. Specifically: AIM-54A The -A model of the AIM-54 is rather old, and unfortunately not very smart. This will now be more accurately reflected in the missile’s behaviour and how it guides on targets. Reflecting the lack of internal guidance, the AIM-54A will now only track when the target is actively illuminated by the radar. This means the missile will only guide periodically in Track While Scan (TWS) mode. The guidance updates can be observed when viewing the missile in external view. Single Target Track (STT) will still illuminate the target constantly and as such the missile will guide the entire time. We’ve also reduced the chaff resistance of the -A to a level that we believe is more appropriate. Overall, the AIM-54A guidance will more accurately reflect being a product of its time and being limited in processing power. Note the periodic guidance updates of the AIM-54A AIM-54C In stark contrast, the -C is a smart cookie and we’ve now been able to implement some additional features to reflect this. Importantly, the missile will now go active on its own. This is important as previously the -C had to receive a command from the aircraft, limiting its capability somewhat in situations where the shooting aircraft had to turn away. We’ve also reduced the chaff susceptibility of the AIM-54C, and added a MK-60 equipped -C variant due to motor interchangeability. One remaining small limitation is that in STT, the missile will erroneously go active on your target (it should remain semi-active all the way to target). This is unfortunately a limitation of the API at this time. We endeavour to model this behaviour properly in the future. Overall, we hope that you will enjoy this update and are greatly looking forward to your input and feedback. We believe we’re now one step closer to the ultimate F-14 simulation, and we’ll be continuing our efforts to get ever closer as we continue our journey out of EA. The full changelog of the update is as follows: DCS: F-14 Tomcat by Heatblur Simulations AIM-54 Overhaul, Part 2: Increased PN gain for all variants. AIM-54A will now only update guidance when the target is illuminated (you will see the missle periodically update). Corrected motor impulse (reduced MK47 a bit and the MK60 significantly). Reduced MK-60 burn time from 30 to 20 seconds. Both motors have the same total impulse now. The MK60 has a slight advantage during motor burn time, while the MK47 has an advantage in burn time. With increasing altitude the difference becomes smaller. MK47 Mod 1 has now the same thrust/impulse and burn time as the Mod 0, but with reduced smoke (was previously weaker than the Mod 0). AIM-54C should go active by default (even when losing lock from STT). Increased AIM-54C chaff resistance. Reduced AIM-54A chaff resistance. Added option for AIM-54C with MK-60 motor. Adjusted AIM-54 missile empty mass. Adjusted MK-60 motor propellant mass. Set the JESTER option for automatic PDSTT -> PSTT to disabled by default. Fixed several issues with damaged avionics and flight systems (including jammed flaps for example) not allowing a repair to be triggered. Potential fix for CTD with F-14 AI (was not applied correctly in the last patch). Fixed emergency sweep logic: Fixed commanded wing sweep position being saved over to a new aircraft spawn. Fixed emergency wing sweep handle moving to spider detent on new aircraft spawn. Fixed wing sweep indicator commanded position bit mismatching with the actual indicated position. Fixed emergency sweep handle able to be moved between 68° and 75°, after being stowed at 75°. Now it has to be lifted to move it again after it has been stowed. Fixed wing sweep indicator raising EMER / OVER flags when wings get swept past 67 degrees. Fixed turn indicator needle deflection rate. Fixed mach buffet not dying off beyond M 1.3. Fixed an issue with the AWG-9 track logic to avoid tracks being thrown by aircraft launching air to air missiles. Fixed LANDING CHK light remaining illuminated after touchdown. Fixed Manual Throttle not unlocking after disengaging the Autothrottle. Fixed all mission versions of “Watching the Devil Dog” not being able to be completed successfully. Fixed VF-31 AE-200 and AE-205 1991 by Mach3DS - thank you. Fixed VF-14 AB-100 and AB-103 1796 by VFlip - thank you. Added Top Gun 114 by LanceCriminal86 - replaces previous Top Gun livery. Thank you. Updated Rogue Nation by YaeSakura - thank you. Thank you! Sincerely, HB

We've certainly had a series of exceptionally unfortunate series of adverse events this year. Right now we're just standing on the gaspedal as much as possible. It is worth noting that our engineering team is steaming full-speed ahead without issue, and having grown the team to 8 full-time engineers over the past year has added a level of capability that we have never enjoyed before. This will be paying off dividends across our products, in both speed and level of support as well as development time, and it has also helped to soften the blow of recent events. Thanks for your patience and support! It means a lot. You should all remain very confident that you will hear from us later this year.

@Gypsy 1-1 It's hard to further engage beyond restating our commitment to continued development, improvements and sustainment- on all fronts and in an appropriate way, as I can't do more than list all of the major improvements and additions we've shipped in the past 7 months alone. We'll continue executing best we can, in our order of priorities even though you may disagree with what comes first. If you wish to apply those feelings to supporting us on the F-4E then that is respectable but hopefully our execution will have been appropriate by then to make you feel more comfortable. Just as an aside, the irony of some of this is that many of the features you're listing are not promised features at release and are features completely out of scope and added post-launch. The Viggen PBR overhaul is a great example of a feature that wasn't even in DCS on launch and is now a cornerstone of our EA exit. Nature of DCS and if I had a dollar for the amount of night lighting overhauls I've had to do

Indeed! Thanks for putting it so concisely, my posts are (a way too long way) of trying to convey that we feel the same. That said and in the context of this, the F-14 and Viggen both absolutely need to be in a better state and level of (promised feature) completion before we release the Phantom and our development goals revolve around achieving this.

Yep! You can though IIRC it's ridiculously long hence why no-one might have experienced it yet. I'd like the oxy gauge to be back for the May patch with a number of other F-14 additions/improvements. Will update you all on it.

Also; if I may indulge for a moment- interestingly there are some features that are straight up shared between F-4 development and F-14. A great example is the synthetic tone generation for the ALR-45 (Early F-14A). This is of course great as we're working on it for the F-14 but sort of means we're developing the F-4 at the same time. Conversely, there are things we're developing for the F-4 that are unannounced that will make their way back into the F-14 (Jester v2, anyone? ). It's not a zero-sum game, thankfully. Long term, we think of our products more as living platforms (sort of like DCS) which benefit from "platform improvements" down the line (e.g. some future aircraft tech being useful for earlier releases). We haven't fully realized this vision with the Viggen and F-14 yet though, since they're quite different, but it will become a bigger element in the future. Even something as small as us developing ways to better render curved displays is going to make it's way into the F-14 from the F-4. RE the Iranian F-14A (because I realized I didn't actually answer the question in this thread at all!) We will be doing something feature-wise for the Iranian F-14A. Likely we'll be doing the pod + lack of fuel pylons + other minor changes to make it more authentic + hopefully some ancillary elements like the older pilot equipment. When we get the -135 Early out and get closer on this we'll make a more detailed list. Sorry for the wait, we just want to get the early -A out before we nail down the above.