Cobra847

Great scott!

I think we've decided to include these. Will have to check in with the team on these.

Yes, -B first and a few months later the -A.

There is nothing to indicate currently apart from; we're working on it, and there is plenty of work still to be done before we go gold. Not sure on exact timeframe for the next development update yet either. We announced LANTIRN on 19th of February, FWIW :)

This is because the PBR adjusted lighting got merged into 1.5.8. Not sure how to deal with this yet if there is to be no more 1.5.8 patches.

Fixed for 2.5 patch since last week

The reason that this was put on the backburner was due to the lightning quick user mod that was put up. I know it's not ideal, but we felt that focusing on resolving core issues was a better priority. Will focus on getting this done in Q1.

We're working on this. It's not completely solved yet, but progress is being made.

We consider 1.5 deprecated at this point and will not be supporting that branch anymore.

The issue is that we did not expect a 1.5 patch at all prior to 2.5. What has happened is that a lift bug (that is fixed for the upcoming 2.5 release) has thus managed to make it's way into the latest 1.5 patch. We need to think about how to solve this (if at all) considering that 1.5 is now deprecated and we will not be supporting that branch anymore. Obviously leaving the Viggen broken if many people will continue to use that branch is less than ideal, however.

Yes, it is, and it was sort of a "design by necessity" sort of thing IIRC (it's been a while). The other issues need to be looked at and also whether this feature needs improvement.

You betcha!

When we developed the Viggen we actually developed a simple transponder based IFF challenge/reply system. The issue is that it's.. well, useless in the context of DCS because the only aircraft equipped with this level of detail would be the Viggen. I believe we deactivated the code and the IFF panel buttons work but do not do anything.

Yes, in many ways we're actually making really good time on certain features (in particular the entire rebuild of the aircraft's visual assets). This is largely due to the massive increase of Tomcat assigned artist staff to rebuild the jet once we returned from our research trip in April. We expected this expansion to be enough to meet our end of year estimates and deadlines, but unfortunately ramp up time was significantly longer than initially expected (For example, we realized we were woefully unprepared for such a large amount of data processing. We've been spending plenty of money paying for Amazon AWS this year, that much I can tell you. :) )

I'll be a bit more blunt then :) We haven't discussed release with Eagle Dynamics because we do not have a release candidate build of the F-14 ready yet. When we do, only then will the "Does the F-18 impact the F-14's release date" question become relevant, if at all. (Depending on when we consider ourselves ready to release) Thus, don't worry about the Hornet. The only blockade to the Tomcat's release at present are our own quality standards and incomplete development status.

Where's the Viggen option?

Our only concern currently is to bring the Tomcat to a level where we're proud of it and would feel no shame in releasing it to the public. I'm sure that once we're ready to go live, we'll be discussing appropriate spacings to other releases with Eagle Dynamics. I'm also sure that they will meet us with professionalism and work with us to make sure both aircraft get smooth rollouts. I'd like to reiterate that we hope to make the Tomcat a very solid, robust and complete launch, with as little missing features as possible. We're also breaking a lot of new ground (in all departments) with the F-14, so it's important that we get it right. It's honestly not long now until both the F-18 and the F-14 take to the sky together in DCS. Focus on that for now! 2018 is going to be awesome!

Indeed. :)

Yes, of course. :) Features wise, the list is growing very slim. :)

It's not really, or- rather, it's the unique way in which DCS replays are run, and we didn't think of this when making design decisions during the Viggen's development. DCS replays are essentially "re-run" simulations, with the exact same inputs being made at exact timestamps. If the code being run does not behave in the exact same way in both instances, they will begin to diverge and issues appear. Obviously random number generation in code can be a big culprit. That is what Ragnar has been working on correcting.

The aircraft itself is very much close to complete at this point. If you're expecting any major changes in the Viggen itself, then I'm afraid you'll come away very disappointed. This is directly at odds with our roadmap: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=199206

This is not included because the latest Viggen changes were not pulled for the current 2.2 patch. Sorry!

Perhaps we need to take into account I/O performance in our ground radar implementation in order to alleviate this problem for the future.

There is probably some sort of raycaster reading issue going on (i.e. checking surface type or similar). We're trying to reproduce a fix.

This is probably fixed in the latest 2.2 (and if not, the latest dev build pending for next patch!)