R0NiN

I know this topic is old as dirt, but my $.02 if ED is really going to do an Afghanistan map... 1. Balkans- to include maybe N. Greece, and some of Italy for Blue land bases. This would be cool to do some historical Balkans conflict missions. 2. Korean Peninsula- historical Korean War battles, but also some neat future scenarios like DPRK crossing the 38th Parallel. 3. Obligatory request for Vietnam.

"Hello valued viewers, today we're going to shoot down some Migs with our M4s in the cockpit of our F-14 Tomcat."

Mine is crashing too. It could be that I have an older PC (replacement is in the works, once I have a little more money to build a new one with a modern chipset), with a GTX 1060, but got loaded in, started up, and then when I went to take off- boom! CTD.

Looking at their #Announcements channel proves that for the last 6 months it's basically been a repository for their Screenshot of the Week- which the last post there was 5/10. No update announcements, and no real "learning the platform" needed to discover that. There is no need to be salty, people are genuinely frustrated at the fact that there has been little to no word on how things are really going, outside of my point that I'll address below. THIS! I'm growing tired of people jumping in to excuse the lack of any real tangible news or progress with "They're pretty active on their Discord." Yes, they are, and I've seen many of them respond to questions and comments, but again, as I stated before, with a complete absence of any news or progress updates in their announcement channel, finding out how the project is going is damn near impossible to do on Discord absent being in the right channel, at the right time, or scrolling endlessly, to which I don't really have the time nor patience for. Sabre makes a good point. It would be incredibly helpful for those within the community to post to the forum what they've personally gained from those conversations if PC isn't going to. Just my thoughts. I agree 100% with this. Rick, you make some very good points here. I know there was that one interview with Sven and Casmo, but that was back in Dec. Since then we haven't really seen much from streams, updates, or official word on anything. After the delay announcement, Sven has been very reluctant to even openly admit if they anticipate a 2021 release. That's understandable as they did experience a pretty catastrophic setback with one of the updates, and I'm sure they did put in some work to check how it responded to the 2.7 update. But the fact remains that ED announced the Hind and anticipates EA release soon. I can't say how long they've been developing it (because I'm not terribly interested in it and haven't really follow it), and I recognize that it's EA and not final release like PC wants with the Kiowa, but from the looks of many streams towards the end of last year, it looked as if we were months away from it being finished. Now we're almost halfway through 2021 and it's seemingly like the optimism of getting this released this year is faint. I'm in agreement with everyone who is saying "look, we know you're a small team, we know you've had some setbacks due to compatibility issues with OB updates, we know you're working hard, all we really want is something, anything." I know they don't want to put deadlines out there as that sets them up for even worse criticism when those timeframes cannot be met, but even if they came out and said "we're working hard on getting this done, we are hoping for Q_ 2021" or even "We anticipate early 2022" would be more than sufficient. Just something that can easily be distributed to more than just the select people that haunt the Discord (as I am just not a big fan of that platform and would just like a quick, 10sec update- I'm not asking PC to go out of their way to draft a major press release). Hell, they have a good relationship with Sergio Costa with HeliSimmer.com, why not just shoot him a 1min message saying where things stand to put out to the community?

As I have said in another thread here, Discord is a terrible platform to get news and updates. It's a big giant chatroom that finding a specific notice, update or information is pretty difficult. I peruse it once in a while and have a really hard time finding anything that resembles an update from the PC team. Maybe if they had a closed channel with updates it would be a little better, but as is Discord is awful for getting any kind of direct news from the Devs without spending an inordinate amount of time scrolling through weeks of random conversations.

Yes, but Discord isn't exactly the easiest place to get updates and track where they are in the development process. Anyone who has spent more than 5min on there knows it's pretty much a big open chat that could potentially take hours, if not days, to find a specific reference to an update or announcement that isn't exactly placed in the announcements channel. And I can't speak for others, but myself, when I get on discord, I'm reluctant to even ask a question for fear it's been asked but is buried in weeks of conversation. Their FB page has been pretty much relegated to posting their SOTW (when they actually have one of the team get on and post (the last one at the time of this writing was on 5/10). And that's not even a good gauge (as has been previously stated) of where they are at in the development process. The most helpful information I've been able to garner in recent months (and I use recent very loosely) was when Casmo did that interview with Sven back in December. PC has almost zero presence on YouTube- which I understand, the time it takes to record, edit and publish a video to YT is time better well spent at your job, working on the module, or spent with your family. Like others have said, these guys are a small team, that have lives outside of the KW project, and I understand that. But it takes maybe 3min to jump on and give a quick update on here- that's where I'm in full understanding of the frustration as to why a lot of people are feeling like there hasn't been much in the way of chatter from PC (outside the mess that is Discord). Pretty much Fri13 hit the nail on the head. Many of us just want some kind of update- regular or not- here, where it's easy to get it, not somewhere that's a total dumpster fire like Discord. That's just my $.02.

I think it's just anticipation. We've known about the KW since what? The end of Nov 2019... we're nearing the end of April 2021 and people are just eager to get into it. Some people just don't have the patience on a comparable level to others. Like the song says "The waiting is the hardest part." I'm still excited, and when it does finally come out, it will be oh so worth it. But you're totally right, being anxious about it isn't healthy.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this opinion- but I think it would be to a great benefit for Polychop to release the KW before the AH-64 drops, otherwise, I could definitely foresee the Apache pulling all the wind out of the 58's sails and many opting to grab the latest "current" gen heli (let's face it, the UH-1H is a 40+ year old iteration, the Mi-8 and Ka-50 are, well not western aircraft, and the Gazelle is a very niche bird) and whatever drops thereafter won't have nearly as much steam to be a huge seller among the rotorwing market for DCS. I could be wrong- but among most of the more casual RW pilots not itching for a specific airframe (as I am with the KW) they'll grab what comes first (between the 64 and 58) and hold off on the next purchase for a little while. In other words, first spotted, first to shoot = first to kill (figuratively speaking).

Here's some Bo105 pron for you:

They sometimes post information (albeit not much on updates), but are pretty active on their discord.

What xvii-Dietrich said... I wish we could get some kind of update- like at least an assurance that the Bo is considered an official WIP for the team... It sure will be interesting to see a fully rigid rotor system (the Mi-8 is fully articulating, correct?) and what kind of awesome maneuverability we can see in the Bo.

Not necessarily. A lot of contractors keep options open for new potential customers, and being that they aren't a primary distributor (such as Boeing for OEM parts, materials and support) they may not have direct customer interaction from the onset of a contract with the manufacturer. Not every country operates in the same way or capacity as the US DoD.

So looking at here and on FB, it looks as if Polychop has gone radio silent for the last 3 weeks. I'm almost wondering if we're now in the home stretch and they've gotten the module to Bell QA and it's nearly there...? It would be oh so spectacular if they announce it's release before the end of Feb. Wishful thinking I know, but the quiet could be a really good thing, or a really bad thing.

This is from December, but details some of what they're willing to disclose on progress:

Casmo did an interview with Sven from Polychop back on 12/20/2020 (Here). If you don't want the full 30min video the basic rundown was that yes, they delayed from their anticipated Dec (ish) 2020 hope for release, but they had some delays that couldn't be avoided. He then went on to say that the flight model is about 95% complete, and they are still working on other things for it (keeping it very hush hush). He said they won't estimate a completion date yet, but after they do finish it still needs to go to Bell for QA (to make sure they approve of it). Once it's there that process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, it really depends on Bell. Once approved by Bell that's when Sven said they could run a final check and plan out release with ED. I would imagine that process would go very fast and by that point we should have word on a solid release date (which I would surmise would probably be about 1-2 weeks). I wouldn't anticipate any sort of progress report with any release date information until after it's done with Bell QA. They most likely won't announce anything like that until after the QA- which I would hope would come in the form of Polychop saying "The OH-58 has passed Bell QA, we anticipate a release within X timeframe."

+1 for the Pavelow model, either the H or J variant (if they could even swing it with how some of the penetrator systems are most likely classified). It's basically the American version of the Mi-8, except way better, and way cooler. The 53 would definitely make troop transport, especially behind enemy lines, much more exciting than the UH-1 (not saying I don't love the UH-1, but if they're going to have the OH-58 and AH-64, why not allow troop transport to be up-to-date as well?).

2 Days ago:

I kind of figured that. I'd be up for it if it wasn't that level of difficulty. Doesn't have to be perfect, but yeah.

Between time learning and my utter lack of artistic nature whatsoever, I'm not up to the task myself. I am loving flying the F-16 with my home state's livery (the CO ANG livery available in the user files- there's 3). They posted a few months ago, a really neat picture of their "Aggressor" livery, and I would love to have it in DCS. Are there any talented skin creators that feel up to the challenge? I've been told to do it myself, but the one time I tried to even modify a skin, I screwed it up royally. Thanks in advance.

With the flak that ED is receiving for the F-16, I can't blame Polychop one bit for going for a full release. Patience is a virtue. And a complete module is not a bad thing at all. Can't wait! I'm very excited for this to come to life.

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Could it really have been so easy? Yes, yes it was! Much thanks, friend! :thumbup:

So I just picked up the F-16C this week and have been learning it. But I just downloaded a few skins and it doesn't seem to want to load them into the game. Am I missing something? I download from user files, unzip the file, copy the folder into C:\User Files\[user]\Saved Games\DCS\Liveries\F-16C\ I load up the game, go to any various method of changing the skin of my plane, and the only one showing is the default. Am I missing something? Did I mess something up? Thanks in advance.