Rick50 Posted April 2, 2021 Posted April 2, 2021 (edited) Actually, let's look a little deeper into the Hornet's development timeline. We are in spring of 2021, the Hornet isn't "finished" as in it's still Early Access. Near as I can tell, it was released to us in Early Access in May 2018. Quote DCS: F/A-18C Hornet will be released to the DCS World 2.5 Open Beta next week, May 30th! That's about 3 years of Early Access, so far. Also notice in the video, that by May 2018, Hornet had ALREADY been in development for "several years of very hard work". I looked up the definition of "several" and got different answers, but seems to mean 3 or more. This would seem to suggest that Wags might have been meaning the Hornet was started roughly maybe in about 2015. I don't know if that means data collection started to gain a knowledge database of the aircraft to be modeled, or if he means a high def model and flight characteristics were starting to be created that year. And please, do NOT bug Wags about this, I'm very sure he's got a lot on his plate, doesn't need any more agravation from us customers! But, BEFORE early access, it was in development for years, and I don't know how far back. This video Wags made, introduced us to the Hornet "Pre-Alpha", which although it was a very early state, still likely had quite a bit of development to even reach the stage shown in the vid. Please note that the video was uploaded to youtube on Jun 17, 2017 : So what's my point? That ED seemed to have roughly started developing the Hornet sometime in 2015, and while truly amazing results have been achieved in April 2021, they STILL have not declared it "finished"! This is not a criticism in ANY way of ED or their results, rather I mean to illustrate just how much incredible efforts, time blood sweat and tears have been expended to bring us ONE SINGLE ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT that we buy for the same price as a retail budget joystick. Think about that. We buy WARTHOGS and Virplis for many hundreds of dollars, with screens or VR for hundreds or thousands of dollars, with vid cards and pc's that total in the thousands, to run a Hornet module we bought on a 25% off sale, for about half or less, than what you'd pay for a budget concious T.16000M stick. Not the whole HOTAS, just the stick. Ask yourself: what took more development time and effort, investment and frustrations, a decent joystick, or the Hornet module's creation into the work of art that it is today?! My second point is that, this is how long it's taken ED to get near the finish line for the Hornet, with all it's electronics systems, it's mountains of ordnance loadout options and make all those work realistically. As far as I know, I believe the Beagle / Mudhen to be similarly complex in real life, considering it too is a multi-role aircraft with lots of ordnance options, both aircraft in real were made by McDonald Douglas, in similar development years. Different but similar. Sooo... how long, and how much effort will be required of Razbam to get the "E" from a pretty 3d model screenshots, to finishing Early Access and happy customers with few/no bug reports about the product? Keeping in mind that it's not clear if Razbam is at an advantage or disadvantage in terms of it's people's skills, knowledge and experience over ED's Hornet team? I look forward to flying Raz's "E" bomber, I just don't expect to buy it in "two weeks"! Edit: I just looked at the first posts on the first page of this thread... very interesting: thread was created December 2015, the Mirage (was that Raz's first product?) wasn't finished yet. Edited April 2, 2021 by Rick50 2
kseremak Posted May 30, 2021 Posted May 30, 2021 On 1/10/2021 at 5:28 PM, Viper1970 said: Another flying tablet. I don't like those new "glass only" cockpits. But that's the future It's even worse, unmanned drones are the future.
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