OH-58D Announcement

[ddc196]

I definitely get the frustration and I for sure have experienced it. The OH-58 is the airframe I have been wanting to fly for some time now. The lack of information is disconcerting but I do think the project is progressing. The DCS weekly news post from March which actually had Kiowa info in it brought new hope for this year. You may be right though, all may have to wait until sometime next year. Only time will tell. Either way, when it's released, I'm buying it.

[Rick50]

Yea,  I hope the Kiowa will show up for sale.   It's just that the drastic decrease in comms from the team has many of us wondering if the project will get to that point. The silver lining  is that silence does not  equal a dead project. Sometimes silence is just silence while things happen out  of view of the many. That's my hope anyway.

I  can understand the silence  of a sim dev team too... the increasing uncertainty of the project's finish time, new bugs to work out...  dealing with frustrated fans like myself... 

[Zarma]

Nothing since the few videos 2 years ago. I know the codeur had some health troubles but really ? So disappointed with this lake of communication. And it's not better on their Discord.

[Rick50]

 

Sometimes life takes a bad turn, sometimes permanently. Perhaps maybe this is an example of that. 

 

Nowadays with instant communication and soc med, it seems that as a society we are getting much poorer at dealing wth ambiguity... and waiting patiently too it seems!!  Which is made funnier since more than a decade ago, we wouldn't have any of these reactions, because we probably wouldn't even know of a project being in dev in the first place! 

 

[Zarma]

yea maybe but they started to communicate, gave a release date, postponed it (twice) then went silent for months... Then one message about their coder and silent again for more than a year...

So, to quote Yoda : communicate or don't communicate, there is no try

[flyingscotsman]

See Pricklyhedgehog on utube, he did an update on DCS and I recall there's mention of the Kiowa still being worked on. There are 2 videos from about 18th Jun. So much stuff is now 'On their facebook page', never joining Facebook, so I'll never know ha ha

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by flyingscotsman

[Rick50]

Well that's  good to hear!

 

I guess we'll just have to be patient and not expect any news. One day sometime in future, maybe we'll  suddenly hear the Kiowa Warrior is about to be released... a youtube trailer, influencers doing tutorials and demo missions...

I mean, given the  choice, I'd rather eventually get a good working module to fly, than get a bunch  of screenshots and vids that never result in a module release. I personally don't see ANY  advantage for a dev to tell the public about a module subject more than 3 months before release. Well maybe except getting good and enough SME's, sure. But screenshots, details of scope, updates, I just don't see any upside to the dev team. 

Maybe instead we should make a database of SME's for dev teams to refer to?

[Nahen]

March is getting closer...

[Viper ZA]

What is happening In March ?

[YoYo]

10 hours ago, Nahen said:

March is getting closer...

Which year? 

[Nahen]

4 hours ago, Viper ZA said:

What is happening In March ?

Spring

[Nahen]

Spring is coming soon

[Charrua]

En 8/2/2023 a las 16:54, Nahen dijo:

Primavera

maybe autumn

[Nahen]

For me spring starts in March

[Baco]

its autumn on the southern hemisphere... Spring (primavera) is September for us

 

[Steel Jaw]

Sit Rep?

[Daerchanar]

5 hours ago, Steel Jaw said:

Sit Rep?

Stalled.

[YoYo]

New video:

but I still consider it a certain kind of RIP, no updates, no announcement, no active members here (the last post of @Polychop Simulations was in June'22), no any estimated date, month, year even ect. So treat it as just a curiosity that probably hasn't changed for many months, I havent idea.

Edited March 7, 2023 by YoYo

[Ogma]

You guys can never be pleased, can you ?

They said repeatedly on their Discord that they are actively working on the project, that they are making good progress.

The module appeared in the "2023 and beyond video"; their SME released 3 videos of an hour each on preflight walkaround 2 months ago; now you get a 10 min video showcasing alignment of the grease-pencil gun marker and the gun (not seen before) ... And yet you are still debating whether or not the module will eventually release ?!

Keep in mind that they are planning for a release without early access; for comparison, the F-16 is still in early access; so yes, the development takes some time, but they are still well within the timeframe of any other module in DCS.

And that's without considering the horrendous circumstances that they had to face a couple of years ago that lead to their radio silence. Yes it was frustrating but you need to keep in mind that they are actual human beings, they could not foresee one of their team member having to fight for his life and couldn't predict the impact on the project. And you can only understand how communication or the project itself was not on the top of their priority list when it happened.

Yes, we don't have any estimate for the release date. And that's for the best. They will announce it when they are 100% certain that they can achieve it and I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

[YoYo]

First of all, we are not on discord, but on the official Polychop Simulations channel here, on the ED forum. If communication on Discord is so good, then they could put some information here. Why this is not happening, I don't know. If someone demands something in terms of information, and someone else knows, it usually means that communication itself is not well conducted. As you can see, the last official post was here in June'22. There were considerable plans at the end of 2021 and it did not happen in much of it in 2022. Therefore, it is hard to think that the model is on the right way to release. Several years have passed since the announcement and there were many months of stop of this project as well. Looking at some problems related to Gazelle and lack of reaction, unfortunately Im not an optimist in this case, but I hope that Im wrong and the model will come out the holidays this year or earlier . Btw. do not compare advancement of F-16's systems to OH-58. This is a completely different level of avionics and integration. Note also that progress is very small and these are small differences when we finally see something new, not milestones according me. Of course, I wish the authors all the best and I keep my fingers crossed for this module.

[ironhard]

5 hours ago, YoYo said:

New video:

but I still consider it a certain kind of RIP, no updates, no announcement, no active members here (the last post of @Polychop Simulations was in June'22), no any estimated date, month, year even ect. So treat it as just a curiosity that probably hasn't changed for many months, I havent idea.

 

It's also very silent at their discord. No progress news and their gatekeeping grunts usually get quite hotheaded when you ask for news or a release date. They even seem to have an internal joke that goes like "days since last release date request = 0" or something like that. In my POV, there is not much apparent progress going on there. Something really bad certainly happened to this project early last year that completely stalled it.

 

 

[kotor633]

And this video isn't really meaningful either: Because the section you see from the cockpit looks good. The sound of rotor and external MG also sounds great. And that's it. What is that supposed to tell you? Except that we can continue to speculate here in the forum.

[Viper ZA]

I say just be honest we will understand. We know it's a team of only two dudes. If you say "Hey we only getting to work on the module over weekend and not every weekend" then we'd be disappointed, but understanding. People just like to be informed. If you say you have some news In 2 months time, then we know, don't bother them they will have info In two months time. Communication is all fans want. I seen games not sell by the time they released because the devs never ever game fans any updates during progress that I think most just lost interest and the game left a sour taste In the mouths that they just avoid the game because if you treat your fans like that then what does it tell them about you. Not saying this about them but as before. Communication goes a long way and build hype.

[Ogma]

I understand the concerns and the scepticism, I however don't share them.

As you said, communication builds hype and I think they will communicate a lot more when they are ready to start the hype train; not before. As to avoid what happened in 2020.

[barundus]

13 hours ago, YoYo said:

Btw. do not compare advancement of F-16's systems to OH-58. This is a completely different level of avionics and integration

I'm curious how you'd compare the two (admittedly an apples/oranges comparison) to support the statement?  By weight?  Volume? How many menu pages?  Buttons?