F-4E Phantom II Development Update and Release Delay Announcement

[Mistermann]

19 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

Not next week. As of now it's slated for tomorrow.(I think the interview was done before the weekend)

......and the new and improved QA process found significant issues last minute.  Patch delayed at least a week.

Glad they're delaying to prevent game impacting defects, however methinks game breaking defects should be uncovered well in advance of patch date.  I suspect their CI/CD and QA pipelines need some attention.

[Gunfreak]

14 minutes ago, Mistermann said:

......and the new and improved QA process found significant issues last minute.  Patch delayed at least a week.

Glad they're delaying to prevent game impacting defects, however methinks game breaking defects should be uncovered well in advance of patch date.  I suspect their CI/CD and QA pipelines need some attention.

I have no idea how they do things.

And while I love patch day for DCS.

in this patch we have very little idea what's coming.

Unless there is some major surprise. It seems be be a normal bug fixing patch.

We've not been informed about anything major. Like vulkan, Kiowa, F4, new map etc. Said I said, might be a big surprise but we don't know so a week extra waiting ain't a big deal.

[Mistermann]

17 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

Said I said, might be a big surprise but we don't know so a week extra waiting ain't a big deal.

Waiting is not a problem, I agree.  I'd much rather wait for a quality release that doesn't break things - regardless of what's in the patch.

[G.J.S]

Expect nothing. That way you cannot be disappointed, and anything that does pitch up can only be a pleasant bonus.

 

She IS coming . . . 

[Kalasnkova74]

8 hours ago, Mistermann said:

Glad they're delaying to prevent game impacting defects, however methinks game breaking defects should be uncovered well in advance of patch date.  I suspect their CI/CD and QA pipelines need some attention.

Apparently, Heatblur is born to lose. Unless they execute a module of advanced complexity with 100% accuracy and ahead of schedule , people will complain and criticize the effort at the first sign of adversity. Much gnashing of teeth lately since the delay announcement.

My two cents? I’ll quote Edward R Murrow:

”We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men”

[ThorBrasil]

[Tiger-II]

Chromium crap in DCS? Wow. I'm totally fine with running tools outside of the sim. I hope you stripped out all the Google phone-home junk that is buried in everything Chrome.

Quote

If you’re familiar with some of these types of features in Microsoft Flight Simulator or other simulators, you know exactly what we’re talking about.

Yes...and it is TOTAL GARBAGE. Web-anything needs to stay 50 light years away from the simulator. Don't turn DCS into another bloated piece of junk.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Tiger-II

[Q3ark]

1 hour ago, Tiger-II said:

Chromium crap in DCS? Wow. I'm totally fine with running tools outside of the sim. I hope you stripped out all the Google phone-home junk that is buried in everything Chrome.

Yes...and it is TOTAL GARBAGE. Web-anything needs to stay 50 light years away from the simulator. Don't turn DCS into another bloated piece of junk.

 

You’re a happy chap. How about you don’t buy the module. 

[Oesau]

2 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

Chromium crap in DCS? Wow. I'm totally fine with running tools outside of the sim. I hope you stripped out all the Google phone-home junk that is buried in everything Chrome.

Yes...and it is TOTAL GARBAGE. Web-anything needs to stay 50 light years away from the simulator. Don't turn DCS into another bloated piece of junk.

 

FYI It’s not chrome that they are using 

[freehand]

6 minutes ago, Oesau said:

FYI It’s not chrome that they are using 

What is being used ?

[BJ55]

It's CEF, it's not Chrome spyware/backdoor browser, but it's a Google product ("community" doesn't matter, since all decisions are vetted by google) with plenty of vulnerabilities (Snowden told us a long time ago... ).

But... If configured to not use the network it will not "phone home", here an example of CEF used in another sim:

Times applied: 0 (no connection attempts)

 

So, if HBUI doesn't trigger my FW I'm fine...

[unknown]

7 minutes ago, BJ55 said:

It's CEF, it's not Chrome spyware/backdoor browser, but it's a Google product ("community" doesn't matter, since all decisions are vetted by google) with plenty of vulnerabilities (Snowden told us a long time ago... ).

But... If configured to not use the network it will not "phone home", here an example of CEF used in another sim:

Times applied: 0 (no connection attempts)

 

So, if HBUI doesn't trigger my FW I'm fine...

Cobra said that there are parts used locally on your PC(UI, manual...) and that there are "specific internet related features" which will trigger your FW, so don't be surprised.

[huchanronaa]

2024/4/3 AM3點57分，felixx75说：

在這裡您可以看到下一個計劃補丁的日期（以防您還不知道）

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/233848-patch-status/

There is almost no possibility that 4/10 will be released, because the problems faced by the DCS F-4E are much more complicated than imagined

 

[felixx75]

1 hour ago, huchanronaa said:

 

I don't know where you got your information from, but this is the current, official patch status.

It also has nothing to do with the Phantom. This only refers to the planned date for the next general DCS patch

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/233848-patch-status/?do=findComment&comment=5408539

[ThorBrasil]

[westr]

17 hours ago, ThorBrasil said:

Pilot body looks really cool.  

[Tiger-II]

No...I'm not happy at web browser tech being jammed into the sim. Web browser tech was never designed for game use, but the use of it in games is a trend that needs reversing, and rapidly. If you need to display PDFs in the sim, develop a specific display process for PDFs in the sim! No web browser required.

The other problem with importing wholesale a complete web browser, are the aforementioned privacy issues. People really have no clue just what these mega corps are doing. Google is a massive data-collection agency. I don't trust any of the others, either.

So yes... it is a major negative point against the F-4 (and anything else that uses similar tech).

I already pre-ordered and won't cancel, but unless people speak out against this nonsense, how will they ever know that people are against it?

I am also somewhat bemused that they ever found it neccessary. OK... so the current Jester UI is limited...but they created it in the first place, so why are the limits suddenly a problem? They said it "only supports 8 slots". OK...so make it support more? I see nothing here that required a web browser.

It's a "nice idea" to have a framework that you just drop in, set a few parameters, and suddenly it works with something else, but the reality of software development is it rarely works out that way, and you often end up with 60% or more specific-use programming. It's unavoidable if you want to create a product that is even slightly different from the last one.

There really is no cookie-cutter way to develop different products using the same templates. It can't be done. The best you can do is copy a block of code and modify it (or in the case of Jester, strip out the Jester code and try and modularize it). You can't avoid the modification part though, no matter how you do it.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Tiger-II

[unlikely_spider]

13 minutes ago, Tiger-II said:

No...I'm not happy at web browser tech being jammed into the sim. Web browser tech was never designed for game use, but the use of it in games is a trend that needs reversing, and rapidly. If you need to display PDFs in the sim, develop a specific display process for PDFs in the sim! No web browser required.

The other problem with importing wholesale a complete web browser, are the aforementioned privacy issues. People really have no clue just what these mega corps are doing. Google is a massive data-collection agency. I don't trust any of the others, either.

From one of the devs:

"everything needed for the module itself runs locally (manual, UI, etc.) without a single byte of data leaving or entering your computer"

A browser can be just a viewer, just like a PDF viewer is. It does not need web traffic to operate if it's reading local data. And it seems to me that a light browser reading an HTML file can be less processor-intensive than a dedicated PDF viewer opening a PDF. At least the viewers I've used. They tend to bog down the threads pretty heavily when opening or operating on any PDF of moderate size.

[Tiger-II]

26 minutes ago, unlikely_spider said:

From one of the devs:

"everything needed for the module itself runs locally (manual, UI, etc.) without a single byte of data leaving or entering your computer"

A browser can be just a viewer, just like a PDF viewer is. It does not need web traffic to operate if it's reading local data. And it seems to me that a light browser reading an HTML file can be less processor-intensive than a dedicated PDF viewer opening a PDF. At least the viewers I've used. They tend to bog down the threads pretty heavily when opening or operating on any PDF of moderate size.

If that's the case, fair enough.

[mondo]

1 hour ago, Tiger-II said:

No...I'm not happy at web browser tech being jammed into the sim. Web browser tech was never designed for game use, but the use of it in games is a trend that needs reversing, and rapidly. If you need to display PDFs in the sim, develop a specific display process for PDFs in the sim! No web browser required.

The other problem with importing wholesale a complete web browser, are the aforementioned privacy issues. People really have no clue just what these mega corps are doing. Google is a massive data-collection agency. I don't trust any of the others, either.

So yes... it is a major negative point against the F-4 (and anything else that uses similar tech).

I already pre-ordered and won't cancel, but unless people speak out against this nonsense, how will they ever know that people are against it?

I am also somewhat bemused that they ever found it neccessary. OK... so the current Jester UI is limited...but they created it in the first place, so why are the limits suddenly a problem? They said it "only supports 8 slots". OK...so make it support more? I see nothing here that required a web browser.

It's a "nice idea" to have a framework that you just drop in, set a few parameters, and suddenly it works with something else, but the reality of software development is it rarely works out that way, and you often end up with 60% or more specific-use programming. It's unavoidable if you want to create a product that is even slightly different from the last one.

There really is no cookie-cutter way to develop different products using the same templates. It can't be done. The best you can do is copy a block of code and modify it (or in the case of Jester, strip out the Jester code and try and modularize it). You can't avoid the modification part though, no matter how you do it.

 

You're literally using technology browsers use every time you play a game on the internet, every time you need to authenticate etc.  You've probably booted up games and platforms to launch games with browsers embedded in them for years. This is such a non issue. HB make simulated aircraft, not PDF readers yo embed into them. The use of a browser in the way they've described is both absolutely fine and a cheap way of delivering information to the player without the need to alt tab or have a second monitor.  I would take this for every DCS module if I had the chance.

[Q3ark]

For everyone freaking out about Chromium being used in the F4 module, it's not just used for internet browsing the below is from Wikipedia.

"The Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is an open-source software framework for embedding a Chromium web browser within another application. This enables developers to add web browsing functionality to their application, as well as the ability to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the application's user interface (or just portions of it)."

I think that last part is the most important to remember, they're using it for the jester interface, the new bombing calculator and probably a bunch of other cool stuff.

[NoodI]

i'm sure the devs know what theyre doing, and you're on a browser to even get on this forum in the first place if you hate it that much then dont be a hypocrite complaining about it there and using it here. even if they were using chrome i wouldn't care, they know what they're doing

[exhausted]

On 4/2/2024 at 10:35 AM, ThorBrasil said:

I don't think Robin Olds flew the F-4E, but rather the F-4C and D

[Gunfreak]

14 minutes ago, exhausted said:

I don't think Robin Olds flew the F-4E, but rather the F-4C and D

Robin Olds isn't flying the E. His mustache is. Olds is just along for the ride.

[Kalasnkova74]

1 hour ago, exhausted said:

I don't think Robin Olds flew the F-4E, but rather the F-4C and D

Brigadier General Olds flew the F-4E in combat. During Operation Linebacker (circa 1972) - years after his 8th TFW tour flying the F-4C & D - then Colonel Olds had a staff job at the Pentagon. After the improved North Vietnamese GCI system took down multiple USAF F-4s in quick succession , he was dispatched to Thailand with orders to audit the air to air training level of the USAF wings. 
 

His Linebacker tour was supposed to be ground-duty research only, but “somehow” Olds wound up flying combat missions in the F-4E. He delivered a candid report informing HQ USAF its pilots were woefully underprepared for air combat. Nothing was immediately done to address that.