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

[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. 

[ThorBrasil]

[_BringTheReign_]

22 hours ago, ThorBrasil said:

Great shot from the latest video!!!! 

[MACE11]

On 4/3/2024 at 7:09 PM, Kalasnkova74 said:

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”

Haters gonna hate...

[ThorBrasil]

[rwbishUP]

On 4/10/2024 at 8:44 PM, ThorBrasil said:

Just.........just.........ooooozes SEXY!!!!

[JG11Preusse]

I was to optimistic

Planned and used two weeks Vacation Hamburg Easter Holidays 18.03 til 28.03.2024, after ordering early access.

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2024 by JG11Preusse

[QuiGon]

22 hours ago, JG11Preusse said:

I was to optimistic

Planned and used two weeks Vacation Hamburg Easter Holidays 18.03 til 28.03.2024, after ordering early access.

No.1 rule of DCS: Everything takes longer than expected. It's just something one needs to get used to.

Edited April 15, 2024 by QuiGon

[Marsvinet]

22 hours ago, JG11Preusse said:

I was to optimistic

Planned and used two weeks Vacation Hamburg Easter Holidays 18.03 til 28.03.2024, after ordering early access.

 

 

 

 

Everybody needs to know that the second somebody books some time off for a release, a developers computer catches fire, delaying said release by at least two weeks™! 

[Lt_Jaeger]

5 minutes ago, Marsvinet said:

Everybody needs to know that the second somebody books some time off for a release, a developers computer catches fire, delaying said release by at least two weeks™! 

Oh, did not know that. 

So pleases everybody, add 2 weeks (tm) 

[Tiger-II]

5 hours ago, QuiGon said:

No.1 rule of DCS: Everything takes longer than expected. It's just something one needs to get used to.

 

In this case though, it was a monumental screw-up even Microsoft would have trouble matching. Core tech that has allegedly been worked on for at least a year, suddenly and unexpectedly breaks most systems on first test. Nope...don't buy it.

Edited April 15, 2024 by Tiger-II

[QuiGon]

1 hour ago, Tiger-II said:

In this case though, it was a monumental screw-up even Microsoft would have trouble matching. Core tech that has allegedly been worked on for at least a year, suddenly and unexpectedly breaks most systems on first test. Nope...don't buy it.

If you're referring to the HB UI issue, then I recommend to read the Delay Announcement again, because nowhere does it say that it broke on first test on most systems. It literally said that it caused a critical issue on a very small number of systems that was detected when mass testing begun:

Quote

When we began mass testing of the F-4 in January, we found that an estimated 5-10% of users had complete, game breaking, unusable lag with any and all UI elements due to a GPU bottleneck, and despite all-out efforts, truly day and night, to resolve these as soon as possible, we found ourselves at the mercy of a complex onion of PC hardware and OS interactions.

https://store.heatblur.com/blogs/news/of-delays-and-silence

Edited April 15, 2024 by QuiGon

[Mike Force Team]

By unofficial decree, Mike Force Team hereby revokes Murphy Law.  The revocation of Murphy's Law allows the developer to move forward so they can deliver the F-4 phantom.

Mike Force Team.

[TLTeo]

1 hour ago, Tiger-II said:

In this case though, it was a monumental screw-up even Microsoft would have trouble matching. Core tech that has allegedly been worked on for at least a year, suddenly and unexpectedly breaks most systems on first test. Nope...don't buy it.

Yea this really mischaracterizes what happened. Assuming that the actual number of systems affected is 10%, and that the number of HB employees testing stuff is low enough that the chance of having the right system follows a Poissonian distribution (which should make sense for a small company), the chance of missing that issue before mass testing is on the order of ~13% if I have the math right (assuming we have ~20 employees, we expect ~2 to catch that issue, and we need to never have the issue show up, so in this case lambda=2 and k=0).

TLDR if you have a small team catching something that happens 10% or less of the time is very unlikely.

edit: fixed the math

Edited April 15, 2024 by TLTeo

[Omega417]

3 hours ago, TLTeo said:

TLDR if you have a small team catching something that happens 10% or less of the time is very unlikely.

 

I mean, you get more people when you release in early access.

[TLTeo]

The alternative is releasing modules without any mass testing that can catch game-breaking bugs. I'm sure that would go down splendidly with the community.

Edited April 15, 2024 by TLTeo

[Omega417]

But thats what early access is. You get to play the game accepting there will be bugs, with the hope that they will be fixed in future updates.

 

[TLTeo]

There's a threshold for bugs/missing features that are acceptable. "10% of users can't even run the software" is well below that threshold. I can't believe this is even up for debate.

[Allo]

46 minutes ago, Omega417 said:

But thats what early access is. You get to play the game accepting there will be bugs, with the hope that they will be fixed in future updates.

 

Just like with the F-16 release into EA.

That one went down well with the community didn't it?

[Stackup]

8 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

There's a threshold for bugs/missing features that are acceptable. "10% of users can't even run the software" is well below that threshold. I can't believe this is even up for debate.

That means 90% of the users can run it.  That may not be enough for you, but 90% success is still pretty darn high given that some users are on lower end computers that may have trouble running DCS in the first place. 

My opinion on EA is that it sucks in general because we are paying for an unfinished product(yes, willingly I know), with no guarantee of when it will be considered complete(or even that it will be because stuff happens) and in some cases major systems or weapons are just flat missing on launch or reliant on another party to get its act together.

[TLTeo]

5 minutes ago, Stackup said:

90% success is still pretty darn high

It's not remotely close by any standards of software development.

[diego999]

The difference here is that this isn't really "Early Access"; it's more like "Early Pay".

A person who purchases the module on the day it's released gets to use it immediately, just like us who paid 6 months in advance.

So, where exactly is the "early" aspect in this situation?

Edited April 16, 2024 by diego999

[Omega417]

5 hours ago, Allo said:

Just like with the F-16 release into EA.

That one went down well with the community didn't it?

wasnt here, wouldnt know.

[_Milan_]

It is pointless to have this debate again and again.

There is no standard for the meaning of early access in general. With DCS modules, EA usually means that the functions of the module are continually completed over the course of the EA phase. EA in DCS does NOT mean that we get access to software that contains bugs that make it impossible for some users to use it, whether it affects 50 percent or just 5 percent.

As a rule, it has always been that way and I am convinced that it will continue to be that way and complaining about it, in my opinion, shows a great lack of understanding for the work and effort of a small indie studio.

Dont get me wrong, of course I want my F-4 and of course I would take it woth some small bugs and a few lags but this are not the demands HB has to itself and that is what the benchmark is in this case.

Cheers Milan

[hermes7226]

So have HB solved the main problems with the module or not? From the official report on the delay, it is not very clear whether the main problem seems to have been solved, but it seems not yet.