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

[IronMike]

Dear all,

with our sincere apologies for both the late update and delay:

Unfortunately, and with a heavy heart, we had to decide for a delay for the DCS: F-4E Phantom II release. We prepared a detailed update for you, if you would like you can read up on it here:

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

Furthermore we prepared an in depth, regular development update for you all, to bring you up to speed about the state of the module, as is, on what remains to be done, and what is already complete:

https://store.heatblur.com/blogs/news/of-delays-and-progress-part-ii

Finally, we would like to share the long awaited EPISODE III of our Phantom video introductions, regarding Navigation in the F-4E Phantom II this time.

Thank you all for your amazing support and extermely kind patience in these past few weeks.

Your Team Heatblur

Edited March 16 by IronMike

[ThorBrasil]

I already imagined that the launch would not take place in March due to the lack of videos. The important thing is to keep the community informed. I will wait patiently. Thank You!

Edited March 16 by ThorBrasil

[unlikely_spider]

Very nice update, and I hope everyone on your team is healthy and recovered. Thank you for your contributions to our great hobby. Looking forward to spending time in this cockpit when it's ready for us.

Edited March 16 by unlikely_spider

[Wavehopper]

Thanks for the letting us know, it's appreciated.  It'll get here when it gets here.

[Hiob]

Thanks for the update!

Don‘t crunch your people to badly though. No deadline is worth sacrificing health and family!

Looking forward to the release.

[Waxer]

Disappointed. But not entirely surprised. Thank you for the explanation. And I hope your colleagues are well on the way to recovery of their health issues. There is a huge amount of goodwill towards Heatblur given the high quality of previous modules.

Meanwhile, will T-shirts be received by pre-order customers on time? I've seen some customers receive T-shirts, but despite ordering on day 1 of pre-order I still have not received anything. (Location UK).

[Grundar]

Thanks for the update and the information, I'm sure it will help alleviate the concerns that some people have exhibited on these forums.  Props to offering an extension of the pre-order discount for those who wish to cancel their pre-order at this stage.  I think we would all rather have a functioning game than one that potentially could just not work at all for some players.  Heatblur have made the right choice here.    Yeah I would love the F4 now so that I can fumble my way through court-martial worthy displays of navigation and weapons delivery, but there is plenty else to do in the meantime.

[Hiob]

@IronMike Just read through the whole explanation. Whilst very welcome, I feel you went much more in depth as anyone could have asked for. So thanks to the Heatblur team for that.

One thing that came to my mind while reading about the nature of the issue, is the the obvious similarity in quality and nature of the problem to the performance problems some people face with DCS in general. (Hard to pin down and replicate problems and so one)

I trust and hope that Heatblur is working hand in hand with ED and any findings will benefit DCS as a whole.

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, IronMike said:

Furthermore we prepared an in depth, regular development update for you all, to bring you up to speed about the state of the module, as is, on what remains to be done, and what is already complete:

Thanks a lot for the status update, I will simply fly the Viggen while I wait for the Phantom, no worries here as your quality level is worth waiting for. Greetings from Chile 

[ecirpnai]

I like most people am a bit disappointed but I would rather wait to have any bugs/problems sorted first, so we get a production as good as the F-14.  So thanks Heatblur for the update and keep up the good work. 

[Ziggy]

Thanks for breaking radio silence.

  Must've been a really hard call being so close but not close enough.

   All in all, we'll live!

   Thanks for all of your hard work and I look forward to flying this beautiful beast when you're good and ready to release it!

 

[IronMike]

Thank you all, it was indeed an incredibly tough decision for us to make, specifically because we are this close to full on release ready.

Thank you all again for your kind patience, passion and support!

[ContinuedMayhem2020]

12 minutes ago, IronMike said:

Thank you all, it was indeed an incredibly tough decision for us to make, specifically because we are this close to full on release ready.

Thank you all again for your kind patience, passion and support!

Thank you for the update and I wish you all well. I paid my money on day one and now I'll just sit back and wait, because I know it's going to be an outstanding product. Back to the F-14...I love that damn thing anyways.  Cheers!

[Kiwispirits]

Does the offer to extend the preorder discount for those that cancel at this time apply to those who preordered via DCS?

If so, how does one go about cancelling a pre-order please? This is not because of the delays but rather as your videos have come out I feel the module is more complex than I wish to deal with at this time.

 

[IronMike]

19 minutes ago, Kiwispirits said:

Does the offer to extend the preorder discount for those that cancel at this time apply to those who preordered via DCS?

If so, how does one go about cancelling a pre-order please? This is not because of the delays but rather as your videos have come out I feel the module is more complex than I wish to deal with at this time.

 

Please simply contact ED support for a refund in this case. The pre order discount will extend only to those who decide to refund now (for whatever reason), and decide to re-purchase within the first two weeks after release.

If you run into any troubles regarding your refund, please be so kind and contact us at support@heatblur.se

[Hotdognz]

Im not surprised at all and a little disappointed, but happy to wait for the serious bugs to be ironed out, just glad its not a module I'm hanging out for.
 

[speed-of-heat]

@IronMikeThanks for the status update.  I am sorry about the health issues your team has faced, and hope they are all through the worst of it, and are continuing towards good health.  

As much as I am excited by this I am also gravelly concerned about the implications of putting a browser in game, the security implications of that are actually staggering, given that a browser is one of the most significant attack surfaces on a computer today.

And keeping a browser up to date is a very difficult and time consuming task even for a full fledged Dev team that is only updating a browser, even if what you are doing is delivering an instance of Chromium based browser you are recompiling (just ask the Microsoft Edge Dev team!) this concern is even higher given that most guidance for dcs suggests excluding it from most anti-malware programs for performance reasons.

Chrome and edge both recieve daily updates in some cases to mitigate threats, given that dcs itself only receives updates monthly, how are you mitigating these issues?

Edited March 17 by speed-of-heat
Chromium

[BJ55]

1 hour ago, speed-of-heat said:

I am also gravelly concerned about the implications of putting a browser in game

+1

For security and privacy reasons all my systems are configured to deny traffic for Google products and with all Google servers, so CEF is in the block list.

[Rodeo]

@IronMike thank you for the in-depth update. As the owner of a small innovation based company in a competitive industry I completely understand and have lived through the very same decisions you all at HB have been facing and making; again thank you and I am still as excited for your F-4 as I was day 1 of pre-order (personally really looking forward to your A-6 though )  

One thing all of us in the DCS community need to remember is even the best funded and biggest publicly owned game developers suffer countless set backs and delays. I personally am amazed at the ED and DCS 3rd party developers and all they accomplish with very limited budgets and resources; these modules and maps are truly a passion project. Compared to the current drama at EA and Ubisoft the DCS content creators are Allstars in my book  

Cheers

 

[Slippa]

1 hour ago, BJ55 said:

+1

For security and privacy reasons

Same here.

eta: Best of health to all the team .

Edited March 17 by Slippa

[Max Thunder]

6 minutes ago, Slippa said:

Same here.

+1

[Cobra847]

Security is of course important and we take it seriously. Note however that the UI is run and stored locally, using only files stored on your hard drive unless using the specific internet related features.

Edited March 17 by Cobra847

[Goofy12]

Very good and clear clarification and fully understand the delay, take your time. And best wishes to the long-covid sufferers amongst your team, its a horrible thing to have to go through.

[speed-of-heat]

1 hour ago, Cobra847 said:

Security is of course important and we take it seriously. Note however that the UI is run and stored locally, using only files stored on your hard drive unless using the specific internet related features.

 

I am pleased that the default state, is to only use local data sources on the device, however, if you allow access to the Internet, then then it must be part of your threat model, and it requires appropriate mitigation in order to manage the risk... And appropriate security testing... And controls...

Just saying "don't use a feature" is not a realistic control... As it is prone to user error, or deliberate exploitation.  Especially because as I have said we largely have been recommended to turn off security features in windows (Av etc...) on the folders containing dcs, for performance reasons, something that until now made sense, because of the limited attack surface in play.  Adding the browser in this way changes that.

I remain concerned that a browser is being used here in this way, especially with such a small team, I am less concerned about the use of a chromium based browser , per-say, though I do care what features will be in your build of chrome. And again how you will maintain the integrity of the browser, given dcs's own patch update schedule. Also bearing in mind that any customisation will complicate your ability to patch the browser...

I would strongly recommend you consider this approach of allowing browsing access to Internet resources, as it will have consequences that will be difficult for a small Dev team to manage... Ranging from sand box escapes, to custom tab vulnerabilities to Skia, to WebSQL and on...and on...

Edited March 17 by speed-of-heat
Chromium based rather than chrome

[Basco1]

Well that explains all to me and I am happy to wait.....that's all I needed,an explanation,so thanks Heatblur this explanation is appreciated.

Best wishes to all of the team that are suffering with their health.

Edited March 17 by Basco1