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F-15E?


JazonXD

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Eagle. 

On 11/26/2020 at 5:01 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

I suspect that what's holding up the Mudhen is systems development. Harrier doesn't require modelers by this point, and those are the ones working on the MiG-23 and the Lightning, while the avionics people are busy fixing the Harrier.

 

Systems coding will be the rate-limiting step here, I'm afraid. While the Lightning is a very simple fighter (albeit with a few not so simple solutions), the MiG-23 is a complex machine, and of course the F-15E is even worse. I strongly suspect the Mudhen will be a priority once the Harrier is squared away, but that would put the MiG-23 in a very distant future indeed.

 

 

THIS ^^^

 

There's lots of 3d artists who can make a pretty 3d model of an airframe. There's FAR FAR fewer people who can create coding for flight dynamics, then tweek it until it flies like an aircraft, and finally tune it to match a real Beagle circa mid-2000's. There's FAR fewer people who understand and then program, without bugs, a radar system to interact with an AMRAAM. There's FAR fewer people who can write code to replicate dozens of MFD modes, after finding some aircraft manuals and understand them.

 

Yes, on occasion I'll see a rendering that impresses me. But an airframe rendering does not make a full DCS full fidellity module. At least for the modern complex airframes anyways. If a developer has 5 products being developed at the same time, chances are that none of them are getting enough attention to eventually crawl over the finish line. Some developers struggle hard with releasing a single product, with only that one project occupying their time, more than a year after the original estimated release date.  Even ED, with all it's insider knowledge and high level of resources, struggles with a few aircraft in development. 

 

Look at ED's Hornet and Viper: even now, they aren't finished the development, Hornet's been near 3 years or something. The viper's been more recent, but it too went a long time before the HARM got implemented there... yea, a Viper that couldn't fly with HARMs ?!?! The HORROR!!  

 

The Beagle is every bit as complex, in terms of systems and MFD pages, modes, wpn systems modeling, as any Hornet or Viper. If Razbam has just as much resources, sources and technical manpower as ED, it's likely gonna take years before it's able to end "Early Access" and be considered a complete finished product.  Maybe Razbam has a different strategy... work very hard on it without telling public, do tons of internal testing, in secret, so as to not get hopes up too early. Then suddenly build excitement right before release. It's possible I guess. But I think it's more likely that we have a long wait ahead for an E. I mean, they haven't shown any cockpit video tutorials, showing how to implement the radar ground mapping modes have they? Or slaving an MTI radar selection to targeting pod to use LGB's on moving vehicles? Or datalink for air to air engagements?  Yea, 3d models tell me nothing about when a DCS module will arrive in the store, it's all about systems development and the bug fix phase, IMO. I wish the company well in its endevours, but I think we're more likely to see a release of the Falklands map, an early Harrier and Pucara long LONG before any Strike Eagle. 


Edited by Rick50
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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 by Rick50
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