A great thing at Mudspike is that people take the time to make logical, cohesive arguments, discussion, debate, instruction and the like.
So please, feel free everyone, to many words and lengthy descriptions!
It’s quite a bit of work, but the rewards of communication around language barriers far surpass it! (And that even applies within native english speakers with varying vocabularies.)
Back to EA topic at hand:
The Hind pre-order is out. Considering it will have some new tech, a Jester-like-but-maybe-not-like AI, I anticipate it may be a rocky experience. I’m still buying in on this one though anyway, I think multi-crew helicopter from ED is an experience worth the hassle. The experience will be different enough that I think my interest in it will stay up and therefore filing bug reports won’t seem as dreary a task.
This week’s newsletter has given an outline of what is to be expected EA and Full-Release - so that is a good start. Some specific detail in regards to the systems prior to EA release will be good as well, as this outline doesn’t cover if any of those features will be expanded throughout EA or just require the normal EA debugging by a larger audience.
For me this is ‘sad news’. As I mentioned I dont do pre-orders. But thats not that sad. ‘EA is planned for release in the 2nd quarter of 2021’ is sad for me. At that time my sim time will already go to minimum.
So for me this EA didnt turn out positively. Thats why I would rather see this already out without all the whistles and bells than to wait (in my case) maybe till autumn where my sim time will go back to normal again. I mean I have no intention to buy it so it can sit in my dusty virtual hangar all the summer season.
But I am happy for others who will get the EA in the advanced state of development.
I think the main problem with the F-16 was that ED had established a pattern of what was there on release over many years of EA releases and then it was far short of that.
If the F-16 had been the very first one done, ok, fine. Yet we’d had the Hornet and others for a long time already so we all THOUGHT we knew what to expect. The Viper being invulnerable was a BIG miss. I’ve barely touched it still because I mostly have flown the Hornet or other planes. I’ve been waiting for it to get further along, although now it’s probably actually far enough along now to start.
I’m not sure what happened with the F-16 at all. Did they have it farther along internally but it was unstable and to make sure it didn’t crash DCS or screw up the rest of the modules they had to seriously nerf it? Whatever it was, I think they’ve learned from that and I expect that future EA releases will all be more like the Hornet. Sure it could take years to finish, I’m not particularly upset with that, especially as “release” is usually more an arbitrary point where ENOUGH features are implemented and working but not necessarily ALL, but as long as we can use it well enough in missions I think it’s ok.
I preordered the Hind because it was a good discount and a bird I’ve always liked. Now if it’s another F-16 situation you can bet ED will burn a lot of goodwill and their EA program will be in serious jeopardy…so I think they will NOT do it because they are aware of that.
@JediMaster, you made I point that I hadn’t thought of. The F-16 is a plane we all THOUGHT we knew from our experience with BMS and other Falcon iterations. I hope that the Hind will be shielded a bit from the pitchfork crowd (easy guys, I include myself!) because most of us haven’t a clue. We’re dumb enough to accept anything (easy guys, I include myself!).
What i think happened is that they probably couldn’t fill vacant positions or somebody left. The Viper to this day has only a very small subset of its MFD pages implemented. Apart from radar and Weapon/TGP system related pages, none have been added since release. Also there was hardly any progress on the DED since release.
The F-16 situation is IMHO different from what we have with the Hind right now.
The F-16 does not seem to have been clearly scoped in terms of what was available at the beginning of EA. It’s an aircraft that is incredibly deep in terms of avionics, and good avionics coders are hard to find. Chronologically, the F-16 also came at a time where TWS was also in development, and prior to the implementation of the air-to-ground radar. These changes probably required a massive effort that obviously drained resources from other projects. In my opinion, speaking as a systems engineer, both the Hornet and the Viper are massive scope creep monsters and should never have been developed side-by-side. However, we don’t know whether or not the F-16 revenues paid for further development on Hornet/Viper features and further engine updates. I guess this is the part of the story we will likely never know. From a purely external point of view, the F-16 story looks like a scenario where they bit more than they could chew and realized it when it was already too late.
The Hind’s features, when compared to the F-16, seem to be defined much more clearly in terms of what will be there. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s a russian aircraft that the developers are more familiar with (having documentation in your mother tongue sure helps)… but I think a lot of it comes down that the guys working on it appear to be the same bunch who did the Belsimtek projects like the Huey and the Mi-8. IMHO, both of these projects are the golden standard in terms of early access. Sure, multicrew came in years late but for all intents and purposes the important systems were mostly there at the beginning and the documentation that came with both these helicopters was very complete when delivered. In my experience, a module that is well documented indirectly shows that the workflow is generally well planned and that the systems are well understood and simulated.
I don’t want to jinx it, but the interview with VargTV translated here leads me to believe that the Mi-24 is in safe hands.
Also, nowadays is more easy to get very detailed data from soviet cold war hardware than from USA counterparts. Even on civil aviation.
Usually russian manuals goes into very very details with all construction data, internal details, engineering formulas and tables for all parts etc. In western civil aviation is not so easy to get on the same level.
So, adding all that with, as mentioned, books on the same language as devs, all goes into a more easy level of developing. Also a F16 is a much more complex equipment than Mi24.
As far as my beloved F-16 goes, I think ED pulled a money grab.
They had shown pictures years ago of the Viper cockpit (WIP), and I truly believe they had a dev resurrect whatever they had started and finished enough to push it out Early Release.
Probably all wrong on this, but sure wasn’t the same effort as EA for the the A-10, or F-18.
I think it is forgot somewhat that the Viper took a hit to development as the Hornet fans raised arms in anger over development resources being pulled away from the Hornet for a new, modern, full fidelity module - well before the Hornet was anywhere near complete and when we had seen a slow down in it’s development.
Even though the resources in question may not have been needed on the Hornet any more, it became quite an issue should any features reach the Viper first or even any substantial progress in general.
So to an extent the Viper hasn’t been as neglected if the premature release is roughly factored out, as if it had been released later the current development gap would much smaller and less of an issue - perhaps. That’s speculation on timing completely, but I think the idea is valid.
It’s taken quite some time but the recent videos from Wags show they have achieved some parallel development using the HARM as an example, a bit late as the Hornet is slated to soon leave EA (not feature complete, however). With the Hornet in longer term product sustainment, those resources can perhaps dive in on the 16.
As for the Hind, the recent interview with Nineline on Air Combat Sim ep.18, he mentioned that he thinks they learned from the F-16C fiasco and the Hind should be closer to expectations for EA.
One additional factor for many I think is that the DCS Falcon has modern full fidelity sim to compare it to. The Tomcat or Hornet really only had legacy sims with significantly less fidelity to compare them to. BMS is a fully mature product that the DCS Falcon was inevitably going to be compared against. I would wager that most folks who purchased EA for the Falcon had plenty of time in BMS and really knew far more about the systems modeling, what should work, etc than other modules really had to deal with. This really highlighted what wasn’t complete/working compared to something like say the AV-8 were we were all digging through NATOPS manuals trying to figure out if something was even supposed to be happen or if it was a legacy item, different model, etc.
The DCS F16 “fiasco” was the culmination/sum of all mentioned previously and also more and more DCS devs realised that DCS fans don’t mind to have half baked aircraft because soon/later they will be completed. So, after years of sado-maso relations between ED and DCS users, all are happy to have the aircraft that they dream NOW instead of having it later more finished. So they already get used to released continuously half baked birds to have a continous flow of income.
I know all the reasons of why they do it, because it enters the same way as Early Access (EA) schemes are so popular in steam. But if I agree? no, because more and more we have what we was begging “take my money now and give me that because i want to fly it know even knowing that its not complete”!!!
ED already created very well the culture of complaisance from DCS users that DCSWorld is a constant beta, so you should expect it always incomplete and always with bugs!!! To you like DCS World you should ignore their always beta and bugs and if you not like, go play/fly other things! Also because it sadly not have much big competition in their nich department! The only that get close are BMS, but not all knows about their existance and also BMS is mainly only F16 (because other birds there are +/- hammered reskins of F16). So DCS can do what they want because if you want the same kind of aircraft simulation of specific aircraft you fly on DCS (like it or not) or not fly at all, so common user needs to accept it!
IMHO also generalization that to many EA others games, its slowly killing the quality of many games because when the money is in their side the speed to finish is over, and lets start into a new fresh half baked aircraft that everyone want to preorder again…
ED not created reputation, fame and quality expectation because released halfbaked birds in the start, the problem is that now they allegedly over abuse of our expectation and we are happy on the dreams.
I really hate this behavior because is how many times others business give bad services after create good expectations and first good products. First create an excellent service and increase, and be good, after you get reputation, no problem, you always have fanboys supporting you and people buying your products on the base of older reputation.
… but as it you, I’ll let it go 
