Dear Community, dear Friends,

We hope you are well and that you and your families are safe and not too distressed in these tough times. We also hope you enjoyed last month’s “Stay at Home” event. It was a new and refreshing adventure we trust was well received by the community as we registered a very large number of users who took advantage of the free to fly opportunities, despite the rather short 2-day time limits for each module.

In the light of the ongoing difficulties we are all facing, we have decided to go the extra mile and will be announcing a similar but enhanced event in the very near future. We really hope it will meet with your approval and enthusiasm.

Thank you again for all your comments I received following my previous post on Reddit/Hoggit.

Your remarks were extremely helpful, insightful and encouraging too.

Today I would like to share some information pertaining to the DCS: Supercarrier early access release date, the F/A-18C Hornet and F-16C Viper roadmaps and our updated pipeline.

DCS: Supercarrier

We have been working hard towards the announced release date of April 15th. Sadly, we were unable to work through all the issues in order to ensure a satisfactory Early Access release.

The main “no-go” for me and I am sure for you too, is Multiplayer behavior which still suffers from certain non-game breaker bugs which were confirmed on Saturday, April 11th. Today we have a new plan and will be working overtime to bring you this long-awaited product. I actively follow the threads, in particular “April 15th 2020” and I understand how disappointed you are, but I am confident you will agree that Multiplayer needs a bit more love.

DCS: F/A-18C Hornet

Since my previous post we delivered 4 FLIR pointing modes which were a substantial task to develop. We have prepared a bug fix update for this week and we are working to deliver the following features by the end of April:
Completion of the Litening Targeting Pod
Dynamic launch zones and AUTO LOFT mode for JDAM
AG radar: Real Beam Ground Map (MAP)
SLAM air-to-surface missile

During the spring and summer, we plan to work on a range of Flight Model enhancements that include Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS), autopilot modes, and about 30 related features and issues.

DCS: F-16C Viper

For the last two months, we have mainly focused on bug fixing and small improvements. A new developer joined us recently and is working hard on the AGM-65D Maverick air-to-surface missile, which we hope he will be delivering by the end of April.

We will be increasing our efforts on the navigation system starting in May. Improvements will include the update of the steerpoint system permitting in-game mission planning and cursor zero (CZ) will also be added.

Our general roadmap hasn’t changed substantially since February 20th:
Ka-50 cockpit update was delivered.
Fw 190 A-8 Anton was released out of Early Access.
New Damage Model is progressing well and will be presented to you in the near future.
Enhanced Aircraft AI was added to active phase of development together with FLIR.
A-10C II moved to active phase of development.
Lighting and terrain improvements were pushed back a bit to.
Enhanced Asset Pack, Supercarrier and helicopter Multi-crew now have deadlines.
Hornet received its final list of features to be delivered this year, but this is a topic of a future update.

Current projects in active development phase:


DCS Core:
[ Near Term ] 2.5.6 preparation for the stable release (FPS improvement)
[ Near Term ] Damage Modeling for WWII Aircraft
[ Long Term ] Weapon improvement (missile dynamics, new AI units), final AIM-120B dynamics to be released very soon AIM-120C to follow
[ Mid to Long Term ] Voice Chat
[ Long Term ] Dynamic Campaign
[ Long Term ] Enhanced Aircraft Artificial Intelligence

DCS Graphic Engine:
[ Near Term ] Special effects update
[ Long Term ] Multi-threading
[ Long Term ] Vulkan API integration
[ Long Term ] New FLIR engine

Modules:
[ April 2020 ] WWII Asset Pack update
[ April-May 2020 ] Supercarrier EA
[ May 2020 ] Huey Multi-crew
[ Q2 2020 ] P-47D Thunderbolt EA
[ Q2-3 2020 ] The Channel EA
[ Mid Term ] Mariana Islands
[ Dec 2020 ] F/A-18C Hornet out of EA
[ Mid to Long Term ] F-16C Viper
[ Mid Term ] Modern Air Combat
[ Mid Term ] A-10C Warthog II
[ Mid Term ] Mi-24P Hind

Near Term - we have the final list of tasks to be done before we share it in DCS World and expect delivery in less than 6 months.

Mid Term - we have a firm list of tasks and we trust that it might be delivered in less than 9 months.

Long Term - we have an initial list of tasks but still a lot to add and do not have exact expectations. Some Long term tasks can be delivered partially in iterations, some need to be fully completed.

Projects that are in the passive development phase (waiting for a 3D model delivery, developers allocation, reference gathering stage or one of the current active project to be finished first):

DCS Core:
Damage Modeling for modern aircraft
Airfield ATC

DCS Graphic Engine:
Terrain lighting
Terrain improvement
Clouds. This task is planned to be started again in May 2020.
Weather update
Full Air-to-Ground Radar

Modules:
Yak-52 Release
Ka-50 Black Shark 3
Mosquito FB MK.VI

ED has 4 items in Early Access:
F-16C Viper
F/A-18C Hornet
Yak-52
WWII Asset Pack

We plan to deliver all products out of Early Access this year however, the F-16C Viper is likely to be in Q1 2021, but we’ll keep you updated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to all your comments.

Thank you all for your passion and support.

Yours truly,

Kate Perederko
Chief Operating Officer
Eagle Dynamics