Announced too soon and took too long!

Global economics and politics, whether you are Socialist or Capitalist, have probably finished off this simulation and what a shame since the days of Scary Pigeon boasting lots of innovative features and cutting edge ideas only to drag out a lifetime of nonsense calling itself 'Jet Thunder' :-( Sad but I think you guys have missed the boat or if you are Italian and a Captain of a ship, you have abandoned it regardless of if there was life still aboard!!

I truly think you left this project too long before bringing it to market. I sincerely hope I am wrong...dearly so ;-)

Mizzy

Well, it wouldn't be the first . . . but I would not necessarily write it off just yet.

It certainly took a bit too long and the outcome is not very encouraging.

if im not mistaken jet thunder is an indie game made by enthusiasts. the work required to make an accurate sim with historic accuracy, realistic flight model and avionics is at the least, difficult.

You were 90% accurate, but not quite 100%.

We all recognize that the work required to make an accurate sim with historic accuracy, realistic flight model and avionics is at the least, difficult. I don't think anybody here would argue that.

Jet Thunder WAS an indie game made by enthusiasts. Then Aerosoft came on board. Dante struggled with the choice of getting in with a publisher -- that would giving up some profits on the back end but getting some operating capital to really employ a team full-time, and maybe surrendering a bit of creative/editorial control in the process. But ultimately he did get in with Aerosoft and so he ramped up his team and went to work. Dante shared a little bit of that with me, at the time, but I haven't had any contact with him sinnce then. Obviously, he's had his hands full!

Somewhere along the way, probably, they ran into a snag I am guessing and they had to go back and rework a major section of the code or something that was causing a problem of some sort. That is purely my feeling. But as far as I know, Aerosoft is still on board. Anybody heard otherwise?

Ripcord

Unfortunately, when a project takes this long, one of two things usually happens.
They get tired of it, say ,"We've had enough!" and cancel it.
Or they get tired of it, say, 'We've had enough!" and kick it out the door and release it as a buggy mess.

The videos they released were slightly underwhelming, so possibly they've taken it back to the paint shed to update it's terrain and replace some place holders with the real thing. That Harrier look great though and I hope we see it soon. I too messaged Dante a bit, hope he and the team are still plugging away at JT, if they pull it off it'll be fantastic.

Yes, still a JT fanboi...

Wow you guys are a tough crowd......

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jet-Thunder/108275485873472

Latest news from the guys.

Not a matter of being a tough crowd or not.
The devs promised so much that this sim would be released before christmas that they even "promissed" to eat trees in case Jet Thunder wasn't available in the market before that same date and after christmas passed and Jet Thunder wasn't released the devs instead to giving some feedback to their loyal followers (which I include myself) they gave absolutelly NO feedback at all! So and from my "lifetime experience" regarding PC flight sims I came to learn that this indicates that there's a 99.999999% probability of something being very wrong regarding this sim's development and this like Pooch already and correctly said this usually means that that one of the following two situations will almost certainly happen:
1- The sim will be canceled (like "tons" of other many promissing sims in the recent past)
2- Or, the sim will be rushed and full of bugs and with half or even less of the promissed features (like IL2:CoD for example)

Of course, since Jet Thunder is one of my favourite sim projects (on par with Combat-Helo) I honestly hope to be 100% WRONG! But recent history seems to counter or contradict my hopes...

So that could be an explanation why it takes so loong.... Though, comunication could be much better.

Scope creep - always the bane of developers, anyway, lets hope they pick up the comms bit and we see something on our HDD sooner.

I'm reading waaaaay too much into this..imagining a modern era (ok...1982) RoF. Hope they pull it off and do the subject the justice it deserves.

Yeah some feedback would be nice.

Yup.

How it should have been handled:

[To our loyal customers and fans; while we promised you a game by EoY '11, we've taken a step back and reevaluated our resources, and decided to revise our original launch strategy and timeline.

Unfortunately,this means our JT Dev team will be going dark for much of the remaining year. Rest assured however,that this will result in an increased feature set, making JT a far more robust title. In the greater scheme of things, JT will be a better software for this delay, and all of us at Aerosoft are confident you'll appreciate our choice in the long run.]

^I could polish it up a bit once the coffee hits the brain, but that's how pretty much what I would have done.^

If you need to go dark,so be it, but let the fans know that all is well. I don't think that's asking too much. Aerosofts a publisher, is their job to advertise and promote, and they've been doing a sorry job with JT.

And frankly,I've never understood why all these devs are so secretive with their products. What, is Ubisoft gonna swoop in and steal their idea for a high-fidelity simulation of the Falklands air-war? Heck, most Americans probably don't even know where the Falkland islands are, let alone that there was a war there.

I simply couldn't agree more with you AggressorBLUE!

Its pretty flippin' obvious a kindergartner can handle press better than the JT team. But I still want to see them succeed rather than pour doom and gloom all over their heads. Despite the amazing amount of time it's taken for this project I really want to see it get its day, despite all the obvious warning signs, maybe the project is in limbo or something (IDK) Aerosoft is just the publisher the JT team from what I understand is still just a handful of guys and I can't remember if they had full time jobs on top of all this.

Again, the JT dev team isn't responsible for PR, that's the publishers (now Aerosoft) job. I don't hold the Devs at all responsible for the blackout.



Well I work in marketing, so I figure I'm at least qualified to have a professional opinion on that!

Any chance of a new video Dante?

^Wow someone more optimistic than I am lol!

There may probably be another Falklands War before this is released!!

Not very interesting from "all new game" perspective, our Argentinian planes would be the same ones that flew in '82...

Well, we don't have any carrier based aircraft at all lol

We don`t even have the aircraft carrier/s either!
However, it doesn`t take away any of the desire for Jet Thunder to appear in a saleable form at any time in the (hopefully) near future.

Yes but the Eurofighter Typhoon is one hell of a plane lol

Yeap, but there are only 4 (four) of them in the Falklands which by all acounts is a VERY SMALL number.
If I were an Argentinean planning an invasion I would sent a team of Special Forces to sabotage those 4 Typhoons and then game over. Of course the British defending the Falklands could expect such actions but after years and years of peace, "sharp readiness" is usually a "casualty" or overlooked.
What I mean is if the Argentineans managed to pull out a strike that disables/destroys those 4 Typhoons (Special forces raid or perhaps a surprise air attack) this could mean "game over" for the British defending the Falklands...

Yeah, but then we would have to convince the settlers to become Argentinians and be part of the wonderful third world, with disastrous governments, low salaries, HUGE taxes, and an overwhelming feeling of being on your own... That's the biggest weapon for the UK.

Yes, I also have no doubts that the Falklands are British by right! I have this oppinion because of some reasons but the main one is that 99,9999999999% of the population WANTS TO BE British (just not to say 100%) and self-determination is the most important right of ANY PEOPLE - But politics a part, one thing is sure: an invasion or invasion force doesn't care a bit about what the local population wants or else Argentina wouldn't have invaded the Falklands in 1982, would it?

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php/topic/41424-new-schedule-revised-plans/page__st__160

Latest news from aerosoft.

Wow! Imho that sounds bad!
Seems that this game is seriously messed up!

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/top...post__p__358867

Doesn't sound good, but without the details it's a difficult to understand the impact.

That's it, it's the end folks. Last one out, please turn off the lights.

What I'll never understand, is how a project that was marching, slow, but moving forward, all of the sudden gets some financial support and dies! What kind of sh*thead does it take to actually kill a project that was going good BEFORE you assigned resources to it...

Obviously the whole project was a exaggerated from the beginning, plus the devs got lost in their own high anticipation.
I wish they would cut their losses release what they have plus some kind of development kit and let the modders have their way with it and salvage whats left of JT!

Now there's a thought. Maybe they can sell what they have, or open it before time overtakes the engine.

Oh I almost forgot about this project !

Clearly this project isn't on track as planned here's hoping the team can turn it around and still get this sim out the door! Good Luck JT team!

Well, you can forget about it now!

My comments in Red:

"It would be silly to say things are going well with this project.Then we agree Mr. Kok.

But give me a bit of time to sort things out.You've had a year...how long does "sorting out"take? We got serious money in this project and we are still very much aiming for a release. If only because we just like the idea and the people behind it. I love flying a Harrier over the Falklands waiting for some Argentine fighter to show.That does sound awfully fun! Hey, maybe someone should make a game about that.. "

This smells like feature creep induced vaporware.

At the end of the day: Aerosoft is the one who's out the money they invested, Aerosoft is the one who's failing to generate interest because they lack basic knowledge of press release and developer diaries, and Aerosoft will be the one who makes JT "toxic" as an investment from other publishers.

oh, and it appears you have a bit of bark in your teeth Mr. Kok...

Now where does it say this project will never be released you silly boy!! READ what it says, it is having problems and your comments are not helping matters! Come to think of it, neither were mine so let's just hope they get this project to market and wish them luck xx

Mizzy

I'd rather they kill it. Let someone else come in and take over.

I wanted this game already but they haven't released it yet so I want them to give up their hard work and forget about it?

This is like the guy that #%&*$# about how his free Wi-Fi on the airplane is too slow even though he'd never used it before until that flight.....

I still Think this will be released

It will be released when it is ready, in a couple of more years

I wish them luck. I myself will purchase it when it comes out. I would love to fly a different plane set and in a rather unique environment.

Same here, no high hopes, but I will definitely buy it.

I have no problem with this taking another year, two years, three years or ten years as long as it is well developed and released without show-stopping bugs. Rather that, than it being released next month, half-finished and poorly managed by some greedy publishing house. There are excellent sims out there RIGHT NOW to enjoy in the meantime, and when Jet Thunder finally DOES come out, I will be waiting, cash in hand, to add it to my list of sims. Blustering about release dates is pointless and sometimes destructive.

I heard there are people still waiting for Fighter Ops to release as well.

You MUST be joking, right?

.... crickets...............................

God...

Probably easier at this point to just convert it into a DCS product -- why waste all the 3-d model and system engineering that has gone into this thing? Good way to generate a little extra cash to fund this project. And while they are at it, maybe they could add the British naval fleet as well.

Hell, as a phase two, they could create the falkland theatre for DCS World and probably come pretty close to realizing what they had hoped to accomplish with their own project, without having to sink gazillions of dollars/euros in to a new graphics engine, or whatever it is that isn't working out as planned. Who knows, maybe some of their terrain data is in a format that can be reused and/or converted. Aerosoft gets some kind of return on their investment that way.

Or maybe this thing is closer than any of us thought...?

Perfect sense Sir...asmuming that their software programing allows for such a project! I really feel that the DSC model is the future of such projects, only time will tell but it does make sense what Ripcord has said!! ...Does it not?