In what seems like a neverending saga, the DCS F4E Phantom has been pushed back yet again. This time developers Heatblur have broken cover and made a full statement in regards to this delay.
As the 3rd in the series of videos is released we also get an update from the developers themselves about a further delay and a new “probable” release date, yet they still won’t put a nail in the exact date so it could once again be moved. I for one am starting to lose all faith in the developers who have already brought us some wonderful modules such as the classic F-14 and the slightly under appreciated Viggen. Has HeatBlur bitten off more than they can chew with this? We certainly hope not and with the current stability problems that DCS seem to have a strangle hold on and the Oculus v63 dilemma continuing to rear it’s ugly head, it’s not been a great few months for the brand, albeit, most of the issues remain out of Eagle Dynamics hands.
So What Happened?
When we began mass testing of the F-4 in January, we found that an estimated 5-10% of users had complete, game breaking, unusable lag with any and all UI elements due to a GPU bottleneck, and despite all-out efforts, truly day and night, to resolve these as soon as possible, we found ourselves at the mercy of a complex onion of PC hardware and OS interactions. Every time we thought we had a breakthrough, we’d run into another set of hardware and software
That’s right folks, you read that correctly. It was onions! HeatBlur blame this pesky vegetable twice in there statement which is linked below.
So when can we expect the F4?
Well going by comments made via other sources, we are looking at an April (probably May) release. This now pushes it from a Winter release to a Spring Release. I for one hope they can keep this promise but if the bugs they are facing are truly as earth shattering as they say, then without huge investment in the underlying game system, we may be waiting a very long time or we will get a very watered down version of the initially promised release. Who’s betting on which it is?
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog today. When more information is available I will of course share it with you.
RedBear
Links to the full letter from the developers.
https://store.heatblur.com/blogs/news/of-delays-and-silence