I’m back on the DCS: F-14 release date news cycle with new information from Heatblur that tells us that the launch date will be determined within days.

Ready to rock?

In addition to mentioning that a launch date would be determined along with Eagle Dynamics within days, Cobra from Heatblur also told us that the module has undergone multiplayer stress testing and has now entered release candidate status.

What does this all mean? Well first, DCS modules tend to be complex beasts and its important to conduct testing that involves a lot of different scenarios including what will likely be some common ones – namely, a large flight of F-14s flying together in a DCS World multiplayer instance.

Some modules have had issues in the past in these kinds of circumstances so what Cobra called a “dense multiplayer environment” essentially means putting a lot of F-14s together at once to see how the module performs.

Second, the announcement that they are now on release candidate status for the DCS: F-14 is significant. This means that everything planned for inclusion is locked in, the code is locked in, and if all goes well then the module will be launched in the state that it is currently in. If, however, the release candidate testing goes badly then they may have to go to a second release candidate.

A release could then potentially come as early as next Wednesday (February 27th) in the Open Beta release prior to release on stable several days later.

This all comes on the heels of another story I posted a few days ago from Meteor, the group responsible for the DCS: F-14s very own soundtrack,

Then what?

As much as hype around the release of the DCS: F-14 is reaching a fevered pitch, this is still just the beginning. Though Heatblur looks to be releasing a nearly feature complete DCS: F-14 there are still things that the team is planning to make available as the module develops and Cobra gave us an indication of what’s next.

Also in the coming days, we’ll be going through what to expect from the F-14 Early Access, what our roadmap is for it’s final release (-A, Campaigns, other missing features, etc.) and projected timescales. Hopefully these will give you a good idea of what you’ll be flying on day one, as well as what the future holds for our F-14 project. The F-14 won’t be perfect when we launch, but we intend to show you just how committed we are to quality and our product in the days following release. Expect to be impressed.

Cobra847 on the DCS World forums

Two campaigns, the F-14A (in addition to the early access F-14B), an A-6 AI aircraft, and the Forrestal-class aircraft carrier (3 versions) are all coming. Heatblur has also teased the potential for an IRIAF export variant of the F-14 with some of that version’s unique functionalities are also potentially coming.

More to report in the coming days!