After years of waiting and what seems like an eternity between the unveiling last fall and now… Heatblur and Eagle Dynamics have released the DCS: F-14B Tomcat into Early Access on the DCS World beta release. It’s an exciting day for a lot of fans of DCS World and of the F-14 Tomcat!
Iconic fighter takes flight!
We’ve waited so long but it doesn’t matter now because Heatblur’s F-14 is in the general public’s hands for the very first time. That means that we get to see first hand what the team has been up to and just what kind of module the Tomcat is going to be.
In our microcosm of the flight simulator world, it feels like the now retired Tomcat has been reborn. In digital form anyways. What a glorious experience it has been to take this iconic aircraft up into the air for the first time.
It’s far too early for even a true early impressions piece but I’ve just spent the last hour getting acquainted with the F-14 and it looks like we have a really impressive module on our hands here. For bonus points the module comes with the full Meteor ‘Defender of the Fleet’ album which you can play in the cockpit. It’s fantastic!
If you’ve been following the development of this module or are familiar with Heatblur’s past work, you won’t find yourself being disappointed in the level of detail, quality, and dare I say craftsmanship because I really think their whole team took this to another level.
Again, its still early, there are a few bugs and some DCS instability that I’ve experienced, and there’s a lot of work still to come here. The F-14B will no doubt need tweaks and we’ll be looking to the F-14A, the A-6 AI, the USS Forrestal and two campaigns to help fill out the Heatblur F-14 experience before we can move this one from ‘early access’ to ‘released’.
First screenshots
For now, here are some of the first screenshots from my few flights where I was checking out the aircraft and flying from the carrier deck. Enjoy!
Stormbirds 
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