When Eagle Dynamics has been saying early autumn I was, in my head, putting that as mid October or even later. That still seemed like an autumn release to me, yet, it seems like the DCS: F-16C might be coming a bit sooner than that. A new update from Matt Wagner helps fill in some of the details!
Early release date?
Matt Wagner reports that Eagle Dynamics is still planning on an ‘early autumn release’ but that the specific date is not yet certain because certain items are still in flux. That means that the development team is close but they may delay if bugs or issues come up.
September 25th was posted on the Steam page, mostly out of necessity to provide a release date to Steam, however, it does seem like Eagle Dynamics is looking at that date as a best estimate – even if they miss the deadline, it still sounds like it will be coming much sooner than at least I had thought.
Features to come including Litening
One of the things that the update provided us with was a list of confirmed features for release plus an interesting note about the targeting pod.
– Finalizing CCIP and CCRP bombing modes.
– Tuning the flight model and braking system. Much of this involves drag values.
– RWS and ACM air-to-air radar modes.
– Air-to-air gun, AIM-9, and AIM-120.
– CMDS.
– HMCS.
– Cold start procedures.
– Tuning the NVIS cockpit lighting.
– External model, in particularly the landing gear and aircraft underside.
– Even at early access release, the skin will still be preliminary.
Most of those features we already knew about but it’s still interesting to see what they are feeling confident about. One feature that stands out to me in particular is the HMCS (Helmet Mounted Cueing System) which we had to wait for a while on before it was added to the Hornet. Also of interest is the fact that the external model is still being worked on and that the skin will still be preliminary on release, something that was finished on the Hornet.
We are also working hard on the Litening targeting pod with LGBs, but we can’t promise this will be ready in time for the early access release, but it’s something already well underway.
Matt Wagner
And then there’s the Litening targeting pod which the team is apparently working hard to come at release. If you’ll recall, the Litening took many months before finally coming to the Hornet. By contrast it seems that the work done on the Hornet is ensuring that this pod will be available on the F-16 either on day one or not that long after.
Stay tuned!
This has been an interesting update from Matt Wagner and the Eagle Dynamics team. It makes the F-16 feel a lot closer than I had expected and that it will be at least slightly more feature complete even during early access launch.
Now, let’s just hope that the radar has a decent IFF system on day one so that multiplayer is a reasonably smooth experience.
Looking forward to checking out the Viper soon! In the meantime, check out the full update here.
Stormbirds 
Leave a comment