DCS: OH-58 Kiowa Warrior pushed to 2021

November 21, 2020

2–3 minutes

Third party developer Polychop-Simulations has announced on their Facebook page that, despite their best efforts, the DCS: OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter that they have been working on will be pushed to 2021 despite their best efforts to get it ready for the public before the end of the year. Here’s the information and thoughts on the delay.

Prudent delays

In a statement on their Facebook page, Polychop indicates that their team has been in crunch mode for several months attempting to get the DCS: OH-58D ready. Despite that, they feel its just not ready yet and are officially announcing that the module will not be coming in 2020. Read their statement here:

Dear community,

With the end of the year fast approaching and still a lot of work to do, we have come to a point where we have to accept that a 2020 release of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior module is no longer feasible. We want to release a module that we feel is feature complete, mission ready and a true tribute to the men and women in army aviation. That is not to say no extra’s will be added later on. Even though we’ve been crunching the past months, we simply aren’t there yet.

We can imagine this is a disappointment to all who look forward to the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior module and we hope to make up for this with the polished release the module deserves. We’ll be working hard to get you the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior module as soon as possible.
Polychop-Simulations on Facebook

Though disappointing to some, I think this is the right move. Any time a developer acknowledges that their product just isn’t ready for customers yet, I applaud the openness and transparency that goes into saying something like that.

Polychop has a somewhat chequered reputation in the DCS community and although there is considerable interest in the new helicopter, having a good first release and having good first impressions of their second module for DCS World will go a long way towards improving that reputation.

Looking forward to seeing what they can do in 2021. Until then, check, check Polychop-Simulations out here.

8 responses to “DCS: OH-58 Kiowa Warrior pushed to 2021”

Yolanda

November 21, 2020 at 9:30 am

The word is they were asked not to compete with ED’s own release of Mi-24. Do you remember the F-16 rushed release? ED panicked about the just released JF-17, which seemed quite successful on the launch and pushed out half-baked product (not talking about features here, but basic things like collision/damage model). I guess they do not want to repeat that.

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1. ShamrockOneFive
  
  November 21, 2020 at 7:50 pm
  
  That’s an interesting possibility, however, it appears that neither helicopter are due imminently as the Mi-24 seems to have been delayed until the new year as well.
  
  It is possible that ED were concerned about the JF-17 upstaging the F-16 although in the end it seems that both module have done well.
  
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Fernando

November 21, 2020 at 5:47 pm

That! Same happens to the carrier from HB. SuperCarrier out the other delayed.

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1. ShamrockOneFive
  
  November 21, 2020 at 7:51 pm
  
  I’m not sure about this either. Supercarrier came out in the first part of this year and Heatblur have been pretty transparent about their efforts on their own carrier have been slow – the last we saw, only basic texture work had been done and the model was still being 3D detailed.
  
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butcher75

November 21, 2020 at 10:18 pm

A lot is riding on this module when it comes out.So a delay to get it right would be the wisest decision for polychop.

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TK.1

December 28, 2020 at 6:57 am

Polychop was forced to delay the OH-58 because they need to rework with the flight modeling. It was pointed out in their demos that flight modeling is similarly borked as it is in Gazelle. Meaning that you hold the stick at the center through the maneuvers and you had 2-2.5 times more power than suppose, there is no weapon recoil at all etc.

So because they [Bell] likely didn’t want to release anything that is not even believable acceptable, it was pushed further.

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1. ShamrockOneFive
  
  December 28, 2020 at 7:24 am
  
  Interesting. Is there a referenceable source for this information? I know Polychop had some issues with their flight modeling and that Bell helicopter is going to verify the modeling – not a bad thing if they are having a good dialogue and working through the issues.
  
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  1. TK1
    
    December 30, 2020 at 6:31 am
    
    Nothing straight to quote for, but first they had in this year lots of videos about how flight modeling was ready and so on. The few who got special change to fly it praised the flight modeling (no real life experience on Kiowa or so) and then suddenly there were some mentions that they are changing the flight modeling because feedback.
    
    Last time they got to real storm by denying all faulting in gazelle flight modeling and defended it to be a proper for years. Only finaly admitting that it needs to be rewritten by using new methods that Kiowa does use.
    But the same problems were commented in the videos of those Kiowa demos and it really does look like such Gazelle behavior.
    
    Polychop is very sensitive for their work, so one can’t really give negative critique about it without getting them upset.
    
    Someone made example video about Gazelle how you can fly it without using cyclic, just by using collective or pedals.
    
    It looks like first part is about collective how you can pump it up and down and gazelle doesn’t react to forces by any other means than going just up/down.
    And then on other phase there is just using pedals to turn helicopter around as wanted and gazelle doesn’t really react to it by any other means than just slight power loss at full pedal.
    
    Everyone who flies helicopters know that you can’t take hands off from controls and make new inputs without requiring to adding corrections.
    
    In the start it seems that player disables all autopilot and trimmer functions even so gazelle should be extremely sensitive to flip around and so on.
    
    Carefully wathicng the videos from Kiowa show similar traits.
    
    1:47:30 and forward. Like he is flying at about 15-20% power use. And Kiowa Warrior is famous for it’s underpowered engines even in cold weather that you are very weight limited and every pound counts to get it up in the air.
    
    2:05:25 and forward the high maneuvers are done almost without any inputs given. Just like with gazelle that it requires just couple millimeters with even extended joystick to get it moving around nicely. While with other helicopters we are talking even almost going to max cyclic limits and using collective and pedals to get them moving properly.
    
    Even watching some flight flschool cockpit videos shows that gazelle is flown by moving cyclic a lot around like on other helicopters and it is not at all so sensitive as that red box shows it is in DCS.
    
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