Yesterday, Heatblur provided an update on the work that they have been doing as well as an explanation of what did go into the latest DCS World Open Beta patch as well as what didn’t.

Update from Heatblur

DCS World developer Heatblur are reporting on two of their modules with this latest update. The goal for the team is moving F-14 Tomcat and AJS-37 Viggen out from early access into full release. Although both modules represent high quality releases, Heatblur has continued to develop them as early access for an while now.

Some items, notably the new in-cockpit pilot models, did not ship in the latest update. Cobra847 reports that he had a sudden and unexpected death in the family that demanded immediate attention and thus some of these items were delayed. Completely understandable and I express my heartfelt condolences to Cobra847 for the loss. Its always tragic be it sudden or expected.

They report that the invasion of Ukraine has also affected the art production capabilities in Heatblur. Yet another example of external events continuing to impact flight sim development.

There are some bright spots, however, as there are some new updates that have been added in. One of the biggest is a complete ACLS overhaul for the DCS: F-14. ACLS reportedly will now engage correctly within the parameters and fly a stable approach. Safe engagement values, glideslope, and VDI caution lights have also been adjusted or fixed.

There are visual updates on the Tomcat as well. Retextured gun tube internals and improved modeling and textures for the TCS camera. The AIM-54A also now has the new overall white texture and is a separate visual scheme from the AIM-54C.

The AJS-37 Viggen also gets some updates. Fixed jamming in multiplayer, master volume knob adjusting Sidewinder tone volume, fixes and adjustments to waypoints, and a slight visual adjustment to the radar scope round out some of the highlights.

The full changelog is available on this post here.

F-4 updates?

No mention of the Heatblur F-4 in this update as the latest from Cobra847 here was focused on currently released modules and the most recent DCS World beta update. Cobra did post an update back on April 5th with some indication that we wouldn’t hear too much until the project was fully unvelied.

Don’t expect to hear much, if at all, until we actually “unveil” the Phantom. 
While this may seem somewhat strange – it was always our intent to not announce the phantom until our unveiling later this year; but the high volume of requests and interest kind of precipitated the need for an announcement trailer ahead of time.

As an additional compounding factor, Russias’ invasion of Ukraine has impacted us severely, and this will have an outsized impact on our time availability for updates before we’re fully ready.

Thanks for all of the wonderful interest and support! We won’t let you down.

Cobra847 on the DCS World forums

I suspect we won’t see much from Heatblur then on the Phantom until its close to a release. When the dam breaks then I think we can start to speculate on a release date. Although Heatblur have said that the F-4 is expected to launch within this year, I think we as community members and fans have to acknowledge that world events continue to have a disruptive effect on our favourite sim developers and content.

With luck, the F-4 will still launch on schedule and be brilliant. And if luck doesn’t hold, I’m sure it will still be brilliant but come a little later.