Heatblur have been very quiet about the DCS: F-4 Phantom. This has been by design as Heatblur CEO Nicholas Dackard aka Cobra8472, has said a few times in public that the team wouldn’t be showing off too much until they were close to release. I would imagine that Heatblur’s excellent PR machine would kick into high gear when the time comes. With a release date originally intended for 2022, many of you may be wondering where Heatblur and the DCS: F-4 Phantom is at as we head into the last 8-weeks of 2022. Fortunately, we have a little update that you might want to read so let’s have a look!
Phantom in progress
For some DCS World fans, the F-4 Phantom has long been on the wishlist and the news that Heatblur was doing it was an instant hit for nearly everyone. Their excellent work on the AJS-37 and F-14 Tomcat have put Heatblur up at the forefront of DCS World module development. With very little news on the development to go by, any news is big news for this module and we do have some.
Responding to a question on the r/Hoggit Reddit group, Cobra 8472 had quite a bit to say about how the project has been going and some of the unexpected challenges that have impacted the team over the last several months.
Here’s what was said:
Release dates and our timelines are frequently memed here; sometimes for good reason, but we made our 2022 announcement with extreme confidence at the start of the year. This was based in having already spent a year developing the Phantom and growing our team into a full-time, professional outfit. We’re spending a lot of money developing our DCS modules, past and present currently and no-one wants to release our next flagship earlier than me, trust me on that. 🙂
No measure of good planning could have predicted a huge chunk of our art production manpower to disappear overnight due to Russia invading Ukraine, and that I would be out of action for two months due to a family tragedy. To say it’s been a tough and outright chaotic year is an understatement and a half. We’ve increased spending significantly and hired more people than planned this year to make up for lost time, but even at a full sprint and standing on the gaspedal only gets you so far. A benefit to this is of course that we’ll be better equipped to tackle future challenges.
Apologies for the “non-answer” as to a specific timeline update, the situation remains dynamic enough for me to avoid offering a public committal. We’re burning the candle at both ends to revert to the intended timeline. The power grid situation in Ukraine just this week is yet another factor that just popped up, uncertainty is ever-present currently.
To offer some detail on the Phantom itself- it’s that we are working to make DCS: F-4E a step up in every way. We’re going deeper and more detailed than we have ever done before, across both core and base systems (hyd, electrical, etc.) all the way to the frontend (Radar, JESTER v2, etc.). For our next slew of aircraft we’ve developed our “NextGen” core- which completely revamped every single part of our codebase and we’re developing to a diligence and detail that is quite novel. We want to go beyond the F-14 and further ourselves and our products as much as economically feasible.
Overall, and most importantly, thank you for the interest and being excited though.
No matter how tough this year has been- getting a legendary module of a legendary aircraft in your hands is all the motivation we need to power through.
Cobra8472
At the moment, if you go on the Heatblur Public Roadmap Trello page, DCS: F-4E is still listed under 2022 so its a possibility but with just eight weeks to go, it does feel like a stretch to me. That may be overly pessimistic but after years of watching DCS module releases and paying close attention to groups like Heatblur, this is a project that probably won’t see a release until it’s feeling good. DCS: F-14 saw lots of post release development but it was already feeling really good even on day one which was impressive to say the least.
My read of the situation is that Heatblur are working very hard to hit their goal of a 2022 release but a lot of unexpected issues are making that a challenge. Although Cobra doesn’t want to offer a date, I would say that it’s probably a safe bet to say that DCS: F-4 Phantom might not make a 2022 release but it could see an early 2023 release – and that’s ok.
Stormbirds 
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