Its the spooky Halloween season and so what better time for Heatblur to talk about their highly anticipated F-4E Phantom II for DCS World. Let’s have a look at the statement and some responses in the comments and get updated on what is happening with Phantom. Before you ask… no release date just yet but it does get addressed.

Latest with the Phantom

DCS: F-4E Phantom II is one of the most anticipated modules for DCS World. It’s unsurprising given Heatblur’s strong reputation with the AJS-37 Viggen and the F-14 Tomcat as well as the reputation of the F-4 Phantom itself. The wait has been long and made longer by Heatblur’s initial report that the F-4 would come in 2022 (obviously it didn’t). Here is where things are at right now as per an update on the company’s Facebook page.

As we head into a.. spooky season, we’d like to take a moment and thank you all for your unwavering support and passion as we knuckle down and keep grinding away on what in many ways is the most complex project we’ve ever undertaken.

The top priority is an enjoyable, polished Phantom experience on day one. Part of the complexity though is also ensuring that everything new we build can potentially be backported to the F-14 and Viggen; which will both become beneficiaries of everything we do in the future. Unifying the feature and detail levels across all of our modules will be key moving forward and we look forward to fulfilling all of our remaining promises on the Tomcat and Viggen.

At the core of things, it appears that building up Heatblur’s technology base not only for the F-4 but also for their prior modules so that everything is working together and sharing technology is taking time but also setting them up for success with the Typhoon and A-6 Intruder as well.

Invariably, a question in the comments asked for release date and here’s what Heatblur had to say about that:

Trust us, it’s frustrating for us too! We’ll share more as soon as we feel a little more comfortable doing so. You are all always extremely supportive, we just don’t want to disappoint again- even if it’s an external factor or influence. Know that we are motivated in every way to launch ASAP!

That external factor in Heatblur’s case happens to have been the Russian invasion of Ukraine which cut off and disrupted the efforts of a couple of key developers on the Heatblur team.

Another person asked about naval Phantoms and while Heatblur has indeed confirmed a naval based Phantom for the future it is still good to hear more recent confirmation that their team is indeed still planning to deliver.

We’ll absolutely be delivering naval Phantoms once the -E is complete!

As far as we know from the earlier statements, an earlier Phantom will be different enough that development would require a partial redo of the airplane and Heatblur feels that such a change would be a separate module. Given the depth and detail that the team tends to do, it seems more than appropriate when the airplane itself is quite different.

Check it all out on the Heatblur Facebook page!