Announced back in 2023 as part of a flurry of developer announcements, recent news coming from the r/Hoggit community is relaying word that the DCS World third party developer is changing the specific model of the Shenyang J-8II that they intend to develop. We haven’t heard much from the developer in quite some time so let’s see what the latest word is.

Changing the “Finback”

The J-8 Peace Pearl (or PP) variant was announced back in 2023 as the variant that Deka Ironwork Simulations was planning to do for their next DCS World project. The Pearl Pear version was a controversial decision driven mostly by available documentation on the radar and avionics of other variants of the J-8II. The Peace Pearl version was fitted with largely US based avionics as part of a short lived thaw in relations between the US and China. The controversy was largely because the Peace Pearl version was limited to just a couple of prototype jets and tensions soon rose again and the aircraft was never finalized.

Now, a post from the developer released on Chinese social media platform Bilibili appears to suggest a change in course. The post, made on r/Hoggit, translates to read:

After announcing the J-8PP, we’ve been listening closely to everyone’s feedback. During the development of the J-8PP, timing happened to work in our favor. At the same time, both the community and the team increasingly wanted a more authentic, “true-to-original” J-8 variant—and with BVR steadily becoming the mainstream in PvP, we reconsidered the plan again and again. In the end, we’ve decided to switch to the J-8DF instead.

DIS announced that it will launch the J-8DF instead of the J8-PP

The J-8DF that they intend to offer seems to have some confusion over exact capabilities but it looks like it will have a mix of IR and radar homing missiles including the PL-11 which is roughly analogous to the AIM-7. There’s some dispute in the comments on if it will have that capability or if it will be limited to IR only missiles.

More as this develops.