DCS: World

Hey folks,

Sorry for a lapse in updates. I am almost comically plagued by internet issues on my trip; could make for a nice story all by itself. Almost considered doing a write-up, but perhaps in a couple of days when there’s no trace of bitterness. Catching a plane home tomorrow afternoon, where a nice PC with a nice Ethernet cable awaits. The things we take for granted.

Anyway, while I was incommunicado, the rest of the team has been hard at work.

We’re going to do a combined update on a bunch of fronts.

The 109 cockpit, shown earlier, is virtually completed. It’s scheduled to be done by the end of next week. Here’s a teaser shot.



We’ll do a full photoshoot once it’s finished and checked.

The 109 external is not nearly as far along. We actually ran into a bit of delay with it, and we’re working double time to catch up. The 109 is still scheduled to be the first new RRG plane to be completed, in time for the closed alpha.

The first step of making an external model for a DCS plane is to make its engine. Even though it’s not something you really see, this is what’s traditionally done first before the rest of the aircraft is built around it. We had an issue with blueprints and references that had us redo a portion of the model, and the engine is generally extremely detailed and elaborate, so we’re about a week behind schedule. The engine is generally modeled and mapped, so we’re ready to proceed with the rest of the aircraft.



I am walking a very fine line here between keeping the fans and the artists happy. This is something I’m sure most of you did not think of at all, but the 3D artists making these models feel very connected to them and have a sense of personal pride, so asking them to show clearly unfinished models is always met with some resistance. I’m not the kind of boss who says “just shut up and give me the model to screenshot.” So, in this case, just like with the 109 pit, we have a modeler who really hates the idea of showing unfinished, “crappy” (in his words) WIP. He really asked to delay showing the engine until it’s shiny and perfect, so this is our compromise.

Please consider this as a general showcase of our attention to detail.

The flight model and the weapons and all the physics stuff for it has been in the works since July, but it's using the P-51 as a stand-in for now. We're rather far along with our physics model of the Bf.109, but obviously that's not something that can be shown with screenshots. We'll probably do some detailed lengthy videos once the 3D model is put in place, in the run-up to the alpha.

Next, we have the current state of the P-47 cockpit. Again, slightly behind schedule there, but really working hard to catch up. No deadline jeopardized, just a bit of an extra crunch in the middle of the project. We expected to just reuse P-51 gauges for the Jug, but ended up having to redo most from scratch. We currently have the canopy framework, the dashboard, and the gunsight, all done from scratch for our brand new P-47D-30. All await the delivery of the last set of factory blueprints for a final accuracy check.






Lastly, here’s where we are with the landscape. Been doing a lot of technical engine-related tasks. Redrew all the roads and crossroads. Redid the canals. Redid the flooded areas once again. Played a whole lot with the trees. Generally the terrain is beginning to look more detailed, but still a long road ahead.






Now, the most important thing I’ve realized over the past two months is that if I was my own employee, I should fire myself as a community manager. I barely have any time to do it, and it creates a very poor impression. Now that we’ve finally received our kickstarter funds (by the way, yay) I really need to hire a more professional community manager. I’ll get busy once I’m back home this weekend. Of course, ideally it would be a member of this community. It would most likely be a salaried part-time position, and the qualifications would include a passion for flight sims, understanding of aviation, and good communication skills. I don’t know if it’s realistic to hope for someone who’s fluent in both Russian and English, but English fluency would definitely be a must, while Russian would be a huge plus.

If you think you might be a good fit based on this preliminary announcement, email me at luthier1@gmail.com

With that, I’m off to pack my suitcase. Hope you like the screenshots!

Unfortunately, we were not able to incorprate the new mesh, lighting and shadows this week. However, I have included a video I created earlier that you might find interesting.

This video is captured from the terrainviewer of the work in progress Nevada Test and Training Ranger (NTTR) Map being build for DCS. This is not running in DCS at this time though and many elements are not complete and require tuning. Please note that we are creating Las Vegas in a "representational" level and it is not our intent to model it building for building.

Just 2 little videos to show weapons first implementation
Cannon -> https://youtu.be/NivE67V0d0M
HOT missiles --> https://youtu.be/2cBo1NzQm5o
The targeting system was not done at the moment of the videos, so the HOTs fly ballistic...
To be continued ...

Oh, Would some of you have photos of french gazelle pilots suited for flight to share, any else country will do too, soon the Gazelle will show a brand new 3D cockpit entirely remade plus HD pilot and copilot

Thanks

Hi,

Weapons Step 2 : Feature for the pilot to fire gun or HOT missiles (for playability)
Feature beeing activated/Deactivated in Options screen
Gun reticle is not movable and HOT missiles are fire and forget style for the piot

Next step will be the same for the copilot + TV screen + commands + gun slaved to the target + missile guidance during its flight to the target

Pilot Gun
https://youtu.be/h9RNfSUN74Q

Pilot HOT missiles
https://youtu.be/sREJoH4OIlI

Of course cockpit is not representative of the final product

DCS MiG-21Bis NewsFlash - Issue No.9

External Model

Rudel is still working on unwrapping the exterior mesh and building the master textures. He has nearly finished the wings. Check out the images below to get a good idea of what to expect detail-wise. These are, of course, without speculars and normals, which will massively benefit exterior texture artwork, once finished.

The aircraft will likely come in a few variations of weathering. Of course we will release a paintkit with the normal compliment of layers once the aircraft has been released.

Internal Model

The Cockpit diffuse texture set is currently at around 95% completion. Only some small details on the main canopy remain.
More importantly, however, the first normal and specular maps are being built. These maps will allow for massively increased fidelity and detail.

We have also begun initial deployment of the new cockpit artwork into the DCS engine. This is a labour-intensive project, as various parts need to be updated to fall in line with new development.

Please enjoy a selection of screenshots from a VERY Work in Progress version of the MiG-21 cockpit below. I've tried to showcase it in a wide variety of conditions to give you a good idea of the current look.

Please keep in mind, that there will most certainly be considerable improvement before the cockpit is considered Final. I cannot stress enough how important specular and normal maps are in our workflow. There are also many various bugs still to be ironed out (rampant fresnel, seams, etc.), so as always-- Work in Progress!

AFM

At the coding side things are progressing rapidly. Dolphin and Roland are working heavily on completing the MiG-21 codebase.

The duo is primarily occupied with implementing the last missing features in various Avionics, including failures simulation.

The Weapons system has been extended with the implementation of the SPO and weapons managment has been further improved. The Radar and ASP optical sight are now operational, and are waiting for final tuning.

The AFM has been optimized, tuned, and is now waiting for finalization of weapons integration for its' final iteration.

Various other improvements, such as panel shaking and ground occlusion for Radar and other Avionics has further advanced the aircraft's fidelity and complexity.

AFM + Coding

The roadmap remains the same. We're all crunching VERY hard at this point for you all to enjoy the Fishbed this year.

Others

As Always-- thank you all for your support, patience and encouragement. We can't wait to share our work with such a great group of people.

ok heres a small "WIP video" of the harrier jump jet audios.

beautiful Pegasus F402 engine tones ingame.

enjoy all.

Just wanted to give a quick update,

I started testing some methods to aid in building the cockpit, but nothing to really show as I was simply testing the functions in Max.

As for the External Model:
-I'm adjusting some Lighting, and Some Lighting Settings.
--Strobes, (only controlled by AI Right now) Are gone, and replaced with Rotating Red Beacons.
--Re-Positioned the Upper and Lower Red Beacons
--Deleted the NAV Light from the Top of the Vertical Tail (There isnt one there IRL).
--Afterburner is adjusted a lil, but not final.
--Started building the 3D meshes for the Landing Lights

Also, Right now, it's looking like I'll have little time to do massive 3d Construction/Changes,
So if the Team wants to, they can start looking for someone to take over the Cockpit Building,
As I Don't want to continue to delay work on systems and Stuff. ( I have some of the panels mostly done, and none of the TUB or Gauges. )

I can continue to re-vamp and work on the exterior, and hopefully have an AI w/ Damage Model Done this year (hopefully for the MIG-21), but Building A cockpit from scratch, Might take a Long time with available free time.

Our lead developer in charge of the NTTR map has been out of the office this week, so progress was rather slow. However, I've attached a couple images of the new trees being developed for this map.

New GBU-31(V)3/B penetrator on F-15E

A little Late Night Work...

Hello folks,

A really quick one today.

The Bf.109 cockpit is finished and ready to go. The external model is behind, which is normal. The pit was started earlier and was made by two people, so this is exactly as planned.









The landscape is also moving along. Changing the trees a bit, working with forests. Beginning to play around with hedges, obviously a very early test. We know how important these are. Our goal is to have them everywhere. Also redoing lake and river banks and intersections points.

Perhaps not as "sexy" as other DCS World game elements, we are working on a new GUI for the Mission page. The current page is less than user friendly and particularly baffling when trying to locate Combined Arms missions.

Here is an early image of the new GUI that we think will make finding single missions much more easy.

Things going a well so far. I'm still busy getting additional photos on the BO-105 since the guys from Roth doesn't allow me to shoot/ record sounds for privat use ().

State of work:

Modelling to Does:

- Rotorbrake
- Board landing Light
- Door grips

Integration:
- The Internal and external model is integrated in DCS World and flyable (with Black Shark Dll's). Thanks to my Squadronmate: JaBoG32_Butcher

Sounds:
- Diveplane did an outstanding job on the sound files and I can just recommend this guy. He knows what he's doing. The sounds are (in my opinion) more than realistic. I've heard a lot sound of the BO-105 sounds but these are so close to the realisic that i was leaning back, closed my eyes and I had the feeling that I was sitting on the pilot's seat . Thanks Diveplane for your outstanding job.

Next:
- i'm moving on texturing the Centerpanel. In the last few days I was counting gauges jumping over fences when I was lying in my bed . That's why I moved on texturing the weapons-terminal which is 90 % done.
Check the screens of my current state of work. Thanks for your patience

Friday Development Update - November 22, 2013
Comment Like 2 likes
Hello everyone,
Things are a little slow, or rather, the progress at this stage is not too apparent.

On the Normandy front, the landscape is moving along. We’ve increased the amount of details on the landscape and worked a bit more with the woods. The woods are now a separate single object which makes them both easier to place and a lot easier on performance.






We’re also creating a few more stand-in buildings. The design process has us place a lot of blue box stand-ins, simple shapes that denote where the buildings will be, which will later be replaced with detailed buildings of the same dimensions. Replacing blue boxes with these more detailed stand-ins is an intermediary step that allows us to better fine-tune the look of city blocks. The texture is obviously temporary. Once we place a bunch of these together we can experiment with damage modeling and the general aesthetics.



On the airplane front, we decided to hold off on screenshots today. When things are unfinished, they just don’t look that great, and while many of you will perhaps call us too pessimistic, we’re just not comfortable with showing these unfinished intermediary steps.

The P-47 cockpit is beginning to look rather good. We greatly improved the instrument panel. It’s virtually complete now, and it looks a lot more like the real thing. We had to redo a huge chunk of it compared to the previous screenshots, and the gauges now have the proper bezel as they should on the P-47D-30. We’ll be finishing it up next week and polishing it and inserting it into the game engine the week after that, so hopefully there’ll be something cool to show the Friday Dec 6th.

We’re also progressing on the biggest success story of this kickstarter, the Me.262 cockpit. Being what it is, we again want to hold off on showing the very early stage. The modeler making it is the most resistant to showing unfinished work out of everyone working on the project. We’ll see what it looks like next week. Definitely very eager to show you guys what we worked so hard to put into the project!

The 109K external is also almost ready to be shown. Again, we made a very hard choice to hold off on those screenshots because we’re going to have something a lot more impressive next week.

Anyway, this is where we are across the board so this is slightly painful to write. Hopefully this week is the least amount of screenshots we’ll ever show. Everything is moving along, and as things get closer to completion there’ll be a lot more stuff to show. Especially once we have the 109 visuals in the engine. That’ll begin a very exciting stage for the project.

Finally, on the web development front, I know a lot of you are very anxious. This is taking a lot longer than anticipated but the end result will also be a lot more comprehensive than we originally intended. We’re moving along with the backer web functionality and making sure it’s both clear and easy to use. The intended end result will allow all project backers, kickstarter or paypal, to log in to the project site and to see their own personalized management screen. It will show you the exact number of rewards you’re eligible for based on your pledge amount. It will show you the rewards you have currently selected along with their status (shipped, in progress, etc). For any unfulfilled rewards, it will allow you to swap them out or enter additional details. We’re working very hard to make sure it’ll be easy to use and to understand, while also being full-featured and problem free, allowing for example such a range of options and easily specifying user accounts for friends you wish to gift additional licenses to, or specify different shipping addresses for several copies of the same aircraft manual, etc.

We’re working extremely hard to have it working as soon as humanly possible, and hopefully we’ll have some screenshots as well as the ETA for the site ready very soon.

Thank you for your continued interest in the project!

It's always that last 10%...

Over the last few months, the team has made tremendous progress on both the NTTR art assets and getting EDGE working in DCS. Although we had hoped to have this wrapped up by the end of the year (never promised), I don't see that happening. There are half a dozen art issues that need to be resolved, EDGE integration into DCS will probably not be completed until Mid-December, and beta testing of the map within DCS has of course not been able to start yet.

Nevertheless, progress is being made... just not as fast as we all would like.

I've attached a short video showing some of the areas outside the airbases and downtown Las Vegas.
https://youtu.be/HbDQ9tdraBc

Right now we have good progress with 1.2.7 version but have decided to release small update 1.2.6 with 2 noticeable fixes.
Fixed StarForce protection bug with false virtual machine error.
The bug which prevented with normal work on the PC with Nvidia Optimus technology is fixed.

I was tuning the light and shadow values today, and I took the following images that I thought I'd share.

Fellow Simmers and DCS Community,

We at Studio Beczl are, and always will be, committed to clear, transparent and honest communication with our fans and customers.
Be it development updates, release schedules, upcoming product announcements, post-release support, technical support and all other
forms of information relevant to you and your experience.

As such; we believe now is the time to present our current development status of the MiG-21, our plans for the near future and a summary
of the project so far.


1. Release Date

Even though we have honestly put in a herculean effort to get the aircraft ready for release before the Christmas season,
we are not confident that we can provide a release to the standard we have set forth for ourselves, and one that you all expect.

Consider for a moment the ramifications of reduced sales due to missing the Christmas season, and you can accurately surmise
that we are just as dismayed at the timing as you. We are all passionate simmers here and it pains us greatly that we have to delay our launch
by yet another 3 months. After much internal discussion, progress consolidation and assessment, we can finally present you with a concrete date.


The DCS: MiG-21 BiS will launch 30th of March 2014


Mark it in your calendars, take the week off work and put a biometric sensor on your Mancave door; because on the 30th
you'll be strapping yourself in and taking off on your first GCI intercept.

Once again, we are incredibly sorry about not being able to deliver before the end of this year. Pushing a rushed release of a
complex aircraft such as this is fair to neither you or us. Count on the above date holding true.

NOTE: It is possible that the aircraft will be finished and published EARLIER than the specified date.


2. Development Status & BETA

During the past year of development, our programming team has undertaken the massive job of rewriting all aircraft avionics and
subsystems for our new C++ framework. Our lead developer, has spearheaded the charge of writing our AFM, which makes the
MiG-21 both a joy and challenge to fly.

We are without a doubt convinced that the MiG-21 will live up to everyones' expectations with regards to systems depth, fidelity and accuracy.

We have also devoted significant development resources and time to implementing features such as GCI, Custom ground occlusion,
custom ground units and many other important features that will benefit your flying experience.

By Mid-December, we expect to reach feature-complete status. We will then be moving into polishing and bugfixing stages of development,
essentially an internal BETA.

As mentioned previously, we will not be running a public BETA program. The aircraft released to you on the 30th of March
will be feature-complete and thoroughly tested.


3. FAQ

Will you be publishing through STEAM?
We do not have a definitive answer to this yet. Rest assured that we'd love to publish the aircraft over a tried and true platform
such as Steam. We will not be publishing exclusively on steam.

Will there be a Pilot in the Cockpit?
We love this feature and implementation is planned.

The MiG looks Great! But performance must be terrible?!
False. As we have mentioned quite a few times now; our triangle counts are lower or equal to similar ED products, both internally
and externally. Texture weight is also low. Performance is of utmost importance to us; and our development team possess a
wide range of hardware configurations.

Will there be an Early Access Program for Backers?
Yes. As stated previously, IndieGoGo backers will be able to fly the MiG-21 at least a week before the official release.

Is the MiG-21 being released together with EDGE?
We have no influence or association with the release of EDGE & Nevada.

How much will the DCS: MiG-21BiS cost?
Similar or Cheaper than existing modules initial price.

Are backer shirts coming?
Closer to release. Designs will be coming shortly.

What is coming next?
At this point we have announced the MiG-23. Stay tuned for more exciting info regarding future projects.
Right now all hands on deck are focused on finishing the MiG-21.

Are there videos coming?
Yes. Many. Both instructional and promotional.

Will the manual be available before the aircraft is released?
Unlikely. Writing the manuals is a lot of work and is planned for the pre-release phase.


Most importantly:

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support and for your patience. We hope you'll stick with us through the final stretch.

Stay tuned for the next Newsflash in the next few days and more development info & updates!


Sincerely,

The MiG-21 team