[Minoslas]

Leatherneck progress update

ED Forums - View Single Post - LN Quick Status Update (We're alive!)

Dear All,

First of all- thank you all for your patience in the past year.
Unfortunately plans don't always work out, and we're working very hard to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

Here's a very quick summary of what we're working on and where we stand.

AJS-37 Viggen
We're all fairly quiet and keeping our heads low- as we're still very much knee deep in the AJS-37 completion crunch. Most of the current work is focused on a few critical areas:
Correction of erroneous artwork
Fixing of a few hundred bugs, including some critical
Completion of ground mapping radar shader & visuals (Performance!)
Campaign & Mission completion. (1 Mini Campaign, 1 Major Campaign & Training suite)
Marketing materials, music licensing, livestream planning
Expansion of the LN Site (including Merchandise- and MiG-21 rewards)
New Theatres
The past few weeks have seen the completion of the last research trips conducted with real Viggens. Again, we visited the JA-37Di at Graz-Thalerhof to be able to remedy some of the erroneously constructed artwork. (Canopies are a PITA!). We're very grateful to all of the museums around Europe, which have graciously afforded us the ability to crawl all over their aircraft in search for complete accuracy.

The Viggen has been a very challenging project for us, both in size and complexity- but primarily in the new features that will be introduced with the aircraft. Our own, custom ground mapping radar has been a point of very difficult development- but we sincerely hope that the end result will be stunning in every way.

It all sounds, in writing, a little more pessimistic than it really should. We're getting there.

F-14
The F-14 is progressing steadily and many new systems are being consistently implemented.
There are not too many "unknowns" or- directly- new features involved in the F-14, which make the development process a little easier.

We have begun relying on the expertise of SMEs to ensure accuracy of various systems, the flight model, and other features. It's been very helpful to fill in the gaps that exist in the documentation, which- unfortunately are quite large. It's also been helpful so far in ensuring that the feel and look of certain aircraft systems is accurate. A concrete example would be the refresh rate for the HUD and VDI.

We've also begun conducting concrete CFD experiments for the AIM-54, to ensure that the missile is modelled to the most accurate extent possible.
We'll be doing a full update dedicated to just this area, as soon as we start getting concrete results from our simulations.

We'll be sharing much more on the F-14 once the AJS-37 is out the door, and more resources are freed up to produce enjoyable visual material.

MiG-21bis
The last few patches for DCS have seen the inclusion of a few new MiG-21 features, and we still have a few large items that we need to take care of to ensure the full completion of this module.

These include some sound updates, visual updates- as well as backporting a few new features from the AJS-37 and F-14 projects.
There are, of course, also a few bugs left with aircraft functionality- and we're getting to these as quickly as possible.

We have not, nor will we ever abandon our previously released modules. They're all equally important to us, and we hope that we have, and will continue to prove this moving forward.

Again, thank you for all of your patience and support.

We're eternally grateful to have such a great and understanding fanbase, and if we could take all the premature teasing back, we would.
We're always trying to improve, and the past couple of years have been a great learning experience.

Thank you!
LNS