https://www.facebook.com/veaosimulations/posts/1835941929790199
Hi Guys,
I thought that I would give you a bit of an update on the happens within our team and what is currently going on.
Its been a little while since I posted any king of lengthy update so I'll go through things that I have on my desk right now and what is coming next and a rough order, although as always these things are subject to change, but as of now this is how they stand.
First off lets talk Hawk, the taxi/wind/aoa bug has been haunting us for a little while and we had difficulty in both replication and identification of the bug. It would take longer than I have now to go into details of exactly what was causing the issue but the head line is that because of the methodology that we use for the FM on the Hawk there are several non scripted dependencies and one of these was returning a NaN, we have had these kind of problems before and have built in protection from such behavior, however a side effect was that because the redundancy was taking over there was a small error and it took us a while to track it down.
Long story short - we found it and we have fixed it, the fix will go out with the next patch from ED.
We have also been working on some of the external PBR textures and the internal cockpit PBR update, the external work has been completed and will, like the taxi fix, go out in the next patch. Chris and the guys are working hard on the PBR cockpit update and while it may go out in the next update it also may miss, depending on when the next patch hits I can't make promises on that one yet. There are other fixes included in the update as well and they will be detailed in brief in the patch notes.
Work is also underway on restructuring and coming to grips with Hawk 2.0 (note not Hawk T2) and we have been working away on that as well, this is quite a major overhaul of the systems of the Hawk, mainly on back end code, and will enable us to continue to update and support Hawk far into the future with less regressive adjustment on legacy code. Things that are currently in the works is pretty much everything and something I have taken a note of is the hydraulic jitter issue that we have seen previously, this will not transfer over to 2.0.
I know the next question is "WHEN man WHEN!" well as soon as we possibly can, because this is a major update to the code base for the Hawk it does take time and largely incompatible with the current base as it is being written 6 years after the original and alot has changed in DCS since then. I will be on the lookout for a handful of guys who are interested in some testing as/when this becomes available, so keep an eye on the forum and facecbook for details if you want early access and most importantly to help us get a complete and fully functioning Hawk done as soon as we possibly can.
In other Hawk news Tim Davies has been continuing to work with us on all aspects of the T1A, as you may know Tim is an extremely experienced Hawk pilot and he along with our other pilots are taking even more interest in fine tuning some of the behaviors, especially in the FM. The first round of changes to that will also go out to you with the next DCS patch. I can't say too much right now but there will also be some content coming directly from Tim on our Hawk in the future as well, including some in game content you can download and try yourself! So keep your eyes peeled!
OK, so what about P-40 then?
Well work has been a bit up and down as we had to divert a lot of resources to the Hawk to hunt down and squish the taxi bug, now that this has been completed we have returned some of our teams focus back to P-40.
P-40F's systems are nearing completion and are probably about 90% complete and there are some minor things that need work on and behaviors that we will continue to work on until we get the module to ED.
The FM is flying really well and I was hoping to get a livestream done this week but the day job has been keeping me busy, maybe next weekend if I get chance. We have a couple of dedicated testers who have the most boring job in the world doing flight tests for us and gathering data for analysis, climb tests, glide tests, roll tests, turn tests, stalling and all sorts of things. It would be unfair for me not to acknowledge their efforts and the hours then spend flying up and down the maps gathering data.
The external textures have been finished and the internals are getting there quite rapidly, You will be able to see those when I get chance to do the livestream.
I know that you will enjoy the fidelity that we have put into all the systems of the P-40, each and every system will work as per the real aircraft, a testament to the assistance provided by The Fighter Collection and the engineers that have helped us with our hundreds of questions about the aircraft and its weakness' and strengths. We have even included some specific undocumented but common faults with P-40' that we have been briefed on by numerous pilots and engineers. Things to watch out for in the future! I won't go into detail on them now as I think part of the fun will be when things go wrong and the process of eliminating possibilities to try and diagnose the problem, I am expecting alot of bug reports that are actually features
Our sound recording session I eluded to at the end of last year went well and I wholeheartedly believe that the P-40 sounds amazing with each and every switch getting its own private recording session.
I was fortunate enough to be given some pilots diaries from the war for the P-40 and they contain enough detail for us to be able to make a campaign based on a real pilots diary. One of our team has stood up and said that he will make a campaign based on these and I am pleased to confirm that I have permission, when the campaign is ready, to include exerts from these diaries with the module. I am going to see if I can get them voiced as well, so you will have the opportunity to fly realistic, historical missions with a brief based on or containing content from a real life pilots experience. I personally can't wait for that.
Over the next few weeks I will try and get a live stream done with P-40F and show you how she is coming along, When I can setup a time for this I will put it in the usual places and get a recording for those of you who can't attend. Updates for Hawk are with ED and will go out in the next round of patching as well.
As for when P-40 will be in your hands, the honest answer is simply as soon as we can sure we have squashed as many bugs as we can find and are confident that we have her in a good place for beta and more widespread testing to start.
Until next time everyone, all the best
Pman
