VEAO simulations Ltd

[Silver_Dragon 411]

August VEAO develop update

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2888594&postcount=1

Good Morning Guys,

I can't believe it's the end of August already, where has this year gone??

 

Being the holiday season mainly over here in Europe a few of our team are off enjoying the summer sunshine which means development slows down a little; however this does give me some more time to actually enjoy flying the aircraft whilst doing more lengthy testing sessions rather than just jumping in, testing a specific system and back out of DCS, multiple times, over and over.

 

As most of you know I'm more of a jet head but I have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying flying the P-40F with all of it's little quirks, especially in VR.

One thing that really struck me the other day was doing circuit bashing, trying to get my landings right (to save embarrassment later) and in the P-40F cockpit along both sides are two big canopy frame bars that run the entire length of the canopy.

You really feel how close these are in VR and when turning final you have to hunker down to see under the canopy bar to keep your bearings on the runway.

I remember speaking to the pilots at various Duxford air shows and they talked about this a lot.

Chatting to Stevo Hinton when we got a chance to sit in Princess Liz a couple of years back I remember this big bar running down the canopy and imagining how Stevo would have to hunker down to see out, which he was explaining; well you really get this feeling in the P-40F as well, especially in VR.

 

As I've said before the P-40F has really been designed with VR in mind from the model to the textures as these add massively to the whole VR experience, along with the sounds of course.

Which brings me nicely on to what I'm working on today in fact. Updated sounds from our sound engineer are being integrated into the module replacing our temporary place-holder sounds.

It really is amazing how sounds make a huge difference to the whole experience and I can't wait for you to hear the roar of the Merlin as you taxi out and do your power checks with the canopy open and then can still hear and feel that roar as you close the canopy and wind her up for take off.

As I've said I'm more of a jet head but man I'm loving this bird, more than any of the other WWII aircraft in DCS and I hope you will too.

 

Flight testing against the numbers has also started and many thanks to the tireless repetitiveness of testing from our core testing team to record the flights for analysis against the numbers.

This is essential for ensuring the EFM is as accurate as possible, along with the niggly quirks given to us by the pilots who fly her at TFC Duxford.

We obviously want our first WWII module to be special and the team have done an amazing job on this one. 

 

Chuck is chomping at the bit to get his hands on P-40F for making a video for you guys and making one of his excellent guides so keep an eye out for both of those coming soon.

 

Next steps for us are to polish off the module and get it over to TFC and ED for verification and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the reaction from you guys during future live flight streams.

 

Now, let's talk about Hawk.

She is definitely a labour of my love and we've had a rocky history over the past several years.

Most of you know the problems we have had with coding, textures, DCS updates causing issues and all of those things.

I feel we have learnt a hell of a lot from our first module release and she still teaches us how to do things today given the advancement of the sim.

These are lessons learnt which has given us a better direction going forward with our upcoming modules.

But, I hear you say, what about Hawk and all of those lessons...

Well, Hawk will be getting a major overhaul from a complete re-write of the ASM code to an updated cockpit to a realistic weapons suite and many more features.

We are bringing on new talented staff and utilising the excellent skills of our current staff to give her an upgrade. 

I'm not going to go into details just yet about what that upgrade will include as I want it to be more of a surprise to you when it gets patched in the future but I think you'll like what I have planned 

 

For now, the team are still concentrating on fixing the bugs that still exist, patching up the holes if you will, which will help with the upgrade later.

 

Again, I can assure you that Hawk has not been forgotten about.

 

On to the other side of the business, the military aspect and events promotion; I've had some excellent tech demo's over the past few months and some exciting opportunities are coming up which we are working on. Some are early discussions and some are more advanced and in final negotiations. These will also benefit our consumer side of the business and details will be revealed later on as to what aircraft they entail.

We are also working hard with our events partners and you should be seeing more of Hawk out and about very soon with an exciting livery on her. I'll be posting some screens soon on what we're working on so keep an eye out for them.

 

As we've said before; the updates will focus on our current and upcoming release products and work is still going strong on all of our other modules in development.

When they're closer to release we'll be posting more details about them.

However; do keep an eye on our Facebook page and chats through these forums as sometimes sneak peak stuff is discussed or shown.

 

Many thanks for your continued support and we wish you a great summer.

Chris and the team.

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

***VEAO 2016 Year in Review***

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=179750

 

 

Hey Guys,

I hope you have all had great Christmas celebrations and are enjoying the time off work if you are just having holidays and don't celebrate.
I can't believe we are at the end of another year already and this one in particular for me has seem to have gone so quickly.
That said, the last several months have certainly been very interesting on our military side of the business which is propelling us into a busy development year for 2017, which is awesome!!
What this also means is that investment from that side of the business is making our consumer products stronger and better.

On the DCS front we have had some big ups and downs over the past year with some great wins like Hawk rear seat implementation and, on the other side of that coin, delays with P-40 of which Pete will mention in his text below.

We have lost some of our development team and have gained new members of the VEAO family. For those that have gone, we wish you all the best in your en-devours and to those that have started this year or due to start in 2017; what are you doing reading this, get back to work!!! hehe

On that note the VEAO office is closed for the holiday break with some members of our development family returning early January, some a little later in January.

So, what's in store for 2017....
Well for me it will be a busy time developing our military projects, securing more military work for the year and those beyond, demonstrating our capabilities within DCS and of course showcasing DCS itself which is second-to-none when it comes to military simulators and the capabilities of the simulator that we all love flying or even driving in.
DCS itself has come on leaps and bounds with the latest installments and we can't wait to develop systems and functionality for what is yet to come <no spoilers>.

You will see vast improvements in technology for DCS; VR being a classic example of this and we are excited to announce some partnerships early in the New Year, so keep an eye out for announcements!! 

I'll leave the consumer side of things to Pete in his text below and just want to assure you that we are working as diligently and as fast as possible to get new DCS products out to you whilst keeping the DCS quality mantra high.
You will see some vast improvements to Hawk (2.0 we are calling it internally) and you will already see these achievements in P-40 and our future products for next year and beyond.

The whole VEAO family wish you a Happy New Year and look forward to the future of DCS and our products.

Many thanks for all of you support thus far and into the future,
Chris.

And here'a note or two from Pete....

Hi Guys, 

Well what a year 2016 has been, full of ups and downs and all kinds of madness! So I am guessing that you all want to know where we are with the consumer products, specifically P-40F, Spitfire XIV and the other warbirds. 

With P-40F we have been doing a lot of fly to the numbers testing, comparing climb rates, glide rates, roll rates and all kinds of rates. A lot of time over the past couple of months has been spent by the team working on getting these key performance indicators correct. It a core objective of this module that it is the most accurate representation of a P-40F that has ever been released to the flight sim community, DCS or otherwise. 

We have pretty much finalised a lot of the ASM systems including electronics, Hydraulics and flight control systems, weaponry is in full working (and tested!) order. The textures have been finalised bar a few small tweaks for both the external and internal. Engine management is currently the focus of our programmers, myself included, to ensure that the start-up and management of the engine is not so predictable, it needs to feel alive and that is certainly how she is feeling at the moment. 

We firmly believe that when you fly a warbird it is far more than simply a collection of metal, they are all individual machines with their own little quirks and nuisances. 

The P-40 has been provisionally combat tested with the other warbirds and although it is fair to say that while she is not the top dog, she is capable of pulling out the odd surprise! Besides there is something to be said for evading while hiding behind fighter cover isn’t there. Make those Spitfires work for their medals! 

We are still working through damage modelling with ED, this is a long standing issue that all 3rd parties are suffering to one degree or another and ED are working hard and diligently to improve the interface so that we can bring more depth to the functionality we have already. More news on this as it develops. 

So what’s left and why the delay? Well first let me apologise as there is no one who wants the P-40 to be out of our stable more than Chris and I however sometimes things crop up and it is left to me to make the decision as to if it is acceptable to go ahead without a fix or if it needs attention.
Coming from the community myself I understand hardheartedly how important is to release a quality product and at the same time being dedicated to continually improve that product throughout its entire cycle. So yes, some of the delay falls at my door as I will not let something go out when I am not happy with it, hopefully this means that when the product is downloadable for you guys, you have something that will knock your socks off the first time you fly it!

So what’s left; well once the engine management has been completed we want to go over the departure from controlled flight parameters again and refine those behaviors and once that is done, and bugs pending, we will do another round of internal testing with some of our guys to check for glaring issues but after that it is looking rosy for the P-40. A lot of smaller bugs are continually being squished as well, the list is getting shorter, I promise you that. 

One thing I can tell you is that quite a few people at various public events and some people privately have flown the P-40F and have contributed to the development of the module and the overall feedback is amazing, They have all commented on how alive the aircraft feels and that you have to fly the aeroplane and not ride along like simulators of years gone by, this was extremely pleasing for the entire team to hear as that is a key objective of ours, to make it real. 

We have also spent quite a lot of time optimising the P-40F for the 3D environment with a number of our team testing the P-40 on Rift and Vive and again the feedback has been very positive, so those of you lucky enough to have one of these devices I am sure will appreciate the level of work put in by Gibbage and Rock. 

Spitfire has been rattling along at a pace behind the scenes as well, Rock I notice has been sneaking more screenies onto the Spitfire threads so if you haven’t seen them then please go along and hunt them down! Well worth a look. Producing a Spitfire XIV has given us some new, but not insurmountable, challenges, especially that engine, I believe it will really be a case of the cat among the Pigeon when this finally leaves the stable. Through work with one of our partners we remain in close contact with an airworthy example of the type as well as having some of the most experience Warbird pilots on call for feedback and testing purposes. It is fair to say that Spit has been held back while we work on issues with the P-40, no denying that, however I firmly believe that Spit will be the better for it. I know Rock is constantly on about it to me, so rest assured I am getting it in the neck on your behalf!

No one likes delays, no one likes having to say to you guys that we are not ready yet. Rest assured we are working our asses off to get the P-40 and the other aircraft to you as soon as viable. We are very proud of the shape that she is taking and I can’t wait to see some of you flying her online with some of us!

Lastly, I want to publicly thank the entire VEAO Family for their hard and diligent work this year, Many hundreds if not thousands of hours have been spent away from their families staring at Max, Photoshop or Studio when they could be off enjoying time with their loved ones. I want to offer my personal Thanks to each and every one of the 35+ staff that we have on roster, your work is deeply appreciated. 

We have a very exciting 2017 to look forward to and from me and the rest of the Consumer products workforce here at VEAO I want to wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas and all the very Best of Wishes for 2017. 

Pete

__________________

[Phantom88 3,287]

***May Update from VEAO ***

"Dear VEAO Customers,
I am writing to you to keep you informed about the Hawk and P-40F development programs for DCS World.

As you know, we have seen a list of problems develop with each iteration and patch of DCS with both of our aircraft, through no fault of our own. From engines suddenly not having any thrust to aircraft not being able to take off from the ground to weapons and smoke stopped working to the latest problems we are encountering with the upcoming DCS 2.1 release.

Our development team scramble around trying to fix these issue which are caused by the core simulator being updated. As you can understand this is sometime soul destroying and very time consuming for us, not to mention things breaking for you when flying the aircraft.

You, our customers, are the driving factor for my team and I to keep working on these issues and to provide you with the best experience possible with the aircraft we are developing and we are committed to doing just that.

Therefore I have taken the decision to delay release of the P-40F and future VEAO modules until a stable DCS 2.5 has been released. I feel that this is the only way forward and it is not a decision I have thought about lightly.

While we understand that this news is disappointing to many of you; to demonstrate our commitment to those who have and continue to support us, we are willing to offer a full refund to those customers who purchased the P-40F through the VEAO Store

Please go to this page and fill in the required fields on the form to request a refund: 
http://veaosimulations.co.uk/dcs-p-40f-refund-request/

The Activation code that you have been provided with already will still be valid for P-40F when it is released for DCS 2.5. In addition we will provide you with a pre-release version closer to the time of release for you to enjoy.

For Hawk we are still committed to developing the product to its full potential and are working through the bugs presented to us with each DCS patch. This will continue to happen through versions 1.5.6, 2.1 and beyond to the merged stable 2.5 version.

We understand your frustration with our products and no one is committed to solving the issues more than us.

We have taken the decision to concentrate our focus on the development of P-40F and Spitfire along with the updates and changes to Hawk and as such we will not be releasing development updates for unreleased products until they are in the hands of ED and release is imminent. For released products we will of course update you as soon as new features and updates are completed.

Thank you for your continued support and patience.
Chris Ellis
Director"

[Phantom88 3,287]

***VEAO UPDATE***

From PMan.......

"Following a shareholders meeting with our investors this week, development of modules for DCS was high on the agenda amongst other business development items.

Following the recent activity in regards to contract renewals for specific aircraft modules we were in the process of developing and heavily invested in, the following conclusions were made regarding moving forward with DCS module development:

DCS will no longer be our primary development platform.

That said; we are committed to getting Hawk out of early access and released as soon as possible. This will involve updated PBR cockpit textures, bug fixes for major systems, bugs recorded internally with ED and any found with future DCS patches as ongoing maintenance.

Development of P-40F for DCS will resume but will not take precedence of development over other platforms. We maintain that we do not expect to release P-40F prior to 2.5 and a release schedule will be confirmed when the module is ready for beta. 

When P-40F is ready for review in DCS; we will, as previously agreed with TFC arrange an acceptance demonstration with a view of releasing the aircraft to you, the public. 

Development work on our other aircraft will no longer continue for DCS. 

If, at a suitable time, we however convert these assets for DCS we will confirm this in due course when the aircraft is ready for release, not during its development cycle. 

Chris and I along with the entire VEAO family appreciate the support of the DCS Community during this time and continuing into the future of our modules in DCS world. 

Pete"

This is NOT Good!!