"Friday" Update, April 28, 2012

[BlackSix]

Dear friends,

Yes, we know it's ridiculous. No one is more upset at the situation than us, believe me. You have lives outside flight sims. You have jobs, you have homes. For us, Cliffs of Dover is our life. When we can't get it right, it hurts us. When we are in the constant state of "almost ready", when we break promises week after week, it affects us very deeply.

Unfortunately, even though it looked like we had something releasable this morning, by lunchtime we felt we should work on it more. What we almost released would have been a "DX10 alpha". All the FM changes are there, lots of other great things, FPS and stability improvements, etc.

However, the things that are the current "known issues" are:
· No dynamic low-caliber hit decals showing on aircraft;
· Detached aircraft chunks losing their texture and becoming pitch-black;
· Little particle "dust" that comes out of weapon hits looking like untextured squares;
· Gunsights always white in color;
· No waypoint lines rendered in map or FMB;
· Pilot and Plane models not rendering textures in Options - Pilot and Options - Plane respectively;
· DX9 support not ready for public consumption.

We just felt that this was one known issue too many. The decision was very hard to make. Many team members are unhappy with it, especially those responsible for the parts of the patch that are fully tested and working such as the FM.

I believe however that, rather than presenting ourselves as a team that releases half-finished patches with lots of graphic issues, we should work very hard on building the reputation for making things right, the first time, however long it takes.

We’ll keep providing regular reports.