No!
Okay, seriously though we are still testing. This week we have out fourth revision of the release candidate to test behind closed doors and it includes (for testing) multiple fixes, tweaks, new features and many more behind the scenes goodies.
Airfield Sirens are being worked on as a bug was found that caused them to go off whether you were a friendly or enemy aircraft! Imagine the panic hearing the siren only to find out it was you that set it off
this is now a thing of the past and all sorted. Flak has been looked at at this is a big reason why we can't release it just yet until this is thoroughly tested. AAA accuracy has been 'fixed' after a few lines of code were found to be causing issues with the gunners firing randomly into the air, and then the damage effects from the shrapnel were/are seriously undermodelled. This has been fixed but imagine now that mission that were built, online and offline, have more accurate flak. Well previously these were built with a lot of AAA to make up for the fact the flak was very inaccurate. So now imagine having very accurate flak with a lot of AAA in a mission. Probably a chance you'll never ever reach the target! So we need to test this thoroughly before it goes into the wild.
In an image posted by ATAG_Bliss in the screenshots thread, it shows the fog effects have been 'found' and re-introduced. This came about due to the annoying horizon bug that has plagued the game since the last official patches. For those who haven't noticed it, it was a straight line that appeared across a virtual horizon, about 5% opacity and could be seen over the land, inside a cockpit, in-fact at various angles it was just there....
This has been a long running discussion in the TF forums....how to get rid of it. Well, it's been fixed by re-writing one of the shaders and during this work, it also becae apparent that it now allows proper representation of smoke and fog effects.
It must be stressed that the video you will see linked below contains footage showing the comparison and it really is a huge difference. I stress though, that the smoke in the video is not optimised and the mission I made to show off the fog/horizon fix was made effectively to overload the particle system. London really was burning! Our new effects guys (one on vacation at the moment) are set to get to work on rebuilding the particle effects and making them even more fps friendly. The smoke in the video is not optimised and fps hovered around the 21-25fps....but you'll see why The new shader is set to be released with v4.01
Finally, here is the video of continuing WiP as we move forward understanding the code and effects. This is a long video (nearly 10-minutes) but it includes footage of cockpit repaints for the Bf-110, the new shader effects and finally work from our guys in the Sound Studio. I must stress the Sound Studio is really early WiP but already it is looking/sounding like they are having fun learning new effects and re-working the soundbank. Please understand, we are not sure if these will make v4.01 or will have to wait until v5.00, but hopefully you can get n idea of what they are 'playing' with?
Here goes then, and hopefully the next update will be v4.01
Cheers, MP/TF
https://vimeo.com/85381354
https://vimeo.com/85381354