Status Report #21: 11th of January, 2026

Hello there, dear readers, and welcome to 2026!

Michael here, and we hope you made it into the new year nice and safe. As is tradition, we had a nice new year's eve with friends.

...... and then, as is also tradition, listened the next day to reports of how the larger cities turned into warzones overnight, fuelled by alcohol, low-yield explosives and general stupidity. Good thing we're country bumpkins over here.😉

Anyway, let's get into the main thrust of things and talk about our...

Active projects!

Okay, we'll have to be honest: In terms of music, the holidays seem to have put us into a bit of a creative slump.

We're sitting on a pretty cool new project, with a beat and some melody already written, but all in all, for the past couple of weeks, we seem to be stuck on ~20% progress or so. Been trying to get something done on a regular basis, but beyond just normal practice sessions, there wasn't much spark.

Don't fret though! Now that the holidays are over and we're moving back into a normal life rhythm, we figure that the spark will come back. Having fun and making music on the weekend or after work is a lot more enticing than just doing it whenever because you've got all week.🤷

Been doing well for our blog, though, as you can probably tell!

Chapter 3 of Casualia came out the other day, as well as our post about new year's resolutions on the 1st!

Today in fact, we're looking to start the gameplay for chapter 4 of Casualia, and indeed, we're about to start writing a post about another, rather different game, too.

Actually, we've been uploading Youtube shorts of it, so it's hardly a secret:

Expect a post about Teardown in the near future.😛

But yeah, that's about it for projects, so let's talk about...

Other stuff!

Okay, i haven't been entirely honest. Yes, the holidays might've thrown us out of rhythm a bit in terms of musical work, but there's also something else that's kept our minds occupied.

And well, it's....

DCS again! Yep, we've been DCS'ing pretty hard. We got started on the AH-64D Apache Longbow on Christmas Eve and well, we kinda both fell in love with this thing. Such a satisfying machine to learn and fly.

Though that's also amplified by another factor:

We wrote in our new year's post about how one of the few things we'll allow ourselves to buy this year is the upcoming Balkans map, assuming it comes out this year. Well, we changed that a bit.

Instead, we got the Cold War Germany map. It was on sale, it's often touted as one of, if not the best DCS map, and most importantly, we updated our build of the Retribution dynamic campaign engine and found that it now supports Germany.

Considering that the Balkans will be more expensive on launch, won't have Retribution support for a good while and likely won't quite reach the quality of Germany or Syria, we pushed that back to "yeah, probably some day, if it's any good" and got Germany instead. No-brainer, really.

And i mean..... look at this:

This. Map. Is. Insane!

You can get up close and see things like individual benches and clothes lines! And somehow, even though you're flying over this kind of detailed terrain with seriously complex and intricately simulated aircraft, DCS manages to do a nice ~60-70 frames per second even with other units around, whether you're over the middle of Berlin or out in the sticks.

Meanwhile, MSFS 2024 with all it's modern advancements somehow manages to look like a garbage fire by comparison, has the simulation depth of a puddle and fluctuates between 20-50 frames on the same machine. So not only are we happy we switched over, we actually feel like we're experiencing something of a personal golden age when it comes to flight simming.

That sort of map, and an awesome helicopter to fly low and slow, so we can really see the strengths of the map up close. It's sheer, condensed awesomeness!😁

Oh, and as an extra bonus: Now, the only thing we might get this year, if it comes out, is the Panavia Tornado. Admittedly, it would've fit nicely on the Balkans map, too, but come on. A Tornado. Over a cold war Germany map. Can't beat that.😉

We're also intending to finally take some time to study the F-4E, which we already own, specifically because 1, the Tornado is going to use Jester 2.0 for multicrew stuff, just like the F-4, and 2, there might be a naval F-4 in the future, which we'd like to be prepared for. Though of course, learning the E variant should be quite enjoyable on it's own. 

Y'know, it's actually seriously surprising that we've not written a blog post purely about DCS, or flight simming in general. Should really get around to it at some point, if we can manage to stick with a single topic within that sphere. Otherwise it'd be a 3-day-read.😜

Anywho, beyond DCS, we've also been doing a lot of...

..... yeah, that.

We rather like Teardown. So much so that we're actually about to finish it up, including all (currently available) DLC. Again, blog post incoming on that end.

Nothing to report on the book front, as we're currently using our reading time for Apache guides and manuals.😉

Oh, also, we actually dug up Fire Birds. Old Nicolas Cage movie. Sort of like Top Gun, but with Helicopters.

Obviously not as good as Top Gun, but eeeh, it was entertaining enough. Many mistakes, both big and small were noticed, but well, we're actively studying the machine, so that was to be expected.

But yeah, i think that'll about do it for us, this week. Hope you're having a solid time with the new year so far, and here's hoping that it keeps up!

Until next time, dear readers, have a good one! Hopefully one that involves 30mm cannons and Hellfire missiles!🙃