Hi Pilots!

Here’s a small update, mostly centred on performance optimization. We hope you like it, and it should fix some problems if you have any. We would like to remind you that the registrations are still open to the second event of the 2025 FAI eDRWC, so sign up now if you haven’t already! Also…

⏰ANNOUNCING THE CHALLENGERS LEAGUE⏰

We are now running a new series of competitive events: the EreaDrone Challengers League. Read more about it, and sign up here.

🔜COMING SOON : ⚖️PHYSICS UPDATE✨

Releasing soon, we are announcing the often-requested Physics Update! It will overhaul physics, give you more options to tweak them, including a gravity slider, and will include an in-game guide to explain what all those confusing sliders mean to help you get the physics that suit you best. Stay tuned!

But before that, here’s the changelog for the current update:

🆕 NEW FEATURES 🆕

🌄DLSS 3.7, FSR 3.1, and XeSS 2.1 Support:

You can now turn on your AI upscaler of choice, which lets you enjoy higher frame-rates and better visuals. They are available to choose from in the Anti-aliasing option.

🖼️Import an image in the Track Editor:

You can now import any image into the track editor and move it around/scale it as you want. This can be helpful to reproduce any real track layout, if you have a picture of it. This is only to help you build a track, and it will not show up once you decide to publish the track.

📊Improved Drone Interpolation:

In Multiplayer, drones of other players were often stuttery and distracting. With this new system, they should now fly smoothly and be accurate to how other players fly them at all times.

🌬️Ground Hovering FX:

In Multiplayer, you can now see some visual effects of the drones hovering over the ground. This is tied to the Volumetric Clouds setting, so you can turn it on/off that way.

👀AVAILABLE FEATURES 🔦

Over various recent patches, we discreetly added a few features, but we never told you about them… So here’s a small list of what’s new since the Rework Update:

🎛️High Quality Collision option. Turning this on will simulate drone collisions with the ground and obstacles more accurately. Please note that this will use more system resources.

🔭You can now use Ctrl + scroll to change your FOV in Map View Mode

🏷️You can hide other players’ names in Multiplayer (Options -> Display others’ names). We know this is often requested, and it's already in the game!

📊PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS ⚙️

Here are the major changes in this update! We have major CPU and memory optimizations, and especially reduced memory allocation. This should help your game run smoother and minimize some of the issues with stutters and weird frame pacing.

- Better support for VRR and Low Framerate Compensation on compatible monitors

- Controller polling should now be more efficient

- Minor optimization in the Stadium environment

- Various bug fixes related to performance

- VSync and Target FPS are now independent of the quality presets

- Removed “Unlimited” Target Framerate option

We removed the Unlimited option because it caused lag spikes and uneven frame pacing, which do not occur when the framerate is capped. Instead, you will still have the option to choose a max framerate up to what your monitor can support, so your input latency will not be affected.

🛠️BUG FIXES 🔧

⚠️Major : 

- Fixed missing Game Ending sequence and Spawn Selection screen in certain scenarios

- Fixed occasional fatal game crash related to the initialisation of drone physics

- Fixed Local Server crashing because the ports were not available

- Fixed Tutorial mode not starting, causing the player to be stuck in the lobby settings without the start button

- Fixed alternative fonts not working, making some non-Latin (especially Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) characters into squares

- Removed a 3rd Party tool that was sometimes wrongly detected as malware by some antivirus software

🔎Minor:

- Various security and networking fixes

- Various visual fixes

- Various fixes related to controllers and input

- Fixed the mouse cursor never becoming invisible in certain cases

- Fixed drones stuttering in spectator mode

- Fixed issue where drones were locked when joining a lobby after the lobby already started

- Various bug fixes related to events

- Fixed Drone Collision detection for High-Quality Collision setting, sometimes not giving back adequate control

- Fixed a bug where localized text inside buttons was not updating when changing locale/language

- Fixed game blocking exception when the droneprofile.ed file is corrupted

- Fixed the Replay reader playing too quickly

- Fixed the wrong font in the Game Mode Selection screen

- Fixed bloom settings not being applied everywhere, and made bloom stronger

- General updates to packages and game components

And that’s it!

- The EreaDrone Team