Description

This update brings a few more experimental features to the table. Most notably: landing gear, which is as of now only available for the Marlin, Claw and Comet aircraft. A landing gear control has been added, assigned to G by default.

Landing gear is fully integrated with physics, this means it is affected by aircraft manuevers. Moderate to high G-forces and rolling moments could induce retraction problems, so fly as smoothly as you can when the gear is not locked down yet.

The select instances control has been removed to make missile firing slightly easier/less confusing. Now, you just switch between next/previous weapon types, and fire as many as you want (of that type) by pressing Fire.

Also interesting is the Scramble gamemode which is being worked on. For now it just serves as a sandbox for the brand new General Purpose AI (GPAI) that will eventually replace the old model. Scramble will be an incremental gamemode where you fight off intruders, defending the airbase and it's facilities. You will make use of the airbase for refueling/rearming and will be able to scramble wingmen to help you out.

Some other changes:
- Added "Typhoon" fighter
- Increased performance of Storm/Thunderstorm/Supercell weather
- Sun improvements
- Flight model tweaks to various aircraft
- New, more dramatic heat blur effect for various high tier jets

Visions for the next update

I will attempt to introduce a cockpit view to the game. Just like with the landing gear, this will happen gradually, with more and more planes being equipped with cockpits as time goes on. Also more optimizations to the weather system, improving the performance and look of clouds. Engine start and shutdown operations are on the way as well. Many people have reported that joystick yaw is inverted, so I will add a toggle to control that.