Liftoff update for 5 January 2022

Celebrating the 7th year of Liftoff development, our latest milestone update is the biggest update for the game to date! Improvements on all fronts should make this the ultimate Liftoff experience.

Don't like reading long changelists? We've got you covered!

In short

• Liftoff Physics 5.0: most advanced FPV sim physics.
• BetaFlight, Raceflight, Actual rates, Quick rates and KISS
• Short Circuit: our best environment to date.
• Performance revolution: no excuses not to play anymore.
• Less loading, more flying!

Full changelist

• Liftoff Physics 5.0

  • New flight controller: relies less on Unity's built-in physics and increases performance.
  • The new Liftoff flight controller has an A.I. PID tune feature that adjusts itself based on the system's performance for a perfectly tuned setup in light. Manual tuning is also still possible.
  • It relies a lot less on Unity's physics system, greatly decreasing the time required for physics and collision resolutions, freeing up more time for rendering and increasing overall FPS.
  • New flight controller settings menu.
  • Support for multiple rate models (BetaFlight, Raceflight, Actual rates, Quick rates and KISS). The model can be changed in the flight controller settings menu.
  • Fixed: the throttle is now more responsive.

• Updated: Unity engine - better rendering and code performance.

• New: Short Circuit environment!

• Added 3 official tracks for Short Circuit

• Added an official track for Hangar C03, Russian Woodpecker and Liftoff Arena

• Removed Eastside FPV Meet, Formula FPV and IDRA Dover as official tracks on Liftoff Arena

• Updated: Single player Infinite Race now has bots that continue flying, thereby behaving more like a multiplayer game.

• Updated: players in a multiplayer game show up in the player bar on the right as soon as they join, instead of only upon entering the level

• Updated: all multiplayer menus have been merged together into a single menu, removing several loading screens between joining, creating and browsing multiplayer games.

• Updated: the "old school" level selection menu now allows you to directly select the drone, removing a loading screen.

• Updated: all interactable UI elements have been made more consistent across menus and levels. Many elements now have an additional highlight to emphasize the selected element.

• Updated: while in first-person view, certain parts that would clip with the camera are now hidden.

• Updated (macOS-only): re-enabled voice chat. Before voice chat can be used, it will need to request microphone access. You can do so in the audio settings menu.

• Added: search bar for tracks and races during multiplayer room creation.

• Added: as a result of rendering optimizations, propellers can now once again remain in view (on supported rendering APIs, see next point.)

• Added: Quick Play option to the score screen in single player

• Added: show/hide propellers in view is available in the game options menu.

• Added: enable and customise propwash effect in the game options menu.

• Added: battery sagging when battery simulation is enabled.

• Added: disarm drone option in the button setup window.

• Added: new model for ground effect simulation.

• Fixed: on supported rendering pipelines (DirectX, Metal and Vulkan), the rendering distance is now fixed instead of dynamic.

• Fixed: some frame parts referenced the wrong weight data

• Fixed: the Night skin of the KHole frame had some colors not working as intended.

• Fixed: Double Rainbow and Clockworks skins animate again.

• Mr-Hcap ghost data work again in Dubai Legends.

• Fixed: the pause menu could become unresponsive when the menu was closed during a dropdown selection.

• Fixed: drone trails now properly reset during a race, whereas before they would show a big jump from the previous positions.

• Fixed: the field of view option is now consistent between menus and in-game controls.

• Fixed: dropdown labels that were too long would not slide back to their original position.

• Removed: the 'Display' option from the graphics menu since it's internally broken on the engine-side.

• Removed: support for 32bit Windows and 32bit Linux versions of Liftoff.