Hello everybody,

Another week has passed and our Bodenplatte development progressed neatly during this short time. First, we have finished reworking the graphics effects system we told you about last week:

1. Fire effects improved for aircraft and ground vehicles, more dynamic and detailed;
2. Fuel leak effects improved (less noticeable, but more realistic);
3. Damaged engine exhaust effects improved (less noticeable, but more realistic);
4. Tracer smoke effects improved (more smooth and realistic);
5. Wingtip trails effects improved (more dynamic, less apparent beginning);
6. The water hit effects improved (more realistic);
7. Aircraft and vehicle hit effects improved (more difference between AP and HE ammo, more realistic, added debris);
8. Bomb detonation effects improved for 250kg +  bombs, additional flash effect;
9. Water steam effects added for twin water radiator aircraft (Bf-109, Ju-87, Spitfire Mk.IXe, Pe-2);
10. Water steam overheating effects added;
11. Wrong mixture exhaust effects added;
12. Wood hit effects added for WWI aircraft;
13. Gunfire smoke effects added;
14. Oil leak effect adjusted;
15. Fuel leak effect on the ground added;
16. Water steam effect on the ground added.

Second, we have revisited the gunfire dispersion model and performed additional research on the historical documents covering the fire dispersion depending on the gun mounting. There are no new sources, but we have re-analyzed our approach and one problem became apparent - some sources provide fire dispersion data for single shots while others have data for short bursts. For some aircraft, the sources provide dispersion data for both cases - this allowed us to build a statistical model for single/burst fire dispersion ratio. Having updated the dispersion model, we're now able to tune the fire dispersion separately for single and burst fire. Of course, we've taken into account the fact that even when you fire a burst, the first projectile has the fire dispersion of single shot while the subsequent ones deviate more because they are modeled as shots in a burst. The fire dispersion increases with the gun temperature as before.

In the most cases, the fire dispersion has been already modeled using the burst fire data, so the changes in these aircraft will be hardly noticeable when firing in bursts, but the single shot dispersion will be lowered greatly: 2-2.5 times. On the contrary, the Soviet fighters were set up using single fire data before so now their fire dispersion will be increased 2.11-2.86 times depending on the gun and aircraft (this isn't that much at the effective fire distances though, see below). In addition, thanks to this research, the single fire dispersion of the heavy 30 mm and 37 mm guns has been slightly lowered while the burst fire values stayed the same.

It should be noted that all these changes (applied to each aircraft independently) gave the overall effect of reducing the difference in the fire accuracy among the different planes (for fuselage mounted and wing mounted guns that are close to the fuselage). Excluding the rare exceptions, the fire dispersion for non-overheated guns is 0.66-0.95 thousandths of distance. At the effective fire distances, this results in the fire pattern of around 1 ft or slightly more.

Surely, we have worked on the other parts of the sim as well. One month ago we could show you the 3D model of Me 262 without textures and a couple of weeks ago you saw the cockpit of P-47D that was untextured too, but today we present them to you in the game engine - the artists haven't finished the texturing and materials yet, but they are almost done. What can we say - while P-47D-28 cockpit is a bit overwhelming with all the details, instruments, controls and various information plates, the jet aviation pioneer Me 262 looks strikingly beautiful in the air. Here they are: