Hello Pilots,
I have been in Moscow all week with the team working on many things both current and future. Before I head home to California I want to share some images of the Spitfire cockpit and our new shadow tech. You heard right, our shadows have been re-worked and they look awesome!! They are sharper, your plane projects its own shadow on the ground while in the cockpit and objects such as trees and buildings and vehicles cast their own dynamic shadows on everything! We’ve also increased the distance at which shadows are drawn. This makes the scenery like villages and ground combat environments looks even more realistic. And shadows in cockpits will also be sharper with all details casting shadows. When everything is in motion is just looks great.
So, let's talk about Supermarine Spitfire Mk.VB. It took off for the first time in December 1940 and saw extensive action in both Europe and North Africa. Some were also sent to the Soviet Union via the Lend-Lease program for use on the Eastern Front. However, the Spitfire V was considered to be a relatively old plane by the time the battle of Kuban begun in Spring 1943.
We're finishing our work on 2.011 update. It will bring you another Collector Plane - Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb which has been used in Battle of Kuban. These planes were sent to the USSR via the lend-lease program. The update will also include the new historical campaign Blazing Steppe by Alexander =BlackSix= Timoshkov (you can already pre-order on our website).
However, in today's Dev Diary we'd like to tell you what will happen after this update - in update 2.012 that will be released later, possibly the end of July or early August. We already told you about the coming huge update of all aircraft (Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Kuban) flight models which will address such minor effects like oscillations in maneuvers, aircraft banking with full rudder input and control surfaces load changes at different speeds. These peculiarities, while being minor, are caused by deep flight model parameters. Tuning them meant a lot of work, but caused additional positive changes in the flight behavior of every aircraft in our project. We decided it would be the right thing to do to tell you about these changes in advance - what will be changed for each aircraft. We present you the full change list of the coming FM fix (once again, please note that these changes will be published later, in the end of July or early August, in update 2.012).
Another week has passed and we're moving further in the development cycle of Battle of Kuban. There is only a bit more than half a year left until its release, so many of its parts start to look final already. The base of the new Career mode is already there: almost all the historical texts are ready as well as squadron insignias, we're working on the cutscenes. Its internal elements - GUI and mission generator patterns - are being filled with content. The flight physics improvements (enhanced fuselage tail modeling that will make the FM even more realistic at unstable flight modes and when there is a strong rudder input) are nearly finished, we plan to release the corrected FM in July. The work on Hs 129 B-2 (we did show you several screenshots with it last week) flight model is started. We just finished reworking the airfields on the Moscow map and in the coming update they'll be prettier at close and medium distances and, most importantly, the performance hit near them will be lower.
Today I’d like to share some straight talk with you about our current and future plans for the Sturmovik franchise. I took over as Lead Producer in August 2016 with the goal of improving Sturmovik and bringing it more in line with your original expectations, while at the same time bringing the product’s technology into the future. Matter of fact my goal was to improve, what I call the four key pillars combat simulations – technology, features, content and community.
The past 9-10 months has seen Sturmovik be improved in many ways with new technology, more content and additional features being developed with more still to come. I also hope that some new out-of-game initiatives will further strengthen our small community even more.
