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Dear Pilots, Good news on all fronts this week as we continue our march towards completion of Battle of Normandy and ramp up work on Flying Circus II. We hope to have some pics of the first FCII plane, the Nieuport 28 soon for you, but today we’ll stick to WWII. As you already know, We have several aircraft in development and the closest, actually very close, to completion is the Spitfire Mk.XIV which is currently in beta testing. Below are a few pics. This plane is a beast with its Griffon engine and shooting down Doodlebugs with it is going to be a blast. Speaking of Buzz Bombs, our V-1 is going to be treated just like an aircraft. It will have a detailed damage model, so you can damage parts of it like the wings, the pulse-jet engine, the warhead (boom!) or if you’re talented enough tip it over with your wing! More on the V-1 as we develop it this summer. Next, we have some early pics of the very cool Me-410 ‘Hornisse’ and the Ar-234 jet bomber. The images speak for themselves. The Hornisse strikes me as the German response to the Mosquito no? Who do you think would win in a dogfight between a 410 and a Mosquito? Did they ever duel during the war I wonder? .In addition to new planes, we have made some tweaks to some of our oldest, namely our 109 series. When we overhauled the damage system several months ago, we had to make a temporary change to the 109’s tail assembly to avoid a bug that caused certain parts to stay attached to the plane after other damaged tail parts had been blown off. All 109s other than the E-7 was affected. The temporary change we made was to fuse the vertical stabilizer and the horizontal stabs making them one part which basically tripled their strength and the likelihood of them ever coming off was three times less likely, so basically never. To remedy this, we needed the model team re-build these tails and make a new failure point in the vertical stabilizer (like on the E-7) and break up this fused tail into their proper damageable and detachable sections. Remember that before we did any of this, the 109’s tail assembly was the ultimate ‘kill button’, push it and the entire tail would come off, not just part of a stabilizer like other planes. Of course, you can also just blow off the elevators and rudder if you hit them right. In the images below you can see this new reality in action during combat. I shot off the vert stab and rudder in one image and the horizontal stab and elevator in another. This should solve the so called “109 concrete tail” phenomenon. 109 tails now behave like all other tail sections in the sim. An. Petrovich Lead Engineer's Note: Initially, 3D models of all 109s except the E7 had the point of broken tail in such a place that the loss of the vertical stabilizer simultaneously led to the loss of the entire horizontal stabilizer. One successful shot in the vertical stabilizer could immediately deprive the plane of all its tail surfaces. Of course, it looked catastrophic (you called it "crystal tails"). And only in the E7 (as in all other aircraft in the game), the 3D model made it possible to separate the vertical stabilizer and the central part of the horizontal stabilizer separately. When we completely redesigned the damage system a few months ago, this limitation of the 109's 3D models did not allow us to fully correct the situation with the strength of their empennage, and we had to temporarily block the loss of vertical stabilizer for these aircraft. Although the aircraft could still lose the ends of the left and right horizontal stabilizer consoles, elevators or rudder. However, the fact that it became impossible for all Messerschmitts (except for E7) to shoot the vertical stabilizer and the central part of the horizontal stabilizer caused criticism from the players, and now the tails of the 109s were called "concrete". It was only possible to do it "right" by completely reworking the 3D models of these tails and adding a new break point on the vertical stabilizer (as in E-7). Which is what we did in the end. Work on the Tactical Codes feature continues and although we don’t have them working on all aircraft and vehicles yet, the technology works great and the images below gives and idea of how it will work and look. It’s not totally final yet so final result may vary a little. Work on the Dynamic Visual Damage system also continues and is currently being applied to our tanks. When it’s perfected on the tanks, we will then work to apply it to aircraft. Finally, in the next update we will include 4K skins for the Mc.202 and Ju 88 A-4 made by our talented partner Martin “ICDP” Catney. To celebrate this, I have made these interesting posters showing these new skins side by side. They make quite a colorful display. We hope to do this kind of graphic for all our aircraft eventually. Speaking of new skins, Martin is now working on 4K skins for the Spitfire Mk.Vb. This means both marks of Spitfires in Great Battles will now have 4K skins soon. The beautiful image below of the Macchi skins reminds me to say that I intend to make an Italian pilot for the 202 later this year. Similar to how we made the female Soviet pilot. The images below are 4K so you can re-size them and use as wallpaper is you are so inclined. Mc.202 Poster Full JU-88 Poster Full See you in the skies and on the battlefield! Jason and the Sturmovik Team