Almost 3 years ago we said "Coming Soon"; soon is now!
The last couple years we've been working really hard on SimplePlanes 2, so it was about time we delivered on the years old promise, but why keep it at that? 1.4 is our biggest update since 1.0, there's so much to cover that we'll just let the release notes speak for themselves (they're at the bottom of this post).
You can try 1.4 on Steam by joining the Open Beta branch, and once stable we'll push it out for everyone. Thanks for your patience!
On another note, congrats to @fe1nnecfox, @PigeonPruu, @VoidAerospace, @CardZLol and @Swordi001 for being the first to listen closely! As promised here is the original song featured in Cladh's Easter Egg :)
1.4 Update
You may notice we mention Localization in this changelog yet you can't find any language selector in-game, so let us explain: We want to work with the community to bring the game to as many people as possible, so we are actively working on a platform to support this effort. For this reason we have decided to not bundle any language with the game, but all the tools are in place for those who dare!
Some of the changes depend on the full system being reworked, we are still polishing things, as soon as the system is ready for a swap we'll include it in a patch.
Features
Localized the entire game
Pulled aaaall the text into locale files, covering the UI, part properties, tutorials, career, Vizzy, Planet Studio...
Added a language selector (it shows up if you have languages other than EN-US)
Expanded the fonts to include all the extended ASCII characters and enabled multi-atlas support so non-Latin glyphs (Cyrillic, CJK...) render properly instead of silently dropping out
Included partial example translations in Spanish, Russian and Chinese as a reference for translators, drop them out of the examples folder for them to become available
Overhauled the reentry and heat visual effects
Reworked the reentry shock into a mesh-based effect that blends from condensation to plasma based on Mach and atmospheric density
Added a long reentry trail when coming in too hot
Improved the blackbody heat glow, now using a realistic Planckian locus curve and actual emission instead of an image effect
Note: We still need to test the compatibility of the new effect with the infinite list of devices in Android, we have left the Legacy reentry as an option just in case
ISRU First steps
Bipropellant fuels (Kerolox, Hydrolox and Methalox) can now be drawn from separate constituent tanks (LOX, RP-1, LH2, CH4) in the correct ratio when no pre-mixed tank is present, with pre-mixed tanks still taking priority for full backwards compatibility
Renamed the Monopropellant to Hydrazine to reflect what it truly is
Added Hydrogen Peroxide as an alternative monopropellant
Added Argon as an alternative ion engine fuel
Added CO2, Nitrogen and Regolith, serving no purpose right now but meant to be part of the ISRU gameplay
Allowed planets to specify the composition of their atmosphere, hydrosphere and terrains
Added Vizzy blocks to get the atmosphere and hydrosphere composition of a planet
Engines!
Added a "LOX Afterburner" mode to the jet engines, letting them draw liquid oxygen from connected tanks instead of relying on air intakes, then falling back to air when the LOX runs out
The jet afterburner now uses a mesh-based exhaust like the rocket engines, responding to pressure and the LOX boost with sea-level mach diamonds, replacing the old particle exhaust
Jets now require Oxygen to work, atmospheres with no oxygen won't support jet engines, and atmospheres with low oxygen concentrations will produce less thrust
Added a thrust-vectoring (gimbaling) variant of the solid rocket motors using the Echo nozzle
Added a truncated variant of the aerospike nozzle with lighter weight and increased the efficiency of the full aerospike slightly
Raised the max chamber pressure the full flow staged combustion engines can operate at
Added rocket engine nozzle glow driven by its temperature
Active cooled nozzles will actually run cooler
Overthrottle now overheats the nozzles instead of damaging them outright, so if you manage your temperatures you will be able to use it for longer
The nozzle disc is now replaced by actual inner glow
Allowed specifying in Propulsion.xml what fuels are craft-wide so mods can now easily replicate the way Jet Fuel and Monopropellant work
Made craft-wide pooled fuels truly craft-wide and not Command Pod based to prevent crafts with multiple command pods from loosing access to the fuel pools when changing control units
This change may affect crafts that used this previous behavior to prevent Monopropellant on the payload to be drained from the booster, if the new behavior causes problems we'll investigate alternatives
Created a global particle manager and added a bunch of new particle effects
Rockets, jets and props now kick up dust when pointed at the ground, with the result depending on the angle of incidence
Fast slides will pick up dust when on the terrain and sparks when on structures or other parts
Hard terrain impacts throw a dust disc and an ejecta plume if you hit it hard enough
Hitting the water throws up a splash with foam
The rocket and jet engine smoke physics has been greatly improved
Each fuel has more distinct smoke colors, and jets will leave a darker trail when using afterburner
New designer tools
Added a new Free CAD-inspired navigation cube gizmo allowing the camera to easily be snapped to precise viewpoints, with a toggle to hide it in one click
Added tilt and roll arrows, a perspective/orthographic toggle and a center-indicators toggle around the cube
Added dropdown spinners to various part properties so all options can be seen without spamclicking eternally
Fuel tanks providing resources to the selected part get highlighted to make them easier to spot
Added a toggle to disable fuel flow gizmos and a setting to adjust the size of the navigation cube independent of the rest of the GUI
Added Fuel Flow gizmos colored per fuel type and routed along the craft's actual fuel connectivity between the selected part and all its sources
The new fuel flow gizmos exposed a couple bugs in the old fuel lines logic, fuel lines should be more consistent now but in edge cases old crafts may behave different
Overhauled the flight cameras
Overhauled the chase camera so it frames the craft based on its actual size and view direction, now becoming reactive to the acceleration
Overhauled how zooming in and out is handled while on the chase camera view to ensure the craft stays on the same position on-screen
Added a new Target Framing camera that keeps both your craft and its navsphere target in frame at once, whatever the target is
Overhauled the stationary fly-by camera, allowing the FoV to be changed while in this view, the position of the camera to be easily fine-tuned just by dragging and adding Vantage Points around the world that the camera will snap to when available
Overhauled the cinematic fly-by camera, adding new varied shots and dedicated static variants so they work even when the craft is barely moving
Added a priority to the camera parts to control the order they show up in
Added the Drood PoVs to the list of cameras in a craft without requiring taking control of them
Flight UI
Reworked the time panel so the slow motion and fast forward speeds can be adjusted without going into the settings
Added a pause button and improved how pause/unpause is handled
Added a Switch Craft menu when in Sandbox to swap crafts on the spot, spawning it in the position and velocity you were at
Map View overhaul
Swapped the resume flight menu with a main menu map view, with a list to manage your crafts while having proper context of where they are
Added more details to the planets when selected, so you can see all their info before committing to visit them
Added the planet rings to Map View both in the new menu map, flight and Planet Studio
Tweaks to the atmosphere and planet shaders
Added a PS modifier to bake the clouds of a planet, allowing clouds to now to be detached from the surface and spin independently, as well as be disabled by mods trying to replace them with custom clouds
Improved the scaled space lighting by using the correct normal when vertex displacement is enabled
Added noon and dusk tinting to the terrain and atmosphere shaders for better artistic control, and improved the dusk transition near the terminator in the scaled space terrain shader
Optimized the ALU in the sky/atmosphere scattering shaders
Vizzy shenanigans
Added a text synthesizer using Flite, no AI, full control over the pitch and length of the phrases
Added more waveforms for the Play Beep block
Moved the Play Beep to the UI layer so it doesn't get muffled by distance or the space attenuation
Added support for setting texture alpha in the MFD texture widget
Gameplay improvements
Changed how the spawn bounds are checked so spawning small crafts is less likely to remove other crafts nearby accidentally, and spawning very large crafts is less likely to clip other crafts
Added an in-flight offset slider in the inspector of the robotics parts so they can be adjusted even when no input has been assigned to them
Added an in-flight selector in the inspector of the control units so they can be changed between Plane and Rocket mode at any time
Added an Override Craft's Forward button in the inspector of control units and docking ports
Reworked how locked heading behaves after docking to avoid sudden changes in heading causing aggressive attitude adjustments
Added built-in support for Apple Silicon so the game can be played without Rosetta
Bug Fixes
Fixed a miriad of minor issues, some with no impact, some with a small impact, if you notice any change in behavior let us know!
Prevented non-player droods from becoming invisible when the player was in first person and they were unloaded
Guarded against an error when a capsule with a drood flew by a grounded player from a low orbit, loading and unloading very quickly
Included G-force damage in the total damage calculation
Fixed a typo in the stopwatch formatter
Hardened the ModApi entry points and XML loaders against missing or null inputs
Various ModApi correctness fixes across collections and mod-assembly hashing
Fixed a bug that popped when locking heading and EVAing a Drood out of a craft
Fixed a bug causing launch locations from the selected flight system to show in the switch location menu in a Planet Studio test flight
Have fun!
