Attention! This news was published on the old version of the website. There may be some problems with news display in specific browser versions.

Developers' Diaries: 1.39

New aircraft

Some of the features listed below might not be introduced in update 1.39 - it a list of what is currently in the development. If we are not able to finish some of the additions or we face any problems during development or the testing process then there will be changes (as you know changes are implemented after opening the DEV-server to the public as we gather feedback from the community). For now we decided to show you what we are currently working on. ===============================

Which aircraft should represent jet aviation for Japan and Germany? This question has been asked many times by our War Thunder players. Originally we considered that “paper” (or “blueprint”) planes and prototypes for Germany and Japan would be MiG-15 and Sabre counterparts, perhaps a little bit less powerful. But as our deeper research has shown, it was not quite right. Apart from that, the idea of “blueprints” as top rank aircraft for a nation is arguable itself, the supposed performance charactaristics of these planes (for Germany) turned out to be better than the ones of the MiG-9, La-17, F-80 and other similar jets. These aircraft are still very much inferior to the top aircraft of the Korean War era, such as the MiG-15 and the F-86 Sabre, thus the introduction of these paper planes would not fix the balancing issues.

We also had an idea to introduce other planes that existed and were in service during the Korean War and that have at least some connection (though indirect) to German aircraft engineering, such as the FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II and the Saab 29 Tunnan. The first one was developed by a German designer Kurt Tank, but in Argentina. The second one is of a Swedish original design, that began in WW2. Sweden gained some details of the German jet aircraft development which definitely influenced Swedish aircraft design to a certain extent. But both planes are not related to Germany: both countries stayed neutral during WW2 and were not allies. Swedish aircraft though having performance characteristics similar to the ones of the MiG-15 and the F-86 “Sabre” is not connected with Germany at all, the Argentinian one has inferior performance. Though these two aircraft may still appear in War Thunder since they are really interesting planes, but they won’t be top rank plane of Germany and especially Japan.

In the end we decided to bring the planes that were actually in service in Germany and Japan during Korea War era and later:

MiG-15 bis - served in GDR

Canadair CL-13A Sabre Mk.5 served in Luftwaffe

F-86 F-30 served in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces

These aircraft are equal to the planes of the USSR and the USA and the only disadvantage is that all top rank battles will feature pretty much the same fighters. But it reflects aviation development in the 50’s and more bomber and attacker planes planned for high ranks will hopefully bring enough variety to the battles.

Full list of aircraft that are planned for 1.39 Update:

pitfire F Mk 24;

Spitfire Mk 22;

Spitfire Mk.XVIII;

Spitfire Mk.XIV;

Mosquito Mk.XVIII;

La-174;

La-15;

Fw.190A-1;

I-16 type 24;

I-16 type 27;

Lockheed F-80A Shooting Star;

North American F-82 Twin Mustang;

Republic F-84 Thunderjet;

MiG-15bis of GDR Airforce;

Canadair CL-13A Sabre Mk.5 of Luftwaffe;

Ме-262 modifications;

F-86 F-30 of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces;

Ki-43-1;

User created content

In War Thunder 1.39 we will finally introduce the long-anticipated opportunities for user content creation. Several tools are currently in development, some of them we will try to implement in Update 1.39 the others will be added later:

tools for creating user camouflages

full mission editor and ability to play user made missions

Tools to create user aircraft models and cockpits (without FM tuning tools yet)

Location editor

Tools to create your own localization and opportunity to implement new languages

Option to modify the tactical map in a browser

Game wiki, which gives the players an opportunity to specify certain aircraft and game modes description.

Squadrons

There will be an additional developer diary with more information on the user generated content.

In 1.39 we plan to make several improvements and introduce new features for Squadrons

Full-scaled Squadron Battles will appear probably in 1.41, but before that we plan to add Squadron events - special events where only Squadrons can participate and battles that are only Squadron vs. Squadron.

Interface

Statistics and map are shown significantly faster

Some changes in crew interface for more comfortable crew management

Controls settings interface is changed to make it more user friendly.

There may be changes for custom battles and spectator modes but the development is on too early a stage to share any details.

Ground Forces

A lot of work has been dedicated to our Ground Forces. It is too early to say if player controlled ground units will appear in 1.39. CBT is at full blast and many of CBT members think that the game can be released for open test, we still want to fix, check and finish a lot. Ground Forces may be released in 1.39 but most likely it won’t happen before Spring.

Flight Model

Firstly, all the planes in 1.39 will be able to overheat. At the very minimum all the single-engined planes, fighters and attackers, will get control heaviness. Also in this “major” update we will change the nature of the speed influence on controllability, which will make it more smooth and realistic. At the same time we will make some changes for the mouse control which currently doesn’t work properly. Speaking of new flight models – the long-awaited updates will happen to most of the jet planes. All the new planes that we are adding in 1.39 will get to you with their own flight models. Also we plan to improve our plane sheets to be more detailed, including graphs of some of the characteristics that would be gathered directly from the game. But we ask you to be patient since creation of the full plane sheets in a robust way is quite a long process. Some of the functionality of 1.39 is already being tested on the Dev-Server by the alpha test team. Information about the public Opening of the DEV-Server will be given separately.