Demo Update 04/14/2026

Added a slight delay to reactivating weapons after using the RESUME button from the pause menu. This keeps the weapons from firing when resuming the game when your fire button is the same as your menu select button.

Fixed an issue with the enemy fighter materials that made them look darker than they should at short to medium distances.

I finally got around to refactoring the missile launch physics. Before, a missile was spawned off the rail under the right-side wing but did not inherit the players ship velocity. This could make the missile look like it was coming from all manner of places on the ship during heavy strafing. Now the missile inherits the players ship velocity for a short period until its own propulsion overrides its inherited momentum. This makes the missile fire look more consistent when doing lateral thruster maneuvers. This also makes dumb-fire missiles less accurate when used during heavy strafing because the missile has to overcome the players ship inertia when fired and dumb-fire launches use the fixed gun sight.

Disabled the safety override that blocked missiles from being fired while in uncompensated flight mode. The physics change above made this a more feasible option.

Changed the restriction in place for using the boost engine. Now it is possible to boost while in either of the compensation modes. If CMP mode is INACTIVE, the onboard computer will automatically switch to the ACTIVE CMP mode before engaging the boost engine. It will NOT return to an INACTIVE state automatically. The pilot will have to switch it back manually once the activation input is returned to an unlocked state. This is a compromise that allows it to be used in any CMP state but still requires the pilot to actively switch modes (if returning to INACTIVE mode) NOTE: A new system has also been added to ensure that the spacecraft is moving in a forward bias before boosting can occur. This is to keep the boost engine from being deployed while strafing sideways past the minimum speed threshold for boosting.

Added a new ICON to the left MFD screen. A colored box with a black arrow inside. This is a forward bias notification icon. If this indicator is RED (even if the boost system is online) the boost engine button will register an error sound. This means either the forward bias isn’t sufficient for boosting or the minimum speed has not been met. This indicator is red when these criteria have not been met and green when they have. You need both the white boost online text and a green indicator for the boost engine to fire.

Reduced the boost engine recharge time to allow it to be deployed a little more frequently. Once the speed of the fighter has fallen back into the normal speed envelope, approximately 5 seconds of charge time will remain before the system is back online for use. This is a compromise for players who are not a fan of the one-shot system and would like the boost system to be available more often.

Updated the Compendium and tutorial mission with the new information regarding the boost engine and compensation mode changes.

Added an initial and “experimental” implementation of FreeTrack head tracking. This will be the only type of head tracking API used in the game. The idea is to allow the use of OpenTrack, a free application that can take inputs from many different peripherals and convert them to the FreeTrack protocol. It was tested with my Tobii Eye Tracker 5 and works well. There are hard extent limits set for pitch up, pitch down and yaw extents to keep you from seeing areas outside the bounds of the segmented cockpit. It also ONLY supports head rotation; no axial position movement or head roll is currently being tracked. This has been asked for by players since the demo was released, and although it was not planned, I felt I should give it a go. This will be an unsupported feature, but players that use head tracking are sophisticated enough to figure it out. Just download and install OpenTrack, set your input and output sources, tweak sensitivity and smoothness settings, setup any needed hotkeys, then hit the start button. The game will automatically detect that its active and start tracking without any fuss. The only option control in the game that effects head tracking is the sensitivity slider in the options menu. Any control settings, like “head centering” will be setup with a hotkey in the OpenTrack software. Consider this in testing.

Added a head tracking sensitivity slider in the options menu. All other controls for FreeTrack will have to come from OpenTrack or other input software used to output to the FreeTrack protocol.

Reworked the firing rates and damage levels of all enemy ballistic weapons to create more immersive fights without significantly effecting current difficulty levels. These settings are still being tweaked, and any feedback would be appreciated.

Added an additional redundancy when opening the controls menu to try and force Unity to beat the page into focus. There have been fringe cases of the mouse not clicking on anything in the control's menu. As I have never experienced this and couldn’t reproduce it, I’m hoping this might remedy the issue. As a last-ditch work around, the arrow keys and the Enter key can be used to navigate the menus. You can also setup your HOTAS / HOSAS or controller to navigate the UI.

Fixed a controls menu theme bug that caused a controller selection UI button to turn blue when activated before turning its normal gold color. I believe this only happened when navigating the menu with a controller or HOTAS.

At player request: I made the navigation selection marker, in the control's menu, have more contrast against the selectable items normal background color. This makes it easier to see when you mouse hover or controller hover a button or bind slot.