December 2024 Update

Welcome to the December 2024 update for Blue Sky Aces, a low poly WW1 flight simulator. It's been a couple of months since my last update so there's a couple of great new features to talk about, plus an update on the simulation flight model.

The first great new feature added is damage visual effects on aircraft, vehicles, and balloons, which simulate bullet holes. This is something that's been sitting in the backlog for a long time, until I discovered a great tutorial to turn simple cubes into tiny decal projectors using a clever shader.

The next awesome feature is head tracking, which allows you to look around while flying in first person view in a really natural way, that makes you feel like you're almost in the cockpit. Check out this tutorial that teaches you how to set it up with nothing more than a standard web camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGoRnmXEXYQ

Phase one of the simulation flight model is nearly complete, and I'm really hopeful that an update containing all of the above will be released early in January. Until then you can check out the progress in the video below: