Happy New Year!

This update focuses on flight realism, audio correctness, and systemic stability, alongside a major new world addition: The Estate, a fully explorable interior space. We’ve reworked turbulence behavior, rewritten core control loops, clarified diagnostics, and eliminated several long-standing edge cases that could push systems into undefined states.

The result is a more stable aircraft, more believable atmosphere, and cleaner feedback when something goes wrong —with a new place to explore when you’re back on the ground.

🏠 NEW: The Estate (Explorable Interior)

You can now visit The Estate, a new fully realized interior location tied into the broader world.

• Walkable interior space

• Environmental storytelling elements

• First step toward persistent personal/world locations

This is an early version and will continue to gain interactivity and narrative hooks over time.

🌪️ Turbulence & Atmospheric Simulation (Major Iteration)

We’ve completed a non-linear rework of the turbulence model, consolidating several experimental passes into a single, more controllable system.

• Turbulence is now scaled back and shaped non-linearly

• Introduced a new stochastic turbulence engine

• In-cloud visibility variation is now driven by low-frequency stochastic turbulence

• Turbulence aggressiveness now modulates correctly with scalar density

• Rate damping in orbit patched and stabilized

• Diagnostics clarified to better visualize turbulence state

This eliminates sudden unrealistic impulses while preserving the sense of mass and atmosphere—especially critical in Vieneo’s dense air.

🎮 Flight Controls & Autopilot

Significant under-the-hood work to improve predictability and recovery:

• Pitch PID loop fully rewritten

  • Tested extensively with the T-19

  • Reduced oscillation and overcorrection

• Autopilot now:

  • Properly kicks off on stall warning below [c]scalarDensity 0.15[/c]

  • Releases control pressures cleanly when disengaged (keyboard users especially)

• Control loops reset logic hardened

• NULL rate handling corrected (no longer requires cockpit power)

🔊 Audio & Sound Physics Improvements

Several fixes here were motivated by rare but nasty edge cases (including the “Allie weird sound state” issue):

• Sound attenuation corrected for pressure changes

  • ~6% attenuation shift when transitioning from 2.6 bar to 1.0 bar

• Removed global Doppler pitch adjustment for external sounds

  • Thunder and fireworks now behave correctly

• Ambient cockpit sound fixes

• New installer for ionic audio components

These changes make sound behavior more physically grounded and prevent runaway audio states.

🧭 Diagnostics, UI & Feedback

Better visibility into what the sim is actually doing:

• Added APN display to diagnostics

• Gear state logic clarified:

  • Disagree states now correctly show amber (retracted) and red (extended)

  • Unknown positions now display as hashed

• Turned off the 1/2 BANK message below computed stall speed

• Diagnostics screen now more clearly reflects turbulence state

🛰️ Orbit, Commands & Systems

• [c]000COMMAND00[/c] now places you 500 km above the surface in a stable orbit

• Fixed rate damping in orbit

• Modulated control aggressiveness correctly with density

• Reset several file handles to static to eliminate rare instability

🧹 Stability & Cleanup

• Removed global doppler adjustments where inappropriate

• Fixed several edge cases that could force invalid system states

• General cleanup and consolidation across multiple experimental branches

• Merged [c]origin/develop[/c] remote-tracking branch cleanly into [c]develop[/c]

✅ In Progress / Next Steps

• Estate interactivity expansion

• Additional turbulence diagnostics

• Further refinement of sound occlusion and propagation

• Continued tuning of control laws at extreme densities

As always, thank you for flying on the bleeding edge with us. Feedback—especially on turbulence feel and control response—is incredibly valuable right now.