This caught me by surprise when earlier today 1CGS announced that version 3.006 would not wait for the P-47D-28 and Bf109K-4 and would launch with a whole raft of fixes to the series. So what has changed? Let’s dig into some of the biggest updates.

71 fixes and changes

There are quite a few fixes and changes in this patch but I want to highlight just a few of them for you and encourage you to check out the whole list if you’re interested.

This patch introduces a whole bunch of new visual effects. Fire, smoke, fuel, oil and water leaks, different types of engine damage, gun smoke, oil drops on pilot goggles and more have all been added or given major makeovers. I said this before but it bears repeating – these are all small effects that collectively have a big impact on how the series looks.

There are plenty of bug fixes including solving a couple of rare Pe-2 Series 35 crashes, an erroneous oil leak from the Spitfire series after the wing has been detached, right/left engine hit effects on certain twin engined aircraft have been fixed, high calibre guns now can overheat (apparently they couldn’t before), and many more.

There’s also new content with the FW190A-8/F-8/G-8 now able to carry the massive SC1000 bomb as a loadout. There are also changes and updates to the bombloads for this aircraft with SD70 bombs replacing the SC50 bombs (which apparently fell out of production after 1943).

For Flying Circus there are new pilot animations, new hit effects for wooden aircraft, and updated damage models for the already released aircraft.

Affecting all aircraft are modified values for gun dispersion based on a rethink of the data that 1CGS has on aircraft guns and how their dispersion was measured historically. These should, in theory, lead to more realistic values for bullet dispersion during short and long bursts.

Multiplayer netcode has received several small updates as well aimed at improving performance and solving various issues with multiplayer. It’ll be interesting to see these updates in action.

There’s more so check out the full list here.

Reactions coming soon

I haven’t had a chance to play the patch yet so stay tuned for some reactions to some of these major feature changes as I get a chance to test things out. I’m extremely curious to see the new effects in action and to see how things like bullet dispersion and multiplayer netcode changes are in actual practice.

Stay tuned for that!