We've been keeping it a secret, but now I guess the cat's out of the bag! We've been working on a small update for SimplePlanes and it is now available for beta testing on select platforms. Here are the new features in v1.6:

New Parts

• Gyroscope - Keep your designs upright and build quadcopters
• Sphere - Super advanced ball technology
• Hemisphere - Half a sphere, for when you can't afford a whole new sphere

Features

• Wind Physics
• Control wind in realtime
• Windsocks
• New Challenge - Cross Wind Landing
• New Stock "Airplane" - Quadcopter
• Tweaked the instrument panel user interface to improve the compass and add a wind heading indicator
• XML-modding enhancements

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug preventing discovery of Featherfall Squall
• Fixed a bug that prevented Mirage Speedway from showing up (or was that a joke that I didn't get?)
• Prevent Restart Here from working on challenges
• Prevent AI planes from responding to player activation groups
• Fixed a bug with drag on initially disconnected parts
• Fixed a bug with tournament validation of part scale="1,1,1"

HOW DO I GET BETA?

Steam

• Open the Steam client. You need to own SimplePlanes on Steam.
• Right-click on the game in your library and click “Properties.”
• Click the “Betas” tab.
• From the “Select the beta you would like to opt into:” drop-down dialog, select public-test.
• Steam should start downloading the public-test version of the game. You can also verify that you are playing the public test by checking the version in the “About” menu from the initial menu: 1.6.0.0

GOG

• On the SimplePlanes library page in the GOG Galaxy client, select the "More" button (next to "Play") and then select the "Settings" option.
• On the right side of the window, there should be an option to enable "Beta Channels". Set it to "ON".
• For the "Channel" option under the "Configure Game" section, select "Public Beta" from the dropdown.
• The latest public beta should begin downloading immediately.

Google Play

• Go to this link.
• Opt-In
• Download the beta version of SimplePlanes
• Note: The beta was just rolled out, so it may take a few hours for it to be fully available to everyone.

iOS

• Sorry, but we're not doing an iOS beta at this time.

WHAT TO TEST

Test the new features outlined above. Test your existing designs and see how they feel in the wind. Test the new parts. Test the new challenge. Let us know if anything looks whacky. You can reply to this post, or contact us at beta@jundroo.com.

Thanks for playing!