I have been looking through some photos of SP2, and they remind me of Juno. It appears SP2 has ambient occlusion and shading similar to Juno, which looks nice in my opinion. Some of the posts also showcase SP1 lights having glow similar to Juno, although I am not sure if they cast lights. The water looks even better than Juno though. Overall, it looks like lots of the technology of Juno will be applied to the SimplePlanes formula, which in my opinion, will make for an awesome game.

It also appears that Major Chad will be able to interact with cockpit instruments! I think if Jundroo implements more features like this it could become a serious competitor in the VR flight sim market, rather than a VR companion to SimplePlanes, which is how SPVR felt at times.

Now for an incredibly controversial opinion that isn’t related too much to the post but I need to say. I would rather have new QOL features than new parts. SimplePlanes is amazing, but it can be hard to jump in and build something fun and simple without major tweaks to get it to look and fly right. One of the reasons I don’t build much anymore is that simplicity generally equals ugliness. While Juno has less parts and barebones cockpit support, you can build a simple rocket with default parts that looks cool. In SimplePlanes, I find myself reaching for the XML editor every time, which to some degree removes the element of success and failure that comes from testing designs. Rather than experimenting on what works, I just change the variables until what I have works. I want it to be where a simple plane isn’t a blocky mess and looks nice enough to fly around in multiplayer.