On this day (november 12) exactly 1 year ago, I bought SimplePlanes and I want to make a little recap now about it with some screenshots. Let's begin

Attention: This is going to be a veeeeery long post.

Getting the Game

It was in about september when I first heard about the game. I love planes and flying so I was very happy that such game where you can build them exists and when I saw that it is from the creators of Simple Rockets, I was fairly sure this is an awesome game. But at that point I already spent too much money on games so I didn't buy it, then in november, there was a sale on Humble Bundle in which they sold the game along with others for a low price. I decided I give it a try this time... well. with 563 hours in the game in just 1 year, I have to say it was worth every cent (if I knew it's gonna be this good I'd have bought it immediately for full price)
For some hardcore gamers who have thousands of hours in some of their games, 563 hours might not seem too much but just to let them know, this is the most played game in my steam library with the second one being WarThunder with only 222 hours and there wasn't a week in the last one year when I didn't play the game at least once, but I usually play it daily.

First Steps

So at first, after finishing the tutorial, I had doubts. How does one make such awesome creations as the ones I saw in the trailers? My first ever plane was an A6M Zero (well at least I called it that way even tho it showed no resemblance to it) which was ehh... see it for yourself:

A typical beginner plane isn't it? But this was my first so I'm proud of it. 😊

As the weeks and months passed, I gained some experience in the game and then the time to upload something came. Until that point I was just observing builds on the site, seeing how the professionals do it. I built the B-200 Angel, a little bomber, based on the B-17.

I was really happy when I built it and I especially liked that I build a little hollow inside for the bombs.

So I uploaded the thing and I was really glad to see that it even got some upvotes. Unfortunately you can't find it on the site anymore as a few months ago I went through my profile and removed some old stuff which I found too bad.

Get more Complex

As I learnt to use the game more and more I decided to go on with the hollow inside thing. Why not build the entire fuselage up from smaller parts? so the C-400 Pelican was born.

A very ugly abomination I have to say but it functioned well. What makes it great is that it had a little armed vehicle in the inside which it could carry to the front so yea, pretty cool.
But this look bothered me. Why cant I make something that actually looks like a cargo plane. So I placed a fuselage block and placed down structural panels, following the shape of the fuselage. It was a pretty nice tube. a tube with wings, engines and an openable cargo bay door. A tube called C-500 Zeus

fun fact: this is actually the YC-500A, the prototype version of the plane

Unlike the B-200, this is still available to download and it has 4 variants, it's up to you to choose which suits your need the most. Here's the link for the B variant

Conquer the seas!

Soon, I realised that this game (despite it's name) isn't limited to aircraft only. I saw many ships and ground vehicles too. So I started building such stuff too. I had many fails with ships as I still didn't understand completely how the game's water physics worked. But that didn't stop me from experimenting with submarines. I had many fails with this too but then I found something. A little video made by @Pianoman about his controlled sinking mechanism. I was fascinated about it and asked for his permission to use the idea. He gave it and I started building my first sub, the USS Karkaboa (yes I know the actual island is called Karkabloa, but I mispelled it. Well, it stays this way now)

Two more modern submarines followed (The USS Wright and the USS Maywar) and then two ww2 german subs (The U-131 and the U-132) plus there's a new one, the U-133 which I built last week, but it won't be released as the mechanism is too complicated and very hard to use.

The U-133, a sub that can go any depht

The Two only edits

I see many players, uploading other players' builds with editing them a little bit. It's a part of SimplePlanes, players add to each others stuff and it's great (except when someone just repaints a nice build or put two rockets on it and then gets upvotes for a "two minute edit") I personally don't like editing as I believe "why would I use someone else's stuff when I can build it too?" and that's what I usually do, except for one occasion. Back then when I was still a very new player I found @Weaverfish's profile and his awesome builds (He's still my favourite builder on the site, I think his builds are the awesomest) and I found his B-17 Tail Gunner mini game. I loved the idea and decided to make a new version with a Turret gunner. It took me a while to build the Turret but it looks pertty good I think. Then as I was scrolling through Weaverfish's B-17s, I saw that he has a version with a working tail gunner, a version with an actual bomb bay and a bomb sight and I have a version with a working turret. Why not combine them into one, all-working B-17? And I did it. These are the only two occasions I uploaded an edit and I don't plan to do it in the future (for the mentioned belief of mine) but it's an important step because since I made the All-working B-17, I try to build stuff with more and more usable features, so yea, it is great.
The Turret B-17
And the All-Working one

One more Fictional plane

After making the B-17, I still didn't feel like I could build an actual replica because I still didn't have enough experience. So I decided to build one more fictional plane. This was the SB18BM-1A Sólyom (the name means Hawk in hungarian) This plane was built only for my self entertainment. I just built it to fly around and bomb stuff. This is important because I have many builds like this, which I only build for myself but this is the only one which I uploaded for some reason. Nowadays I only upload stuff which I find good enough to be uploaded (that's why the mentioned U-133 will never be uploaded)

The First Helis and the First Replicas

At some point, I started to learn how to build helicopters in the game. After building my first successfully fuctioning heli the AH-2 "Bee" (I know, I'm not too good at giving names XD)

I decided to build one of my favourite helicopters of all time: The UH-1 Iroquois "Huey"

The Huey saw many reuploads and new versions since it's first release and now it counts the 6th version (there's a v7 too but that's very experimental and I don't think it will be uploaded)

After the Huey, came the OH-6 Cayause "Loach" which is currently my profile picture as well. (edit: was)

And then followed the C-47 Skytrain and the JU-52 as two other replicas

And the C-130 as a modern plane replica (with a gunship version)

Glider revolution

after building the C-47 Skytrain with a paratrooper version and a gunship version, I was thinking if there's anything else I could make from it. while thinking this, I sat down playing Company of Heroes (a ww2 Real Time Strategy game) those who play the game know that the British Army has an ability to call in a Waco Glider carrying commandos. Then came the idea. Waco's are towed by C-47s! Let's build a glider then! The Waco was built with a usable Willy's Jeep inside.

I soon decided to build a Hamilcar Glider with a Tetrarch tank. It started out a bit hard as the C-47 was too weak to tow it. So I had to build the Halifax bomber for the purpose.
The Halifax was my first bomber since the B-200, so it's a really great comparsion to see how much I improved since then

The Big Ones

The USS Beast

Ever since I saw some aircraft carriers on the site, I was wondering why haven't anyone built a USS Beast replica? I found one but that wasn't so accurate. So I decided to build it myself. It was a huge job (the game crashed a few times because of the huge size) but I did it and what was a huge shock for me is how successfull it is. It stands at 83 Upvotes currently and new ones come even now, so much time after it's initial release.

Fun fact: The USS Beast wasn't my first aircraft carrier project. It was the CVN-120 'Kraken'. It was never released as I didn't find it good enough, but I might restart the project in the future

Shoot The GI Mini Game

My most controversal and yet most successful upload (it stands at 116 upvotes currently)
The idea came after @zap210 's Star Wars Trench Run mini-game. I was fascinated by the idea to build a minigame. It was at this time that I bought the game Rising Storm 2: Vietnam so I was pretty obsessed with the topic. I was thinking a lot about what game could I make about it. The final idea was a point defense game. since the north vietnamese didn't have a significant airforce during the war, the game had to be made from their perspective and the enemies had to be american aircraft. I had a lotta work in it, it was hard to build such a big and complex thing (for example the pistons always broke etc. there were some difficulties)
It offended many people and I was really sad to see that how seriously some people took it. It was just a game and it didn't mean to attack anyone but I'm glad so many peolpe supported me. I'd like to especially thank @Tully2001 , for supporting me as a moderator.
I'm planning to make new minigames in the future and I won't let my creativity to be held back by some offended people.

The Age of Dreadnoughts

After the USS Beast I started to be very interested in making huge ships. I wanted to build a huge battleship but which should I build? One of my goals on the site is to build stuff that are unique, stuff that no one built before. Well. There aren't many hungarians among the players so there's very few hungarian stuff uploaded. Let's build that then. So came the idea to build the only hungarian built dreadnought ever the SMS Saint Stephen. I was really proud of it but I thought I could build something bigger and better. I was thinking on other dreadnoughts I knew and realised the only other dreadnought (apart from the HMS Dreadnought itself) comes to my mind is the USS Arizona I had worked a lot on it and thanks to this, I finished it in just 4 days.

The longest project

One of my latest uploads is the M1A1 Abrams, a tank I've been working on for more than 3 months. I started working on it sometime at the beginning of summer 2018 and uploaded it in september. The problem was that I had a lot of trouble with the tracks. I tried to work out a new track system but failed (I still consider using it in the future as the idea is good, I simply didn't have enough experience in the game to build it properly)

The failed track system

thanks to @Minecraftpoweer who made amazing tracks for it, the tank was uploaded and wasnt forgotten like many of my half finished and failed projects. I didn't perform well in terms of upvotes but I don't really care as I don't build for upvotes, I build because I love to build.

And we arrive to today. But, about Minecraftpoweer. I want to give a mention to the people I met/look up to in the community. I already mentioned @Weaverfish my favourite builder, @Pianoman , who is a great builder and makes amazng stuff, @Tully2001, who is the coolest moderator (in my opinion), @Minecraftpoweer who helped me and taught me a lot so I can't thank him enough, @BlazeInfinity who introduced me to the ship building community within the SP community, @WPN78 and @Gestour my two favourite modders, @HistoricBirds who I met not so long ago but is a great guy and he picked me up into his squadron @TakicraftCorporation a fellow hungarian builder who I met here and who makes absolutely awesome cars. I'm glad to know all of you guys. I'd also like to thank all my followers and everyone who supported me so far.
I hope to continue to build more and more stuff and I hope that many people will enjoy my creations.

Some more screenshots I made in the game

the first ever screenshot I made featuring one of my early planes

The USS Maywar, firing Cleaver missiles

Flying in formation with Weaverfish's B-17 formation using his Spitifire

A night picture of the Shoot the GI mini game

Two Abramses in the desert

A project that haven't been released yet, the Bridge Layer Abrams

Well, this would be it, my 1st year in SimplePlanes, my most favourite game ever. I'm looking forward for the next year to come and I wish to you, dear reader, to Have a great time, and as I always say under my posts: Have Fun!