Release Notes

A new cockpit

The cockpit has been rebuilt inside: a round attitude indicator, a new instrument panel and frame, a convex rear-view mirror and eyebrow indicator lights.

Every display in the cockpit now shows live values.

The HUD combiner glass is now drawn, so you can see where the HUD reaches. The HUD no longer blooms at night or fades into the sky by day. The eye position and field of view have been retuned too.

Gyro steering

Tilt the device to add rudder or bank on top of the stick. Choose which one, and how strong, in Settings.

Pitch inversion now works on the touch stick as well. The setting has moved to the section shared by all inputs, and while it is on, the stick’s guide arrows flip too.

Voiced radio

Every line spoken in flight now has a voice — the instructor, the tower, the LSO, the ship, all the way down to the flight tutorial’s cards. On the carrier, the air boss and the shooter speak English.

• Mission openings — Each sortie begins with an outside shot of the jet while the first calls are made. Sorties that start on the ground open with the tower’s takeoff clearance and your readback. Tap the screen to skip
• Chapter openings — All six chapters open with a caption of the time and place and a scene with the instructor. They play each time you open the chapter
• A rebuilt prologue — It opens in flight around the carrier, and if a landing fails you go straight round again with no screen in between. A closing line leads into the opening of Chapter 1
• Spoken briefings — The instructor reads the briefing on the stage select screen. Toggle it with the speaker next to the instructor’s words
• Radio calls now play to the end even after the debrief appears

The Instructor radio setting is now Radio subtitles: it turns off the subtitles only, and the voices always play. The Audio tab has a new voice volume.

A theme for every chapter

Each chapter has its own music, and the music dips while a voice is speaking.

The chapter themes are also available in replays, where the sortie’s own track is selected to begin with. Free Flight now defaults to ENDLESS HORIZONS. ACROSS THE SKIES, NIGHT FLY and AMBITION have been removed (a saved setup that used one of them now plays ENDLESS HORIZONS).

Catapult launches and a carrier underway

Chapter 3 has a new mission, CAT SHOT (after CALM DAY). You start hooked to the catapult, talk to the air boss and the shooter, go to full power and launch. Once you leave the bow, you are flying — the nose is still low, so you will sink unless you pull up.

Before the shot, the jet blast deflector rises and the shuttle pulls on the nose gear. On stages with the ship, steam rises from the catapult tracks, and after a launch a white wall of steam runs the length of the track.

The carrier itself has changed a lot.

• The carrier steams at 25 knots — The closure rate drops, so landing gets a little easier
• The carrier is full-size (332.8 m long)
• The wires and the tailhook are visible — The wire you catch pulls out into a V. You trap when the hook you can see crosses the wire
• Parked aircraft on deck — Four F-2s and four F/A-18Es. Hit one and you crash
• Too fast and the wire won’t hold — Catch above 360 km/h on NORMAL or 320 km/h on HARD and you bolter. On ACE the limit is on-speed. Fifteen points of the landing grade go by whichever is worse, angle of attack or speed
• The ship is now reflected in the water
• An MH-60S flies around the carrier
• Carrier approaches now start 5 km behind the ship

CASE ONE, the final chapter, rebuilt

The final chapter, CASE ONE, has a new flow: take off from Matsushima, join up with the instructor in the holding pattern offshore, fly to the ship in formation, break and land. Every call is voiced, and the ship is steaming at 25 knots.

It comes in as a new mission, so it shows as not yet cleared even if you cleared CASE ONE in v1.3. What you need to play it has not changed.

A new home screen and the F-2 GARAGE

The start screen is now a home screen with a column of cards: CAMPAIGN, FLIGHT TUTORIAL, F-2 GARAGE, REPLAYS, Settings and General. Behind it are the sea and the carrier, where F-2s land, park, launch and fly the pattern. What’s New opens from the link next to the version number.

The F-2 GARAGE is a new screen. Turn the F-2 parked on deck to look it over, swap weapons and drop tanks, and check the weight and performance. Tap any empty spot once to hide the interface. TEST FLIGHT takes you into Free Flight with the loadout you built (MY GARAGE).

Free Flight also has a LOADOUT choice: five presets for what hangs under the wings, plus MY GARAGE. Stores are carried only; they cannot be fired.

Stage select is easier to use, too.

• It shows where each sortie takes place
• After a success, the next mission is selected for you. The selected mission has a double ring
• On launch, the mission you last started is selected (with its chapter and difficulty)
• Clearing the last mission of a chapter takes you to the next chapter’s opening

Flight tutorial

A new nine-lesson tutorial teaches the bank-and-pull turn and how to trade speed, climb and descent. It takes place over a glowing grid floor; the instructor reads each card aloud, and a virtual stick shows you what to do. There is no score and no record, so try it as often as you like.

Open it from FLIGHT TUTORIAL on the home screen, from the menu, or from the in-flight menu. If you crash within a minute of starting three times in a row, the debrief will point you to it.

Flight model

• Let go of the stick and the bank stops dead
• Drop tanks and stores under the wings make the roll slower both in and out (up to about twice as slow)
• The angle-of-attack limit now goes out to 25°, so you no longer lose G when you pull all the way. The pitch rate limit rises from 18 to 28°/s, giving the best turn rate at corner speed (about 650 km/h)
• Run out of speed and you stall
• Supersonic flight depends on the loadout: clean, it reaches Mach 2.0 at 11 km; with anti-ship stores, Mach 1.04
• The F-2 model is now the real aircraft’s size
• Mission aircraft now fly with empty wings. The weight of the practice rounds they used to carry has gone into internal fuel, so the total is unchanged

Mission changes

• WHEELS UP — The climb target is now 3,000 m
• ROUND TRIP / NIGHT CIRCUIT / WEATHER DAY — The pattern altitude is up from 300 m to 500 m
• DECK TOUCH — One touch now (two on ACE). In the opening, the instructor walks you through it: full power the moment you touch down
• WINGMAN / FLIGHT LEAD — The openings and in-flight calls are voiced. FLIGHT LEAD no longer has the carrier, and it no longer counts as a success when your wingman drops out
• FIRST CONTACT — No wind, and you start further away (3 km behind on NORMAL, 5 km behind and off to the side on HARD, head-on on ACE, passing before you turn in behind). Light fog on HARD, thick fog on ACE. The time limit is doubled to 21 minutes, the refuelling box is twice as big on NORMAL and 1.5 times on HARD and is drawn in outline, and the time score counts from the join-up
• SOUTHERN ALPS / AZUSA VALLEY — The altitude ceiling is now the same on every difficulty. What the difficulty changes is the course length and how many seconds it takes the radar to spot you

Scenery and sound

• The trees have been rebuilt. Cedars are cones and broadleaf trees are round domes, so the forest reads tree by tree, and colour varies from tree to tree and stand to stand
• Forests and fields around Matsushima and the four valleys now follow the real vegetation more closely
• The afterburner exhaust has been redrawn: the fire inside the nozzle, shock diamonds and the flame
• Wingmen, flight leads and the instructor’s jet now use the same F-2 model and stores as yours
• Fixed radial streaks in the haze when looking straight down
• The engine sound in the seat has been rebuilt. From outside, the exhaust roar carries a long way and rolls on. Your own jet heard from outside now has delay with distance, direction and air absorption
• The LANDING GEAR voice warning no longer sounds in Free Flight

Also

• Passing a gate from a later step before finishing the current one is now an immediate failure. A missed gate is called out, as in MISSED D1 — 300 M HIGH, and the target values (SPEED 350 ALT 1500) show under the cue
• The heading tape and the instruction box have swapped places, with the instructions at the top of the screen
• In the horizon-holding chase view, the screen HUD’s pitch ladder now lines up with the horizon in the picture
• Replays now record until 10 seconds after the result, and record wingmen every frame. The RIDGE camera’s lead-in and follow-out are 4 seconds longer each, with half the shake
• Fixed the RIDGE camera sometimes showing a car right in front of it, or standing underground
• Badge award cards close by themselves after 30 seconds if you don’t touch them

iPad support

F-2 MISSIONS now runs natively on iPad. The interface fills the whole screen, so text and instruments read at iPad size. The virtual pad sits a little further in from the corners, and you can pick the stick size in Settings > Controls (100 / 125 / 150%). The radar rose in the top corner is larger too.

Stick on the right

Settings > Controls > Stick side now puts the stick on the right and the throttle on the left. The fire buttons move over with the throttle.

Also

• REPLAYS and BADGES can now be opened from the top right of the stage select screen
• The pattern exercise no longer draws the next lap’s guide line after you land (it comes back if you go around and climb out again)
• In replays, gate markers follow the single GATES switch and the steering arrow no longer shows
• The autopilot-disconnect tone no longer sounds when you first touch the controls while parked
• The cockpit seen through the canopy is no longer pitch black in daylight

The approach guide line

A ribbon now shows the approach path down — to the carrier, to the painted deck, to a plain runway — all the way to the touchdown point.

It shows you where to fly, and its colour tells you what to do with your speed: red means slow down, blue means speed up. It appears on NORMAL only, and you can switch it off from the button in flight or from Settings.

Please note that the ribbon is a path the game calculates, not necessarily the right line for the moment — always fly by what the situation in front of you calls for.

A tactical map

A radar rose in the top corner, a full-screen map, and a live HSD in the cockpit — all three are the same map. The rose and the HSD show the next gate and the one after it.

Drag to pan the full map, pinch to zoom, tap the rose to step its range.

New view and quality options

The chase camera can hold the horizon, so the picture no longer rolls through a loop or a continuous roll and you keep your bearings. The view button now cycles chase, chase with the horizon held, and cockpit.

Settings has a new Game tab for the instructor radio and the guide line, and graphics quality and render resolution are now two separate choices.

A sharper cockpit

The HUD now sits on the combiner glass: the HUD horizon lies on the real horizon, and the flight path marker points where you are actually going.

The canopy tint seen from the seat is lighter for a brighter view, and the throttle gauge has a lever knob — the bar and the number are the engine’s actual output, the knob is where you put the lever, so you can watch the engine catch up.

Valley runs sized to the difficulty

The two low-level valley runs (SOUTHERN ALPS and AZUSA VALLEY) now change length with the difficulty you pick.

Also

• A one-time trailer plays on first launch — skippable, and replayable from the menu any time
• Clearer gate marker pulsing
• The stick sensitivity curve is now a −5 to +5 slider
• The rudder band shows before you touch it
• View distance tuned per stage
• An OVERSPEED warning when a dive passes the airframe’s limit
• A feedback window you can open from the menu any time

A rebuilt virtual pad

Three control layouts, each tunable in Settings. You choose where the rudder lives — pedals beside the throttle, pedals above the stick, or sharing the stick’s horizontal axis. The game asks once, on your first sortie, and the on-screen pad rebuilds itself as you pick, so you decide by looking at the real thing.

Settings is now full-screen with three tabs (controls, graphics, audio): how wide the rudder band is when it shares the stick, the stick sensitivity curve, the input mode (virtual pad / gamepad / auto), and three volume sliders.

Tapping the edge of the stick no longer snaps to full deflection — where you put your finger down is now zero. And the throttle commands the position you put the lever at.

More polished missions

The takeoff drill is clearer. It no longer fails you for touching the throttle out of turn — it shows you the procedure instead and lights up the control you need next, and the control check is split into pitch, roll and rudder.

The three valley runs are much longer.

Par times and the radar ceiling were re-measured by actually flying them. The low-level runs are now scored on four axes — how low you held it, gate precision, stealth and time.

And CARRIER LANDING on NORMAL is free again.

Badges and a squadron board

27 patches that fill in as you work through the syllabus, with an award card each time you earn one. Your debrief shows how the rest of the class did and where you placed. The board is opt-in, and the only thing it shows is your callsign — no free text, no chat.

Your record follows you

Sign in to Game Center and your badges survive a reinstall or a new device. We never ask you to sign in.

Also

• The prologue now says something when it beats you three times
• Labels that stayed in Japanese on English devices are fixed
• CLASS BOARD headings show mission names instead of stage ids

New: cockpit view

A fully modelled first-person cockpit — instrument panel, canopy, and a HUD projected onto the combiner glass in front of you, not pasted on the screen. Turn your head and the symbology slides with the world; pull g and your head goes with the jet.

A prologue and six chapters

A story prologue, and the missions rebuilt into a 25-stage training course with an all-new chapter and stage select.

Land-base training — 10 missions at Matsushima AB

Fly the whole thing: takeoff, circuit, approach, touchdown, full stop. Plus touch-and-go and wire traps on a painted deck marked out on the runway. Land-base missions go from one to ten.

Your instructor on the radio

In-flight callouts and coaching, across every mission.

A richer world

Real building footprints, trees and far terrain, greatly expanded.

Graduation

Complete the course and earn your wings, with a ceremony.

Also

• A one-line “do this next” guide on the HUD
• A view picker on first run
• Time-of-day and cloud knobs, plus music preview, in FREE FLIGHT
• Distance-aware engine audio
• A redesigned title screen

Difficulties unlock in order

Instead of every difficulty being available at once, clearing NORMAL opens HARD, and clearing HARD opens ACE. The purchase screen now says so, too.

A new opening for the formation chapter

The first mission of the formation chapter is now wingman station-keeping rather than aerial refueling. Refueling is the hardest thing in that chapter, which made it the wrong place to start.

Also

• Terrain data the game never loaded was dropped from the bundle, cutting the app’s size substantially

The first release on the App Store.

An authentic flight model

Angle-of-attack based physics, so holding a banked turn with back pressure emerges from the equations rather than a script. Roll is rate-command with no auto-leveling, and inverted flight is possible. Control response scales with airspeed, so the jet gets heavy when slow.

Assists live in the display, never in the controls. The FLOLS meatball, steering cues and gate rings guide you without flying for you.

Three mission categories

• CARRIER QUAL — carrier landings from calm daylight to crosswind, night traps and touch-and-go. Scored 0–100 on sink rate, centerline, wire and AoA
• WAYPOINT FLYING — offshore gate slaloms and low-level runs through real Japanese terrain. Stay under the radar, hide behind ridgelines, follow the river
• FORMATION FLIGHT — hold position behind a tanker’s boom, and fly formation

NORMAL / HARD / ACE

Difficulty rises through the environment — night, rain, fog, crosswind — and stricter judging. On ACE you manage the landing gear and afterburner fuel yourself.

Weather, replays and free flight

Clear, overcast or night skies, rain, fog, wind direction and speed — the same stage never feels the same twice. Every flight is recorded end to end, so you can review your traps from the LSO’s platform or a chase camera. Clear every mission at NORMAL rank to unlock free flight, with music.