What ever happened to the release of 4.1 proper? Or the second beta?
The first beta turned out to be riddled with bugs and performance problems – some discovered by me in the weeks following the upload, some duly reported by users. I planned to put out a second beta that took care of most of these bugs, but the issues with flight performance were very troubling and I decided to postpone the second beta while working on the FDE. There is, after all, no point in uploading another version which still does not fly properly.
This is basically the problem: A lot of the engine parameters were totally wrong in 3.x and 4.0 due to my misunderstanding a crucial part of the SDK documentation. To compensate for the erroneous engine params I had been tweaking the aerodynamics to a point where the curves were completely off the chart. I have spent the last month reworking this, starting from scratch and actually following instructions this time. The result is a completely new FDE which gives a more or less correct engine thrust at all altitudes. The next step is to rework the lift/drag parameters to also get the correct airspeed and angle of attack, which is what I am working on right now.
Apart from this I have added a lot more 3D details in the VC and made some changes to the sometimes quirky radios and nav systems. When I eventually upload the next version I will try to include a detailed change list. No promises as to when this will be though, I really want to get the FDE right first.
Stay tuned, /Tom