Location Improvements & Updated Abandoned Factory!

The Firebirds major update brings with it a host of improvements to several locations and a complete graphics update to the Abandoned Factory ground battles map!

Abandoned Factory Visual Upgrades

Welcome to the updated Abandoned Factory map! One of the most beloved locations amongst players for ground battles has been completely transformed visually. Our artists have replaced all the soil textures with new, clear and authentic ones, and the models and textures of buildings and almost all elements of the environment have been changed. Grass and small vegetation have been updated, making them denser, and bushes have been reduced in size to better match the size of ground vehicles.

Despite being significantly updated in terms of visuals, the performance of this location has not changed much when using the same in-game graphics settings as before.

Improved Effects

On Abandoned Factory and other War Thunder locations, dust clouds from tracks and wheels caused by ground vehicles in hot weather have been improved. When it’s raining, you’ll see realistic puddles and streams of water flowing from the roofs of buildings and the surface of objects. By the way, for Abandoned Factory, we’ve separately worked on the sky effects in cloudy weather, meaning the clouds have become more realistic.

Push Objects That Were Previously Static

The ability to interact with various objects in the game has also been updated. For example, in the new Abandoned Factory and other locations, you can now push carriages on the railroad tracks, giving you the chance to freely make your own passage or to make it difficult for your opponents. When driving into cars and trucks, they’ll be realistically crushed under the tracks of your tank.

Airfield Overhauls

There’s also great news for pilots! We’ve significantly improved all airfields for aircraft in Test Flights and missions for high-ranked aircraft. The runway slabs have been completely reworked, with the textures becoming sharper and the airfield environment improving significantly. There’s new buildings, a reliable light signaling system, and positions of anti-aircraft missile systems for protecting aircraft. There’s even aircraft skid marks! To improve the airfields, we consulted with current pilots and think they’ve turned out pretty well.

That’s it for today! The updated Abandoned Factory location will come to the game in the Firebirds major update. Follow our website for more dev blogs that we’ve got planned, as there’s a lot of interesting things ahead!

39 Likes

My FPS, I don’t feel my fps…

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what a improvement, it looks way better then before
reminds me a bit of enlisted.

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Cool! Great work guys!

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Does this mean a working PAPI or VASI?!?

And would it be possible, maybe in the future, to allow us to chose to spawn on “the plate”, in front of hangars and shelters, instead of directly on the runway?

YESS!!!

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Uhhh…. Sure….

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Still ZERO consultation or engagement with customers over the highly contentious map changes, shrinking, deleting, flattening in a manner that restricts the usage of modern vehicles.

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YEAH BUDDY!!!
Why isn’t this a complet sentence?

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Wdym, I like it.

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Wil graphical updates, like ray tracing etc, also be for Console players on PS5

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time to upgrade my PC :)

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Do you want to get rid off all advantages what armored vehicle has?
Just fight in build up areas and they are gone…

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Will other maps be visually improved? :)
Cologne, Berlin, Poland, Ardennes, Eastern Europe etc. really need it

With the updated test flights maps will it be possible to have more than 2 MiG-15’s flying around as air targets? Maybe add a few more aircraft flying around like a bomber formation or strike aircraft?

Also changing the AI aircraft to be inline with what aircraft you have chosen to fly? Like having BF109’s flying around when you test fly a Spitfire or P51’s when flying a Zero?

Also will there be an aircraft carrier that naval aircraft can launch from and land on? In the Dev server there was a carrier there when flying naval aircraft but there was no spawn option and the carrier didn’t spawn when not flying a naval aircraft

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That’s insane! Let’s hope it does have good optimization!

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The new visual effects and graphics updates are what I am looking forward the most this update!

I hope the new asset/environment standards will soon be carried onto every map.

meatball

Awesome!!! Getting stuck on certain objects that I should be able to push with my 60 ton MBT is quite annoying 😄

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Yeah, please… going from 160 FPS to 35 on the dev server after enabling DX12 and Ray Tracing was extremely disappointing to me, hahah.

So I really hope it’s just Dev Server shenanigans.

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But did you widen the playable map zone and improve the spawn areas to defend against spawn camping?

I personally don’t care about how the map looks visually, I care about the playability.

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