In this digest we would like to tell you about our continuing work on improvements and fixes in the game. You can find information about all updates that have been released in War Thunder on the website special section. This time we are going to talk about some of the particularly interesting improvements in War Thunder that came out with the Direct Hit major update!

Great work on sounds

With each update War Thunder sounds better and better. Direct Hit was no exception if your feedback from Open-DEV was to be believed. This time we worked with the sounds of the engines so they not only sounded realistic but also changed the character of the sounds depending on the load. You can hear the result in the game! Engine roar and its speed will be noticeably different when driving on rutted tracks or when climbing a steep hill. To consolidate the atmosphere of heavy vehicle movement, we added new sounds of surfaces under an armoured vehicle's tracks: water, sand, snow, asphalt, paving stones, mud and even ice will all sound different. Major changes also occurred in the firing sounds of all automatic cannons and machine guns. Now they better correspond to the main features of the real guns: the detail of the sound depending on the location of the listener has increased and each shot is heard more clearly.

Arc of sight on the minimap

A simple but useful improvement for the minimap. The marker boundaries that display the sector of the map you see are now more visible and contrast better. No longer will they be lost against the background of bright winter locations. Look around more comfortably!

Destroyed enemies will become cooler

It is hard to imagine a battle of top tanks without the use of thermal imaging and therefore this mechanism deserves special attention. We worked on the temperature of the wrecks of destroyed vehicles. Now the piles of metal that used to be your enemy will become colder than active vehicles if enough time has passed since the fire died down and the tracks, barrels, and hulls have cooled down. However it will still be possible to hide among destroyed enemies. Just dont forget to turn the engine off.

DLSS 2.2

In War Thunder you will always find a lot of features that improve picture quality or improve game performance. Among these are smoothing with deep learning algorithms - Nvidia DLSS. This mechanism allows you to increase the FPS and at the same time get a higher resolution. For the Direct Hit update we have updated the support for this technology to version 2.2 which brings two key fixes: an even more noticeable improvement in the picture and a victory over ghosting especially in dark scenes. If you own an Nvidia RTX GPU - go ahead and turn it on!

Weapon control for naval

Weapon control - your trusted friend and comrade that makes shooting much easier by calculating your preemptives and making other adjustments for you. Pilots are very familiar with it but what about the Navy? The fleet has it now too! Later ships have begun getting Artillery Directors whose job is to help aim at targets. Extremely useful mechanics especially when firing at very long distances. These mechanisms are fully-fledged vehicle modules that means that they can be destroyed with a precise hit or even lucky shrapnel but until then the Artillery Director will faithfully help you shoot more accurately. You can get acquainted with the characteristics of the new modules in the analysis of the modules on vehicles right in the hangar. There can be several of them and each is responsible for different cannons. Presented are Artillery Directors on those ships where they were used in reality. In addition, a noticeably updated interface for cannon guidance in binocular view.

Showing radar characteristics

Not too far from being able to hover your mouse over a module and learn about its capabilities, we would like to inform you that you can now do the same with aircraft radar. Turn on the module viewer and point your cursor at the vehicle or pilot radar where the head display can also tell you a lot about the aircrafts capabilities.

Improved effects

Explosions, splashes, sparks from hits and smoke you see virtually every second spent in a good battle. We devote a huge effort to make them better. Do you remember the improved effects of hits we introduced in the Ixwa Strike update? Now were ready to present the new improved effects for naval battles! We have completely reworked the large calibre rounds hits to different surfaces, and thoroughly improved the effects of hits on the water for all calibres in the game. The effects of underwater explosions have been reworked for torpedoes, depth charges and sea mines. New splash pillar effects from large calibres allow you to see the results of a salvo much better. We have also improved the effects for explosions on decks and introduced new beautiful splashes of stern waves. Youd better visit naval battles to witness our work personally. See you there! Dont forget to check out other types of vehicles. Another bulk of ground units received physically correct tracks, a few others got an empty cartridge animation.

Improved graphics on ULQ settings

In the Direct Hit update we have improved the quality and overall picture perception on ultra-low graphic settings. New color correction and improved optical adaptation of the brightness in contrast scenes, such as dawn or evening, the picture looks deeper and more saturated. It looks better now! Objects in War Thunder, such as trees or houses, now have a similar rendering distance for all graphics presets. New optimized shadows appear in a certain radius around you, which require minimal resource consumption from your PC.

More improvements

For this digest we have prepared a large set of useful fixes and game improvements. Be sure to read the full list which we have prepared in the separate changelog - there are many interesting things. Once again, many thanks for all your bug reports that you submitted in our bug report section on the War Thunder forums.

Update 2.9.0.17

• A bug has been fixed where players couldnt see the Attention to the map marker on the minimap during a battle.
• A bug has been where an afterburner flame looked black in ULQ settings.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented a vehicles pop-up menu displaying in the test drive window whilst using a gamepad.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented the decal tab from closing whilst using a gamepad.
• A bug has been fixed that in some cases led to a crash on PlayStation consoles.
• The display of ground units at low heights has been fixed for weapons with TV seekers.
• IS-7 a bug with an incorrect display of the coaxial 7.62mm machine guns in x-ray mode has been fixed.
• Vickers Mk.3 vignette in the gunners sight has been fixed, field of view has been widened. .
• Pe-8 separate fuel tanks have been enabled (reduced chance of fire). A more precise inertia calculation has been implemented depending on the current weight (fuel and armament load). Thermodynamics of engines has been specified.
• AV-8A a bug with the display of the flares block has been fixed in the preset Flares/chaff x240.
• MiG-27M The R-60 missiles in the preset with 100kg bombs have been changed to R-60M.
• ZTZ99-III reduced armour durability of the hulls front in comparison to the ZTZ99-II has been fixed (report).
• ZTZ96, ZTZ96A, ZTZ99-II, ZTZ99-III Reloading time for the 125 mm cannon has been changed from 7.5 to 7.1 seconds.
• Type 79 ASM Elevation above the line of sight in flight has been added.
• ZSU-37-2 Displaying of the different angular guidance speeds for the left and right cannons in the X-Ray view has been fixed.
• HMS Peacock Radar has been added to the X-Ray view.
• Churchill I A bug with reverse track rotation has been fixed.
• Aviation SB mode now requires Easy Anti-Cheat enabled.
• In air SB sessions, created by players, now disabled bots will change to missing or exited players.
• A bug has been fixed with disabled the rocket ballistic calculator in mixed battles, if a player previously played in a ground vehicle or naval vessel.
• A bug has been fixed with disabling the ballistic calculator when ammo is depleted. The fix means that it is not necessary to repeatedly switch it on in AB mode
• F-104G (Italy) The AIM-9J has been added to the weaponry list. The AIM-9B modification has been moved to rank II, LAU-10/A to rank III. A preset with 2AIM-9B is now available without modification research by default.
• F-104S The AIM-9J has been added to the weaponry list. The AIM-7E modification has been moved to rank II. The LAU-10/A modification no longer requires research. The AIM-9B modification has been moved to rank III
• F-8E A Preset with 2 AIM-9C and 2x AIM-9D has been added.
• Tu-1 Material and armour glass thickness in the nose section of the cockpit has been fixed.
• Conditions for obtaining some achievements and the rewards for completing them have been changed. This will not affect the reward of achievements already received and the progress of partially completed ones. The full list of changed achievements:
  • Miscellaneous Custom-built
  • Miscellaneous Path of perfection
  • Miscellaneous Fully Equipped
  • Miscellaneous Rearmament
  • Miscellaneous Proved as Improved
  • Crew Expert
  • Research Only the Stars Are Higher
  • Aircraft Can't Catch Me!
  • Tanks Victory machine
  • Fleet Flagship
• Incorrect display of fuel has been corrected, that mistakenly depended on the connection quality.
• A bug has been fixed where AI aircraft in Test Drive spawned with low initial speed where they stalled and crashed.
• A bug has been fixed that in some cases led to a client crash on downloading the hangar on Nvidia graphic cards.
• B-29 (USA) nuke carrier - in ground RB, the incorrect respawn type Bombers has been removed.

Sound

• A bug has been fixed with the overly loud sound of the Begleitpanzers gun and the British 40mm QF.2 gun, as well as the 57mm ZiS-4 gun from the gunners view.
• The overly loud sound of the rotary barrel gear on the M61 gun (M163 SPAAG) has been fixed.
• A bug has been fixed with the missing sound of the naval gun chase camera for the first 4 seconds of flight.
• The overly quiet sound of the beginning of an artillery barrage has been fixed.
• A bug has been fixed where the sound of the M230 guns of the Apache series of helicopters didnt depend on the rate of fire.

The current provided changelog reflects the major changes within the game as part of this Update. Some updates, additions and fixes may not be listed in the provided notes. War Thunder is constantly improving and specific fixes may be implemented without the client being updated.