First Impressions: SimplePlanes 2 (Demo)
- Caio "Hueman" Barreto
- 3 hours ago
- 12 min read
From Flyout to Aviassembly and everything in between, we have always had a predilection for covering build-your-own-plane flight games. But, when covering this peculiar genre, there’s always been one game we’ve mentioned, yet never covered on its own; the
benchmark, the standard, the one all are compared against. And, alongside the more space-focused KSP, it could be argued it’s what started this genre to begin with. I’m talking, of course, about SimplePlanes.
Released in 2015, SimplePlanes did not feature impressive graphics or super detailed flight simulation mechanics. What it did offer, however, was an extremely flexible building system which put almost no bounds on players’ creativity, as well as means to share these creations. The end result is that across its 10 years of existence, SimplePlanes has seen thousands of creations uploaded by its player community, covering everything from airplanes to cars, ships, and even functional, fully articulated mecha.
On a personal note, many years ago I was a small part of this playerbase - and though my take on Santos-Dumont’s Demoiselle was once featured on the game’s home page, I never considered myself anywhere close to being one of the best creators out there. The level of quality and detail some folks managed to achieve is truly mindblowing (check out this nearly simulator-level F-5E, for instance!), and while I’m sure the developers could never have anticipated their game would be used in such a way, they did support this community with a great deal of updates designed to give players even more ways to explore their creative madness.
So it should come as no surprise when Jundroo announced they would be doing a week-long open playtest of its sequel, we were excited to try it out!
Rising Up to the Challenge
Of course, there’s a problem with sequels in gaming. A sequel has to at least equal, and hopefully surpass, its predecessor; and when the predecessor in question is a creative sandbox with thousands of user creations attached to it and a highly dedicated player base, that bar is very high.
Too often, we see games that either fail to rise up to the expectations set by the original entry, turn out to be a mismanaged mess, or both; and after the catastrophic failure of Kerbal Space Program 2, I’ll admit that I was worried when Jundroo first announced SimplePlanes 2. I had several doubts regarding some of the proposed features, and despite my appreciation for the developer’s work in the original game - or perhaps exactly because of it - I approached this new entry with more than a healthy degree of skepticism.
I’m happy to report that this playtest demo has addressed the majority of those doubts. There’s real effort and care put into this game, and the result is very promising. Some key features were not yet available, therefore some questions still linger; but overall, this was a great experience.
Cleared for Startup
Upon starting the game, you are greeted by the game’s new mascot, Major Chad. He also serves as the avatar for the player and was one of the changes I was deeply worried about but ended up being positively surprised with; we’ll get back to him later. The menu UI is pretty simple and easy to navigate, and upon hopping into the builder/aircraft editor, a list of default crafts built using SimplePlanes 2’s new features is available.
Some of the base game vehicles available.
Many of these crafts were built by longstanding members of the community which were invited by the developers to participate in internal testing; a showcase of the developer’s engagement with the player base.
Unfortunately, players were not able to interact with the game’s building system in the demo; thus, all that was left to do was pick the game’s standard F4U Corsair replica and step into the cockpit.
When the scenery loaded up, I was suddenly hit by this strange feeling - the UI was familiar, but much easier on the eyes. The visuals were completely different, yet they still reminded me of the original game somehow; and to top off the cozy atmosphere, the game’s brand new, 80’s-infused soundtrack shows off one of the tricks up its sleeve - it changes dynamically during gameplay!
I wasn’t expecting this much effort to be put into the music for a plane builder game, but I’m glad it was - it pairs with the game very well, and while I eventually got tired and switched to my own playlists, that only happened after a few hours of continuous flying.
Gone are SP1’s flat oceans and smooth terrain; water now features dynamic waves (which, besides being eye candy, actually affect ships and seaplanes) and clouds are now volumetric, instead of a flat skybox.
Comparison between the water in SP2 (left) and the original SimplePlanes (right).
The brand new map features greatly improved terrain, both in terms of modelling and textures; airports and towns are decorated by lovingly crafted 3D models which match the game’s visual identity perfectly; and trees now populate the previously barren grasslands, making low-level flying feel much more dynamic.
Unfortunately, only a small area of the map was accessible in the demo, encompassing a single island; however, we know Jundroo is working on a much bigger map, full of locations to explore - just like in the original game.
But going back to low-level flying, what happens if one of your wings has an unscheduled meeting with local vegetation? Well, the trees have hitboxes, so the result is almost certainly going to be a fireball. If you’ve played the original SimplePlanes, you’re probably expecting the cockpit piece - the part which defines the player’s POV, so often scaled down to 0.1% in order to visually hide it in custom builds - to go flying off to the stratosphere. But this is where Major Chad steps in.
Even in craft where the new player character doesn’t show up visually, once the player’s vehicle is destroyed Major Chad jumps from the explosion like an action figure hero, and the player’s controls and POV switch from the vehicle to the character. Even upon being launched towards the ground at 600 knots, the Major will effortlessly come to a standing stop without a scratch, like he’s an anime protagonist or something.
The player is then free to walk around the scenery, and either respawn the craft (either at the initial or present location) or just wander around. Players may also elect to exit their craft to explore on foot at any time: Major Chad can run, swim, and even push your vehicle around - which comes in handy for smaller airplanes if you need a little pushback in a remote grass strip.
This player character was one of my main concerns going into SP2; it is such a major departure from the original game’s concept. Yet, having seen how it’s been implemented firsthand, I can now confidently say this is a great feature and was a smart move by the developers.
After testing out the game’s default vehicles and their showcasing of the game’s new features - the new wings with built-in flaps, the targeting pods, the improved aerodynamic simulation system which results in far more believable handling qualities. These are all marked improvements over the previous game; but they are not the game’s most impressive feature. It was time for the real test: Backwards compatibility.
As advertised, players would be able to import creations from the previous game into SP2 - a huge deal, since there are literally thousands of them. But with core systems such as the aerodynamic simulation changed in this new game, I wondered how they would behave - it’s no use being able to import a design from SP1 if it is completely non-functional, after all.
I open up SimplePlane’s website and look at my creations: Uploaded six years ago. It’s been that long? Holy smokes. I should be worried about this thing’s compatibility with the latest SP1 updates, let alone SP2! I reckon if this works in the new game, anything will.
What shall be my airframe of choice for this stress test? My eyes immediately turn their gaze to the most cursed option available - the asymmetric S. Ca. 163 Quimera. It’s got a bunch of custom systems made from SP1 parts - custom landing gear, custom cannon, custom missiles. Most importantly, it is an affront to basic aircraft design principles, has very temperamental handling characteristics, and had several quirks even in its original game. In other words: it’s perfect.
With a certain degree of hesitation, I load it into SimplePlanes 2. It loads into the game’s aircraft editor - immediately, SP2’s new shaders means it looks better than it did in SP1. But will it fly? I take the clumsy bird to the runway, throttle up, rotate… and an ear to ear grin grows on my face. Lo and behold, the imported aircraft work great! Sure, there are a few quirks with very complex designs, but overall, craft imported from SP1 behave just like they did in their native installment.
This is, to me, the very best feature of SimplePlanes 2; considering so many of the systems (aerodynamics, construction) are either brand new or thoroughly revamped, it would have been far easier for the developers to just make it a completely separate game. But instead, they deliberately took the extra effort to make the game backwards compatible with the legacy systems of SP1, allowing players to enjoy their old creations alongside SP2’s new toys.
This decision highlights the passion the developers have for this project, and the regard in which they hold the community which has formed around their game; it acknowledges the thousands of creations players have made, and shows respect and admiration for the thousands of collective hours spent on them. Instead of being relegated to obsolescence, all of these little products of human creativity are now given a second chance to shine in a brand new stage.
I cannot overstate how praiseworthy this is; it is rare to see developers put this much care into acknowledging player’s effort and time, let alone making sure virtually all content from their previous game gets carried over to the sequel. Well done, Jundroo.
Airliners, Airships, and Armageddon
Unlike its predecessor, SimplePlanes 2 features multiplayer support from the get-go, without any need for mods - and I was very surprised to see it already implemented in this demo.
Flying your creations (or the standard craft) alongside your friends in SimplePlanes is great - there is nearly unlimited potential for all sorts of silliness and debauchery. For this purpose, SimplePlanes allows you to create private lobbies, from which you can invite your friends via Steam.
However, public lobbies are also a thing. What happens when you give people nearly unlimited creative power, weapons which can be XML edited to have ridiculous stats, and the opportunity to use these tools against their fellow humans in a virtual environment?
It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to conclude the answer is pure, utter and unbridled chaos, with so many megatons of explosives being dropped each minute it’d make MacArthur blush. There’s also the players with absurdly overpowered spaceships with auto-aim insta-kill lasers - although admittedly it was fun hunting them down with a bog standard 4th generation fighter.
So why on earth would you want to play multiplayer SP2 in a public lobby? Well, because if you happen to come across some people who aren’t solely looking for a power trip, there’s cool interactions to be had. Jundroo knew this would happen, which is why lobby owners can select the “Peaceful Mode” option, which disables weapon damage. Ill-intentioned players can still ram others, or just be a nuisance by causing huge explosions which drop everyone’s frame rate, but these cases can be easily dealt with by kicking the offending players from the lobby.
In the few hours I spent in peaceful public lobbies, I flew formations with complete strangers, landed a pre-WWI aircraft on top of another player’s sci-fi spaceship carrier, buzzed a player who was drifting their car in the touge-like circuit of the woodlands, and generally got to see a plethora of different vehicles I would have never seen otherwise.
Another noteworthy feature is the event system - players can start events such as races (both for cars and aircraft), team deathmatches, and even co-op combat events, such as intercepting AI bombers or fighting against an invasion of AI mechs.
These events can be started both in single and multiplayer, and in the latter case players who do not opt into the event won’t be affected by it. In my opinion, this is a great way to implement this system and I’m eager to see what new events show up in the final product!
Outside the Test Envelope
Let’s talk about some of the features which were not yet available in the demo, because there are some pretty big items on the list.
The first and biggest of them all is the in-game builder itself. In the demo, players were able to access a pretty good selection of default/example vehicles, as well as import creations from SP1; however, all builder features were disabled, meaning there was no way to try out the new parts and building system of the new game.
This leaves a lot of questions open: how similar (or different) is it to the original? Are crafts made in SP1 editable in SP2, and if so, how easy will it be to retrofit them with SP2’s new wings, for instance? And most importantly, how on earth did they make the demo aircraft look so beautifully smooth?
And then there’s the new wings. SP2 uses a completely new wing modelling system, as described in the game’s news hub. This should, in theory, make it a lot easier to get the shape and look you want, without employing the various subterfuges which were necessary in SP1; but crucially, the physics modelling has also been rebuilt from scratch.
The new system features a vastly improved drag model; and now accounts for things such as spanwise lift distribution, induced drag (with the associated wingtip vortices!), and control surface moments - which alongside accounting for the effects of flap deployment on the wing’s Cl-Alpha curve, means we finally get flaps which actually work like flaps!
All of this sounds very exciting, and has been extensively documented and explained by the developers in their dev blog - a fact I greatly appreciate - and we were indeed able to get a small taste of this new system with the game’s preset aircraft. However, in the demo, this system was a black box - you could not modify or create new wings, so just what new possibilities will be opened by this new implementation are yet unknown.
Finally, there’s the new engines and transmission systems. They are now simulated in much greater detail, which should improve the immersion and fidelity of car designs. Players will be able to change the number of cylinders, their sizes, and other such configurations; again, we weren’t able to play around with this, but the game’s default cars do suggest this system is implemented and working.
The long-time reader may have had a sense of déjà vu with SP2’s new wing and engine systems; and that would be no coincidence, because the procedural systems used for them are a lot similar to what Flyout has implemented (at least on the user-facing end).
And thus, the big question is: How easy (or not) will these new systems be to use? While they offer players a lot of new options to play with, SimplePlanes’ greatest strength has so far been its relative simplicity: it strikes a balance between Aviassembly’s casual gameplay and Flyout’s aerospace engineering freshman complexity. It is very approachable at first, and becomes as intricate as your creativity allows. Flyout has also arguably already captured the more hardcore, super-in-depth audience for aircraft building games (a niche within a niche!). It’ll be interesting to see the direction SimplePlanes 2 ultimately takes in this respect.
Conclusions
When it was first launched, SimplePlanes was criticized for its flat graphics and lack of personality. In other words, it didn’t truly feel like a game; and while I’d argue the community that formed around it is proof that the game found its niche and the early critics missed the point, SimplePlanes 2 does feel like a welcome injection of game-iness into the original concept.
With its renewed visuals, charming soundtrack, and lovingly crafted terrain and buildings, the game has a much more interesting atmosphere than the original; and the built-in multiplayer system gives players a whole new dimension to explore that world in. If SimplePlanes 1 was more like an engineering proof-of-concept, SimplePlanes 2 seems to be shaping up to become its final product, the result of a decade of user feedback and developers’ work.
The effort and passion the developers have poured into this game is evident, and the retrocompatibility with SP1 ensures the new game can tap into an entire decade of the collective playerbase’s efforts in content. Even though the demo’s gameplay was limited, and some of the new features remain to be seen, it was enough to give the impression SimplePlanes 2 will be what so many sequels fail to:
Just like the first one, except better.
About the Writer
An incurable aviation fanatic since childhood, fascinated by the design and history of practically anything that flies. A long-time fan of flight games, he holds a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering and pursues his hobbies of drawing, writing and flight simulation on his spare time. See Staff Profile.
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