What happened to Jetborne Racing?

While we were playing some of the VTOL VR sessions with our friends, I suddenly got reminded that there is another game by the same developer (Boundless Dynamics), Virtual Fighter Maneuvers aside.

This older title is one we covered at launch, and one that I quite enjoyed despite its setbacks. It was a great experience with no true parallels in modern gaming, a racing-focused flight sim experience tailored to VR and desktop users alike.

So, years after its release, what happened? The game has not received any real updates since 2021, and most people have forgotten about it, to the point that some of my friends thought that this was a new game when I started streaming it to them to get their opinions.

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VTOL VR, MULTIPLAYER AND TESTBEDS

Before the development of Jetborne Racing, BahamutoD's VTOLVR was purely a single-player experience. This was, in fact, the only downside that game had at the time, and a feature a lot of people yearned for. That is where Jetborne Racing comes into play. Jetborne Racing was designed from the ground up to be not only multiplayer capable, but also to have a great emphasis on multiplayer air racing sessions. It is also a game that was made in the same engine as VTOL VR, which meant that the tools made for this game would be extremely easy to implement on it.

Shortly after the release of Jetborne Racing, VTOL got its multiplayer mode added. And that is around when updates just stopped for Jetborne, no more content drops or any real post-launch support. To be honest, it felt like an expensive opt-in beta for the VTOL VR multiplayer.

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WASTED POTENTIAL

Personally, I quite loved fighting for positions on the leaderboard and the races. It was quite exciting and very different from what is out there in the market, both back then and even now 5 years after release. The game could have certainly used a content drop, some new courses, or even some other aircraft to play with. Everything just stayed as-is since launch, with the only patches we got being stability and bug fixing updates.

The ability to be able to use TrackIR and a full desktop HOTAS is nice, but since there is basically no content that hasn't been untouched, there is little to no reason to get on the game nowadays. I wish I could play Jetborne and not get bored in 30 minutes. I want to play it with my friends and not have them feel guilty for buying what effectively is a dead game. On the other hand, I will still play VTOL VR and its great mods, that is what keeps that game alive.

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About the Author

Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos

Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy