The world’s leading drone-racing simulator leaves Early Access and takes over the skies today! Liftoff is officially released on Steam and receives a subtitle to mark the start of a new era for the project. Liftoff is available on Steam, for Mac, PC and Linux under the name "Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing".
We want to thank all of you for supporting us over the past few years. This had not been possible without you!
Release!
Three years of development, hundreds of updates, but most of all the continuous support from the community have turned Liftoff into what it is today. The scope and vision for the project have grown immensely since we released our first Early Access version in 2015. The project has become everything we had hoped it would be and more. The V1 release marks this progress with the biggest update ever: more than 50 big additions and improvements have been made for this release. Check them out here: Release Notes
The Future
The release of Liftoff is not the end of the project, but rather the start of a new stage in our adventure. The team at LuGus Studios is committed to further grow and evolve the project with more free updates, for years to come. We have planned a revamped tutorial, new exciting environments, extended tournament features and much more. Furthermore, LuGus Studios is committed to the expansion of the brand and aims to not only release Liftoff Academy in the future, but a multitude of other Liftoff related products.
There's so many things yet to do and we hope you'll continue to support us in these goals.
Announcing the Liftoff Pro Pilot tournament!
To show our commitment to the game and the community, LuGus Studios will be hosting a huge Liftoff tournament to take place in stages after the launch. The winning pilot will receive a $10,000 sponsorship deal and be flown to real drone racing tournaments around the world. More information on that soon!
Release Date Announced!
LuGus Studios are thrilled to announce that Liftoff will be leaving early access and take to the skies on Thursday, 13th September.
The drone racing community is filled with creative minds and budding engineers and it’s the passion of this community that has helped us shape Liftoff throughout Early Access. Through the support of the community, their feedback has fuelled our attention to detail and allowed us to make Liftoff the definitive drone racing experience, offering players the most true to life experience possible. Even though we’re excited to launch out of Early Access, we will continue refining and supporting Liftoff long into the future.
Release version
The release version of Liftoff will include over 50 updates that will completely enhance the Liftoff experience. Expect new frames and parts, new physics, progression and reward features, a new track builder and so much more.
Everyone who bought the Early Access version before the 13th of September will also receive a festive legendary skin for Talon frame in-game. (Liftoff Pro Account required)
Release showcase
The team at LuGus Studios will be visiting Gamescom 2018. We'll have a Liftoff booth where visitors and members of the press can experience the release version for the first time. We'll be sharing the reports with you in the days and weeks to come.
If you want to preview the release on your website, blog or social media channel before it comes out, please contact us: team@lugus-studios.be
EB update: Bots & Rewards
Gamescom is only a week away and that means the team is in full crunch-mode to get the first release candidate for V1 ready. To make sure everything is functioning as expected we need to test a few more things. We hope to count on your help once more. This new Experimental Branch
version includes the Liftoff Physics 3.0 update but also introduces a more complete progression and rewards system. We’ve also extended the bots system to function in all official tracks.
PROGRESSION & REWARDS
We are introducing the latest version of our progression and rewards system. Starting today, you’ll be able to level up, collect rewards and unlock them for 2 weeks long. All of the progression and rewards will be reset again on 28/08/2018. Later, these features will be made available again on V1, expected to arrive in September.
We hope that you can help us find out how quickly you can level up in Liftoff, how you feel about the rewards you can unlock. Most of all we want you to help us find exploits of the system, so we can better balance everything.
Want to know more on how to progress in Liftoff and how to unlock rewards, check out this video by RobIsNow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo5IB1n2ugc
LIFTOFF BOTS
Bots have been available in the game for a while now, but only for the Straw Bale tracks. We are finally expanding the system!
We are introducing bots to all the official tracks. These bots make use of actual player fight data. We’ll need your help in teaching our bots how to fly. How? Simply by completing races on our official tracks. Your flight data will be collected and dynamically reworked and loaded in for other players to compete against. Bots take into account your personal piloting skills and will adapt to keep every race fun and exciting.
We are excited to learn how you feel about the bots in Liftoff. Thank you!
Liftoff Physics 3.0
The previous update of the Experimental Branch brought a lot of changes to the physics of Liftoff. We were glad to see the Liftoff players enjoyed these updates and we feel the project has been in a really good state ever since. Nonetheless, we’ve always felt we could do even better and that’s what Liftoff Physics 3.0 is all about!
Based on lots of experimental wind tunnel data, we developed a whole new set of physical models that should be a lot more realistic. The main differences in terms of flight behaviour should be the following:
Quads should now fall faster when throttle is cut.
Quads controls should now feel more responsive, and a bit snappier.
The cornering behaviour is improved. Thrust can be used more efficiently to control the quad’s trajectory.
If you use a low camera angle (between 0° and 45°), you should experience a downforce when racing and cutting throttle. If you use a higher camera angle, you will feel a strong deceleration and/or a downward push in same circumstances.
All parts were re-balanced and are more realistic. As a result, all the possible builds are more different from each other than ever, and result in very different flight behaviour.
Battery Draining is slower and closer to reality.
Weight is now as important as in real-life, and so is thrust-to-weight ratio. High ratio will make your build powerful and very controllable in curves, and lower ratios will bring more “driftiness” to your flight.
DETAILED LIST OF CHANGES
Max RPM Max RPM is now calculated with a new physical model. It now also takes into account the number of blades of a propeller and should give results a lot closer to reality.
Static Thrust Static thrust is the thrust that would be produced by a motor and a propeller at max RPM, assuming zero airspeed. It is a theoretical value that represents the highest thrust that could be attained in specific circumstances. Static thrust now uses a new model. Its scaling with part characteristics is much closer to reality. Static thrust is now lower than the current one used in the game.
Dynamic Thrust Dynamic thrust might be the area where most changes happened. Dynamic thrust is the real thrust that is available to your quad. It decreases with airspeed until a certain speed at which the quad can’t generate any thrust. That phenomenon was not taken into account before. We use a new model to calculate the speed at which you no longer generate thrust, based on the motor, the propeller and the rotation speed of the motors. Also, beyond that speed propellers can now generate negative thrust, which also happens in reality. The most obvious consequence of this phenomenon is that sometimes when you race and suddenly cut the throttle, you might feel a downward push on your quad, or in more extreme cases, when flying at a high angle, a major deceleration. In the same way, if the speed of the air coming to the motors is negative, like in a sharp turn or when the quad is falling horizontally, the dynamic thrust generated can exceed static thrust for a short time, just like in real life.
Battery draining Before this update, Liftoff had a tendency to drain batteries too fast in certain conditions. We are now using a new model that is closer to experimental data available.
Drag Our drag model now scales better with the size of the quad and drag should be lower in general. We now calculate individual drag for each surface of the quadcopter, making it more realistic. We expect the quad to fall a little faster and to have some “driftiness”, allowing the pilot to use throttle to adjust and find the perfect trajectory. That “driftiness” can be increased by adding weight to the build through the workbench.
Balance of the parts Manufacturer datasheets are often the result of calculations and don’t necessarily reflect reality. We have scaled some of the part characteristics in order to reach the thrust level observed in experimental wind tunnel data from reliable third-party testers. We are also actively working on new, often requested parts, such as high-performances batteries, and lower Kv motor to use with 6S batteries.
Weight The effect of weight is now more important. The heavier a drone, the more momentum will be carried in turns or when throttle is suddenly cut. You can still add weight to your builds in the workbench, to tune them to your preferences.
Game engine physics
We don’t use any of the game engine physics functions anymore and developed our own instead. This way, we have a better control over the simulation code.
WHEN AND HOW?
We hope to include these new physics changes in our V1 release (around Gamescom). In order for that to happen, we’ll need a lot of test results from the community.
Reaching our V1 goals will only be possible with your help, so we are counting on your support. We've made the Liftoff Physics 3.0 available for testing on the Experimental Branch and hope to get as much feedback as possible.
To get access to the Experimental Branch you have to change some “Properties” settings on Steam. To do this, follow these steps:
Right click on “Liftoff” in your Steam Library
Click “Properties”
In the “Properties” menu, click the “BETAS” tab
Select “Experimental Branch” in the dropdown menu
Happy testing!
TL;DR
Liftoff will have the best sim physics ever!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LJ73cDYDSw
Update 0.14.2 released!
This update is completely dedicated to our new soundtrack, to be enjoyed in the game right now!
CHANGELIST
Added new soundtrack (12 songs)
Fixed some tournament recordings not being saved
Memory optimisation for ghost drones and recordings
Minor bugfixes
NIGHTIME BURNOUT
We can’t release an awesome soundtrack like this without telling you some more about it. We’ve taken the opportunity to interview the talented artist Nightime Burnout about his work.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your passion for music and how you got involved with the FPV community. My name is Max and I do a lot of music work behind the scenes for Rotor Riot. I grew up surrounded by musicians so there wasn’t a minute of the day that music wasn’t being played. I started to play around with music softwares at age six and I haven’t stopped since! I got into FPV January of 2017 and almost immediately, Rotor Riot was my goto place for learning about everything and anything. After watching the channel for about four to five months, as a lifelong musician, I got tired of the stock music that they were using to avoid any copyright claims. I wrote an email to Chad Kapper and the rest is history! I’m now a proud team pilot for both Rotor Riot and Underground FPV.
Has your work for Rotor Riot influenced your work? Has FPV inspired you to create certain songs? This is actually a super interesting question. It has for sure. I’ve created songs I didn’t think I ever would have before. For example, in the Rotor Riot Presents: Botgrinder, I teamed up with a local pilot and fellow musician to create a metal track. I’m not a guitarist so it would have never been something I would’ve done on my own. The track ended up going perfectly with the opening sequence!
We agree, it’s perfect!
How long have you been playing Liftoff, and what’s your favourite environment and frame in the game? I found a video about Liftoff very early on in my FPV days. Almost immediately I picked up a copy and started playing! All long long before I teamed up with the Liftoff guys to make this soundtrack. My favorite environment has to be Hannover. As a freestyle pilot, I like all my tiny gaps and cool structures! The golf course is a close second though. My favorite frame is the Sleek. I fly a chameleon for my main quad in person so the sleek frame reminds me the most of my beloved quad 😛
Tell us a bit about the philosophy behind the Liftoff soundtrack. The creation of the Liftoff soundtrack was super interesting. Aside from being a lifelong music lover, I’ve also played video games since I was super little. Amongst these games were all of the well known racing titles. Having a musical ear makes you pick up on things. For example, I knew the moment I started with the soundtrack, I had to include drum and bass tracks. The fast paced, floaty, and atmospheric vibes are something that’s commonplace with racing games and I knew it would accent Liftoff well as pilots went full tilt head to head for the win. After I had the first track underway, everything else came to me quickly, one after the other. They all have a similar vibe, even though they are completely different genres in some cases.
We are really happy with the results. What was it like to work with the Liftoff team on making this new soundtrack possible? The guys at Liftoff were super kind and laid back and made this super fun and no-stress to produce. I uploaded each new version of each track as I went along and got feedback from the team to then go back and tweak the tracks to make them better! This production was my first big job as a producer and I could not be more thankful to the team for taking me on and making my dreams a reality!
Working with you has been a pleasure! Whats next for Nightime Burnout and where can people follow you? The future of Nightime Burnout is unsure, as all musicians’ futures are. For now, I’m going to keep pumping work out for the guys at Rotor Riot and for my casual fans that just listen to my soundcloud regularly. I have projects in the works that have been under development for more than three years a piece so I’m super excited to share them with you all soon! You can listen to my entire discography at https://soundcloud.com/nightime-burnout and you can find my FPV content at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYqbvFOczx2Txuxmh6a_-og and https://www.instagram.com/burnoutfpv/
You can also catch me around in the Liftoff and Rotor Riot official Facebook groups!
See you on the race tracks!
Update 0.14.1 released!
As has become tradition, every Milestone update gets followed up by a few quick-fix updates, dealing with some of the bugs and issues your report to us. Thanks for the support!
CHANGELIST:
Moved the dronogate turn to the Track Builder ‘Flags’ category.
Fixed the Hannover level’s Hall26 missing structures.
Fixed motion blur on race freeze frame finish.
Fixed depth of field being always on in The Green and Hall 26 .
Added a button to the race finish freeze frame to return to the tournament’s lobby when practicing for a tournament.
Fixed Vortex Pro issue in the Workbench where it wasn’t selectable.
Small memory optimisation during ghost playbacks which should give less frequent framerate spikes.
It's been a while, hasn't it? We've never had such a long time between updates, but two months of waiting will be well worth it. As we are getting closer to a V1 release, this update will play a huge role in further solidifying the core feature and content set for Liftoff. You'll love what we have in store for 0.14.0: a new frame, new parts, a new environment, cool features, performance updates, better looking visuals, quality-of-life improvements and so much more. Enjoy!
Added Dronogate track elements to the Track Builder.
LPL: Added option to play in previous tournaments (practice only).
LPL: Added a tournament setup timeout timer, so you can't get stuck in the process.
LPL: Improved tournament timer with live update of remaining time.
LPL: Added option to rewatch tournament submissions of other players (up to 4 ghosts).
LPL: Added option to load in tournament ghost data in your practice rounds (up to 4 ghosts).
LPL: Tournament banner loading has been optimised (loads faster).
LPL: improved some backend systems.
Graphics: Reworked internal camera system to improve performance.
Graphics: Improved motion blur effect.
Graphics: Added depth of field effect.
Graphics: Added Anti-Aliasing option.
Added some visual additions to the Workbench scene.
Improved menu navigation: more "back" buttons.
Fixed weight of Vincbee frame.
Fixed ghost ranking issue after reset.
Updated the Terms Of Service. Approval required prior to signing in to your account.
Minor bugfixes
Hall 26
When we updated the Hannover environment to have a more realistic representation of Hall 26, we didn't tell you we were also working on the interior of the hall. Hall 26 is an exact replica of the real hall at Hannover, and we are excited to have it available in Liftoff. We are releasing this as a complete separate environment, since adding the interior to the existing Hannover environment would create a performance issues for some players. Furthermore, the style and variation this new indoor environment offers deserve its own place in the spotlight. Since its an indoor environment, it's not as big as some of the latest environments we've released, but being among the biggest halls in the world, there's enough space for both racing and freestyle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDfVohlftE
Performance and visual improvements.
Improving performance while updating the visuals? That’s the idea! It’s the best of both worlds.
In this version we are changing the way things are rendered in the game. Before, we used three virtual cameras to render everything in layers. In this update we have brought that down to two, decreasing the amount of rendering work needed to create the image on your screen. This change is expected to bring some performance improvements, but also allows us to add more visual effects to the game.
The motion blur effect has been improved: it now looks better and gives an even better sense of speed than before. We also introduce depth of field effects, basically blurring objects that are really close to the camera. This mostly affects the ground and foliage in front of the FPV camera and creates an authentic feel of what’s being shown on the screen. Depth of Field, similar to past visual effects will be completely optional and can be turned off in the graphics options.
Remix and Hypetrain Grinders
For those who follow us on social media, it's no secret that we've teamed up with Rotor Riot to bring you the best possible content for Liftoff. This milestone update introduces the much requested Remix frame, created by the talented Ummagawd. Since we know you want the best of the best, we did not only visually recreate the frame in all its minute details, but we've also involved Ummagawd to test and tune the virtual frame at the studio. We are proud to say that our first implementation already did a fantastic job and Ummagawd was happy to put his stamp of approval on it.
Being huge fans of Botgrinder, we are also excited to share we are working with him to add all kinds of cool Botgrinder content in Liftoff. We'll start with this update by adding the Hypetrain Grinders, a fantastic looking variation on the classic Hypetrains. Stay tuned for more!
Liftoff Pro League 2.0
Last but not least, we're excited to tell you about the biggest addition in this update: a huge upgrade to the tournament system. We are now saving your tournament try-out runs, so everyone can look at your run and even load them into their practice sessions. This means you can watch and learn from the other participants, making the Pro League tournaments more involved, more social and more competitive than ever. You can spectate or race against four ghost runs from other tournament participants. While watching you can pause, rewind or fast forward each run using our Ghost Player tools. That's not all! We'll soon be introducing similar replay features to the other parts of the game.
Official Liftoff T-shirt
By popular request we finally have Liftoff T-shirts available for you to get! :D
We've been working together with our friends at Rotor Riot to make this happen. We want everyone to show how much they like Liftoff and thats why we made them available at the best price possible.
For only $18 there's no reason not to get one!
Shirts are slim fit, silk screened onto a very comfortable and soft tri-blend fabric, available in all sizes.
If we ever came close to having a clickbait title, this one might be it. Nonetheless, it’s not wrong to say Liftoff is almost finished. What does that mean exactly?
For the last three years, Liftoff has continued to be in an Early Access state: everything in the game was considered work-in-progress and the game was not yet feature complete. During that time we have released close to 100 updates, continuing to improve and expand Liftoff in all kinds of ways. It’s time for Liftoff to mature and join the realm of finished games. In a little while we’ll be entering this new phase, but not quite yet 😉
THE END OF DEVELOPMENT?
Far from it! We have plans for years of Liftoff development and we consider the end of the Early Access program as a start of a new stage in the life of Liftoff. We are big fans of Blizzard and Valve and how they support their games years after they’ve been released as a full product. We’ll continue to improve Liftoff for as long as there’s a community that supports it. Accordingly, we consider this just the start of a new phase for Liftoff. We are proud of what we have achieved over the last three years and we now feel confident to begin showing and promoting Liftoff to a bigger audience.
WHEN IS THE V1 RELEASE?
We are getting closer to what in development terms is called a beta version: a version that’s feature complete. There’s still a few things on our list before we reach that stage. Things yet to expect are replay functionality, bots for all tracks and our progression and reward system. Next we’ll be entering a polishing phase: we’ll focus on quality of life improvements, but we’ll also do some feature reworks such as the tutorial and the track builder.
Since there’s still a lot to do, we can’t say for sure when the Version1 (V1) release will happen exactly. There’s still some updates planned in between, including a few milestone updates. Internally we do have a specific time in mind that we’ll be aiming for, but we expect that time will shift as development continues. Consequently, we are not yet ready to share an official release date.
WHAT CHANGES AFTER V1?
Reaching a V1 state won’t change all that much for our fans: it will still be the good old Liftoff, that will still receive updates on a regular basis. Liftoff will continue to grow and expand. The time between updates might increase a bit since we’ll likely increase the testing time for these updates to guarantee more stable and polished states of the game.
This evolution of the project does allow us to explore project goals we never looked at before. It allows us to look for what’s next for Liftoff as a game and as a brand. To continue to support these future goals we might also explore some DLC or expansion packs, but nothing is set in stone on that front. All in all, after three years of hard work, it’s time for Liftoff to mature. Having a game in an official V1 state allows us to promote Liftoff to a bigger audience, and expose it to more people. We will be inviting press from both the FPV and the gaming world to experience Liftoff. We expect the community to continue to grow and are super excited about the future!
Badges
Liftoff is not just a game, it’s a community! Everyone involved, including you, have made Liftoff into what it is today and that’s something to celebrate. To show our appreciation for the wonderful Liftoff pilots, we are introducing our award badges. It’s not just our top pilots that can win these badges, but everyone in our community, simply for being awesome!
The badges are sand blasted and gilded or silvered copper badges with a durable safety tack system. They function like actual badges and don’t come with a neck ribbon. You can wear them on a hoodie, a backpack or any other fabric, perfect to bring with you at your favorite FPV event. The safety system makes sure they won’t come loose easily. They comes in plastic gift cases and include a personalised and signed certificate.
LIFTOFF PRO LEAGUE 2018 CHAMPION BADGE
The last months we have been awarding Champion badges to some of the best Liftoff Pro League pilots. These badges are absolutely rare and can only be won by claiming the number one spot of a tournament. Pilots can only win one of these per year, making the top position on the leaderboard highly contested.
LIFTOFF COMMUNITY AWARD BADGE
People who’ve created amazing Liftoff content, who’ve sent us great feedback or simply have shown immense support and kindness towards other people in the community. In other words, it’s an award to celebrate awesome community members!
Everyone can win a badge, including you! Simply show the best of what you have both in the game and outside of it. Excel in making Liftoff bigger and better in all its facets and you might be the next community member to receive one of these badges. A big thanks to everyone!
