Exactly 8 years ago, on the 12th of November, I bought Simpleplanes.

Just like last year, I'm making a little recap of the things that happened to me in SP this year. Let's get into it! Enjoy!

One of my hardest projects

My first post this year was the completition of an old and possibly one of my hardest projects, the French interwar destroyer L'Adroit. I added this ship to my plans all the way in 2021, and started working on it in 2023 but progress proved incredibly difficult: she was an obscure french destroyer, whose only feat in her career was that she was sunk during the Dunkerque evacuations and her wreck laying on the beach became an iconic sight of the event (as a matter of fact, that's also what intrigued me about her). I had to scour the internet, google translating french language forums to get any reference material about her, even briefly considering to buy a french language book just to get a bit more info. Then in 2024, when I was already making a lot of progress on her, it was announced that she would be added into World of Warships as part of a new french DD line which felt like a punch into my guts after so much searching. But, the WoWS model was based on her look as she was built, whereas my build would represent her refitted look as she was sunk in 1940. I ended up finishing her in late 2024, along with a nice teaser video that I have been planning to make ever since I added her to my list. She featured a much improved captain system (even better than on my Van Kinsbergen) depth charge launchers (a first in my career) and other neat stuff. Thanks to her wave dampening system, she was even featured in a dev blog post for SP2, to present the new game's water effects. Overall, I'm very proud of this build, it took a lot of work, but it paid off in the end.

L'Adroit on SP2's water, posted in a dev blog

On the road again!

Following my previous two cars, the Metropolitan and the Minerva I really got into the idea of building cars as relaxing quick builds, because building a full scale ship with high detailing and complex systems is sometimes very tiresome and takes a lot of time, leading to me burning out. Thus, after L'Adroit, I wanted to relax with another car, this became the B.M.C Matilda, a typical 1950s four door sedan. I put a bit more effort into this one than the previous ones, mostly because of the more complex shape of the car, compared to the boxy shape of the Metropolitan and Minerva. I also put a lot more effort into the alternate versions this time, the Matilda was released with 5 alternate variants. The car served it's purpose well, as it kept me motivated enough to move on to my next ship project.

Monitoring!

If my save files could talk, then my next build would have been legendary among them, the Austro-Hungarian river monitor SMS Leitha (Lajta). Work on this project started back in 2021, but got into development hell for years, until in 2024 I finally picked it up again to work on her and I finally finished her this year. It originally started out a farily simple (for my standards), low detail ship, but as the years passed, I kept adding more and more stuff because I felt like her small size justified more details. The end result a ship that had full interior of her superstructure (albeit her superstucture is rather small), masts that can be lowered to pass under bridges, and the best part, a whole crew: on Leitha's decks, I added crew members mopping the deck, standing guard, manning guns, and obvserving the horizon, not to mention the usual walking captain feature. I was super proud of this as I have been thinking about doing such a thing for years, but doing it on a larger ship would have been way too part consuming. I do intend to further explore this idea in the future, stay tuned for that!

Back on the road!... wait, again??

Afte Leitha, I once again wanted something relaxing and so I returned to making cars again... this time for a little longer.
Continuing my habit of making historical based cars, I went even further this time, to the 1920s, enter, the B.M.C Maestro! Once again, I made sure to include multiple alternate versions, ranging from taxies, through a pickup truck modification, all the way to a mafia car with gangsters shooting through the windows. The car was very well received, becoming my most upvoted car so far and my car building skills also improved a lot in this project: I built my first car engine, albeit a very simple one but it's still a start. I also made a functional leaf spring suspension for this project, which is another thing that Im quite proud of.

Following the Maestro, I continued on with the car building, once again, going back into the eastern bloc. My next car, the B.M.C Merkur was based on the legendary Trabant 601, a car that is somewhat close to my heart, as I still sometimes see this little East-German wonders roaming the streets here in Hungary and I did so even more when I was a kid (my father had one too).

Moving on, a friend of mine suggested to build a real luxury sports car, one that put my skills to the test with its complex body shape. The B.M.C Magnificent was based on the famous Jaguar E type, albeit I took some creative liberties as I often do with my cars. the front area of the Magnificent's body gave me a headache more than once, to say the least. I'm very satisfied with the end result, I was able to further improve my car skills and widen the range of cars I have built. Magnificent also became my first car where the main post didn't feature it in any special livery, just the base car. I made all my previous ones to be police vehicles because at first, I considered that to be more interesting, but with Magnificent, a police livery couldn't really work so it had to be civilian.

After this, I decided to do a double upload of two cars, the B.M.C Mongoose and the B.M.C Mountaineer. Despite being published together, they are two vastly different cars. The Mongoose was based on Plymouth Barracuda (If I had a nickel for every car I based on a Plymouth, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but more than with any other brand so far lol). The reason I chose this car specifically is because of a childhood memory: as a kid, I loved playing with the Starsky and Hutch video game, it was a simple arcadey fun and I enjoyed it a lot. The game didn't licence any real car names or brands, but all the cars were losely based on real cars, but in a simple, low poly manner. The first mission's bad guy car was always a favourite of mine, I just loved the look of it, but for years, I couldn't figure out what it was based on (in game it's called "Monkeyfunk", which doesn't help a lot). However, with the help of L1nus, we were finally able to figure out the origins of it, by basically examining every pixel on its low resolution textures. And so, I set out to build this childhood favourite of mine, which became the B.M.C Mongoose... now I just have to build a 1975-76 Ford Gran Torino and I can recreate my childhood game in SP.
The other car in the published duo was a neat off-road vehicle. I wanted to build one for a while because many modded maps feature off-road areas but I never really had anything to explore those areas, besides my old outdated Willy's MB. My choice fell on the Toyota J40, a somewhat legendary off-road car that features both simple and complex areas, giving me a good balance in easy and difficult building. This became the B.M.C Mountaineer (not the greatest name but I needed something that starts with 'M' to keep going with my naming convention lol). For this build, I brought back my leaf spring suspension from Maestro, further improved this time and I think I did a pretty good job with it, making the car climb hills and mountains smoothly.
Once again, both cars came with alternate versions, in the case of Mongoose, one of them was a drag racer, which was an interesting problem to figure out, as I wanted it to rise its front wheels when it speeds up, like real dragsters do.

The car on which I based Mongoose as it looks in the Starsky and Hutch game

Next up, I was once again suggested to make a specific car, the Lincoln Continental which I found to be an interesting project, mostly because I like boxy 70s cars a lot. This project became the B.M.C Marquis an elegant personal luxury car. While the base version didn't have too many interesting features besides maybe the hidden headlights, the alternate version had a lot more to offer: for the lowrider variant I added working hydraulics to the suspension, whereas the convertible variant featured my first full car interior, along with a fun little reference to another childhood game of mine.

Simpleplanes 2!

The Announcement of SP2 was huge news for all of us and like others, I too was really looking forward to it. And then, when I least expected it, I got a great honor and was selected to be one of the moderators of the official SP2 discord server (go join if you haven't yet, it's a nice place, here is an invite!). Even better news came when the open demo was announced, I had a blast with my friends in the MP servers, so I'm really looking forward to the final release of the game (kinda bummed that it got delayed to 2026, but I rather wait a bit more if that means we get a fully polished game).

Closing thoughts

This year almost felt like my first few years, when I was publishing new posts a lot more frequently. I managed to publish something new almost every month this year, which is lot more than I did in some of my previous years. And I did so while (in my opinion) keeping myself to my usual level of quality, so I'm very proud of this year as well. As for the future, well, the next year will bring SP2's release and while I will definitely buy it on day one, I don't intend to fully abandon SP1 yet, or at least, not until I published all my projects that I started here, and from there, who knows, I might release a few SP1 posts from time to time, but we shall see.

Closing Screenshots

Just like every year, I want to close this post with "a few" screenshots I made this year. Like last time, I will include a number of teasers of builds that are work-in-progress the at moment. Enjoy!

My Metropolitan chasing L1nus' Santa's Rusty Sleigh

Sakorsky's E-100, ready to delete some shermans. I took a ton of screenies to help out my friend Sakorsky this year, defintiely go and check out his work, he is a great tank builder and a cool guy

Another Sakorsky build, his VK 45.02 (P) Ausf. A

A little formation flying with ShiroNeko

Leitha's kitchen may have a bit of a rat infestation...

Operation Maywar Storm on the go! using L1nus' F-15

Originally built to be a background extra on some of my screenshots (for example in L'Adroit's post), I decided to upgrade this Elbing-class torpedo boat with the ability to launch one of its motor boats. This was never released, but I like to bring it into MP from time to time

Attack the D point!

Like a true german main

taking out EternalDarkness' yet unreleased, majestic sailboat for a ride

This year, I decided to more seriously experiment with reshade settings, to get the best possible screenshots I can make. Here is one of the test shots, featuring my work in progress HMS Royal Oak