“We’ll support Liftoff as long as there’s a community.” we declared when we first launched Liftoff on Steam.

Well… you absolute legends never left. It’s been over 10 years. Ten. A whole decade. Some of you learned to solder, crashed 40,000 virtual quads, and possibly grew actual children in that time.

Today we just broke our concurrent player numbers for Liftoff!

No wonder, 20,000 new pilots joined in 2026 already (and its only February 🤯)

At this rate, we’ll be pushing updates from a retirement home:

“Patch 86.7.4 is live. Please excuse the delay, bingo night ran long.”

Seriously though, thank you for sticking with us. To celebrate we have some eye-candy for you!

Marina Bay is moving into its optimisation phase, the content phase is officially complete

This is our next true Liftoff level, and it’s a big one: towering skyscrapers, winding canals, boats, metro lines, hotels, and dense city blocks layered with flyable space. Because of that scale and complexity, it’s been in production for a long while.

Now comes optimisation, making sure everything runs as smoothly as it looks. That takes a bit more time, but we’re getting close. Hard to say exactly when it’s done… but not too long anymore.

It’s here, a new milestone for Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing.

For many of you, this won’t come as a surprise. All of the features in this update have been available on the Experimental Branch for the past few months. Thanks to your invaluable feedback, and the overwhelmingly positive response, we’ve been able to fine-tune what this milestone truly represents.

This update brings:

• Physics 6.0 – the most accurate FPV physics on the market Not replicated, actually simulated

• Complex wind simulation, including realistic and dynamic wind effects

• Real-world hardware constraints that meaningfully impact flight behavior

• A wide range of bug fixes and improvements

• Physics 6.0

  • Improved drag system

  • Improved propeller aerodynamics

  • Realistic motor power limits: Drone setups with an unrealistic battery and motor combination are now limited in their power.

  • Updated internal statistics of motors and batteries to better reflect their actual performance.

  • Drone setups that have their power reduced will now see a warning message during the drone selection and in the drone editor.

  • Added new OSD editor elements related to the battery: Current, milliAmpHour drawn, and Voltage per cell.

• Added Wind simulation to the game options.

  • Only available in single player Free Flight

  • Added 5 different wind presets with varying winds speeds and behavior

  • Wind can be visualized using the F10 key on your keyboard

• Introducing Lens FX to the graphics options

  • Added several lens presets

  • Added options to enable or disable the letterbox effect

• Soft reset of the leaderboards. All leaderboard up until now have been archived under the 'Legacy - Physics 5.0' dropdown option.

• Fixed small memory allocation issue in The Drawing Board environment

• Fixed issue in the race editor, where creating a new race would not properly close the window

• Fixed issue with fixed drone setups in multiplayer, where a player could get soft-locked in the drone selection window

• Fixed excessive logging in some environments due to colliders having a negative scale -- this may positively impact loading times

• Fixed auto-input issue when opening the pause menu in some environments, where the selected button would constantly scroll down
  

New physics bring new competitive opportunities.

To keep things fair and ensure everyone is flying on the same playing field, we’ve reset the leaderboards.

Don’t worry, your previous records haven’t been lost. All existing times are preserved in-game as Legacy Times, so your perfect runs (and bragging rights) live on forever.

We’re excited to move the community forward on the new physics iteration and enjoy the results of months of development and feedback together. Teamwork makes the dream work.

That said, if you’re still adjusting to the new physics (you’ve got this 💪), or in the middle of a training program that requires consistency. We’ve got you covered.

Physics 5.0 will remain accessible for a limited time via a dedicated branch (instructions below).

To fly multiplayer or participate in competitions, simply switch back to the latest public Physics 6.0 version at any time.

• Open Steam

• Go to your Library

• Right-click Liftoff → Properties

• Open the Game Versions & Betas tab

• Select liftoff_physics5.0 from the dropdown

• Close the window and let Liftoff update

That’s it!