The turn that wouldn’t bite

July 11, 2026 · mobile

Last week we taught the phone’s virtual stick to bank and hold instead of spiralling into the dirt, and we were pleased with ourselves. The next field report was not: “turns are slow and wide, it’s impossible to dogfight — and I can’t go inverted at all.” All three complaints were true.

Too safe to fight

Curing the death spiral swung too far the other way. The new stick would only ever hold a gentle turn: even hauled most of the way over, the plane just leaned and coasted around a wide, lazy arc while a desktop pilot pivoted circles around you. Pull back for a loop and the nose barely climbed. And the roll was capped — past a steep bank the plane rolled itself upright, so there was no way to get onto your back at all. No loop, no split-S, no barrel roll. We had fixed “I can’t control roll” by making the plane impossible to crash — and impossible to fight in.

Command the turn, not the pose

Four things change how the stick flies:

The stick commands the turn now. The throw is mapped so the middle of it holds the middle of the turn — half stick is a real, hard-banked bite, three-quarter is a proper carve, not a lazy lean.
Deep turns pull to the limit. Bury the stick and the plane rides its full G ceiling instead of sagging halfway there. A hard turn is a hard turn.
A hard pull gets you a loop. Full back-stick powers the nose all the way over the top and, with the stick centered, lets go of the bank so you don’t have to fight the plane upright at the crest. Bank and pull together still hold a turn — because that’s a turn, not a loop — and the plane holds its flight path even when it’s inverted instead of tucking at the ground.
Slam the stick sideways and it rolls. All the way over with the pull released, the plane stops capturing a bank and just keeps rolling — through vertical, onto your back, all the way around. Ease off and it catches the nearest turn. That’s the split-S door the old cap had welded shut.

What you can fly now

Turns that bite: half stick pulls a hard turn, full stick pulls the hardest sustained turn the plane has — and does it while gaining altitude instead of bleeding it into the ground.
A loop over the top in six seconds from a full pull, where before the nose barely lifted.
Rolls all the way around, through inverted, at the plane’s full roll rate. Release from your back and you’re wings-level in a couple of seconds.
The split-S: roll onto your back, pull through, and recover level — the classic escape, finally available on a phone.

Let go of the stick and the plane still rolls itself wings-level in about a second, same as before. Aiming is unchanged — your fine-aim cursor still points the guns and turrets exactly where you drag it — and desktop mouse and keyboard pilots see no difference. This is a phone fix, and the plane itself flies as it always has.