Gaijin Entertainment announces that the “Firebirds” major content update for the military online shooter War Thunder is already available to the players. The graphics in the game have been significantly improved, and the game got dozens of new vehicles ranging from American F-117A stealth bombers to South African Super Hind helicopters and the British battlecruiser HMS Repulse.

Watch the War Thunder “Firebirds” Trailer HERE.

The most significant graphic improvements are the ones that utilise the ray tracing technology. The game now features physically correct and pixel-precise shadows from the sun, and owners of the more powerful video cards will also see realistic shadows from all dynamic lights, like explosions, muzzle flashes and the like. War Thunder also now supports ray traced ambient occlusion and ray traced reflections (including those on water and translucent glass surfaces), which makes the game visuals even closer to reality. All of these effects are available on NVIDIA video cards and can be enabled or disabled individually at the player’s discretion. Ray tracing effects are especially visible at locations with lots of mirror surfaces, such as on the Alaska and Sun City maps.

Many other graphic effects have been redesigned in the game: for example, the mud from under the wheels flies more realistically, the moment of afterburner activation on jet aircraft and the afterburner exhaust itself now look more physically correct, the effects of missile explosions in the air have been reworked, the effect of burning fuel spilling from a destroyed tank has been improved, and abandoned cars are now beautifully crumpled when they are crushed by armored vehicles. Finally, War Thunder now supports the motion blur effect, which is also optional.

Watch the Visual Update Trailer HERE.

Super Hind is a South African modernization of the Mi-24 family of helicopters. Engineers have completely redesigned the front part of the hull, where the sighting system and 20-mm autocannon with boxes for belts are located. In addition, the Super Hind was armed with INGWE tandem ATGMs. Super Hind helicopters are in service with the air forces of Algeria, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan. You can learn about other new military vehicles from the Firebirds update by checking the devblogs on the official website of the game.

You can learn more about the new content and other features of the “Firebirds” update from the devblogs on the official website of the game, or on its Steam page.