■ A new cockpit The cockpit has been rebuilt inside: a round attitude indicator, a new instrument panel and frame, a rear-view mirror and eyebrow indicator lights. Every display now shows live values — radar top left, a north-up tactical map with your planned route in the centre, mission information top right, the engine bottom left. The HUD combiner glass is drawn too, and the HUD no longer blooms at night or fades into the sky by day. ■ Gyro steering Tilt the device to add rudder or bank on top of the stick. Choose which one, and how strong, in Settings. ■ Voiced radio Every line spoken in flight now has a voice — the instructor, the tower, the LSO and the ship, down to the flight tutorial's cards. The voices are Japanese with English subtitles; on the carrier, the air boss and the shooter speak English. Each sortie opens with an outside shot of the jet while the first calls are made, all six chapters open with a scene of their own, and the prologue has been rebuilt. The instructor reads the briefing on the stage select screen, and every chapter has its own music. ■ Catapult launches and a carrier underway Chapter 3 has a new mission, CAT SHOT. Start hooked to the catapult, talk to the air boss and the shooter, go to full power and launch — once you leave the bow, pulling up is up to you. The carrier is now full-size and steams at 25 knots, and you can see the wires, the tailhook and the aircraft parked on deck. ■ A new home screen The game now opens on a home screen over the sea and the carrier, where F-2s land, park and launch on the deck. ■ The F-2 GARAGE Turn the F-2 on the deck, swap weapons and drop tanks, and read the weight and performance. Take the same loadout straight out on a test flight in Free Flight. ■ A rebuilt CASE ONE The final chapter now takes off from Matsushima, joins up with the instructor's jet offshore, flies in formation to the ship, breaks and lands. It counts as a new mission, so it shows as uncleared even if you finished CASE ONE in v1.3. ■ A flight tutorial Nine lessons on banking and pulling, and on trading speed for climb and descent. No score and no record, so try as often as you like. ■ Flight model Let go of the stick and the bank stops dead. Drop tanks and weapons make the roll heavier. Pull all the way and you keep the G; run out of speed and you stall. Also: FIND THE BOAT now starts high and far out, so you plan your own descent and turn to the stern; a wire caught too fast no longer holds (it's a bolter), carrier approaches start 5 km behind the ship, FIRST CONTACT (aerial refuelling) has new start positions and a roomier refuelling box, rebuilt trees and forests, a redrawn afterburner plume and engine sound, and a one-time v1.4 trailer on first launch (skippable, and replayable from the menu any time).

■ iPad support F-2 MISSIONS now runs natively on iPad. The interface fills the whole screen, so text and instruments read at iPad size. The virtual pad sits a little further in from the corners, and you can pick the stick size in Settings > Controls (100 / 125 / 150%). The radar rose in the top corner is larger too. ■ Stick on the right Settings > Controls > Stick side now puts the stick on the right and the throttle on the left. The fire buttons move over with the throttle. Also: REPLAYS and BADGES can now be opened from the top right of the stage select screen; the pattern exercise no longer draws the next lap's guide line after you land (it comes back if you go around and climb out again); in replays, gate markers follow the single GATES switch and the steering arrow no longer shows; the autopilot-disconnect tone no longer sounds when you first touch the controls while parked; and the cockpit seen through the canopy is no longer pitch black in daylight.

■ The approach guide line A ribbon now shows the approach path down — to the carrier, to the painted deck, to a plain runway. It shows you where to fly, and its colour tells you what to do with your speed: red means slow down, blue means speed up. It appears on NORMAL only, and you can switch it off from the button in flight or from Settings. Please note that the ribbon is a path the game calculates, not necessarily the right line for the moment — always fly by what the situation in front of you calls for. ■ A tactical map A radar rose in the top corner, a full-screen map, and a live HSD in the cockpit — all three are the same map. The rose and the HSD show the next gate and the one after it. Drag to pan the full map, pinch to zoom, tap the rose to step its range. ■ New view and quality options The chase camera can hold the horizon, so the picture no longer rolls through a loop or a continuous roll and you keep your bearings. The view button now cycles chase, chase with the horizon held, and cockpit. Settings has a new Game tab for the instructor radio and the guide line, and graphics quality and render resolution are now two separate choices. ■ A sharper cockpit The HUD now sits on the combiner glass: the HUD horizon lies on the real horizon, and the flight path marker points where you are actually going. The canopy tint seen from the seat is lighter for a brighter view, and the throttle gauge has a lever knob — the bar and the number are the engine's actual output, the knob is where you put the lever, so you can watch the engine catch up. ■ Valley runs sized to the difficulty The two low-level valley runs (SOUTHERN ALPS and AZUSA VALLEY) now change length with the difficulty you pick. Also: a one-time trailer plays on first launch (skippable, and replayable from the menu any time), clearer gate marker pulsing, the stick sensitivity curve is a −5 to +5 slider, the rudder band shows before you touch it, view distance tuned per stage, an OVERSPEED warning when a dive passes the airframe's limit, and a feedback window you can open from the menu any time.

■ A rebuilt virtual pad Three control layouts, each tunable in Settings. You choose where the rudder lives — pedals beside the throttle, pedals above the stick, or sharing the stick's horizontal axis. The game asks once, on your first sortie, and the on-screen pad rebuilds itself as you pick, so you decide by looking at the real thing. Settings is now full-screen with three tabs (controls, graphics, audio): how wide the rudder band is when it shares the stick, the stick sensitivity curve, the input mode (virtual pad / gamepad / auto), and three volume sliders. Tapping the edge of the stick no longer snaps to full deflection, and the throttle now commands the position you put the lever at. ■ More polished missions The takeoff drill is clearer. It no longer fails you for touching the throttle out of turn — it shows you the procedure instead and lights up the control you need next, and the control check is split into pitch, roll and rudder. The three valley runs are much longer: SOUTHERN ALPS is now 27 gates over 34 km, AZUSA VALLEY 24 over 28 km, and VALLEY FORMATION 16 over 61 km. Par times and the radar ceiling were re-measured by actually flying them. And CARRIER LANDING on NORMAL is free again. ■ Badges and a squadron board 27 patches that fill in as you work through the syllabus, with an award card each time you earn one. Your debrief shows how the rest of the class did and where you placed. The board is opt-in, and the only thing it shows is your callsign — no free text, no chat. ■ Your record follows you Sign in to Game Center and your badges survive a reinstall or a new device. We never ask you to sign in. Also: the prologue now says something when it beats you three times, the low-level runs are scored on four axes — how low you held it, gate precision, stealth and time — and labels that stayed in Japanese on English devices are fixed.

■ New: cockpit view A fully modelled first-person cockpit — instrument panel, canopy, and a HUD projected onto the combiner glass in front of you, not pasted on the screen. Turn your head and the symbology slides with the world; pull g and your head goes with the jet. ■ A prologue and six chapters A story prologue, and the missions rebuilt into a 25-stage training course with an all-new chapter and stage select. ■ Land-base training — 10 missions at Matsushima AB Fly the whole thing: takeoff, circuit, approach, touchdown, full stop. Plus touch-and-go and wire traps on a painted deck marked out on the runway. Land-base missions go from one to ten. ■ Your instructor on the radio In-flight callouts and coaching, across every mission. ■ A richer world Real building footprints, trees and far terrain, greatly expanded. ■ Graduation Complete the course and earn your wings, with a ceremony. Also: a one-line "do this next" HUD guide, a first-run view picker, time-of-day and cloud knobs plus music preview in FREE FLIGHT, distance-aware engine audio, and a redesigned title screen.

Difficulties unlock in order: clear NORMAL for HARD, HARD for ACE. Grades you have already cleared stay open. FORMATION now opens with WINGMAN — joining up on the leader — and it is free. The refuelling mission FIRST CONTACT moves later in FORMATION and joins F-2 MISSIONS COMPLETE.