I've been actively testing 3.0.0 PTU release and have been thinking heavily about your atmospheric flight models. I am a pilot in real life, so I thought you might find these suggestions compelling. Your models appear to introduce turbulence in the form of constant Gaussian noise introduced on the pitch and yaw axis of rotation, which is of course normally distributed. The degree to which the constant Gaussian noise is introduced appears to increase/decrease as you decrease/increase in altitude. In real life however, turbulence is not normally distributed, it is rarely constant and its not necessarily dependent on altitude (excepting of course that you have to have air flow to have turbulence so above a certain altitude you're not going to have any turbulence). Non-pilots or people who haven't spent a lot of time travelling on airplanes might not notice these things, but they still have a critical impact on game play. With constant noise on pitch/yaw, you are constantly moving around which can be a bit nauseating, and the constant motion (especially in ships with low mass) makes it really hard to fly close to the ground. If you simply introduce your Gaussian noise periodically for random short periods of time you will give your users a much more realistic sensation of turbulence. BTW, part of what makes turbulence "exciting" (if you want to call it that) is the randomness of it. When it is normally distributed and constant it's not exciting. Next, turbulence can affect all three axis, including roll. Your turbulence model doesn't appear to affect the roll axis. Maybe it does and I haven't noticed. If it doesn't, it should. If you are introducing turbulence in random spurts, adding the 3rd axis shouldn't be an issue. Next, your model entirely ignores one of the most important sources of turbulence, which is wind shear. Wind shear is defined as a variation in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance. These changes impact your airspeed and your ground speed. Airplanes stay in the air because they travel fast enough through the wind that lift is created under the wings. If the wind speed and direction very suddenly changes direction, the amount of air passing over the wings also very suddenly changes direction and either very suddenly creates more or less lift. If more lift is suddenly created, then your altitude will suddenly (and sometimes violently) increase. If lift is suddenly reduced, then your altitude will suddenly (and sometimes violently) decrease. Although wind shear can happen anywhere at any time, it most commonly happens when A) you fly through a storm front, which you don't have modeled in the game yet so you can ignore B) when you fly in the vicinity of a mountain, which you have plenty of those. Until you (if you ever) model weather, you can ignore the first one. But you have plenty of mountains, so you might decide that under a certain altitude, and when near a mountain you introduce wind shear. Of course in Start Citizen, not all of the ships have wings like an airplane, but even VSTOL aircraft like helicopters experience wind shear, so I would expect that the ships in star citizen would experience wind shear in a similar way. Lastly, flight characteristics of an aircraft change a bit at very low altitudes due to what is called the "ground effect". When flying close the ground (altitudes at or below the length of an aircraft's wingspan), the ground interrupts the normal flow of air over the wings. Without getting too far into the physics of it, the resulting effect is that a cushion of air is created under the wing which increases the pressure on the lower surface of the wing. That increased pressure = increased lift. Incidentally it also increases the speed of the aircraft. When a pilot tries to land, they reduce their airspeed until they get close to the ground and when they are in ground effect, they have to kill the throttle almost completely to get the aircraft to actually push through ground effect and set down on the run way. When in ground effect, and assuming you are not in the vicinity of a mountain or passing through a storm front, flight smooths out substantially even if there is turbulence above you. What does this mean for star citizen? It means that you should be able to hug the ground in your ship and experience turbulence free smooth air (at very slightly higher speeds than you could achieve above ground effect), unless of course you are close to a mountain. My suggestion would not be to set a fixed altitude for ground effect, but rather make it dependent on the width of the ship that you are in as well as it's type. So a Cutlass would have to fly closer to the ground to experience ground effect than say a Caterpillar. I would also suggest a scaling factor based on the aerodynamic form of the ship that you're in. For example if 1 = full ground effect (i.e. no turbulence, smooth flight and slightly higher speed than you can achieve above ground effect) and 0 = no ground effect (i.e. experience turbulence as described above even when at altitudes lower than the width of your ship) then the Ageis Saber would be a 1, the Cutlass would maybe be a 0.75, and a Caterpillar would be a 0. To summarize the 4 suggestions above: Turbulence is not distributed normally: Instead of constant Gaussian noise no yaw and pitch, you should introduce turbulence in short spurts (i.e. 3-10 seconds at a time) at intervals that are not normally distributed Turbulence & the Roll Axis: Turbulence should impact the roll axis as well as yaw and pitch Wind Shear (altitude turbulence): Introduce wind shear (experienced by the pilot as rapid changes in altitude) when turbulence happens. The rapid changes in altitude should be experienced more prominently when in the vicinity of a mountain or passing through a storm front if you decide to introduce weather at some point. Introduce "Ground Effect" - turbulence free smooth air when flying at altitudes at or below the width of the ship. Have a scaling factor to completely eliminate ground effect from big bulky ships and completely introduce it for sleek aerodynamically formed ships In real life, flying is only exciting when you take off and land. Beyond that, you are often flying in a straight line without any turbulence at all for long stretches. Of course the goal here isn't to replicate reality, but to introduce something that feels exciting. If you implement these 4 changes, you have the potential to really breathe some life and excitement into atmospheric flight. Some potentially useful links with very light reading for whoever is working on the atmospheric flight model: Ground Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics) Wind Shear and its Impact on Flight Operations: http://www.universalweather.com/blog/2015/02/wind-shear-and-its-impact-on-flight-operations-part-1-definitions/ That's my $0.02 - hope its useful. Any other RL pilots out there want to weigh in? EDIT: Per suggestion by @Simmons928, I'm adding @jpritchett_cig to see if he can weigh in?