Happy Birthday and Thank you!
Happy 4th July to all who celebrate today and of course
happy first anniversary Aerofly FS 4! 
Thank you everyone for your continued support and your positive reviews on Steam, the Google Play and Apple App Stores lately, that really helps us out a lot!
As a small teaser let us show you what we have been working on behind the scenes.
Simulation
Our push-back is of course physically simulated and not an animation. This means that the wheels always point the direction they should point to and the pushing force acts through the wheels of the tractor, is transferred through the tow bar and acts onto the nose gear of the aircraft. The angle of the nose wheel then determines how the aircraft steers, as long as there is traction. The actual nose wheel steering of the aircraft is bypassed and instead the push-back tractor drives into a position where the tow bar rotates the nose wheel to the target angle. When the nose gear temporarily lifts up or looses grip then of course the wheel is skidding sideways quite quickly. Naturally the truck can push a smaller aircraft much easier than a heavy one. At some point, if the engines produce significant thrust or when the slope is too steep, then the tractor wheels start spinning, too.
Control
At the moment the push-back is controlled manually and the first release may also be manual but that is not yet final. To simplify the steering we currently control the target nose wheel angle just like you would control it with the tiller for normal taxi. With this it is already great fun to drive the tug around corners and onto the taxiway.
And yes, the push-back will be work with all airliners, not just the 737 shown here.
Screenshots
The 3D model of the tractor is quite detailed and also has a driver cabin which we may show in future teasers, so stay tuned!
Keep in mind that these are in-development screenshots taken in a Aerofly FS 4 developer build and may not represent the final product.
