PUBG announced that the Motor Glider has been officially released today, January 15. Don't celebrate yet, though, as it's only available for the PC. The Glider comes to consoles with the launch of the upcoming Season 6.
Back in December 2019, PUBG revealed that it was testing out the Motor Glider in PUBG Labs. The Labs were introduced back in November as a way to test out new features outside of the usual testing environment. It doesn't replace the Test Server, which continues to be the main method of testing normal content updates. You can read more about it here.
Back to the Motor Glider. It was available in PUBG Labs on December 20 with testing ending on December 23. That means that since then, the development team looked over feedback in order to see if it could be added permanently to the game.
With this announcement, it appears that the Motor Glider is indeed now going to be part of the game. PUBG did say that while most of the mechanics of the Motor Glider remain the same as it was in the Labs, there have been some slight changes. Here are the features of the Motor Glider:
- It's going to be available on both Erangel and Miramar.
- Two seats are offered.
- One for the pilot.
- One for the passenger.
- Passenger can shoot and use any weapon from here.
- In order to take off, players need to reach at least 65 km/h and then use the S key to pitch up.
- The Motor Glider immediately takes off once 70 km/h is reached.
- The fuel consumption rate is tied to the engine speed.
- This means that the more throttle applied, the faster it runs out of gas.
- It spawns with empty gas.
- Players need to fuel up before starting the engine.
- There's no maximum altitude.
- The engine starts losing power the higher the altitude.
- Controls for PC:
- Use W/S keys to control the pitch and A/D to control the roll of the aircraft.
- Xbox One: L-Stick
- PS4: L3
- Adjust the throttle by holding Left Shift and Left Ctrl keys.
- Xbox One: LT & RT
- PS4: L2 & R2
- Hold Spacebar when on the ground to engage handbrake.
- Xbox One: Y
- PS4: Triangle
- Use W/S keys to control the pitch and A/D to control the roll of the aircraft.
However, as mentioned, there's going to be some small changes for the Motor Glider. One of this is the spawn rate. During its time in the Labs, the game spawned 10 Motor Gliders in 10 spawn locations with a 100% spawn rate. However, as it goes live for the PC, it's going to be 10 gliders randomly spawning in 40 spawn locations with each location having a 25% spawn rate. This is not going to be the final feature, as PUBG will continue testing the spawn balance so players can expect it to change quite a few times.
As seen in the list of features, the largest change is related to gas. To make things even more exciting, Motor Gliders start with no gas. The question then is can players fill it up in time before any enemy arrives?
PUBG said that there are still a number of plans for the Motor Glider in the future. One of these is to add key binding options for each of the controls.
Labs Stats
Aside from launching the Motor Glider, PUBG also disclosed the statistics during its time in the Labs. For starters, survivors that dropped into Motor Gliders mode played an average of four times a day and 55 minutes per day. In terms of flight, the Motor Glider was destroyed through crashing 60% of the time.
During its time in the Labs, the Motor Glider was shot down by sharpshooters 25% of the time. It also succumbed to the Redzone 13% of the time.
Overall, fighting for access to the Motor Glider resulted in a lot of players going down in a match early. An average of 30 people per match managed to get their bells rung with enemy punches. About 10 people per match became Motor Glider Roadkill.
