Here are some of my experiences related to this topic in Stormworks:

Why Falling Out Like Brick:

Many players don't use actual wing components, control fins or control surfaces on the wings of their airplanes (except ailerons, rudder, elevator and flaps). Usually paint blocks or regular basic blocks are being used on the wings for several reasons such as;

• Most wing components are too big and not very useful
• Better looking wings made of wedges, pyramids, paint blocks..etc
• Landing gear and fuel inside the wings
• Some players use few wing front section (3x7) on the wings by thinking that they will be enough but actually they are not. Because that wing component has by far the worst lift performance and also it's not visible which side is up and which side is down.
• (Some players may deliberately don't use wing components to be not affected by high winds.)

Why Gliding is Important:

Gliding is important feature, not for building and flying sailplanes or allowing regular airplanes to go some distance when fuel tank is empty. It is important because without gliding, landing of an airplane is especially harder. And landing is the hard part of the airplane manevuers, compared to taxiing, takeoff, cruise...etc

How is Gliding in Stormworks:

I made some tests using a lot of wing components on a lightweight airplane. I managed to achieve about 3:1 glide ratio in Stormworks at best. (Glide Ratio: Horizontal distance divided by the change in altitude). However 3:1 glide ratio is definitely not easy to achieve in Stormworks, and it's nowhere close the gliding ratios in real world. For example;

• Space Shuttle, which was considered as flying brick, has 4.5:1 glide ratio during approach and landing.
• Cessna 172 has glide ratio of 9:1
• Boeing 787 Dreamliner has glide ratio of 20:1

Why is Gliding Poor in Stormworks:

There are two (*for the bonus 3rd factor, see below*) factors causing this. Air drag is the smaller factor and I won't discuss it further because it is well known and already discussed before. Bigger factor for poor gliding is that the wing components stop producing lift below certain airspeed. Wing components provide lift with airspeed and when the airspeed drops, lift drops as well, this is normal behavior. In Stormworks, when airspeed is around 30 m/s (110 km/h), lift begins to drop fast; when airspeed is below 24-25 m/s (86-90 km/h) lift is no more. Because of wing components don't produce lift below that speed, final phase of the landing of an airplane becomes tricky.

[*Bonus 3rd part: Apart from landing, an airplane on cruise slows down quite quickly when its engines are off because of air drag and possibly the low weight of airplanes in Stormworks compared to real world, like balloon stops quickly after throwing. But this part is just a detail and not something that is fixable IMO, so you should avoid this part.*]

How can Gliding be Improved Without Breaking the Existing Vehicles:

Since air drag doesn't allow airplanes to go usually faster than 25-30 m/s without engines AND wing components don't produce lift when air speed is below 25 m/s: A simple solution is that wing components need to produce lift at LOWER AIRSPEED VALUES.

Continuing from previous reply;

My Suggestion:

In my opinion wing components need an update. They feel outdated and not very useful because most of them are very large blocks. Two smaller ones do not provide much lift if you plan to have also fuel and paint blocks and landing gear in the wings. I think it'd be easy to add new wing components and deprecate the old ones.

• Wing leading edge: 1x3x1 (it's like three 1x1 wedge placed side by side)
• Wing trailig edge: 1x3x3 (it's same as rear part of small wing section) There should be more variants for this such as 1x3x2 and 1x3x4 and maybe 1x3x6
• Wing middle: 1x3x3 (it's like 9 cube blocks)
• There can be more modular wing components to increase availability.

These new wing components should continue to produce lift in decreasing order until airpeed is below 13-14 m/s. They should have slightly higher lift (per block) values and also show which side is up and which side is front using editor only blue arrows.

^bump, with weapons DLC added too, bombs in SW are kinda stupid. Any effective guided weaponry needs to be either super XML edited or has to have thrust. Not to mention the massive improvements even a simplified 1x1 lift block would add, letting planes be planes and boats not fly away in a breeze.