"My only real issue with despawning is that there is no "in game" visual difference between a pilot killed that is simply despawning, and the losers who pull the plug/despawn alive to save stats.

DOC: Our intention with this has always been to create a “hulk” plane that just falls along it’s given flight path as if it is out of control, for at least a period of time if not all the way to the ground. Trailing smoke as a visual clue if nothing else, such as you setting it on fire or removing it’s wings or tail. This way you’d always have an image of a crippled aircraft falling away even if the pilot punched out (despawned) … eventually when we can add “bailing out of vehicles” we could tie the two things together in useful ways. Bailing out of vehicles is actually far more complicated to add than it should be, given you ARE the vehicle in the original way the game engine was programmed, that’s why it hasn’t been tackled yet.

It remains one of the bigger things we want to do in improving on the original code as part of our continued goal of polishing things that were never fully realized in the original way they were tackled when the game was built.