MC Heli Overdrive — Vehicle Icons, Tech Progression & Stability Update

Reworked Vehicle Inventory Icons

• MC Heli's existing 3D vehicle inventory icons have been completely reworked for performance.
• Instead of rendering the full live vehicle model every time an inventory, creative menu, GUI, or NEI page is drawn, MC Heli now generates a model-derived snapshot once and reuses it as a normal texture.
• This keeps the same 3D-style presentation without repeatedly rendering complex vehicle geometry in GUI screens.
• Generated icons are used across:
  • Inventory
  • Hotbar
  • Creative menu
  • GUIs
  • NEI
• Once generated, icons are cached to disk and reused on future launches.
• Equipped, dropped, and spawned vehicles still use their normal live 3D rendering.

Much Better Vehicle Icon Framing

• The new snapshot system also significantly improves how vehicles are presented inside their icons.
• Vehicle icons are framed around the visible rendered vehicle instead of relying only on raw model bounds.
• Aircraft, helicopters, tanks, ground vehicles, and ships now use different presentation presets so each class fills the available space more naturally.
• Planes and other wide vehicles are scaled more aggressively so they no longer appear unnecessarily tiny.
• Long ships and unusually offset models are handled more carefully to reduce clipping caused by strange model origins or proportions.
• Tanks and other ground vehicles retain a stable elevated presentation angle.
• Icons automatically center and scale around the vehicle's visible silhouette.
• Vehicles that still approach an icon edge are automatically recentered and reduced before the snapshot is accepted.
• Older cached snapshots automatically regenerate using the improved framing system.

Smoother Icon Generation

• Uncached vehicle icons are prepared gradually instead of forcing complex model work into a single frame.
• Browsing large creative or NEI inventories should be substantially smoother while new icons are being generated.
• Vehicle models can now be loaded specifically for icon generation, so a vehicle no longer needs to be held or spawned before its snapshot can appear.
• Cached icons load directly without rebuilding or rendering the vehicle again.
• Temporary queue congestion no longer causes otherwise valid icons to permanently fail.
• Missing icons remain queued and retry automatically when resources become available.
• While an icon is still being generated, MC Heli temporarily displays the vehicle's normal authored sprite.

Independent Technology Progression

• Added an optional MC Heli-specific technology progression system.
• Every bundled vehicle now has a technology year and corresponding progression tier.
• Progression supports full and half tiers for more gradual unlocks.
• Servers can control MC Heli progression independently from other mods.
• Technology restrictions can apply to:
  • Crafting
  • Vehicle placement
  • Dispenser deployment
  • UAV spawning
  • Entering vehicles
  • Controlling vehicles
• Already-owned vehicles and existing world entities are preserved instead of being deleted when progression settings change.
• Vehicle items display their technology information in tooltips.
• Creative and operator bypass behavior can be configured by server owners.

Full Bundled Vehicle Classification

• All 503 bundled MC Heli vehicle definitions now participate in the technology system.
• Classification includes:
  • Helicopters
  • Planes
  • Tanks
  • Ground vehicles
  • Ships
  • Drones
  • Civilian vehicles
  • Artillery
  • Static weapons
  • Launchers
  • Support vehicles
  • Alternate weapon and loadout variants
• Historical variants use their own appropriate introduction years where necessary instead of forcing entire vehicle families into one date.

Improved Dismounting

• Fixed the long-standing issue where leaving some MC Heli vehicles could interfere with Sneak for several seconds.
• Dismount input is now separated from normal Minecraft Sneak handling.
• Vehicle exit requests now reject stale or mismatched dismount attempts.
• Player movement is returned to normal Minecraft control immediately after leaving a vehicle instead of repeatedly forcing the player back to MC Heli's exit position.
• Pilot, passenger, gunner, and rack exits now share the corrected placement behavior.
• This should also reduce conflicts with other mods that track or modify player movement.

Fixed Pilot Seat Positioning

• Fixed a regression that could place pilots too high above their configured seat position.
• Rider offsets are no longer applied twice.
• Pilot and passenger positioning should now match authored seat locations more consistently.

Improved Vehicle Model Loading

• Vehicle models now load when they are actually needed instead of eagerly parsing every vehicle during startup.
• Large MC Heli installations should do significantly less unnecessary model work during startup.
• Improved model caching and reload behavior so changed models can refresh without unnecessarily discarding working ones.
• Fixed multiple model-loading and rendering issues involving:
  • MQO models
  • Case-sensitive resource paths
  • VBO render state
  • Throwable models
• Texture repair and model preparation now integrate more cleanly with the lazy-loading system.

Internal Compatibility Improvements

• Replaced the old custom dismount bytecode transformer with UniMixins.
• Cleaned up large amounts of decompiled source naming while preserving existing behavior.
• Removed obsolete duplicate implementation fragments without changing existing addon-facing behavior.