War Thunder is about to make its tracked vehicles turn the way their real-world counterparts do. In a new Steam announcement, Gaijin Entertainment detailed three realistic steering systems coming to the game’s dev server, plus engine refinements that arrive with the Eagle’s Shadow major update. Mechanics that change how a tank behaves go to the dev server first. Changes that improve mobility in every situation ship directly in Eagle’s Shadow.
Today War Thunder’s tracked vehicles turn on a simplified model. Most tanks steer by braking the inner track, which bleeds speed through every corner. The new systems replace that blanket behavior with the actual drivetrains of the vehicles being modeled, and each one carries its own trade-off.
Double Differential Steering: Keep Speed, Give Up Turn Radius
The headline mechanic is double-differential steering, which Gaijin already tested on an earlier dev server. In a real vehicle with this setup, part of the engine’s power reaches the tracks through the gearbox while the rest runs through a differential steering mechanism that slows one half-axle and speeds up the other. The two torque streams combine at each track, so a tank can slow one side while feeding the saved energy into the other.
In that design there is no mechanical difference between turning while rolling and pivoting in place. In neutral, torque flows only through the steering mechanism, the two axles rotate in opposite directions, and the tank spins on the spot.
That precision comes with a larger turning radius. Gaijin lists the calculated minimum radius for the M1A1 Abrams by gear: 5.8 m in first, 11.3 m in second, 17.9 m in third, and 26.9 m in fourth. Other double-differential tanks run 30 to 40 meters in top gear, and some reach 70. In exchange, these vehicles keep more speed through a turn than any other tracked design.
Double-differential vehicles have no side clutches, so they cannot brake a single track on its own. That rules out the independent track braking some players requested after the last dev server test. Gaijin’s answer is a downshift feature that engages when you brake or reverse while turning, which pulls the radius in tighter and returns some control. The mechanic is testable on the M1 Abrams, Leopard 2A4, Leopard 2A8, Chieftain Mk.3, AMX-30 (1972), Challenger Mk.2, Type 90 (B), and Type 10.
Dual Transmission: Soviet Tanks Shift Down to Turn
Dual transmission covers the Soviet T-series family and its derivatives. These vehicles run a separate gearbox for each track. In a turn, the inner track shifts down by at most one gear relative to the outer track, and that behavior is now reproduced in-game. Because the clutches can slip, the shift can be partial, which means sixth and seventh gears can effectively operate at the same time and produce a smooth turn rather than a stepped one.
Turning radius still depends on the ratio between the two axle speeds. In the short gears, where the speed difference between adjacent gears is small, the radius grows large. Gaijin’s figures for the T-64 and T-72 run from 2.79 m in first up to 13.93 m in fourth, then fall back to 8.76 m in seventh. The T-80, whose gas-turbine engine allows longer gears, keeps its radii tighter, from 2.8 m in first to 8.86 m in fourth.
The manual figures are kinematic calculations that ignore track slip and the vehicle’s moment of inertia, so real in-game radii run wider. The dual-transmission downshift works the same way as the double differential, and the system is testable on the T-80BVM, T-72 (1989), and T-64B.
Planetary Steering: The Middle Ground
The third system, planetary steering, splits the difference between speed and control. For a gentle turn, made with short taps on the turn key or a small stick deflection, the game engages a reduction gear on the inner track for a wide turn that loses little speed. Hold the key or push the stick fully and the vehicle behaves like a simple side-clutch design, shedding speed for a tight turn. Pivots always happen around the stopped track.
Planetary steering keeps a constant turning radius regardless of the selected gear, because the speed ratio between the inner and outer track stays fixed while the reduction gear is engaged. It also allows independent left and right track braking, which gives finer control than the other two systems. It does nothing to recover the speed lost through a turn.
Of the three systems, this is the only one that may ship in Eagle’s Shadow, since it improves handling without adding trade-offs. Gaijin points to the T-54 and T-44 as a clean before-and-after comparison.
Turboshaft Engines Lose Their Placeholder Gears
On the engine side, Gaijin is correcting how turboshaft power is modeled. A turboshaft engine works like a jet engine: the gas spins a free power turbine, which then sends torque to the tracks. Because that turbine’s speed is independent of the gas generator, the engine can produce maximum power even when the output shaft is barely turning. That means peak torque arrives at low RPM and falls off as speed climbs.
Gaijin has now implemented an accurate full-throttle torque curve for turboshaft engines and is removing the intermediate gears that were originally added to fake this behavior in the absence of a rigid link between the tracks and the engine. The change touches every tank with a turboshaft engine or a torque converter. A dedicated torque-converter mechanic is still planned for a later update.
What Ships and What Stays in Testing
Double-differential and dual-transmission steering stay on the dev server for now and will not appear in Eagle’s Shadow. Planetary steering can land in the update if testing stays clean. The turboshaft torque changes ship with Eagle’s Shadow, since they improve performance across the board.
The rework lands on top of a busy stretch for the game, from the return of the Steel Fury battle pass with new German vehicles to a login-streak freeze that keeps missed daily rewards from resetting. Gaijin is asking players to try the double-differential and dual-transmission systems on the dev server and share feedback, since both stay open questions ahead of Eagle’s Shadow.
