Every sortie gets its mugshot: the school and mission boards now show you the target b417e56

The boards read better than ever after the large-print refit — but a ready-room board should show you the sortie, not just tell you. Every row on the flight school syllabus and the campaign board now carries a thumbnail portrait of its key objective, twenty-three sorties, twenty-three little stills.

• The target, not a stock photo. Every thumbnail is rendered in the sim itself — the MiG-29 you’ll dogfight, the raft you’ll find in the swell, the Bear-H you’ll run down out west, the Golden Gate you’ll circumnavigate on the bay tour, the cruise missile skimming in at dawn. If it’s in the frame, it’s in the game.
• A portrait studio in the attract reel. The stills come from a new thumbnail stage pinned scene — one generic setup that poses any subject, holds it dead still, and parks the camera at a hero angle: nose thirty-five degrees off the lens for the jets, broadside for the ships and the span.
• Locks apply to the glass too. Sorties you haven’t earned yet keep their portraits dimmed and grayed, so the board still reads as a ladder — you can see what’s waiting up the rungs.

T-1 shows you the boat you’re about to trap on. Mission 8 shows you the balloon. Mission 14 shows you the Bear. Eyes on the objective before you ever bend the throttles. — HB