Another excellent update and some interesting discussion going on.
The first thing that came to my mind about that smoke is "hmm, maybe it's WIP, it's look a bit too big", but then it seems perfectly fine in that rear quarter picture with the flames. I was thinking that this kind of smoke would be fine for slow moving or stationary objects (eg, ground targets, parked aircraft, etc), or even when close to the fire it originates from, but it seems a bit thick when extending further behind a moving aircraft.
Then i started thinking that it's all a matter of relative airspeeds, viscosity (ie thickness) of smoke depending on what kind of materials are being burnt and dispersion...and a few posts later, Oleg himself confirms they have taken this into account. It's simply amazing that half of the times that i'm thinking "it would be neat to have this feature in the sim", the developers confirm it as something they have already worked on! This is why i trust the final produt will be excellent, because these guys are right within our heads and know how we think and what we want to see
Another thing to consider is that seeing something in motion conveys a better experience. Some bits and pieces of what we see in these updates seems a bit weird sometimes, but i always keep in my mind that we're seeing static shots with no AA/AF, i'm sure seeing it all move and change in high resolution will be something completely different.
For example, the flak bursts in this update are just a time-frozen screenshot of irregular black smoke, but seeing it animated might include an initial flame/flash/shockwave effect from the burst and the abrupt but gradual forming of the black puffs of smoke around it, so that as the flash dies down the smoke is formed. We'll have to wait for a video update before we can really judge this aspect of the sim. Who knows, it might look even better in video.
As for the fuel leak streams they do seem a bit out of place (Oleg said they are WIP after all), but notice how they start narrow at the point of the leak and gradually grow wider as they move to the back of the airframe, even if it is still WIP. It's the small details like these that make it awesome in the long run and the more of them you have in any game, the longer it takes before it starts looking repetitive.
In any case, brilliant update. I can't wait to fly this and i'm also itching to show it off to a few friends who are into WWII history but have never tried flight sims.