After the release of the inferno update, there has been a rumor that all classes have increased air control. If there was increased air control, we would be able to go faster due to tighter airstrafing. Since I have random tf2 backups I decided to try and make an experiment to see if there was any difference in air control pre and post inferno update.
So what I did was I loaded up jump_trix and set "sv_gravity 0" and "cl_yawspeed 180".
Then, I teleported to "setpos -1451.302734 -2182.168945 2784.101074;setang 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000" and did "+moveleft; +left" to start airstrafing in a circle.
I then waited for velocity to even out and arbitrarily picked low and high values from what I saw in showpos.
I did this as scout and as soldier. For soldier, I shot a rocket at the ground while noclipped above it to get the air control bonus from the mantreads.
This was done on the current tf2 client and on one from before the gun mettle update.
Top speed (u/s) post inferno update:
Scout: ~1105-1109
Soldier w/ shotty: ~675-691
Soldier w/ treads: ~623-741
Soldier w/ shotty airaccel 30: ~1130+
Top speed (u/s) pre inferno update:
Scout: ~1107-1109
Soldier w/ shotty: ~675-695
Soldier w/ treads: ~671-695
Unless there's a flaw in my experiment, I'm pretty sure that airstrafing is still the same as before. The people who are saying that airstrafing is different are just experiencing a placebo just like the time when people said that speedshotting was faster/easier after the gun mettle update.