Ok I did it.

Why do I feel like I just bought Pandora's Box?

After sitting on the sidelines for for the better part of 6 years watching this sim develop, I figured it was high time to see what all the hype has been about. What better opportunity than now with Il-2 '46 as the culmination of all at $10/pop?

Skycat,

Thanks for using your editorial skills to spell this out. There's a lot of material here. I plan on taking small sips with this one.. like a fine cognac..

BP (Okland)

Do you mean IL-2 Shturmovik Stab? Then version 6.3 is what you want. You can download from Mission4Today.com

You only need to open port 21000 UDP to host, if you want to join a game you don't need to open any port.

Skycat
Some info on setting up Mat Manager in Vista 64bit in this thread. You might want to add it to the Mat Manager section of your guide

http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2338891&page=1#Post2338891

Unstickied, but merged with the "Essentials" thread. And a bump to the top.

The links to the 4.09 beta have been added.

Hi Skycat,

I just installed 1946 and the 4.08 patch. I want to try the 4.09 beta, but I have two questions.

How can I run this at 1680x1050? I see that IL-2 Shturmovik Stab Version 6.3 will do that for me, but should I use that mod, another mod, or should I do it myself in config.ini (haven't even looked there yet). Also should I do it now or after 4.09.

Second Question; should I use the skins that were released with 4.09 or EnJoyrPatchA_skins (190 Mb), or both?

Thanks for this fantastic guide.

1. I've never used IL-2 Stab so I don't know how it works. I assume that it makes changes to your conf.ini. If this is correct, it wouldn't matter if you use Stab or if you edit your conf.ini manually. The other part of the question is that it doesn't matter if you make the change before or after the 4.09b1m patch because the 4.09 beta doesn't touch (overwrite/replace) your conf.ini.

2. The new default skins that can be added with the 4.09b1m are just that--default skins. They are hardcoded into to game so that if no custom skins are selected for a particular aircraft the default skin shows instead. The skins in Enjoyr's patches are custom skins and are used in the campaigns. They can also be used in online dogfights or in QMB or selected by the player in offline missions...but they are not new default skins. You can install all of Enjoyr's skin packs if you wish along with the new default skins pack.

Great!

I'll edit the conf.ini - did so to 1680x1050 and I get black bars on the sides. It also shows the resolution as 640x480x16 in the Menu/hardware setup/video mode selections box - I guess this is normal.

Now I'll install the 4.09 patch and then new default skins and then follow the rest of your guide - getting enjoyr skins at the right time.

The EnjoyR skin patches are essential to install together with the EnjoyR DGen patches. Without the EnjoyR skin patches, the campaigns added by EnjoyR patches for no add-ons or others, will launch but will not show the intended/correct skins.

The skin patch from 4.09mb is a default skin patch, so as Skycat said, all these are complementary and do not overlap with each other.