I have to ask, but am I the only one that thinks it a little strange that Oleg has allowed Team Daidalos to produce the first of what will be many patches for IL2 when he plans to release SOW within a year? Surely a conflict of interests? Dont get me wrong here the work that Team Daidalos have and are doing is tremendous but surely it will be little appreciated if SOW is released before next September and according to Oleg it will be.

My theory is that the delays are two fold:

1) The infamous Maddox Mission Creep. IL-2 was originally to be a one flyable plane study sim. But he decided that folks might want to fly the Bf-109 that would be defending against the IL-2. And, then, of course, the escorts the IL-2's had against the Bf-109's. And so on.

2) The modular nature of the Storm of War engine. Remember that he's not having a BoB simulation put together so much as an engine that is modular in nature, allowing for flexibility in making a basket of simulations. Ground based fighting sim? Sure, why not give it the capability, and to make sure that module works, we'll start with having the AA guns at airfields mannable by players. I don't think they'll ever make the mistake of burying unique features into the fundamental source code (like the 109 shadow, which is very deep in the code and couldn't easily be undone) as they did with the IL-2 series.

So you get a physics module, a weather module, a graphics module, and all of them have to talk together seamlessly and yet be able to disconnect, be altered to suit the needs of whatever facet of the Storm of War series/sim requires, and then fit seamlessly back again.

IMHO, Team Daidalos is going to do what the 4.0 FM did. Use the IL-2 series as a working test bed for Storm of War features. The IL-2: 1946 DVD extra showed the SoW weather engine being displayed within the IL-2: FB engine, as another example. They can selectively test features for SoW without letting (or requiring) a full beta of the new engine with a huge user base.

That sounds very probable Dart and I have to say I have thought of this aswell, If this is indeed the scenario then SOW will be a considerable way off, If so why does Oleg keep playing the 'This time next year' card.

He keeps saying that because he's a business man as well as a manager of a development team.

Gotta keep people thinking it's right around the corner to maintain interest!

"When we going to Planet X?"
"Real soon!"

Or so John Yaya said.