Presently I am running 4.08 update to the Boxed il2 1946 dvd version and do not need the dvd in my dvd drive . if i install 4.09 will i need to insert the dvd in my drive?

If you only add the patch now... no. The il2fb.exe will not be exchanged nor the rts.dll.
But I wonder, that your box version already comes with a 'nondvd' feature.

Sorry for the late answer, I guess others could have answered this as well instead.

Patching to v4.09m does not make you have to put the DVD in the DVD drive.
It will still work just fine without it.
If you haven't found the v4.09m patch yet or it gives you trouble it is being hosted on SimHQ too.
Get it here. http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2871942/SimHQ_Mirror_for_the_409_Patch.html#Post2871942

I would add the skin patch too.
It's not necessary but IMO it does make the planes look better.



The US version of the "official" game doesn't need the CD to be in the DVD tray to play.
The US version shipped without any SecuROM or any other copy protection.

My "original" unmodded game does not require me to have the DVD in the DVD tray either.



Wheels

That 109 cockpit is 4 years old

That joke is 2 years old.

We upgraded computers this weekend from an ancient AMD X2 based system to the following:

ASUS M4A78 Pro MoBo
AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU
Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4670 GPU/Catalyst 9.12
6 Gb DDR2 (combination of 2Gb of older Kingston PC4200 and newer Centon 557 MHz) RAM
500 Mb Seagate Barracuda main drive
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy from my old box with all current drivers (Win7 recognized it!)
Windows 7 Enterprise N

I had an interesting time getting IL-2 to run under the new setup. It started out with me being an idiot and installing 4.09 over the U.S. 1946 DVD release...which I didn't remember was 4.07m. When I reaslized what I'd done I tried to salvage by installing 4.08m then reinstalling 4.09m, like a nimrod, and of course that epically failed with a dialog proclaiming that I needed a web-install key! I had the DVD, so clearly I didn't have what the game wanted.

Realizing that operator headspace was the problem, I uninstalled IL-2 entirely and deleted all files. This time, I would do better.

The U.S. version of 4.07m natively installs in Win7's "Program Files (x86)" directory. This time I booted into 4.07 on install, to be SURE it worked. It did, and so I then installed 4.08m, to the same directory.

And the wheels came off. The dreaded click-on-icon-and-nothing-happens bug. I could find nothing on Ubi's website but "check your private messages," and the bug looked like it was a 4.09 bug for everyone but me. So I thought about it. Maybe there's an .exe problem, they were talking about a SecureRom issue that there is a modded .exe for. I found the modded .exe and tried it, and nothing happened. I scratched my head in frustration. Maybe it's a problem with a .dll or something that they fixed in 4.09. Can't hurt to try. So I installed 4.09m.

And now the game works.

Except for ONE THING. You can't hear the radio voices at all. But everything else works great! And the last version of Stab launches it just fine.

Anyone have a problem with the voice files in Win7? That's a weird one.

(EDIT!): The voice problems are another operator headspace situation. The SoundBlaster wasn't properly set up-it was set up for quad sound and I've only got two speakers. D'oh!

This is interesting. Usually, if I try to use "perfect" landscaping the UI freaks out and you can't read any text or even see the UI, it's all messed up and the text is distorted like a Picasso painting. But I can use Stab to max the graphics and the text/UI doesn't freak out and artifact to unreadability til the mission is loading. Once in the mission, you can see the 3D graphics just fine, you just can't read any text or see any option boxes while the mission is loading, and in game you can't read the audio subtitles or see the text readouts for speed and heading. Once the mission starts it looks fan-tastic, and after about a munite and a view change or two suddenly you can read the text again and see the UI on quit from the mission. That's weird, probably a driver effect on my particular system.

I never got to see "Perfect" water effects before. Other than some artifacting in the clouds in certain light states, like at dusk, it looks amazing. And even in the Black Death .ntrk framerates are acceptable with a minimum of stutter. I'll scale back to "Excellent, possibly, when I play but I usually don't play missions with a lot of stuff going on-haven't the time. So...pretty cool.

Miao, Cat

What kind of graphic card do you have?