You know Hog, I kind of agree with you! Hey I played that Lucas Arts game "Their Finest Hour..." Too! On my old Amiga 500 running its motorola processor at 7 MHz !
Before that I was playing Avalon Hill board games like "Richthofens War" and "Luftwaffe" pushing cardboard counters around. Heck I was happy at the time, I could only dream of the day when we would have
Computers to play the kinds of games we have now. When It became evident Commodore Amiga's were finished I moved to the early PC's and I probably have had every PC combatFlight sim title made , or most of them. 'Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" remember that? And the great Dynamix ones, 'Aces over the Pacific","Red Baron", "Aces over Europe", Then the Microprose ones like "Pacific Air War" and "European Air War" and CFS, CFS2 and CFS3 and Finally to Olegs fine "IL2" series.. All of them.. Though a part of me wants to be a bit critical about certain things, I really Appreciate what Oleg and his team do for us. Lets try to temper our criticsm with some praise and encouragement. Seems to me as a group, we flight sim players have gotten kind of spoiled over the years. Am I wrong? Even I cringe when I
see people post threads about "dated graphics" and stuff about that "Old IL2 forgotten battles" which still looks pretty good to me, And I do recall reading something Oleg himself said .. something to the effect that he sometimes felt like giving up on making flight games and doing something else.. Who could blame him for feeling that way at times.

I don't think I've ever in my 25 years of playing 'games" ever purchased a game or not purchased a game because of graphics. It's all about the gameplay experience. The graphical experience is utterly subjective. You can't convince those who's opinion differ.

I think calling people who defend the game "fanboys" because they're looking for a richer experience that go beyond the appearance of WIP screenshots (not matter at what stage of development they're at) is uncalled for.

Yes things have moved on a bit

Indeed NL . Cool Pilot cockpit layout all the same.love the flap setting indicator.

LOL, NineLives they really don't know do they? You know even though the visuals in WoP look nice I doubt that you can fly down to strafe and destroy any of the houses and things on the ground. Cookie cutter comments aside it looks pretty damn good.

I think calling people who defend the game "fanboys" because they're looking for a richer experience that go beyond the appearance of WIP screenshots (not matter at what stage of development they're at) is uncalled for.

I agree. I also think calling people "idiots" because they're looking for a richer visual experience that goes beyond the appearance of WIP screenshots is uncalled for.

This kind of pro/con bickering is nothing new; I see it with every flight sim, pre and post release. With CoD, there are certain aspects of the screens/videos I like and certain aspects I dislike. Regardless, my credit card is ready to go.

This game has to be successful! Still 2 months until publishment and everybody is already discussing about pros and cons of this sim. I think it shows, that a lot of people are waiting for the new state of the art sim dealing with ww2 combat. Il2 is getting older and older and although there are some newer titles with the same topic (WOP ...)they did not replaced the il-2 series. Why? Besides Rise of Flight, there is no existing combat sim with a comparable detail in FM, DM ...
If you want to get a good simulation of arial prejet-warfare you can't let il-2 behind you although this sim has already seen its best days in graphical terms.

What do you need for a good combat sim (single and multiplayer)?

In my opinion:

1) believable feeling of flight (hey lads, we are talking about a flight sim and not about a demo of a graphical engine)
2) simulation of weapon physics and damage (no 100 % hit laser guided bullets long range shootings)
3) simulation of the planesystems (Motormanagement ...)
4) representation of the historical differences between the combatplanes and therefore representatio of tactical differences (SpitmkI being a slightly better turner, faster in certain heights than the 109e and the 109 being a better diver with better weapons and better negative g charachteristics)
5) employment of different and evolving tactics
6) historical accuracy
7) good campaign and multiplayer capabilities
and then of course also good gfx (but not to good as it would cost to much fps, try to dogfight in fsx, you have to boost your computer if you installed all the nice gfx addons like GEX UTX and photoreal ground)

I have the feeling, that Oleg did a good mixture and that we will see is the next king of ww2 aircombat sims, but not without some weaknesses

And don't get me wrong: I AM A FANBOY, but as I played nearly ervery kind of flight sims I can describe myself as a FLIGHTSIM-FANBOY

So let us wait for the finished (or not so finished) product and let us be happy, that there are still some people waisting there skills with the production of flightsims
I will buy a copy of COD for sure!

S!,
But, people in here are comparing the two. I agree one is an arcade shooter in a sim wrapper. However, WoP claims to be a realistic simulation. That's the rub. I sold my copy of WoP after a couple of weeks of "playing" it. Again, WoP is nothing more than eye candy for me. I want a simulation regardless of how pretty it looks. So, I'll buy IL2:CoD in the hopes that it comes close or surpasses IL2:1946.

HB

Let's get this straight. People who are complaining about the lack of or quality of screenshots and videos are doing so to the degree that it is indicative of quality of the overall game, the degree of progress made in 6 years of development, and the readiness of the title for release.

Graphics are easy relative to improving assets, flight models, damage models, etc. We have nothing else to assess the quality of the game other than these publicly released assets. At this late date, we should be seeing screenshots and videos that have final effects and graphics. The fact that we have not suggests that the game is not ready by any means. To be frank, we should have been seeing screens and videos long before this with something approximating final graphics and effects. There have been none.

I follow the development of many video games in as much as one can by visiting gaming websites and such. And from my experience, it seems clear to me that CODIL2 is nowhere near complete. Even other games coming out of Russia and Eastern Europe like Metro 2033, Cryostasis, and the Witcher had much more public exposure, marketing, and access by games press than this title which has had many more years of development.

This is a rushed release of an incomplete game for financial reasons. I doubt that Maddox Games has provided review builds to any game or sim reviewers. That is a bad sign.

Expect to be disappointed unless you are a fanboi.

Its easy to speculate that the developer is under great pressure to release COD and some features won't make the initial release, because its undoubtably true. The intial build, we have yet to see, may well be a decent starting point. Even if the game is released a little rough around the edges, the developer has a history of being here for the long run. There is nothing written in stone that says the game must be finished and advertised six months before release. There is plenty of time in March to produce videos and screenshots of the gold copy.

I could well be disappointed with what I see in the initial release, but I can temper that disappointment with the understanding that many of my reasonable issues will be dealt with in time. In the mean time I'll be able to enjoy what I do like about the sim. People say "but I don't want to buy an incomplete game". In ROF's case it was either an incomplete game or the project was cancelled due to lack of money. The people who did support the release are know enjoying steady free improvements to the the game they enjoy. That said, Cliffs of Dover will be much more complete than ROF was in their initial release.

There has been alot of negative advertising in these forums that hasn't been a benefit to anyone. Especially new people to the forum who walk away not knowing the developers history of supporting his sims. There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, and you don't hear fanboys denouncing any of that. The developers want all feedback they can get here, and are intelligent enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the negativity is certainly not called for, but that just human nature.

+1

Yeah and don't think we don't notice the throwaway diss comments from the guys with low post counts, just join a new forum to complain to us guys?
If we're fanbois here we're fanbois of flight sims, we're fans of aircraft, we're family and you know what family is like, not afraid to tell you when you are wrong. We may be fans of Oleg but we don't hold anything back, sure we're a little critical at times but Cartoonish Graphics?. Coming in here and saying the graphics look cartoonish makes us older more experienced simmers laugh till the tears come out. You guys are hysterical, thats funny go look at the thread about Flight Sims from the Old days and tell that joke, Haw haw ha. Tell you what go grab your crayons or maybe you can use MSPaint and you draw us a picture how it should look and we'll all critique your work, okay cartoon guys? Jeez, got to be children, gotta be.

I will definitely be buying this one. I just hope we can have multiple players in the same plane.

Chances are the we are not seeing the game at anything like its full capabilites. Probably because it wouldnt run at max settings.

A few largescale mil sims like ARMA2 barely ran when released and need bleeding edge systems to run high settings still.

Oleg, has always been good about releasing scalable games. I first ran FB on a 1ghz Pentium III! It wasnt even that ugly. Im sure IL2CoD will be playable the day it comes out, and will get better and better looking as time goes on.

BTW: Im easy to please, my first "flight sim" was my weekly episode of "Baa Baa Blacksheep" a color TV and a hockeystick. The IL2 series is a fantasy come true. So you can call me an IL2 Fanboy all you want.

U can, the multiple players thingy that is

Thanks. Can we preorder this somewhere yet?

The engine is the most important part. It is difficult to synchronize physics, damage model, communications, AI and graphics. Most likely Cliffs' engine was done long ago and it will flexible enough to expand. If you plan ahead, you will make the engine thinking not only for today's or past's systems, but for the complete lifetime of the series. They must recoup the cost of development.

It is possible that the game won't run to its fullest. The initial release could have performance issues since it is thinking for future hardware. It is easy escalate graphics, but not the whole engine, plan for more CPU power.

If the engine was done right, most of the problems will fade away with new iterations of the series.

We need the system requirements to get an idea how well Cliffs will run.

Rob, it can be pre-ordered from Ubisoft, depending on your location, If you live in the U.S you wont be able to join in until December the 8th which makes it historically correct

Seriously though, apparently Amazon.De have it for pre order, if you want the German version other than that none of the usual suspects (Play.com, Amazon.com) are advertising it yet, if however youtr in good old Blighty, you can get your mitts on it here.
http://shop.ubi.com/store/ubiemea/en_GB/buy/productID.221859200

Tally ho

On the store in Canada the preorder is offering Silent Hunter III as a freebie. Tempted to get my rubber ducky out and play submarines. Is version 3 the good one with lots of mods and trigonometry? I heard bad things about v5 but wondered if 3 is ok, or is it 4 that's the good one?

Yes version 3 is the good one