Nice to hear people are still playing TF1942. I was co-designer and lead programmer on the project. I've been working at home on a new game that combines 1942: the Pacific Air War and Taskforce: 1942. I wrote both games and have wanted to re-do them both. The engine is mostly written at this point, but the problem is art. I have talked a couple of artists into helping me out, but they lack my enthusiasm to work in my spare time. So although I still work on it, the project will never really go anywhere until I get more art support. Sims aren't seen as big money makers, so I won't get any monetary support unless I've got something pretty much done....
Ed Fletcher
Formerly of MicroProse Software
WOW, this is great news, specially because my favourite WWII combat flight sim which was NOT IL2 (and whatever addons, next gen game that came out from this) and while EAW was one of my favoutites, my favourite WWII combat flight sim was DEFINITLY 1942: the Pacific Air War! This was by far for me, my favourite WWII combat fligth sim since it had a complete aircraft set (not missing Devastators or NO flyable Avenger like that IL2: Pacific Fighters crap) and you could play a DYNAMIC campaign (yes, it was a DYNAMIC campaign!!) as a pilot (career) or you could play the Carrier Battles where you played as an "admiral" that allowes you to control your fleets similary to a strategy game and could jump in as pilot and fly aircraft during the air battles if you wanted to! 1942: the Pacific Air War was a masterpiece that IL2 could never come close and even EAW it's direct sucessor which while being great still didn't come as good as in terms of features as 1942: the Pacific Air War was!
And of course TF1942 was also great!
Regarding the lack of artists, that's a bit wierd since from what I've seen, "indie" projects like yours usually have problems finding programmers and not artists (3D modelers, texturing artists, etc...). Many of the existing "indie" projects (like for example Combat-Helo, Jet Thunder, OFF, etc...) didn't seem have any problems finding 3D or texture artists, by the contrary at least as far as I know! But programmers that's an another story...
Anyway, I'm sure if you ask here around SimHQ (or other sim fan site, such as Subsim and others) for artists that could be available to help you, I'm pretty sure you'll find at least a good number of them willing to helo you with your great project!