I've always been the same way, I think its a love of mechanical close tolerances, and restoration, and yes some degree of insanity.

i once hand polished a small block chev inlet manifold From this ..



to this..



Luckily , with only one person working on it with only one battery pack drill and funding well under many millions i accomplished it in just under 7 months.It proved to me that i could indeed polish a turd and make it look excellent, but unfortunately the manifold was a pos even though shiny and a wonder to look at.I had to ditch it in favour of a better designed Edelbrock job, unpolished on the outside.

I agree with most posts here and the sad fact is that CLOD was a product released on the good name of IL2, with absolutely outstanding good looks especially in the cockpit. Now this alone was good enough to sell the game in advance. So much in advance that it was never anyway close to completion before release.
She still looks gorgeous, still the most prettiest of them all ( in cockpit) but shes not come anywhere near the age of consent and I have come to the conclusion that if a company is prepared to release a unfinished product ( for high sales ) they surely wont be prepared to work on patches for months and years after release when they receive no income from those patches what so ever..........

Whats the answer? What are we to do? I cant keep my eyes off her even with the knowledge that she`ll crash and burn me every time I reach for the stars in her.

S!

The problem for me is that gameplay-wise, and from an offline perspective, CloD is still the same disappointment as on release day, more than a year ago. Not a single one of my major complaints have been fixed so far. Sure, I'm looking forward to the performance patch, but honestly: I don't need one. I can run the game on high settings just fine. So the coming patch won't change a thing about what I really care about: pretending to fly in the Battle of Britain. I have no idea how long it will take the devs to tackle the stuff that's important for me: AI, FMs, radio commands, weather system, improved terrain that actually looks like England (hedges!), ships for the Kanalkampf phase, etc...

I dont expect any of the common complaints will ever get fixed ( sure wish I was wrong ) after all its been over a year.
It all leaves a bitter taste in my mouth........What could have been and WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

S!