I was an IL-2 nut like the rest you for many years. But I had to let it go a while back. Once you've gotten into a CLOD Spitfire or a DCS Mustang, its really kind of hard to look at an old IL-2 cockpit again. There is no question that the old girl was the queen in her day, but it's time to hand the crown over to someone else. They may not seem worthy, but give them a chance.

I've tried IL-2 and CLOD. No doubt the map environment, FM and in-cockpit graphics in CLOD are superior, but the scope of activities, airframes and scenarios in CLOD is sadly lacking in comparison to what IL-2 has now.

I think the adherence to ultra-high fidelity of texturing, 3D structure, and cockpit interaction etc used by CLOD and DCS is actually hindering the scope of modern flight sims, sadly. It is just too expensive and labour-intensive to build a sim with a representative number of airframes and scenarios.

Thankfully for the developers, many people are pretty fixated on a very small number of fighters so game titles can appear that focus almost exclusively on these airframes and still make a reasonable profit.

Now see, I'm one of those people who are not impressed with a huge number of airframes. I tend to pick my one or two favorites and I'll fly just those all of the time. There must have been 150 planes to fly when I had it, and thanks to modders there are lots more ,now. But I never flew 80% of them. Maybe more than that. I had a maybe a half dozen or so planes, in IL-2, that I flew all of the time. Mustang, Thunderbolt, Lightning, and I enjoyed the Spit and the Tempest, too. A couple of more, maybe, but that's it. Out of almost 200 planes.
I'd rather have a handful of beautifully modelled airplanes than a huge number of so so models. Most of the IL-2 planes were good, but let's be honest. There were a bunch that just weren't. That P-40 NEVER looked right to me.

Pooch,

I understand YOUR point of view. It may very well be the norm for most IL-2 players. However, there is one important aspect that needs to be understood.

Your 'half dozen' favorite planes may be totally different than Joe's 'half dozen' favorite planes...which may be totally different than Fred's 'half dozen' favorite planes...and so on and so forth.

In the end, any one of those 200 planes could easily be a favorite for a number of players. I have seen posts stating that their favorite thing was flying a modded transport plane and dropping cargo onto a friendly airfield.

This is just one reason IL-2 has been embraced by so many for so long. There seems to be something for everyone to enjoy.

Aviar

To me it's not the number of airframes but the number of operational theaters and types of combat. From torpedo runs to slicing through bomber formations on the Eastern, Western and Pacific, even Burma and Manchuria.

No other simulation lets you explore the exploits of Richard Bong, Alexander Pokryshkin, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, James E. "Johnnie" Johnson and Eric Hartmann as well as the Battle of Britain, Battle of Midway, Battle of Stalingrad, Kursk, the exploits of the Flying Tigers, the Black Sheep and even a fictitious World War Three.

IL2 is truly in a class by itself and will be for many years to come.

Add WWI and The Spanish Civil War, both with maps, period aircraft and campaigns, plus the newly released DBW beta for 4.12.2 and the new Chaco War addon for 4.10 and IL2 remains the Queen, at least of content, forever.

Be sure, she is one of a kind and given the new business models and ever decreasing human attention span, will remain so.

Pretenders will be prettier.

Believe me guys, I'm not arguing with anything that you're saying. IL-2 was just about the only thing I played on my PC for years. Had every plane mod, terrain, pilot mod, cloud mod....etc. I was hooked on it. Off line and on line. But it was time to move on.
I was a Jane's WW2 Fighters nut for years before that. Then I was introduced to IL-2 and dear old Jane's was uninstalled. She was a great old gal, too. Only seven flyable airplanes and I loved it.
Now let's say that someone decided to take the old IL-2 and run it through a state of the art graphics engine. Hmmm....... might be tempted to move on, yet again. But you can't have that many airplanes and have them all be DCS quality. And all of those maps. I don't think anyone could afford to do it. And the sim would wind up costing a couple of hundred dollars.
There have been times, I'll admit, that I've seen a mod that almost made me reinstall. The P-47's are an example. But then I thought about going through all that, and the patching, and hunting all of the mods down. I thought, "Just for one airplane!?" Nah.
But, I certainly understand why everyone loves it.

And, let's face it, it is the people who love contextual variety that are keeping IL-2 alive now. The people who aren't interested in that are gravitating elsewhere. I think the variety of offerings in the sim market is a good thing - each to his/her own.

I've been having a blast with IL-2 BOS this last week. I've also been having some fun with CLOD/TF and can appreciate what a very enjoyable sim that has turned out to be.

However, yesterday afternoon I fired up IL-2 1946 and flew some Hurricane IIB vs Bf109F-4, some Seafire L.III vs A6M5, some Yak-3 vs Bf109K-4, some Meteor F.3 vs Me262A-1a and finally beat up some airfields in an Fw190F-8 and then a Typhoon IB

If anybody can tell me of another WW2 sim where I can recreate these engagements I'd be most happy to hear about it

Wait... do any of the major updates include the Meteor?

I haven't had a PC since last Christmas, gave my game rig to my kid. Just got back the PC I had prior to that last week, an old E6700/8800GTS/4GB RAM machine (for free!) and loaded up IL2 4.12.2 with all 27 of the TFM mods and the sim is at 68GB. It's nuts.

And yes, there is a Meteor. Two of them at least. There's everything... and more

And the sim + mods run well on an older machine. The eye candy is very, very nice.

Still got it installed but don't play it much... although I sometimes have a 'retro day' and fly all the desert campaigns and missions

None of those pics show up for me Sunchaser.

Beazil, those pictures are no longer posted.

They showed visual improvements to aircraft over the stock version with the addition of mods which really enhance IL2.

TD have done wonders with official updates.

The unofficial modders have added so many maps, planes, vehicles, ships, missions, campaigns, theaters of war, visual enhancements, etc that you would basically have a new game.

My stock copy of IL2 1946 4.12.2 is 6.49 GB.
My 4.12.2 SAS folder which includes, SAS mod activator and the 27 TFM packs for 4.12.2 is 25.2 GB

So, 18.7 GB of content added with SAS and TFM.
There are other options that cater to online play with which I am not familiar.

Most of the modded content is excellent and all of it is very well done.

For all mod info:
http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php

This struck a chord..i remember people saying that to me when i left EAW for IL2

Well these days the most popular online flight game is warthunder which looks like all of these models. Just like in this game online arcade settings prevailed online. Its fun but got boring to me. I have a bunch of the the DCS series which are more sim like games but no online community makes it no fun, Il2 bos is the same engine as knights of the sky to me never got into because of the greed and was a huge redbaron fan back in the day. I don't think there will ever be a flight sim like this again because of the hard work it took to give us almost all the features we wanted and host options.

Still my all time favs have to be EAW IL2 CFS and most memorable was janes wwii fighters.

My perfect sim would be flightsim x / xplane / condor soaring physics and full world terrain, janes wwiis menus sound crashes and over-stressed air frames, historic video museum and il2 host lock and amount of content. As for online game types i think it was warbirds I II and III had the most fun and different online modes. Even wwii ol was a lot of fun but not into the fees to play a game not worth it

can bomb runways capture sectors and spawn there, destroy factories to reduce spawn numbers sector control but pay to play made it die very soon.


I think for something to be successful today the details should be focused on the aircraft visual model, cockpit, along with clouds and weather more then ground detail which is not noticed much when fighting in the air, full world map in one server to keep the small wwii flight sim community in one place. Being able to land and taxi in a hangar to exit the game refuel on the ground maintain the aircraft rearm things to make it fun

The way it's looking now you might be back sooner than you thought

SD

The very premise of this thread is nothing more than pro-BOS spam.

I have had IL2 Sturmovik, from the original demo, through all of it's iterations and addons.

I have at times had 6 or 7 differnt installs, including mega-mods such as HSFX, UP, DBW, etc, etc ......

I currently have 12 IL2 backups, including 2 of the original IL2 Sturmovik.

I also fly on a regular/ weekly basis with several squads running different versions. And I often get invites to fly with other squads.

And as far as getting rid of IL2, I left a squad about a year ago, because the CO insisted several times that we did not need IL2, so we all needed to uninstall it. I put it plain and simple to him, "the squad may not fly IL2 anymore, but you can not tell me what I have installed on my computer, so shove it "

I do have IL2 BOS installed, am a founder, but it has not PROVEN itself to be worthy of the same loyalty that I have for the original IL2.

So to the OP, do you really think that you can only have 1 IL2 installed ? If that were the case, I would be keeping the original and scraping the BOS version. But happily I have enough HDD space to keep BOS, in hopes that it turns out to be nearly the sim that the original has been and is, and then still keep as many modded and vanilla versions as I want.

Last note. Am really looking forward to the 4.13 patch from TD. If I am going to make room on the HDD for a new IL2, it will be the 4.13 patched version.

Have a nice day.

Stryker

Good post Stryker.

Too often squads are used as personal platforms for tyrants.

Anyway, the fact that people are still here talking about IL2, 14 years after its release, is because of the depth of content and functionality put together over the years by the developers and contributors.

I wonder whether the new titles will last even half that long. I suspect that if they don't focus on creating immersive content then they will always be regarded as disposable games, used only until the next shiny thing appears.

Until something more engrossing comes along, I will happily stick with IL2, exploring all the wonderful richness, variety and scenarios it offers.

Cheers,
4S

Stryker7, there is no pro BOS spam in the original post and it was posted nearly a year ago.

At that time BOS was the next in the IL2 line and hopes were high for a new classic.

BOS has suffered a fall (plunge) from grace but some still (not me) hold onto the dream.

The original IL2 has morphed into something we will never see again for WWII flightsims and it is not done yet.

BTW, go to Mission4Today and search Ian Boys then call the original post spam.