SimHQ recently discussed the latest status on the v4.09 update with Oleg Maddox and Team Daidalos' Martin Kubani

http://simhq.com/_air13/air_420a.html

Very interesting interview, thanks SimHQ for taking the time and effort to give the IL-2 community a look into future IL-2 development.

I hope it's not another year before the 4.09 update is completed and available... the whole reason the mod community has taken off was because of the perception that IL-2 development was stagnant. Now we can see that development still progresses, which is great news for the community.

Team Daidalos: Thanks for taking on the IL-2 project. Looking forward to your continuing development of the IL-2 series. Your invitation to have interested modders contact you should bring quite a few new faces on board.

It's a win-win situation anyway you look at it. The add-ons will keep IL2 alive long enough until BoB:SoW gets released, plus the teams working on it will gather some experience and then probably move on to SoW add-ons.

The fact that it's supposedly compatible with mods (even if there are some glitches, the modders will probably work it out) makes one drool over the possibilities. I mean, if there's hard-coded support for radar, then that can be modded to include other radar sets by tweaking range, etc. Since they said that ground clutter is representative of the actual terrain below you, it might even be possible to see H2S bombing radars and not only intercept radars.

The Italian birds are very beautiful (is it just me or does the Regianne 2000 look a lot like a P47?) and the mission triggers will be a blast if they work on dogfight servers as well.

All in all, i'm surprised they can still squeeze new functions into a 10 year old engine. I can't even begin to imagine how much more flexible SoW will be in that regard.

To sum up, excellent and very informative interview. It was totally unexpected too

What Can I say, I am speachless....
Oleg never ceases to amaze me in the most excellent way.

And Kudos to Teal Daidalos.. Incredible work you guys...

I never had any doubt that eventually we would see this.. I just had no idea when. It is good to see the path that O & 1C have taken with this and some of the upcoming features are things that manyhhave been wanting for a long time. I also think it is great that this will not conflict with the mods.

NVM the previous version of that post.

Excellent news ! Been waiting for some of these planes for a long, long time !

Cheers

Nico.

I gotta get back in the game! This patch article is fantastic, and very surprising. At least it caught me off guard! The mission builders will have a field day, not to mention the implications for online campaigns. IL2. Still the best combat flight sim ever, and still growing strong!
Flyby out

I would simply pay for there work on updates $9.99 for all there hard work...I apretiate all they have done and will continue to do... Awsome Oleg and Team Daidalos! great surprise..I wounder how Ubi is taken it?

So, is this a patch for IL2 1946? Is it free?

Nice interview. Thanks Doug and Oleg and Martin.

Wow. "Not dead yet" would be quite an understatement. Thanks for the detailed article.

Thankyou Doug.

Excellent read.

Thank You! It was excellent reading.
The video's weren't too shabby either.
I am looking forward to its release.


Wheels

Didn't like these two statements much I have to say...

(1) : Does this mean they found a way to protect the final patch, and the whole game with it ?

(2) : This kind of annoyed me as well. This sim has so much potential for expansion still, why focus on just one theatre of operations ? The I-15bis and Avia biplanes are nice and all, but shouldn't more important WW2 types take priority. I dunno, RAF on the whole for instance ? Open modding has its downsides, but it lets modders free to develop and implement a greater variety of Mods. Some aspects of the game (like effects or clouds) can be modded differently by different people, giving you a choice of what mod you want to use.

Finally, I'm not sure I like the idea of the team being semi-official. Official team with a 'plan' means planes or mods are likely to be rejected (and they should know...), plus they have the code and that's bound to attract many modders and deplete the ranks of the 'Open modders'.

Then again the new planes and features look fantastic... They really do. I really don't know what to think. I'm just hoping this won't force us to choose sides...

Cheers

Nico.

Just to clarify:
Daidalos Team does not have the source code of Il2.

Great interview guod! You know, Oleg (et all) has THE best sim going. I think about it, playing IL-2 for what, 9yrs now. The evolution of the sim is amazing.

Oleg, if you read this post, just remember I wrote you soon as the first demo was released. ...and you answered! Was cool.

I think it will be mod compatible. They said it themselves, they won't "lock" the game with an anti-mod protection, they will just offer some "official mods" after the patch. The way i see it, it might need a new mod installer to overcome any possible glitches due to the new files but not much else will change. Maybe their aircraft will be locked, but i doubt the rest of the sim will be.

About the points you mentioned...the way i read (1), when they refer to a closed modelling process they probably mean that it's done by an "isolated" team instead of the entire community. As for (2) i think it simply means giving some new add ons to people who don't want the unofficial mods. If you look in the interview it clearly says "we decided not to fight the mods". They also said that the code protection is the same as the 4.09 beta, which means CRT=2 and not much more. Good enough to ensure some compatibility and cheat free gameplay in servers running a certain mod pack, but not restrictive to the point of disabling mods. Well, at least that's what i understood from reading the interview, let's hope this is the case

I'd rather they lock the multiplayer with an anti-mod mechanism and open the singleplayer for modding. Yes, mods has improved IL2 greatly in many aspects, but mods also open the door for FM/DM cheaters. Now, any experienced pilots can find with ease such cheaters in any popular server on Hyperlobby. I'm starting to miss the good old days without mods. Though IL2 looked ugly compared to the modded one right now, it was not annoyed by all sorts of cheats. The online play was clean and fun. And there were way more populated full-switch or nearly full-switch servers at that time. The populated servers now you can find on Hyperlobby are almost all arcade ones. For a flight simulation game, this is not a good sign. The fact is that most hard-core pilots have left the online play or turned to singleplayer. I sincerely hope Oleg will lock the 4.09 for us online players.

It's articles and content like this that make me love SimHQ. Well done guod and many thanks to Oleg and the Daidalos Team for taking the time to answer questions about this much loved sim.

I am not flying online too often, but i pick up the pace once every other month. In all the time mods have existed i haven't seen any cheaters on the servers i fly (and they are full real). Some other people that fly there have seen a few (maybe a couple of cheaters in almost as long as 3 months), they asked other players for a mission track (a lot of people record them to review their performance), submitted track to the admins and the cheater is banned. Honestly, if flying over the real English channel and intercepting player-driven B17s in a well-modelled FW190 means i have to pay the price of dealing with a cheater once every 40-50 days, i think it's a pretty good trade-off.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion and that's why there must be choices in this and not black or white type arguments. The best thing would be to have it both ways. Maybe a new protection system that disables mods for people who like the things you like, plus what we have now in CRT=2 for the people who like mods, which doesn't prevent mods but ensures you are running the same stuff as the server/mission host. Of course, there's always the argument that since mods became popular player numbers have dropped a lot on non-mod servers, but we can't force people to like the same things or fly in the servers we like.

Some will like mods, some will not, let both of them fly the way they want to.