Hey Glo, think I was on your side on that Battle of Britain/OP Sealion battle - thought I recognised the name!
I just tired it, I have had more feeling of flight running around with my arms out stretched making "plane" noises
Hilariously bad...
Sorry - but have the naysayers tried the Full Real Battles mode that was unlocked recently? Locked pits, CEM (I overheated an Il-2 engine on the ground by going for a cup of tea and then coming back to find the rad had boiled over) and no icons (*).
(*There are friendly icons but only v v close - by the time I see them I have already ID'd the plane type).
FM wise I recently flew a P-39 on IL-2 1946 as part of a warm-up for a SEOW, and that felt extremely close to the WT P-39 (in fact the WT Aircobra felt more unstable).
I'll also encountered structural damage when I ripped the wing off a Yak in a high speed dive, and seen a 109 plough into the ground following me in a steep dive in Spit indicating the 109s controls stiffened up.
Once the Planeset Levels for public battles are unlocked, then there will be less mixing of inppropriate biplanes & jets on the same map. (In fact it may be matchmaking already I haven't spotted a jet for ages)
That said, it is not perfect - it could defintely do with some tweaks.
*Remove the +XP messages from the FRB Battles
*Get rid of all icons in FRB
*Turn on friendly fire/collisions in FRB
*The high-gloss skins look fantastic - but apart from the polished aluminium US types, the camo would be matt. (for good reasons!)
*Perhaps remove the red/blue who's wining the battle bar at the top.
*Alternate mode in FRB - perhaps instead of 1hr, make it 2hrs but allow respawning?
*Asysmetric objectives - eg air spawn of a high alt B-17 raid, P-51s must defend
* Would it be possible to add historical individual squadron letters/numbers eg LO-A, LO-B, LO-C or numbers say in the preflight settings for movie-makers to create authentic footage?
*ULtimate FRB/historical mode - Match planesets to historical map (Eg Sabres vs MiGS (+ P-51s, La-7s, Il-2s, Invaders, Sea Furys. Meteors in Korea) and allow low tier players to fly the high tier aircraft temporarily in this mode.
Those that are still knocking it, you do remember that in the height of Il-2s popularity in Hyperlobby, a fair proportion of the servers were running 'arcade' settings, with no cockpit, icons, no CEM, no stalls etc - I remember having to hunt quite a bit for the Full Real stuff. Plus in RoF on New Wings/Syndicate there is a 'score tally' at the top of the screen showing who is winning. In CLoD for example on ATAG server there are big radio messages in the centre of the screen giving vectors to targets. As immersion breaking as the WT HUD?
(note also that while no collisons on the ground in WT is immersion breaking, so is being spawned in a blast pen in CloD, then having the wind push your tail around 45 degs so you can't taxi out and your wing falls off...)
While War Thunder does not claim to have the physics or depth of RoF, Clod or DCS, my take is that with FRB it is very much a sim. If you only look consider the (admittedly v popular) arcade battles then perhaps your perception might vary.
Finally - with 10,000 players online (around 230 in FRB) just in open beta, shouldn't us hardcore sim types be excited by the opportunity to entice a whole new generation into the world of CEM, locked pits, no icons etc and tempt then into RoF/Clod/IL21946/DCS?
(Especially since a whole set of Il-2 virtual pilots now flying in hardcore mode probably started on the arcade servers in Hyperlobby?)