16th January 2016 - The latest update for Battle Of Britain II has been released

Download link: A2A Server

Happy flying!

Big congrats!

I have a windows7 machine so I may actually be able to fire this up. Does it support high resolution ? I have a 2560 x 1440 28" monitor, can I run it at that res or will there be black bars on each side ? I don't mind running it at 1960x1200 or 1960x1080 as long as it fills the screen of my monitor and there are no black bars on each side. I bet 1440p or 1660p would really spruce this up with the rendering in high pixels if it could support it.

Seriously, this sim is so good, I would pay for a direct x10 or 11 version. Rather than reinvent the wheel, why not modernize BOBII with directx 10/ 11 and x64. I wonder if it could be done ?

There is a bdg.txt parameter called
"ALLOW_ULTRA_HIGH_FOVS"; set to ON for multimonitor
sorts of resolution numbers, should work OK.

We would love to upgrade the graphics, along with
all the other things, but we (bdg volunteers) don't
currently have the skills. It is always possible
someone may walk in the metaphorical door and offer
to do it.

Someday, A2A will probably bring out another sim of a
similar nature. They own the code, and have a long term
interest in such things, but have limited resources, as
well. A sim is not a huge money maker, so you can't
fund it the way you can a mass market game, and at the
same time it is quite a complex project. Even altering
the structure of the BoB code to do things like add new
planes, or transplant the scenario to another theatre
have proven too great a project for the size and experience
of A2A in the past, but they are gaining in both areas,
so it remains a potential for the future.

Great news!

I just installed but the game exits with a "Battle Of Britain English text has stopped working" error everything I click "Instant Action" or "Campaign" and select an airforce.

My pc is running windows 10 so I could be out of luck

Anyone running it on windows 10?

As the 2.13 Install Readme says:

It has been reported that it works OK with Win10. Investigation of Win10
is ongoing, please check the forum, both General and Tech Supt, for the latest.

The Forum referred to is here:

http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=48817

(There is a little info here, down the page a bit, not much

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4079389/Windows_10#Post4079389 )

And the v2.13 Release Notes go into more detail:

Windows 10. Several people have reported some success running BoBII with Win10.
According to reports they have best results by doing these things:
 Run program in compatibility mode for Windows 7, as an administrator.
(Native Windows 10 mode may work?)
 In game videos will cause crashes, so turn them OFF.
 Use a font size of 96 pixels per inch.
 Some graphics settings in Options may have to be set lower than Maximum.
GroundObject Density no higher than High?

Currently, the major snag is that alt-x ing out of 3D
yields a crash, typically with a ntdll.dll module
VerSetConditionMask error, so something in Win10's handling,
I suspect the VerSet might be to do with Windows Version.
I believe this may make Campaign use impossible. We may
be able to solve it.

Anyway, it is certainly possible to run one mission of any
kind in 3D, with Win10, using the right settings. You can
turn the videos off in the GUI, best to exit the program
after making settings, as they only get written at exit,
before going into 3D, as they won't get written upon a crash.

Thanks PV1, disabling the movies by changing SKIP_VIDEOS=OFF to SKIP_VIDEOS=ON did the trick!!!

And it seems that I can alt-x after entering 3D in the Instant Action part of the sim. Will test it out in the Campaign also.

I had one crash with alt x when my planes was crashed before leaving 3d. Not problems leaving the 3d in the campaign as it seems.

Reports seem to indicate it is intermittent, some
think it is to do with how long you've been in the 3D,
others suggest it relates to how many ground objects
are visible at the moment of exit - more failures
over cities and airfields and such.

I put in a request a while back to have this thread swapped
out with the 2.12 one as a sticky, but nothing has happened yet;
it's been several months since Racer has made a post, and we
don't have a local resident moderator here anymore, so I guess
we just have to wait. Meanwhile, I can bump...

Bumping this while i wait for it to get stickied...

I have two machines that I run on the same monitor. One Windows 10 and the other Windows 7. Windows 10 seems to default to a different DPI than Windows 7. Actually I can't make the Windows 10 machine Icons the same size as Windows 7. They are smaller in Windows 7 and I have Windows 10 set to the smallest it will go. So I guess the Windows 10 operating system is not compatible with BOB2 v2.13 since I can't get rid of the intermittent English.txt error. I do not get this error on my Windows 7 machine.

- Walt Watson

Apparently no one is listening to PM requests to get the
stickies updated, so to keep this thread, and notice of
the current patch level, in view, it will require periodic
bumping, as now.

I returned my magic wand years ago so sadly I can't be of much help there.

Yeah, I had thought of you first, back last year,
only to find you no longer had the magic red lettering.

i have just installed the 2.13 patch but game crashes when it goes to fly the mission- also unless i set the game with compatibility setting of windowsxp then the game will crash when i go to select a mission - and there is no visible texto nt he screen - there is mention of font needing to be changed but i dont know how one does this, it would be great if someone might be able to help me on this if possible?

i have windows 10 16gb ram 2gb nvidia 860m, i7 - so i dont expect my system to be inedaquate except for teh "windows 10" part. this is quite a spot of bother as i was hoping to trying BOB2 as everyone raves about how good it is and all the good community work on it , i hope i can get it to work


- so far my efforts to get some old Battle britain themed games working is not doing so well - BOB1 is a no, BOB2 might be a no, and EAW i screwed up the UAW160 install, - will try that again later

fortunately i have Their Finest Hour working well in dosbox and will got Reach for the Skies going in to dosbox too which shouldnt be a problem i expect

I have BoB2 2.13 working in Windows 10, except that I get a CTD when quitting a mission, and in a campaign mission, sometimes earlier. This significantly inhibits playing campaigns (except from the map alone) but not the many single missions, each of which is playable from the standpoint of any pilot in any flyable aircraft in any squadron flying in the mission, on either side, or as a gunner any German bomber.

I can't recall what I did to get it working, but it was basic stuff like setting use desktop resolution to OFF, then manually setting both 2d and 3d resolution manually to the desktop resolution (ignoring that one of them displayed an exclamation mark). Not sure if I used XP SP3 or Win 7 compatibility or not (now using Win 7 dual boot instead of 10) but may have also turned off the fancy stuff in the Compatibility tab like disabling visual themes and disabling desktop composition, also NOT installing in the Program Files (x86) folder.

BoB1 can look well with some of Boreas's new mods but if you have BoB2 working, there's no reason at all to bother, apart from nostalgia or curiousity,

EDIT - I think it was the settings described by Buzz3 in post #4 in this thread, that got BoB2 working for me in Win 10 (apart from the aforementioned CTDs): https://steamcommunity.com/app/63950/discussions/0/1471968797464997938/

...namely:

Bob.exe customisation:
1. Run as Administrator
2. Win XP SP3 compatibility mode
(Instant Action menus and videos wouldn't run under Win 7 compatibility mode for me.)
(Alt-X doesn't crash for me under WinXPSP3 mode. It does crash for me under Win7 mode.)
3. Disable display scaling on high DPI settings (Disabling this eliminated many CTDs for me.)

In-game customisation:
4. Use Desktop Resolution: Off
5. 3D Resolution: set to normal desktop resolution (in my case, !1920x1080x32@60!)***
6. Campaign Resolution: set to normal desktop resolution (in my case, 1920x1080x32@60) *** If 3D Res & Campaign Res differ from each other, I get a CTD when running Instant Action.
7. Lower all graphics to low or medium (Alt-X will then work)
8. Anistropic set to 2x

...EXCEPT I have all the graphics settings (7) set to the max, apart from particle density which is Medium.

Any change of status quo when playing BOB2 on Win10 and modern GTX Nvidia card? The simulation looks very appealing by judging by the screenshots and videos on uTube.
Also, is the modding continuing? Sadly, I see no new posts on A2A Simulations forum.

You may have seen that Eisenfaust reports on A2A BoB2 forums that he's testing BoB2 in Win 11 - which I don't think my dual boot 7/10 system's mobo supports, so sticking to Win 7 here. Unfortunately newer CPUs won't easily run 7, apparently, limiting the dual boot option.

As for Win 10, I could get 2.13 playable - apart from fairly frequent CTDs on exiting the 3d world. Which meant that when it happened in campaign, I had to let the AI resolve the mission I had just flown and restart the sim then load the campaign's last autosave. And no debrief if I got a CTD exiting a single mission. A nuisance, but it worked otherwise. Not everybody seems to have got 2.13 that stable in Win 10.

Felizpe's patch for Win 10 seems now to work up to 2.06. No Multiskin or some other 2.13 features. I think multiskin used to be a separate add on (before 2.13) but I don't know if the separate Multiskin is still available and if so, whether it could be applied as a mod over Felizpe's Win 10 patch.

Modding these days seems limited to the work of RogerRoger (terrain textures mainly) and Boreas (whose Multiskin compatible A and B Schemes, slightly darker canopy frames and Spit red doped gunports I use).

Thank you 33lima for this quick reply. So let me understand further: you are playing BOB2 on Win7 cause you have dual boot. On win10 just CTDs on 3d exit, but that is all.
Felizpe's W10 patch is only up to 2.06 but I'd rather opt for 2.13 unless not that much difference from 2.06.

How would you rate BOB2 in comparison to CLOD or EAW? I know I may be press my luck asking you to compare but my question really is BOB2 more immersive?