Posted By: Redwolf
2018/2019 review and 2020 Plans (from developer) - 01/21/20 06:07 PM
I know not everybody follows or is on the official forums, so I will include this here.
This is from a new briefing area Jason (producer) has in the official forums found here
sorry, can't include original pics or links referenced in the original post, but do see the link above if you would like to visit the source
"2018-2019 Review
As you guys have seen 2018-2019 development cycle was very hectic for our small, but talented team. Not only did we have to build Battle of Bodenplatte, but we have coordinated work on Flying Circus and Tank Crew with our third-party partners Ugra Media and DigitalForms. However, just because these partners took on these projects does not mean we did not have work to do as part of those projects. Much was learned and we honestly over extended ourselves and in some cases made a headache for ourselves and caused delays. We also suffered though nasty illnesses, car accidents, brain surgeries, miscalculations, and personnel changes. I asked a lot from my team and our partners the last two plus years. As usual they have performed miracles even if we hit some headwinds at times.
Moving forward we will be more careful in taking on new products and evaluating the impact on our core team better. Both Flying Circus and Tank Crew are awesome products in their own right and we urge everyone to grab a copy so we can continue to make these types of products in the future. Our partners have done an excellent job making these a reality and devoted much time and effort to the work. We hope you will recognize their efforts and reward them with making a purchase of either FC or TC. TC won’t be finished until this Spring as we still have a couple more tanks to introduce and a few more improvements to make.
We will continue to squash bugs and evaluate these experiments for potential follow-ups in the near future. These two titles were indeed experimental gambles, one was a new take on an older product and the other was something completely new for us. I hope they work out long-term just as much as you do.
But before I leave this topic, I must say that the work done by Ugra and DigitalForms in a relatively short time is excellent. FC planes were developed quickly and look beautiful in the engine and the re-work of the ground vehicles is really nice. They also put their own spin on No Man’s Land and added sections of barbed wire and bunkers throughout. NML is such a tricky thing to represent, but they did a great job in my opinion. The towns and village also turned out nicely. They deserve your support!
DigitalForms has created, from what I am aware of, the most accurate and detailed WWII tank interiors and exteriors ever made including tanks never modeled before in a PC game. Please correct me if I am wrong, I have not played every armor themed game out there. DigitalForms has thrown a tremendous amount of research and hard work into re-creating these armored beasts and the result is simply beautiful. Our hats are off to both of these teams for their skill and efforts! They also deserve your support!
2020 Plans
Sometimes I can’t believe I have been flight-simming for almost 30 years and yet another new decade is upon us. It’s been almost 20 years since the first IL-2 product was released. The technology has certainly changed and the hobby keeps evolving and getting more complex, but the enjoyment never ends. In 2020 we will be focused on Battle of Normandy and adding the announced Collector Planes (Yak-9, Yak-9T and Hurricane). If all goes well, they are due in the Spring. They are already available for Pre-Order.
First off, we plan to release an update that improves certain aspects of the Rhineland Map. It will add better river banks and coastlines along with 13 new airfields. We will take our experience with the Rhineland map and apply lessons learned to the Normandy map which will also be a challenge. We have hired an additional map artist to help the team build Normandy. And I have to give thanks to Luke Wallace for helping me research and locate a mountain of data on British and French airfields for Normandy. He found and organized a tremendous amount of information before we even started work on the map which will be very useful.
In the next update we plan to release initial support for SimShaker technology. Early tests have shown it to be very nice and adds yet another layer of immersion alongside VR and motion sim support. Combining all three technologies will give you the ultimate IL-2 experience.
In 2020 we will also be working on something called “deferred shading” or DS for short. This is a graphics rendering technique that we are experimenting with that may offer some additional performance and, in the future, possibly allow for even better graphics. It’s still early on in this work, but we will keep you informed of progress.
On the MP front we are happy to finally have Marshal mode in testing. It’s really far behind schedule, but it’s in the debugging stage. Beta testers have gotten a small taste and after this update it will be tested further. I have not shown you what it entails to you yet because the feature-set and its organization is fluid and may change from the design in testing.
Our Lead Engineer An.Petrovich will be working to improve our fuel system modeling in the coming year along with drop tanks so you can cover some of our larger maps in a 109 and not run out of fuel! Our engineers have also worked on improving some small details in the damage modeling that have yielded some strange results in the past. In general, we have a huge list of things for the Engineering department to work on in the coming year along with building our newest Flight Models.
New Eastern Front pilot models will also be worked on. We made some awesome looking American, British and German pilots for the Western front with oxygen masks etc. and in 2020 we plan to also improve them for our Eastern Front pilots. This will take some time, but this is in the plan.
I have also come to an agreement to add some single-player content to Flying Circus in the form of the "Kaiserschlacht" mini-campaign that our friends at The Syndicate have been working on. Maybe I can convince them to turn it onto a full campaign? It will be added to FC for free, but you can also try the current mini-campaign now at
I also plan to sell the Hell Hawks Over the Bulge Scripted Campaign this year that Gambit has been working on for a while. It’s shaping up nicely and should be quite entertaining. You can read about it here.
I also plan to add more SP content in general in the coming year to our product line including some SP missions for BOBP.
And finally, more 4K skins are on the way in 2020 from ICDP and BlackHellHound. They have done excellent work so far and we look forward to updating as many planes as possible to this standard in 2020. I also hope ot re-introduce the concept of the Official Skin Pack like we had in ROF this year.
This is some, but not all we plan in 2020. I don't want to make any promises we can't keep. As we continue on each year, new features and improvements get more and more complex making it hard to stick to deadlines. There are always surprises along the way.
Please continue to read our Developer Diaries to stay informed of our progress. This is our main line of communication for our products during development.
Jason "
This is from a new briefing area Jason (producer) has in the official forums found here
sorry, can't include original pics or links referenced in the original post, but do see the link above if you would like to visit the source
"2018-2019 Review
As you guys have seen 2018-2019 development cycle was very hectic for our small, but talented team. Not only did we have to build Battle of Bodenplatte, but we have coordinated work on Flying Circus and Tank Crew with our third-party partners Ugra Media and DigitalForms. However, just because these partners took on these projects does not mean we did not have work to do as part of those projects. Much was learned and we honestly over extended ourselves and in some cases made a headache for ourselves and caused delays. We also suffered though nasty illnesses, car accidents, brain surgeries, miscalculations, and personnel changes. I asked a lot from my team and our partners the last two plus years. As usual they have performed miracles even if we hit some headwinds at times.
Moving forward we will be more careful in taking on new products and evaluating the impact on our core team better. Both Flying Circus and Tank Crew are awesome products in their own right and we urge everyone to grab a copy so we can continue to make these types of products in the future. Our partners have done an excellent job making these a reality and devoted much time and effort to the work. We hope you will recognize their efforts and reward them with making a purchase of either FC or TC. TC won’t be finished until this Spring as we still have a couple more tanks to introduce and a few more improvements to make.
We will continue to squash bugs and evaluate these experiments for potential follow-ups in the near future. These two titles were indeed experimental gambles, one was a new take on an older product and the other was something completely new for us. I hope they work out long-term just as much as you do.
But before I leave this topic, I must say that the work done by Ugra and DigitalForms in a relatively short time is excellent. FC planes were developed quickly and look beautiful in the engine and the re-work of the ground vehicles is really nice. They also put their own spin on No Man’s Land and added sections of barbed wire and bunkers throughout. NML is such a tricky thing to represent, but they did a great job in my opinion. The towns and village also turned out nicely. They deserve your support!
DigitalForms has created, from what I am aware of, the most accurate and detailed WWII tank interiors and exteriors ever made including tanks never modeled before in a PC game. Please correct me if I am wrong, I have not played every armor themed game out there. DigitalForms has thrown a tremendous amount of research and hard work into re-creating these armored beasts and the result is simply beautiful. Our hats are off to both of these teams for their skill and efforts! They also deserve your support!
2020 Plans
Sometimes I can’t believe I have been flight-simming for almost 30 years and yet another new decade is upon us. It’s been almost 20 years since the first IL-2 product was released. The technology has certainly changed and the hobby keeps evolving and getting more complex, but the enjoyment never ends. In 2020 we will be focused on Battle of Normandy and adding the announced Collector Planes (Yak-9, Yak-9T and Hurricane). If all goes well, they are due in the Spring. They are already available for Pre-Order.
First off, we plan to release an update that improves certain aspects of the Rhineland Map. It will add better river banks and coastlines along with 13 new airfields. We will take our experience with the Rhineland map and apply lessons learned to the Normandy map which will also be a challenge. We have hired an additional map artist to help the team build Normandy. And I have to give thanks to Luke Wallace for helping me research and locate a mountain of data on British and French airfields for Normandy. He found and organized a tremendous amount of information before we even started work on the map which will be very useful.
In the next update we plan to release initial support for SimShaker technology. Early tests have shown it to be very nice and adds yet another layer of immersion alongside VR and motion sim support. Combining all three technologies will give you the ultimate IL-2 experience.
In 2020 we will also be working on something called “deferred shading” or DS for short. This is a graphics rendering technique that we are experimenting with that may offer some additional performance and, in the future, possibly allow for even better graphics. It’s still early on in this work, but we will keep you informed of progress.
On the MP front we are happy to finally have Marshal mode in testing. It’s really far behind schedule, but it’s in the debugging stage. Beta testers have gotten a small taste and after this update it will be tested further. I have not shown you what it entails to you yet because the feature-set and its organization is fluid and may change from the design in testing.
Our Lead Engineer An.Petrovich will be working to improve our fuel system modeling in the coming year along with drop tanks so you can cover some of our larger maps in a 109 and not run out of fuel! Our engineers have also worked on improving some small details in the damage modeling that have yielded some strange results in the past. In general, we have a huge list of things for the Engineering department to work on in the coming year along with building our newest Flight Models.
New Eastern Front pilot models will also be worked on. We made some awesome looking American, British and German pilots for the Western front with oxygen masks etc. and in 2020 we plan to also improve them for our Eastern Front pilots. This will take some time, but this is in the plan.
I have also come to an agreement to add some single-player content to Flying Circus in the form of the "Kaiserschlacht" mini-campaign that our friends at The Syndicate have been working on. Maybe I can convince them to turn it onto a full campaign? It will be added to FC for free, but you can also try the current mini-campaign now at
I also plan to sell the Hell Hawks Over the Bulge Scripted Campaign this year that Gambit has been working on for a while. It’s shaping up nicely and should be quite entertaining. You can read about it here.
I also plan to add more SP content in general in the coming year to our product line including some SP missions for BOBP.
And finally, more 4K skins are on the way in 2020 from ICDP and BlackHellHound. They have done excellent work so far and we look forward to updating as many planes as possible to this standard in 2020. I also hope ot re-introduce the concept of the Official Skin Pack like we had in ROF this year.
This is some, but not all we plan in 2020. I don't want to make any promises we can't keep. As we continue on each year, new features and improvements get more and more complex making it hard to stick to deadlines. There are always surprises along the way.
Please continue to read our Developer Diaries to stay informed of our progress. This is our main line of communication for our products during development.
Jason "