Jump to content

LATEST NEWS

    Il2 DD Update Dev Blog 215 "Tanks"
    76.IAP-Blackbird
    By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
    Hello friends,   This week was a hard one - we had to let you play during the weekend without problems, so we released another update that continued the work started in 3.010. The majority of the changes are in the GUI and are required for the new Marschal multiplayer mode that is coming this Spring and will concentrate on the interaction with the map. Other important improvements were made for tank weapons and damage calcualtions. We hope that now the basic damage model is adequate and we'll start working on more particular tasks in the tank systems and combat damage department next week.   This week we finished the map of the Southern part of the Kursk salient while two next tanks, M4A2 and PzKpfw III Ausf.M, will follow soon. The new tanks and the map will be released into Tank Crew Early Access after beta testing. Today we can show you the first in-game screenshots of them taken near Prokhorovka:       You can discuss the news in this thread

    Battle of the Battle of Britain sims!
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Campaign contrasts - Battle of Britain II and Cliffs of Dover Blitz Edition For one reason or another, I've found myself running single player RAF campaigns in parallel in these two Battle of Britain sims. As indeed you may have noticed, from recent mission reports. So I thought it might be moderately amusing to describe where I've got to in each, side by side. And share some more of my thoughts - for whatever they may be worth - on their respective merits, based now on a little more than first impressions. Starting with Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory. It's the morning of 18th July 1940. Watching 'the plot' on the campaign map, I hear the a WAAF announce that a new raid is forming, over northern France. Time acceleration automatically slows from 300x to 20x and I watch the raid's marker nudge its way north, towards the Thames Estuary. As it comes, its size is revised upwards to seventy-plus and I can see at once that its likely target is either of two convoys, one off Felixstowe, the other further north near Great Yarmouth. Both are protected by a single fighter patrol, in squadron strength, put up by the campaign AI. The raid drifts past the Felixstowe convoy and I accept AI recommendations to scramble three squadrons to intercept it. Confirmation comes that Convoy Weasel, up off Great Yarmouth, is the likely target. In the meantime, the intercepting squadrons have been tracking across from the west and Douglas Bader's 242 Squadron is the first to report spotting the bandits. BoB2 asks me if I want to fly this mission and I accept, choosing to fly as Green 3, in one of the rearmost 3-plane vics in 242. The mission loads, and I find myself in Hurricane LE-L, at just over 16,000 feet, now heading nearly due south. Up ahead is the enemy - some of them, anyway. There look to be about thirty of them. They're not contrailing, so it's hard to work out their heading. You can just about make them out, right of top centre, in the pic below. From up ahead and to my left, Douglas Bader is saying something important on the blower, but I'm more interested in what the rest of the formation is now doing. Wings are waggling nervously and I'm suddenly concerned about keeping in formation. I'm also thinking, this was supposed to be seventy plus, where are the rest of the Germans? The answer isn't long in coming. Suddenly we are swamped by a shower of Messerschmitt 110s, which fall on us from above. I pull up and around in an effort to avoid being shot down, and maybe even come around onto their tails. In doing so, I realise I'm on my own and have lost the others - in such a situation, it seems to be each man for himself. I look up briefly to see if it's clear above me, before coming back down after the 110s.  I get another shock. Waves of aircraft, which could only be Huns, are sailing past up there. The lower ones might be Ju88s; the paler ones above them could be more escorts. Others again, I can only see by their contrails. Crikey!!! If only the bloody Controller had told us to put on a bit more height, we would not be in this mess, bounced by 110s with the rest of the raid now having a clear run to the convoy. We can only hope that having stripped away some of the escorts, other squadrons will manage to get the bombers before they get the ships. Did anybody buy it in that first pass? No time to worry about that now. I roll over onto my back and go down, after the Messerschmitts. ...to be continued!

    DCS Weekend News: 1 February 2019
    MigBuster
    By MigBuster,
         DCS World Lunar New Year Sale Save 50% off on most DCS World products until 14 February 2019! The DCS: F/A-18C Hornet and DCS: Persian Gulf Map are available for 25% off. Take advantage of this great opportunity from here. Exceptions include recently released and pre-order titles: DCS: Christen Eagle II by Magnitude 3 LLC, DCS: F-14 Tomcat by Heatblur Simulations, and the A-10C Enemy Within 3.0 Campaign by Baltic Dragon. DCS World Open Beta Update This weeks Open Beta update changelog can be found here. Highlights include: Updates to the recently released DCS: Christen Eagle II and MiG-21bis by Magnitude 3 LLC Updates to the C-101EB and C-101CC by AvioDev Hornet updates like corrected LAU-61 rocket weight, AIM-7 guidance without radar lock, and updated BRA and A/A Waypoint color and BRA selection Updates to several campaigns The Enemy Within 3.0 Campaign by Baltic Dragon This week Baltic Dragon’s latest A-10C campaign was released that can be purchased here. The Enemy Within 3.0 is a complete remake of the critically-acclaimed The Enemy Within campaign for the A-10C Warthog. This story-driven campaign puts you in cockpit of the Warthog as part of a small, 6-ship US detachment sent to Georgia. Your mission is to help contain a growing threat from a terrorist organization calling itself the "Caucasus Liberation Army" (CLA). As the story unfolds, you will be faced with a variety of challenges, including close air support, precision strikes, combat search and rescue, anti-ship strikes, and even air to air combat. Striving to be as realistic as possible, the units featured in the campaign are based on their real-life counterparts. It also uses a sophisticated radio control system, meaning that you must tune your on-board radios to the correct frequency to hear the more than 2000 custom voice overs available throughout 21 missions.Compared to the original campaign, version 3.0 offers following great additions and changes: 20 out of 21 missions have been rewritten from scratch. This includes the course of action, dialogues, briefings and background information More than 2/3 of the missions take place in different locations than the original ones, and most feature different challenges and enemies to provide a completely new experience, 3 entirely new missions that are designed to complement and extend the storyline The 8 pilot and 3 commander characters featured throughout the campaign have almost 4x more custom voice overs (over 2100) Additional documents and custom kneeboard pages are available for each sortie DCS: F/A-18C Hornet Update Our Hornet team continues their hard work on the cockpit systems, sensors and weapons of the F/A-18C. The current focus is on: Target of Opportunity (TOO) and Pre-Briefed (PB) HARM modes. Once complete, we will start work on the Litening II targeting pod for the Hornet; the ATFLIR will come at a later point in early access. Note that US Marine Corps Hornet’s operate the Litening II pod. However, this is not a simple copy and paste from the A-10C Litening II pod; this is still a significant amount of work, but it will allow us to bring a Hornet TGP into the game faster than the ATFLIR A huge amount of work is ongoing with the data link (D/L). This is probably the most complex system for the Hornet given the network sharing and new code that needs to be created. We are making good progress, and it will be a “game changer”. This will also address a new system of IFF in which locking an aircraft is no longer required to IFF interrogate it. The Hornet can operate on a D/L network and receive and correlate data from other Link-16 equipped aircraft (F/F) and surveillance aircraft like E-2 and E-3 AWACS (SURV) In additional to cleaning up the DUD and fuze logic / pull-up cue and break X for HD bombs, progress has been quite rapid on JDAM and JSOW. Like D/L, this is also a rather complex task that will take time. Like HARM, these GPS-guided weapons have both TOO and pre-planned modes with many attack options Work is ongoing on the Latent Track While Scan (LTWS) and Track While Scan (TWS) air-to-air radar modes. This will in turn tie into the D/L We expect to see several of these items available this month. New DCS World Features Available now in the Open Beta and coming soon, are two new features for DCS World: Wake Turbulence. Just like the wake behind a ship, an aircraft also produces a turbulence wake behind it, with the strongest forces coming off the wingtips as vortices. DCS World will now be modeling these as an option and will add a new level of realism and challenge when flying formations, aerial refueling, and air-to-air combat. Battle Damage Assessment. Displayed along the left side of the screen when a target is damaged or destroyed by the player, these notifications appear. A red notification indicates a destroyed target and a yellow notification with a percentage indicates a damaged target. When in the cockpit, it can often be difficult to know if a target was hit and damaged. This optional feature is provided to remove that mystery. DCS: MiG-19P Farmer Update The MiG-19P was originally planned for a release in January, but after an extensive review of the MiG-19, we and RAZBAM have decided to postpone its release until a few items are resolved. These include some needed improvements to the flight model and documentation. It’s RAZBAM’s desire to release the MiG-19P in a finished state so it will need just a little more time in the oven to meet this expectation. Sincerely,
    The Eagle Dynamics Team

    Il2 DD Update Dev Blog 214
    76.IAP-Blackbird
    By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
    Hello everybody,   The year has just begun, but we're already preparing the new update for you. Version 3.010 will be focused on improving the functionality of several modules of the sim and some of the changes are long-awaited and important. In the meantime, the work on all the Early Access projects progresses according to the schedule and many new things will be ready shortly after 3.010 release, in Q1 2019.   Our map designers are finishing the map of the Southern Kursk salient that includes Prokhorovka. As we announced before, it will utilize the higher detailed landscape wireframe and higher detailed buildings damage. When it is finished, the work on the scenario campaigns for "Clash at Prokhorovka" will begin. The campaigns will recreate the large scale historical events of July 1943 to the South-West of Prokhorovka. Today we can show you several screenshots of this map:     We plan to show you the new tanks soon - M4A2 Sherman, Pz.Kpfw.III Ausf.M (to be released at the end of the Winter) and T-34 mod. 1943 and PzKpfw IV Ausf.G (to be released at the beginning of Spring). We also started the implementation of the major feature - animated tank crewmen. This is a very laborious and time-consuming task since each tank has 4-5 crewmen and each one of them has his own unique pose and animations (many can also lean out of their hatches). This forced us to find new technical approaches for character animation that open new prospects not only for the Tank Crew but also other projects:     For "Flying Circus" project we're making the map of 100 km front line near Arras (Spring 1918). It will be made using the same techniques we're using for the creation of the large Bodenplatte project map, so it should also be a step forward visually. Here are first in-game screenshots of Sopwith Dolphin and Fokker D.VII which will be ready soon:     For our main project, Bodenplatte, we're preparing the next wave of the new aircraft. FMs for P-51D, Fw 190 D-9 and Me 262 A-1/2 are already in the works, while artists create 3D models of Hawker Tempest Mk.V, P-38J-25, P-51D-15, Me 262 A-1/2 and B-25 Mitchell-II (non-playable). Here are some screenshots of Me 262 A-1/2 (its paint schemes and cockpit are nearly ready):     You can discuss the news in this thread

    Cliffs of Dover - Hurricane campaign
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    The gentlemen versus the players versus the Germans! Until a few days ago, having no interest in multiplayer, I had steered cleared of Cliffs of Dover. Until recently, I didn't have a system anywhere near the minimum spec of the current version on Steam, the Team Fusion 'Blitz Edition' (although it turns out to run smoothly, so far, at good-looking settings on a 1.5Gb GTX580, a lot less that the minimum 4Gb stated). So, how come this mission report? Well despite reports of poor AI, broken radio commands and limited single player content, I got it cheap enough to mitigate the limited satisfaction which I was resigned to expecting. First forays with my new toy confirmed the presence of several things I didn't like. Dispersion of effort into planes with little or no role in the Battle of Britain proper, which must be at the expense of something. Hedgerows replaced with 'tree-rows' and rather strong terrain colours (if not as cartoon-y as early versions). Over-weathered Hurricanes looking like ex-Japanese Army Airforce stock. Reasonable levels of radio traffic, but with some howlers like the boss being described as the Commander, instead of the Leader. Radio comms menu present but seemingly, much of it non-functional. Key commands a chore to set up, partly thanks to confusing duplicate labels in the settings table. Aircraft very hard to spot, without labels. RAF squadron codes vary from unit to unit, but are in too round a font. And that was before finding out whether the doubtless delectable but totally silly Spitfire Girl was still lurking in the wings (pun intended). However... ...if you can get over some quirks, the visuals are pretty good, especially the cockpits, and as I said performance was surprisingly smooth. I tried a few of the included single missions for the RAF, and found them passable fun, again apart from some more quirks mentioned here. So I decided to have a look at the current CloD single-player campaign, despite not having every last key properly set up, and in particular not having worked out how CloD's padlock works (I use mouselook but don't like head tracking systems). I soon found that the SP campaign is for an RAF fighter pilot, and apparently consists of a set of scripted missions, of unknown number so far. They have imaginatively-written briefings, which remind me of the best to be found in user-made campaigns for IL-2 '46, such as Blinding Sun and Faltspinman's Willi Jedermann series. Except that the briefings, creative though they be, are in some places bit twee - how do you say it in the US, 'cheesy'?  The back-story is that you are a working class boy, or perhaps lower middle class, recently signed up in the RAF and posted to your Hurricane squadron, which is based at Tangmere, close to the Channel coast, at about the time the Battle of France ends. Your squadron is fictitious, but nicknamed the Fat Cats Squadron, because its pilots are basically rich kids. In this respect it sounds a bit like 501 Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, which really was like that, being known as 'the millionaire's squadron'. In this CloD equivalent, the first briefing puts you firmly in your place, socially-speaking. But you are taken under the wing of a friendly flight commander with a similar 'limited background' to yourself, also from the Manchester area, a 'northerner' not a proper chap from the jolly old Home Counties. Your first mission with this less than friendly lot involves a scramble against a sudden, low-level raid by three Dornier 215 bombers which catches you on the ground, followed closely by a larger wave of maybe another nine. Second time up, you are scrambled to protect a Channel convoy against an attack by a large-ish bunch of Stukas, apparently unescorted. There are some screnies and brief notes on both missions in the post linked to above. Tolerably good, I found both, and the briefings link the missions together quite well. This report is from mission number three. The briefing begins with you and your friendly flight commander having a rather sad bitching session about the toffs who won't accept the likes of you and he into their circle, and ends when he breaks off to point out a damaged German bomber he's just spotted, apparently making for the coast on its own, in an effort to get back to France. 'Our planes are ready to go, let's go get him and orders be dammed!' is the gist of what he says next. So here we are. The mission has loaded and I'm sitting, engine running (no complex engine management mouseclick madness for me), in FC-A, with my new-found friend-for-life the flight commander in FC-M. The Fat Cats probably have personalised number plates on their MGs and Aston Martins, so I suppose it's no wonder they have their own fictional squadron code. The grass colours are really a bit dark but the airfield detail, as you can see, is fairly decent. It includes moving vehicles, notably some idiot racing around at about 50 MPH in a fifteen hundredweight truck or the like, fortunately well clear of any aircraft. Probably, it's some bored fat cat whose MG is in for a service. But where is the Hun? No-where to be seen, is the answer, so, slightly deflated, I wait for something to happen. ...to be continued!

    DCS Weekend News: 25 January 2019
    MigBuster
    By MigBuster,
         DCS: C-101 Aviojet and DCS: Christen Eagle II Release Reviews Since the successful release of the Christen Eagle II and the C-101CC, some great reviews have been created that discuss these great modules! DCS: Christen Eagle II Reviews: Purchase from the E-Shop. MagzTV Jabbers Crash Laobi 504smudge DCS: C-101 Reviews: Purchase from the E-Shop Mudspike 504smudge Spudknocker Rakuzard (German) We plan to release both the Christen Eagle II and the C-101 into Steam in February 2019. DCS World Update Early this week we released two Open Beta updates that included items like: Hornet: Laser-Maverick tracking range and laser code entry fixes Corrected VR projection to both eyes AIM-7 loft trajectory Updates to the Christen Eagle II and C-101 You can see the complete change logs here & here. Today we have moved the compilation of the past Open Betas into the Release version of DCS World. You can read the change log of this update here. DCS: Fw 190 A-8/F-8 Shrike Update Progress remains rapid on the Shrike with a release set for later this year. The Fw 190 A-8 will be an excellent counterpart to the Spitfire Mk.IX and provide a period-correct aircraft for the Normandy map. The F-8 version will provide the Luftwaffe a capable ground attack aircraft to match the upcoming P-47D and Mosquito. As you can see from the screenshots, a huge amount of detail is being put into this model that allows for spectacular battle damage results. Sincerely,
    The Eagle Dynamics Team

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS


×

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue..

  I accept