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Update 3.101 Dear friends, Today we have finished another huge update and it is already available to you. It includes the new war machines you can control - jet fighter/bomber Me 262 A Schwalbe for Bodenplatte, Т-34-76 made by UVZ factory in early 1943 for Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka and airplanes S.E.5a and Albatros D.Va for Flying Circus - Volume I. Upping the exterior textures to 4К quality level for Bf 109 F-4 and Fw 190 A-8 are another neat feature, as well as adding visible crews to player controllable Pz.III Ausf.M and M4A2. All VR users get the long-awaited fix of an aircraft propeller that looked distorted with VR reprojection turned on. There are many changes in aircraft and ground AI. The level of detail of player controllable tank systems and their damage model is nearly final. And as usual, there are many improvements in FM and aircraft systems modeling. IL-2 Sturmovik team wishes you nice summer weather and enjoyable flying in our sim! Main features 1. Jet fighter-bomber Me 262 A "Schwalbe" is now available for all owners of "Battle of Bodenplatte"; 2. Albatros D.Va is now available for all owners of "Flying Circus"; 3. S.E.5a is now available for all owners of "Flying Circus"; 4. T-34-76 UVZ made in early 1943 is now available for all owners of "Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka" (includes crew); 5. Bf 109 F-4 exterior textures are now available in 4К quality, including damage, thanks to =BlackHellHound1=; 6. Fw 190 A-8 exterior textures are now available in 4К quality, including damage, thanks to =ICDP=; 7. Crew models added to M4A2; 8. Crew models added to Pz.III Ausf.M; 9. In VR, active reprojection won't cause a rotating propeller to flicker; 10. The game launcher (non-Steam version) now offers more options (enabling or disabling VR, 4K textures, GUI autoscale and mods); AI improvements 11. AI fighters may cancel the attack run when hit by a bomber gunner fire; 12. AI fighters aim better when engaging a straight flying target; 13. AI fighters open fire earlier when engaging a straight flying target; 14. AI fighters maneuver more carefully when covering bombers; 15. AI keeps the formation much better; 16. AI ground attack planes and fighters RTB if they have no ammo for forward-firing armament left; 17. AI bombers open bomb bay doors during the bombing run only if there are bombs inside; 18. AI bombers won't open bomb bay doors during the route by mistake; 19. AI won't attempt to land on tank spawn points in multiplayer in case of an emergency; 20. AI gunners fire only at targets selected as 'Engageable' (Mission Editor parameter); 21. AI guns and tanks aim in a more realistic way, there is a slight fire delay after aiming and before re-engaging; 22. Driveable tanks controlled by AI keep formation better, including cases of losing one or more tanks of a platoon; 23. Ground AI can set and keep User Formation by mission command (current relative position of vehicles in the group); 24. Ground AI has three new formations: line left, line right, centered line (relative to the group leader); 25. Ground AI now correctly selects and uses APHE ammo (it used only AP ammo before); 26. Ground AI won't fire at crewmen escaping from friendly vehicles; New features for player controllable tanks 27. It's possible to limit the maximal gear by X and Z key; 28. Enter key invokes the damage control overlay; 29. Headlights state, engine damage and overheat, low oil pressure and battery charge, maximal selected gear limit are shown in the quick info interface panel; 30. Lots of instruments and controls are now animated: odometers, service meters, engine revolutions counters, ignition switches, starter buttons, oil temperature indicators, amperemeters, voltmeters, fire detection lamps, radio tuning dials, parking brake handles, turret locks; 31. Transmission damage affects the changing of gears, they become harder or impossible to switch; 32. Oil system damage causes engine damage at a progressing rate; 33. Cooling system damage affects oil and cylinder heads cooling effectiveness; 34. Electrical system damage affects the functionality of lighting, powered turret traverse and engine starter; 35. Engines have a heat model that is affected by damage; 36. Cold engine yields less power until it heats up; 37. An engine with overheated oil or cylinder heads accumulates damage fast; 38. 'Warmed up engine' option is valid for tanks too; 39. Fuel or oil leak could lead to a fire that can kill the crew and cause the ammo detonation; 40. In case of fire, the crew uses fire extinguishers if there are any left. It takes up to 2 seconds using automatic fire extinguishers and up 5 seconds using regular ones; 41. Damaged suspension springs or torsions can become lame; 42. If the coolant is boiling, there is a visible vapor exhaust from radiators; 43. A damaged engine can fill the tank interior with smoke; 44. Firing the gun and MGs can obscure vision in the tank interior; 45. Crew clothes, faces, hands, etc. can become dirty from smoke; 46. The turret traverse speed decreases with the inclination of the tank, it may be impossible to turn the turret at a high inclination angle; 47. The driver instruments functioning was updated; 48. Powered (electric) turret traverse mechanism added to KV-1s and Т-34-76-UVZ-1943 with the manual traverse as the backup one. The powered traverse mechanism won't work if it is damaged, there is no power or the engine is off; 49. Powered (hydraulic) turret traverse mechanism added to M4A2 and PzKpfw. VI Ausf. H-1 with the manual traverse as the backup one. The powered traverse mechanism won't work if it is damaged or the engine is off; 50. Backup (pneumatic) engine starter added to KV-1s and Т-34-76-UVZ-1943 that is used if there is no power; 51. Additional (panoramic) gunsight added to KV-1s and Т-34-76-UVZ-1943; 52. Backup gunsight (iron sights) added to Pz.III Ausf.M; 53. The shaft between the flywheel clutch and the gearbox on M4A2 is correctly animated; 54. Pz.III Ausf.M brake drums are correctly animated; 55. Pz.VI Ausf.H1 engine cooling fans are correctly animated; 56. Tanks won't 'jump' on rubble left from destroyed buildings; 57. A rare issue that could cause a still functioning tank to appear destroyed, but with functioning turret has been fixed; 58. A rare issue that could cause a still functioning track to appear destroyed has been fixed; 59. A small visual issue (grey square near the gun gunsight) has been fixed for Pz.III Ausf.M and Pz.VI Ausf.H1; 60. KV-1s paint color has been corrected; 61. The motion of a damaged right track of Pz.III Ausf.M has been corrected; New features in aircraft physics, systems and animations 62. Infinitely firing aircraft of other players shouldn't randomly appear in multiplayer anymore; 63. Additional steps were taken that should eliminate a rare problem of another player plane being invisible before opening fire; 64. PTAB sub-munitions effect on ground targets has been corrected; 65. Damage calculations for AP, APHE and HEAT aircraft-launched rockets have been significantly improved; 66. Physical models of all aircraft engines have been revised, many rare bugs were found and fixed; 67. A rare issue that could crash the sim when all fuel was spent (or leaked away) on Ju-88 and He-111 H6/H16 has been fixed; 68. A rare issue in P-47 turbocharger that could crash the sim was found and fixed; 69. The error that caused the Flying Circus aircraft propellers to have more power than RoF ones has been found and fixed. The notable difference was found at lower flight speeds, but additional research showed that this error made during porting of RoF planes to Flying Circus more or less affected all flight characteristics of the Flying Circus aircraft. In this update this error is fixed, so flight characteristics of all Flying Circus planes fully correspond to RoF before update 1.034. You can see the updated flight characteristics of Albatros D.Va and S.E.5a in their in-game descriptions, while updated descriptions for other Flying Circus aircraft will follow in the next update when we redo all the required measurements; 70. All aircraft: when starting or shutting down the engine with all three difficulty options "Cruise control", "Throttle auto limit" and "Engine auto control" turned off you need to move the engine controls during the startup or shutdown procedure yourself; 71. All aircraft: wind noise sound with jettisoned or broken canopy won't disappear at 720 kph and higher speeds; 72. All aircraft: new technochat message informs the player about the engine failure (when it shuts off by itself without player or throttle limiter input); 73. All aircraft: new technochat message informs the player that the engine start command is ignored if the startup requirements are not met; 74. Fw-190 D9 and Me 262 A: there is a tip in chat clarifying that the engine throttle is blocked from moving to cutoff position when the engine is on; 75. Sopwith Camel and Sopwith Dolphin skid steering animations were corrected; 76. Weight values listed for all large gunsights of Flying Circus planes and for the camera on SPAD XIII.C1 have been corrected; 77. Weight values listed for additional Lewis MGs on Sopwith Dolphin have been corrected, speed loss information added; 78. Moving horizontal stabilizers control levers or wheels can be heard; 79. When an engine is turned off, the motion speed of a throttle lever with engine helpers turned on has been increased (it is now the same as its motion speed with engine helpers turned off); 80. In multiplayer, you can hear the engine starter of another player. Because of the huge amount of changes, the track and mission format was changed. If you're an author of a custom mission or campaign, you need to resave your creation (it can be done quickly using 'Convert missions to binary in folder' in the Mission editor). Please discuss the update in this thread.

Hello everybody, The Spring ends soon, and we're preparing the next update for you. In the next 2-3 weeks, we plan to finish the testing of the new game version, which has started already - this week we started the beta testing of Flying Circus S.E.5a and Albatros D.5a and today we add T-34 UVZ mod. 1943 from Tank Crew project to it. And the next week the beta testing of the long-awaited Me 262 A for Battle of Bodenplatte will begin. For Bodenplatte we also have the Summer US pilot ready, German and British pilots will receive their summer outfits soon. We can show you the US one today: Jet engine Jumo-004B-1 for Me 262 A fighter/bomber is nearly finished - it is installed on the aircraft, its characteristics are set up and it is being tuned right now. For our project, we have chosen the updated variant of this engine which had a modified valve that made the throttle controls more trouble-proof. However, sharp throttle changes still can cause an engine fire, so it requires a degree of caution. Speaking of available modifications, this aircraft in the game will have the following ones: - EZ 42 gyro gunsight with automatic deflection calculation, - R4M unguided air-to-air rockets, 12 per mounting, - Armored pilot headrest, - Pilot back armor, - Removal of the gun mounting armor for making the aircraft less nose-heavy, - Removal of two Mk 108 guns, - Bomber variant capable of carrying two SC 250 or one SC 500 bombs. The list of this plane peculiarities includes the dangerous effect of Mach tuck at higher speeds that at first decreases its yaw stability. This yaw stability decrease not only makes the aircraft harder to handle but also warns the pilot of the increasing danger of an uncontrollable dive. The nose landing gear is omnidirectional and has additional brakes. While the plane is capable of reaching up to 837 kph near the ground it has good controllability at low speeds thanks to wing slats. It should be noted that the longitudinal center-of-gravity depends on the remaining fuel, ammo and modifications installed very heavily. For instance, if you remove the nose gun armor and two guns, it becomes so tail heavy with full tanks that it is dangerous to fly. Positive characteristics include good roll controls at any flight speed. All in all, the plane is going to be controversial, unusual and very interesting to fly: Next Flying Circus planes, S.E.5a and Albatros D.5a, are completely finished and are being tested at the moment. The new level of visual quality allows us to have a fresh look at the aircraft of the Great War - previously invisible details became apparent, the materials became more lifelike. We hope to be able to show you the first screenshots of the Arras map soon. Meanwhile, we started the work on the next pair of WWI planes we have to develop - Bristol Fighter and Halberstadt CL.II. Bristol Fighter was a general purpose frontline aircraft that served as fighter, light bomber and recon plane while Halberstadt CL.II was a specialized frontline attack aircraft, sometimes also used for recon. But today we can show you the screenshots of S.E.5a and Albatros D.5a: Tank Crew owners will also get much new stuff in this update - our partners from Digital Forms have finished the work on T-34-76 UVZ mod. 1943 and it will also be added to Early Access. There is much info on T-34 available, but some things can be repeated. Fast, maneuverable, with good armor and weapons - sloped angle armor made it only slightly less armored than heavier KV-1s. However, long 75 mm and 88 mm German guns in 1943 were very dangerous and this armor was no longer enough, so this means that T-34 crews need to rely on the main advantages of this tank - speed and mobility - even more. However, the new tank isn't the only addition to Tank Crew you'll get in the next update. We're currently testing the new, more detailed tank damage model. The damage sustained will be indicated on a special overlay toggled by Enter key and in the messages on the left of the screen. The following systems can be damaged: - Engine, - Cooling system (coolant leaks that eventually lead to an engine overheat and damage), - Oil tanks (oil leaks lead to fire danger), - Fuel tanks (fuel leaks also increase the danger of fire, more for gas engines and less for diesel ones), - Transmission and gearbox (longer gear shifting, inability to change the gear, complete transmission failure), - Steering (more difficult turning), - Electric system (inability to start the engine, inability to use powered turret traversing mechanism, internal and external lighting, radio), - The left part of the suspension and left track, - The right part of the suspension and right track, - Radio, - Main turret traverse mechanism, - Manual turret traverse mechanism, - Gun mounting, - Main gun, - Machine guns, - Crew. Of course, this feature is linked to another - the possibility of field repair. It is also being worked on and most of it will be usable for aircraft as well. The crew will be able to repair the tank systems in the field as long as the tank is not completely destroyed. In addition, the mission designer can add special repair and ambulance tracks that accelerate this process both to single and multiplayer missions. Later, during Summer, we plan to add refueling and ammo trucks to replenish the fuel, oil, water and ammo reserves. And today we can show you the screens of the coming T-34-76 UVZ mod. 1943: You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear friends, The time flows and the Summer draws near, and we're another step closer to the release dates of our projects. For Bodenplatte, the biggest chunk of work to be done is the map. With first cities, settlements and airfields done, the work continues on placing the rest of them according to historical data. In the code, we have begun the long-awaited work on aircraft AI improvements: for instance, in the next update, we plan to release the improved formation logic. For Career mode, new squadron emblems, military ranks and awards for all three countries will be finished soon. P-38J-25 and Tempest Mk.V FM are in the works, while Me-262A jet fighter-bomber FM should be finished soon. Speaking of visual models, P-51D-15, P-38J-25, Tempest and B-25D are nearing completion and proceeding according to schedule. Of course, the new theatre of war requires new ground vehicle models too. Today we can show you the screenshots of another one - German Sd.Kfz. 7/1 halftrack with 20 mm Flak-Vierling 38 AA gun: For Flying Circus, the development of the Arras map (1918) continues, it will use the new art techniques being developed for 'Bodenplatte'. We should be able to show you the first screenshots of it in Summer, but today we have some new WWI aircraft cockpit screenshots, S.E.5a and Albatros D.Va. As you can see, the work on them is nearly complete and we plan to release them for Flying Circus owners before the end of this Spring: For Tank Crew, the work on enhancing the tank damage modeling is progressing well. Physical tank models now include many systems and their damage while visual models have many new animations and working instruments. The already released systems have their damage modeling improved and we have added simple GUI damage notifications for systems and crewmen. All significant events will be displayed in the 'technochat' (log) on screen. In May-June we plan to implement repairing, refueling and rearming (which later will be also applicable for aircraft). In the next update, we'll release the animated crews for PzKpfw. III Ausf. M and M4A2. Today we can show you the PzKpfw. III Ausf. M crew and PzKpfw. IV Ausf. G interior: And to finalize this Dev Blog we would like to show you the new promotional video for Battle of Stalingrad created by =HH=Pauk. It shows that the development of all of our projects doesn't stop on release date by all means and they are continuously developed and improved. Enjoy: You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear friends, As the development continues, we have new stuff to show you today. Let's begin with the Flying Circus project - together with our partners, we're finishing the next two planes: British S.E.5a made by Royal Aircraft Factory made and German Albatros D.Va made by Albatros Flugzeugwerke. S.E.5a combined all the main combat characteristics needed for a victory - speed, firepower and maneuverability. Its 8-cylinder 200 HP V8 Wolseley Viper engine enabled it to go up to 218 kph at the ground level. Its armament of two different machineguns was somewhat original - one forward firing 7.69 mm Vickers and one 7.69 mm magazine fed Lewis installed on a mount that made firing at the targets forward and above possible: Albatros D.Va was a symbol of the first half of WWI and its streamlined profile is easily identifiable. Powered by 6-cylinder 180 HP Mercedes D.IIIa engine and armed with two synchronized 7.92 mm Spandau LMGs 08/15, it had a completely rigid fuselage made of glued wood, which is now much easier to visualize in the sim thanks to the increased quality and complexity of 3D models: For Tank Crew project we're developing the interiors of the next two tanks together with our partners: PzKpfw. IV Ausf. G and T-34 made by UVZ factory at the beginning of 1943. In addition to these new tanks, the next big update will bring numerous additions to the tank system functionality and damage modeling. Today we can show you the renders of the new T-34 interior made by Uralvagonzavod. And finally, the news about our biggest project, Bodenplatte. At the moment, all buildings models for it are completed, including the unique historical ones, and most of them already have modeled damage. The work on the new AI-controlled ground vehicles required for this project has started. Of course, the development of the remaining aircraft is progressing at full speed. Today we can show you a couple of screenshots showing the building damage on the Bodenplatte map: And here's one of the new AI-controlled vehicles - Willys MB off-roader. You can see the increased level of detail we have set up for all new non-player controlled ground vehicles: You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear friends, One week has passed since our previous Dev Diary and we have something new to show you once again. The rate of development is truly fantastic. Today we won't have so much text but will compensate it with WIP screenshots of two 'stars' of our Bodenplatte project. The first star of today's Blog is the British fighter Hawker Tempest Mk.V series 2. These planes played a significant role in the events of January 1st, 1945 - the units managed to take off in time when Luftwaffe attacked the Allied airfields during Bodenplatte operation. Tempests were equipped with some serious firepower - four 20mm Hispano guns - and achieved good speeds at lower altitudes, which was handy for a dogfight near the ground. The second aircraft we want to show you today is USAAF North American P-51D-15 Mustang, the most famous American fighter of WWII that was widely used in different theatres of war. To a degree, its exceptional range and altitude capabilities made the deep bombing raids over Germany possible. Mustangs had good overall maneuverability and climb rate, while their six .50 cal M2 Browning machineguns allowed them to engage any air targets. A Mustang could also carry bombs and rockets, making it a fighter/bomber. It should be noted that while many Mustangs still exist around the world, including airworthy ones, most of them are combinations of different modifications, including post-WWII ones. Therefore we're spending a lot of time researching tech schematics, spare parts catalogs, and similar documents to make sure the final result will be as authentic as possible. And to finish today's blog, here are WIP screenshots of the next Flying Circus plane - Fokker D.VIIF. This Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte late WWI fighter has been equipped with a great engine for its time, BMW D.IIIa, that gave it an advantage over Allied fighters at high altitudes. Coupled with good maneuverability, it made Fokker D.VIIF a very dangerous adversary. You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear friends, The Spring has come and in today's Dev Blog, after some delay, we're returning to our main project - Bodenplatte. This delay in the news has been caused by the fact that during the Winter all the work on this project was made at a deep level - it was hard to make a screenshot of something - but it was a hard work nevertheless. This was known beforehand and planned this way. If you were following us for some time, you may recall that such visible pauses in the development news in the middle of a development cycle happened in all our previous projects and are a result of the effective work and division of labor. But today we finally have some intermediate results to show, and there a lot of them. First, we can disclose more details about the map of the project. Previously we mentioned only its size and location, but today we can tell you more information. There will be more than 200 settlements of various sizes. Air forces of the opposing forces will take off from more than 100 airfields. The total length of all roads will exceed 20000 km. The reachable zone of the map is 129859 square kilometers (400.8 x 324 km) while the entire map is 176947 square km (460.8 x 384 km). The preliminary list of the cities we plan to have ready at the time of release follows: Antwerp The Hauge Liege Frankfurt am Main Dortmund Münster Cologne (Köln) Bonn Gent Rotterdam Charleroi Amsterdam Düsseldorf Aachen Bruxelles Arnhem Duisburg Essen Apeldoorn Maastricht Again, if you have followed our development before, you may notice that the parameters of the new map are breaking the record once again. This is also the first map to be released with all four seasons simultaneously - a hard challenge for the entire team. To be able to complete the project before the set deadline without compromising quality, our Lead Map Artist Evgeny Isaev has found new methods of development and large cities creation. Also, Evgeny has designed artistic approaches that will not simply repeat the visual quality of the previous maps but will also give players a new visual feel that is characteristic for flying over Western Europe. But enough words, it is time to show you something new - on these screenshots you can see the central areas of Bruxelles, Liege, and Köln: But these map development news are not the only ones we have. We can show you the progress we have made on the three coming planes: P-38J-25 heavy fighter, B-25 heavy bomber (AI only), and Me 262 A jet fighter. For the first one of them, P-38J-25, we have used a new approach of creating the exterior and interior 3D models in parallel, not subsequently - at the early stage the model is divided into exterior and interior parts and the coordinates of their seams are stored, then both models are being worked on simultaneously to be connected back at the final step. This aircraft, of course, is unbelievable, what can we say - it's a legend: The B-25 bomber will be AI-only in this project, but we'll try to make its exterior 3D and physical model at the same quality level as our player controllable aircraft. First, this is important for those who will be attacking or defending these planes in the Career mode, campaigns, single scenarios and Coop multiplayer. Second, who knows - perhaps a possibility to make it flyable will reveal itself in the future: The exterior 3D model of Me 262 A "Schwalbe" is completely done, including the official skins. The interior (cockpit) model is almost done (currently the artists are working on its texturing), while our engineers are working on its FM and the physical model of a jet engine. When you look at this legendary aircraft, you can't help but think that it was ahead of its time: To finish today's Dev Blog, we would like to congratulate the beautiful half of humanity on the coming holiday - International Women's Day. Dear girls, be happy! You can discuss the news in this thread

Salute, comrade pilots! For some time, we have not covered the work being done in our aviation workshop, giving the news platform to armored vehicle enthusiasts. But today it is time to return to the planes. And I will tell you what our engineering team is working on now. At this time our software engineers are simultaneously developing three legendary airplanes: the P-51D Mustang, the Fw-190 D-9 Dora and the Me-262 Schwalbe, which is the first jet airplane in the "IL-2: Great Battles" series. Undoubtedly, all these airplanes stand out from the rest of the plane-set in terms of their excellent speed characteristics. And as usual making a virtual copy of a new airplane to our stable brings new challenges and tasks we must perform. For example, the Me-262 is the first aircraft in our project with a swept wing. It would seem that the difference is not very big, but this circumstance required us to refine the aerodynamics calculation technology. The result of this work will be more accurate characteristics of the stability and controllability of the airplane in lateral movement, which sweep has a significant impact. Daniel has already mentioned about a turbojet engine in the previous diaries, and now work on the Jumo-004B model is in full swing. A dynamic model of the turbo-compressor was assembled, and now work is underway on the engine's thrust, heat and fuel-flow characteristics. Virtually each of the above airplanes required us to make improvements in the models of units and on-board equipment. For example, this is a powerful developed wing mechanization, including slats across the whole wingspan of the Schwalbe, a new gunsight that the Dora and the Schwalbe will receive - they will be the first German airplanes in our project with a gyro gunsight. There is also an automated control of radiators and superchargers on the Mustang. I should note that the P-51D and Me-262 have a sensitive center of gravity when heavily loaded with fuel and ordinance. For example, the Mustang had such a small reserve of longitudinal stability with full fuel tanks that the pilot flight manual instructed pilots to avoid aerobatics with full fuel tanks because of the risk of stall and spin. This quirk of the P-51D will be present in our simulator. In addition, two new biplanes for the Flying Circus project have entered the “factory testing” stage. These are the legendary Fokker D7 and Sopwith Dolphin, whose 3D models were revamped by our partner Ugra-Media. This stage involves a large number of in-game tests that we perform before giving the airplanes to beta testers. And for such tests, we use special developer tools that allow us to quickly check various animations, visualization of damage models, operation of instruments and visual effects, such as smoke, fires, dust from under the wheels and others. Today I would like to show you a short video with one of these tests. In this video you can see an in-game test (conducted at a special test base on a distant secret island) where the animation of the landing gear damage was checked. I recorded this video in the fall while working on the implementation of the Sopwith Camel to our project. Often, working on "serious games" we forget that our work is also fun. In this video I just wanted to have some fun with my colleagues, to cheer them up after a period of hard work. So today, my colleagues and I decided that maybe it is a good idea to share this video to you. If it evokes a smile on your face - well, then I recorded it not in vain. If you like it, it may possible that we will show you some more in-game tests that our very serious engineers do: And finally, since we have touched on our Flying Circus project, we would like to show you a series of screenshots from the Arras map which our partners at Ugra-Media are actively working on. In these screenshots you can see the step forward in visualization of the map compared to our previous Great War simulation. Plus, here are the first in-game screenshots of the re-furbished Sopwith Dolphin and Fokker D.VII cockpits which are coming soon: Fly for fun! You can discuss the news in this thread

Hello everybody, Before we return to telling about the Battle of Bodenplatte and Flying Circus in our DDs, today we'd like to tell you more about Tank Crew. The most important thing is that we prepare the next big update that will include two new tanks, M4A2 "Sherman" and Panzerkampfwagen III Ausführung M, that were used in Kursk area and the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient made for joint ground and air warfare. But of course, we work not only on the new content. The main areas of the Tank Crew development at this moment are: 1. Improving the damage and armor-projectile interaction model both for the player controlled tanks we're making for Tank Crew and the other objects. Several consequent updates for the sim we released this month contained most part of this work, but this was only a part and we continue. Ricochet modeling will be improved and 'simple', non-player controllable, vehicles will get even more detailed armor (which will be noticeable especially when you attack them from the air). We're beginning the work on the detailed systems of the player controllable tanks (fuel, electric, transmission, cooling, etc.) which will allow for more variable and realistic damage of Tank Crew vehicles. We also plan to make them repairable in the field. 2. Developing and expanding the tank and tank platoon commander functionality. The basic commander functionality is done - a commander can give all the orders we planned for this stage of development in relation to the current position, target, firing, maneuvering and some additional commands that make the playing experience more diverse. A commander will be able to give orders to other players in his tank in multiplayer and to AI crewmen alike. It looks like the commander role will be the most interesting one. 3. Developing AI for crew members. Again, the basic functionality is done and now detailed tanks controlled by AI can follow the orders that can be specified in a mission like the simple AI vehicles always did. This means that detailed tanks can be fully used in a mission scenario. Now we begin the work on implementing the functionality that will make possible for a player to give orders to crewmen of his tank and other tanks in his platoon. We hope to have this functionality mostly done by the end of Spring and release it into Tank Crew Early Access. 4. Developing the scenario campaigns which should carry out the main idea of the project - let you experience not the fictional gladiator-like balanced tank duels, but the tank warfare of July 1943 with its balance of power and technical characteristics of the armored vehicles involved. Moreover, we'll try to show the historical events since the scenarios will be based on the tour of duty of the units that participated in these events. Later we'll tell you more about these scenarios. All this - detailed, true to history tank models including interiors with crews, the historical map with variable detail level, buildings with detailed damage modeling, realistic movement kinematics, improved tank damage modeling, detailed weaponry, all important crew roles, especially the commander one, acting as a part of a tank platoon, history-based and educational scenario campaigns telling about the major event of WWII, ability to control one tank with several people in multiplayer - all this combined should give you the new experience and impression you can't get anywhere else. To make this DD less dry, our studio and our partners Digital Forms prepared several WIP screenshots for you that show what will be released in the next big update: The map of the southern part of the Kursk salient you'll see in the game. The zone containing detailed buildings developed for tank warfare and scenario campaigns in the historical events of Clash of Prokhorovka project is marked inside (106x106 km, the detailed zone is 19х23 km): KV-1S crew: PzKpfw III Ausf.M impact shot demonstrating the improved damage modeling with certain parts detaching: M4A2 "Sherman" interior renders: PzKpfw III Ausf.M interior renders: You can discuss the news in this thread

Good day my friends, part 1 of 4 of a great Interview is released on Stormbirds. Im proud to see the interest in il2 is growing in our community. So let me present you some great new infos about this great Adventure, called Il2. Best regards Martin It’s my great pleasure to introduce a four part series featuring two members of the 1C Game Studios team: Jason Williams and Daniel Tuseev. Jason Williams is President of 777 Studios and Executive Producer at 1C Game Studios and hardly needs introduction to regular readers of this blog. Jason’s one of the driving forces behind the current direction of the IL-2: Great Battles Series and a frequent presence in the community. Daniel Tuseev has been a Project Manager and is currently the Technical Producer at 1C Game Studios and has been involved with the IL-2: Great Battles Series stretching back to the very beginning of the project. This first part of this interview is focused on IL-2: Great Battles in 2019 with questions on everything from hardware and VR to new content and new features for the series. There are three more parts planned on specific topics covering everything from IL-2: Battle of Bodenplatte, Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka, and Flying Circus Vol 1. We’re also going to talk about the future of the series so look out for follow up segments coming in the next few weeks! Part one: The IL-2: Great Battles Series in 2019 Let’s start by talking about your history with flight sims. How long have you been involved with flight sims and what were some of your old favourites? Jason Williams: “Oh wow…this could be a long answer, but I’ll try to give a short one. My first exposure to a proper flight-sim was F-15E Strike Fighter at a friend’s house when I was a kid. I think it was on an IBM PC with a monochrome screen. A computer teacher of mine also demonstrated the very first MS Flight Simulator in class one day. That was 7th or 8th grade. Later in the early 90’s my uncle had one of the first Falcon games. Then my family got a 386 PC and I played F-117 Stealth Fighter which I got as a Christmas present. In college I bought my first PC and started playing other sims/games including all the titles in the Jane’s series like ATF, USNF, Longbow, WWII, IAF etc. and anything else that piqued my interest including European Air War. In 1997 I worked as a legislative intern at the state capital building. All the staff was invited to the Governor’s mansion for a big party. They would be hob-knobbing with the Governor and other powerful political people who could give them jobs after graduation. I was like meh… I want to go home and play my sims. After college I played Jane’s USAF and then Falcon 4.0 quite heavily. I also played Flanker a bit, but it didn’t grab me like Falcon did. I remember sitting in a cubicle at a big law firm I worked at in Silicon Valley just day dreaming about going home and playing my sims. Then in 2001 I dove into the original Sturmovik and that was a life changing event for me. My passion for the hobby became an obsession.” Daniel Tuseev: “While my Grandfather was an aerospace engineer in USSR (he have participated in S-75/SA-2 SAM and “Shkval” torpedo development) and I’ve spend many time in talks with him about aviation in times even before school – aviation is my hobby and my love as far as I can remember myself. Flight sims was my first love in gaming from the moment I’ve received my first Sega Mega Drive. My first sims were F-117, LHX, Janes ATF. And always I’d love not only just to play them, but to investigate the sim world, do something unplanned, study how the things works. My first “adult love” in flight-simming was Flanker 1.0. I’ve decided to study for an aviation engineer while I’ve played it. This game have allowed me to start to understand how the combat aviation works. After that, when I’ve started my study in Moscow Aviation Institute, I’ve spend many times in study of aviation in LO:MAC and MSFS. These days were awesome.” The IL-2: Great Battles Series has expanded in scale and scope significantly over the last two years bringing a lot of new ways to play. What are some of the standout new features that you think are drawing new players into the series and at the same time satisfying the veterans of the series? Jason: “I think our move to abandon the original design and go back to the classic formula of QMB, SP and MP content without unlock gimmicks has helped and the addition of great new content like Kuban and other improvements in the graphics department and good VR support. The Career has also been a popular addition. The big survey we did a couple months ago helped to clarify what attracts virtual pilots to our sim. It’s a wide mix of things that bring people in, but we got some useful data. Thanks to all who took it seriously and participated.” Daniel: “I’m sure that the reason is consistent with the fast evolution of the project. We have performed several huge steps forward like switching to X64, moving to DX11, VR support, several major improvements in aeroplane physics and damage model, improvements of landscape model, adding Career, Cooperative and Scenario Campaigns game modes. All this was done so rapidly and with so good result that this have really addicted players attention and interest. Plus huge changes in gaming strategy – moving back from leveling system to classic sim gameplay – it is also have bring many positive from our community.” What kinds of improvements are you hoping to see from PC hardware (GPUs, joysticks, etc.) that might make your job easier? Jason: “Good question. Better VR goggles are on everyone’s list and I’d like to see large monitors with higher refresh rates for a reasonable price. How about a 32, 35 or 43 inch 4K 240hz monitor that is not just a stripped down television? And the video card prices are ridiculously high. There are a few joystick makers that really could benefit from committing to the North American market in a more serious way. All of their supply problems could be solved by now and sales would be enormous relatively speaking. The creativity is there that is for sure, just not the business vision. I have some experience in this department, which I won’t get into, but until they move west in a more serious manner their ability to grow will be limited and supply will continue to be an issue. I don’t want to see Thrustmaster be so dominant in this space forever simply due to supply and logistics issues.” Daniel: “IMO one of the great misses on controllers market is lack of medium-cost reliable joysticks and rudder pedals with force feedback. In previous times there was a great choose of FFB joysticks on the market – now we have too lack of it. Of course it would be great to have 4K VR devices with wide field of view which will allow you to use your peripheral vision. Also, I believe that there will become a time when 6-D moving seat platforms combined with VR will be standardized and will have acceptable cost to be widely used in flight-simming. So as you see – all my dreams are around player sensoring and feedback systems.” VR has become a selling point for serious combat simulators like IL-2. What do you see in the future for VR? Jason: “I predict higher res units, but difficulties with framerates. I hope, hope, hope there are some tricks we can use to boost framerates at higher resolutions.” Daniel: “As I’ve said above – for VR it is very important to have wider field of view which will allow you to full-use of peripheral vision. Also, virtual gloves technology is a great perspective.” Are there areas where you’d like to improve performance or add additional features to VR within IL-2? Jason: “The key to VR nirvana is higher FPS at a higher resolution. How we get there is still a bit unknown. With a custom engine like ours and a small team, solutions take longer to figure out.” Daniel: “I’d like one day to have VR gloves support in IL-2. It is the main one.” The team has been implementing new network related code over the last few patches. Are there plans to keep working on that area? How difficult is it to find and fix some of the issues that players have reported over the years? Jason: “Yes, but it’s difficult. We have a small team as everyone knows and re-writing and improving netcode is pretty complex. Our only option is incremental changes, gather feedback and then tweak more or dump the changes. It’s not ideal, but it’s what we are forced to do. We agree it can be better and we are working slowly, but surely in that direction.” Daniel: “Yes, we will not stop our work on that issue. It is very difficult area for debugging because most of the issues which we have fixed and improved I the recent past are related to situation of high population of game server. This fact has put serious restrictions on variety of methods which you may use for investigation and debug. In these circumstances the statistics and analysis become the main tool of the finding the reasons, this why these issues can’t be improved rapidly and requires time for develop.” The issue of cheating occasionally comes up (and has again recently) in the IL-2 multiplayer community. What is the team doing to try and prevent some of these efforts? What can the community do to help report the few that decide to cheat? Jason: “First, if we see concrete evidence of cheating, we ban the player, which we have done already to some. Second, we have built some experimental tools to try and stop more advanced cheating, but they need more testing. And finally, we have already plugged some exploits that most of the public didn’t even know about. Cheaters are assholes who don’t just stumble upon cheats. They create them and it forces us too divert resources to that instead of building the product you want. And “off the shelf” anti-cheat tools don’t necessarily work in a custom engine like ours. Remember, we have a custom engine built from scratch. I hate this subject with a passion because it’s complete intentionally caused destruction of our product. It’s malicious and wrong. Just play the game fair and square.” Daniel: “While flight sim with complex flight model and 80+ players on one game server can’t be developed in the way of shooter (where all physics, weapons and damage are calculated on game server) – this problem can’t be solved “once and forever”. In this case it always will be a competition of the sword and the shield. And as you know, sword is always is on the step ahead. But in combine with administrative methods we doing good job in moderating such cases. Also, of course we work on methods of cheating detection and cheating prevention – but methods which we’re using can’t be told to outside because this will give new arms to hands of cheaters. So what I can really say – we continue our work on that.” The ‘Havoc over the Kuban’ campaign is the first community created Scripted Campaign sold on the IL-2 store. Are more campaigns like that planned in the future? Jason: “Yes, I hope so, but the quality needs to be there. That can be hard to judge sometimes and Scripted Campaigns take a long time to test and development can take a while. But I have two more that I know will happen, but for now I’m taking a break from greenlighting any more. And don’t forget there are some AWESOME free ones out there posted on our forum. Check them out! Some very talented mission makers in our community.” Daniel: “Of course. The main reason of developing the Scripted Campaign game mode was to open the way for community to develop to distribute their result to players. Also, we are working closely with guys from community who doing really serious job on campaigns development helping them sometimes with advices and sometimes with specific changes in the game.” The U-2VS was the first aircraft developed by a third-party developer. Are there plans to continue with that model in the future? Related question: Is the Li-2 (or C-47/DC-3) still planned? Jason: “Yes, that is correct. The U-2VS was built by our friends at Yugra Media. They have a contract to build the Li-2 and maybe a C-47 if that works out, but we’re a long way from that at the moment. The U-2 was a very intensive process that took more of our own time than we had hoped. I’m still hopeful the Li-2 will happen as planned, but until I know for sure I can’t say more. Yugra is also making our Flying Circus planes and they are still learning how to make them efficiently and with high quality. Making planes from scratch or revising older ones up to our standards is a challenge even for an experienced team like Yugra. But they are making real strides. And don’t forget our tanks are made by DigitalForms and that was an entirely new type of machine to for us to support technically and gameplay wise. Daniel, Mike and Sergey have done a tremendous job making tanks possible along with DigitalForms who are giving it there all. It’s been fun to watch the progress.” Daniel: “Yes it is. We working hard to open our doors for everyone who is capable and interested to create content for IL-2 Great Battles. At the moment we have two studios in collaboration with us, we hope that after time it will be more. So, anyone who interested and capable in this – contact to us, we waiting for you. Of course, it is still requiring some work from our side because control, implementation and physics model development is on our side anyway, but this is means that anyone can be calm about quality and accuracy of the result.” Fans of the series have also wondered about future Collector Planes that continue to add to the Eastern Front experience (the Yak-9/9T, IL-4, Tu-2, I-153, Hs123, Bf110F and others come up frequently), are there any plans to do those or work with a third-party team to build those in the future? Jason: “Probably not third party for any of those. Those would be best built by us due to the subject matter. We do hope to make more collector planes in the future and we still like the Eastern Front. I’d like to see all those planes flying one day. Out of all of those the Yak-9T would be the most likely one.” Daniel: “At the moment only ideas are kicked around, it is too early to say what exactly we or our partners will do next. But yes, some of these planes are inside of the circle of possible variants.” You’ve talked about building an Air (and Ground) Marshal feature for a couple of years. How is the planning for that mode coming along and what are you hoping players will be able to get out of having a feature like that once it’s complete? Jason: “We’re in the initial stages of development now. We’ve agreed to a design and begun optimizations of the GUI which was needed before we start the main building process. The design, if it works, has been improved from my early concept into a really neat system. Our hope is that it will make MP more interesting and increase teamwork as it was in real life. It will be an optional feature for servers if they don’t like it. It could be a game-changer for online wars and all forms of MP if the community takes such a feature seriously and tries to fly like a real coordinated air force.” Daniel: “Marshall mode design is established and it is already in development. It will be a huge gameplay feature, comparable to Career by complexity of development. If everything will be good – this feature will be done before release of Bodenplatte. This feature also requires many GUI based improvements and optimizations, some of them you will see in 3.010 as a “bonus” from Marshall mode development which is still in progress. In result players on populated multiplayer game servers will have a new layer of gameplay and cooperation. First of all – this feature should bring an obvious and dynamically changed vision to each player of what multiplayer mission objectives are and what is the player coalition strategy and current tactical tasks. Also, it should bring a new proximity to immersion of real aerial battle to the players.” You’re currently working with Pat Wilson and his PWCG software to add a co-op career experience for players but you’ve also talked about building the IL-2 Career mode into Co-op as well. Is that a long range goal or something you’re hoping to add in 2019? Jason: “No, it’s a long-range goal for us. Pat is a very smart guy and when he said he could do this in a reasonable time frame I jumped at the chance to have him try and I’m confident he will succeed. For us to do it inside the game will take some serious time and right now we have other goals and things to build for MP. Fingers crossed Pat hits a home run with his implementation. Remember he has been working with his code for years now which is different than how we work. Sometimes, it takes one guy with a singular vision and a lot of time to build something super special. “ Daniel: “It is a long-range goal as Jason has stated. Our engine is designed around a central core and different modes of gameplay all share the same basic architecture, so different features of SP and MP can share things to make such hybrid features possible. It will be mostly a question of lobby and GUI design when we eventually focus on such a feature.” Improving the multiplayer lobby is one of the goals that you’re hoping to tackle this year and you’ve previously said that it won’t be easy. What kinds of features are you hoping to have and how much of a challenge is it to build this in? Jason: “I can’t say right now what the exact shape it will take. Obviously, people want chat and a lobby of some kind. Everyone remembers old Hyperlobby and how that worked. So, something that can make match-making easier, but with features users want. We haven’t sat down to draw a final design yet, but that time is coming soon. We briefly mapped it out over a year ago, but it was just to understand the resources we would need to do it. And yes, everything about MP is difficult. A very tough crowd to please. “ Daniel: “While exact design is in development now, now I can only say what we want to have there. We supposing to have common chat, chat rooms, friends, server pre-start lobby where players will bring together and start server when they will be ready and so on.” The team is going to be very busy building a lot of previously announced content in 2019. Are there any surprises we should be watching out for this year? Jason: “Mmmm… if I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise? Time will tell if there are any surprises. Right now, I don’t know of any… or do I. Hmmmm………” Daniel: “I think you will have some.” Three more parts coming I hope everyone enjoyed reading part one of my interview with Jason Williams and Daniel Tuseev. The next three parts are currently in the works and I hope to be able to share them with you very soon! Original link: https://stormbirds.blog/2019/02/06/part-1-an-interview-with-jason-williams-and-daniel-tuseev-il-2-great-battles-series/?fbclid=IwAR3xdunpO0sDtf0I6iG6DQEOB71I6yU_meKoSGH1aI5_4d-6A86CPFCeMBk

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

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

News, put together by Stormbirds IL-2’s Lead Producer, Jason Williams, revealed plenty of new information today in a post on the IL-2 forums with plenty of far reaching details on the release order of content coming to the IL-2 series including some surprise changes to the order of new materials. There has long been speculation on the order that content will release in for IL-2: Battle of Bodenplatte (not to mention Tank Crew and Flying Circus). In the post that went up a few hours ago, we’ve learned about each of the three titles and what content is releasing and when. Me262 coming sooner than expected Though long thought to be the last aircraft to be released, 1CGS has apparently made tremendous strides in getting the required flight model changes and jet engine modeling inserted into the engine – to that point that the Me262 will now release alongside the FW190D-9. That means that the FW190D-9, already well known to be coming next, will come with the Me262. That is incredible news and a change of plans from 1CGS on release order compared to what we previously knew. Here’s the new order: Me-262 and Fw-190 D-9 P-51D B-25 (AI) Tempest Mk.V P-38J Excitingly, the P-51D is next in the line-up but it does mean that we’ll be waiting for a while yet for another two highly anticipated types: the P-38J and the Tempest Mark V. Tanks will be coming in larger packs Eight more tanks are coming in 2019 for Tank Crew – Clash at Prohorovka. While the tanks themselves have been well known for over a year now, the actual release order has been only guessed at based on what we’ve seen from the work in progress images. The next release for Tank Crew will include: M4A2 PzKpfw IV Ausf.G T-34 model 1943 PzKpfw III Ausf.M Following that, a second release will include: SU-122 PzKpfw V Ausf.D SU-152 Sd. Kfz. 184 I would suggest to those unclear about this that it is very likely that there will be large gaps in between these releases as the models for these tanks are worked on. Two additional vehicles will be offered as Collector Vehicles (like Collector Planes) and they are: GAZ-MM + 72K Sd. Kfz. 10 + Flak38 These two mobile flak vehicles will provide a whole new aspect for the IL-2 series with a new mission – firing back at aircraft attacking ground targets and tanks. One thing is certain and that is Tank Crew will be growing immensely from its currently very early access state into a complete package over the coming months. Flying Circus aircraft still to come We already knew that the Fokker D.VII and D.VIIF were coming alongside the Sopwith Dolphin. From there we were only making educated guesses, however, according to Jason Williams, the order will go as follows: Fokker D.VII and D.VIIF and Sopwith Dolphin Albatros D.Va and S.E.5a Bristol F2B and Halberstadt CL.II and CL.IIau Flying Circus has four aircraft that have helped prove and cement the concept of bringing Rise of Flight’s aircraft to the next generation of the Digital Warfare engine – letting people experience VR WWI air combat and enjoying the benefits of years of development on the series’ engine. The rest of the aircraft line-up will help further sell the concept I think – and it leaves me hopeful for a future Vol 2 follow-up too. Map release order too We now have information on the release order for the new maps coming as well. Bodenplatte Map Arras Map Prokhorovka Map Last in the order is the recently revealed Prokhorovka map which is interesting because we’ve seen this map in development while the Arras map for Flying Circus has not yet been seen in work in progress screenshots. Many months ago we saw the first images of the Bodenplatte map followed up by images of new city layouts that would help the 1CGS team quickly populate the largest (and most densely packed) map in the series’ history. Of course, the Bodenplatte map isn’t just one theme as it comes with all four seasons – summer, autumn, winter, and even a spring thaw version of the map that is something we’ve not really seen before. And those other features Sometimes I think we get so caught up about seeing our favourite aircraft or tank added that we sometimes forget that the thing that helps propel all of this along are those “other features” that are so essential to making something like the IL-2: Great Battles Series compelling. 1CGS has no shortage of that planned. Bodenplatte Career Bodenplatte Scripted Campaign Another Payware Scripted Campaign or two from 3rd Parties Tank Crew Scripted Campaigns American and British Radio Calls Air/Field Marshal Feature Object Viewer New MP Lobby (Fingers crossed, this one won’t be easy) PWCG Online Co-Op Campaign (Go chew on Pat about this) and hopefully many other tweaks and fixes etc. as we go along. Things like a Career we’ve come to expect from the 1CGS team who delivered that feature in March of 2018 and which has, in my mind at least, transformed the single player experience. Other things like the Air Field Marshal and a new Multiplayer Lobby have the potential to be game changing for the multiplayer experience. We’ve got a lot to look forward to in the IL-2 series this year and I think we’re in for another transformative year for IL-2: Great Battles. And who knows… 1CGS always has a few surprises rolled up their sleeves. Original source https://stormbirds.blog/2019/01/15/new-2019-il-2-great-battles-content-release-info/

Hello everybody, So, this is the end of 2018. It was a very interesting year for us, it brought many new, but long-awaited changes and improvements to the project. Almost 500 points were listed in the update changelists in total and there were more minor, unlisted ones which are impossible to count. All this combined upped the quality of the sim to a new level. And right now we continue the development of our three Early Access projects: Battle of Bodenplatte, Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka and Flying Circus Volume 1. For the main project, Bodenplatte, we're working on several new aircraft at once. Having completed the implementation of the air compressibility and significant improvements to the damage model (they are already in the public version of the sim), our Lead Engineer is creating the physical model of the jet engine for Me 262. Of course, this work opens up the possibility to widen our aircraft pool in the future. Our partner Ugra Media makes the new WWI aircraft for Flying Circus - Fokker D.VII, Fokker D.VIIF and Sopwith Dolphin. They'll start the work on the Arras area map (1918) soon. The new tanks for Tank Crew that are being made by our partner Digital Forms are more than half complete already: M4A2, T-34 mod. 1943, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G and PzKpfw III Ausf.M. Meanwhile, we're making the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient ourselves. Soon we'll be able to tell you more about the tank commander and tank platoon commander functionality which will be the backbone of Tank Crew gameplay. 3D models of Soviet and German crewmembers are ready and will be added to the sim as soon as their animations are complete. The scenarios for two, German and Soviet, tank campaigns are ready, so soon we'll start to make the missions themselves. The detailed buildings tech that includes higher detailed 3D models and the physics of their destruction is nearly finished and we had a bit of time to make this short video for you: To complete this Dev Diary, we'd like to show you some screenshots. First, here is the finished Fw 190 D-9 cockpit. Also, the community enthusiast Martin =ICDP= Catney upped default and official P-47 skins to 4K quality: Our team wishes you Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. We wish you happiness and fulfillment of all your dreams in 2019! You can discuss the news in this thread

Update 3.009 Dear friends, Trying to squeeze in more functionality, new content, improvements and additions for you before the holidays, we've prepared another update 3.009. This time, the main feature of this update is the new content: Collector Plane, famous Soviet light bomber U-2VS. At the moment it can be used in QMB and multiplayer modes, but we'll add new Career mission types especially for it (Stalingrad and Kuban ToWs) next month. There are two new scripted campaigns available. One made by =BlackSix= happens at Stalingrad after 'Blazing Steppe' and continues the story of the German pilot that started in '10 Days of Autumn' campaign, while another made by =Gambit21= is dedicated to A-20 squadron operating in the skies of Kuban. As usual, the update also brings numerous improvements and additions, upping the overall quality of the sim: 1. New Collector Plane U-2VS; 2. New scenario campaign 'Fortress on the Volga' by Alexander =BlackSix= Timoshkov; 3. New scenario campaign 'Havoc over the Kuban' by =Gambit21=; 4. New Career mission "Troop concentration night bombing strike"; 5. New Career mission "Enemy airfield night bombing strike"; 6. New Career mission "Railway hub night bombing strike"; 7. New Career mission "Supply dump night bombing strike"; 8. New Career mission "River crossing night bombing strike"; 9. Our community enthusiast =BlackHellHound1= remade all outer textures of Bf 109 F-2 (main texture, bump, specular, damage) and made historically accurate skins for it in 4К; 10. Three new skins for Fokker Dr.I; 11. Two new skins for SPAD 13.C1; 12. The delay, when a new player connects to a server, has been minimized for other players; 13. Projectile hits at turret gunners now calculated properly (they weren't counted properly before); 14. 76 mm APHE rounds won't erroneously damage the internal components without penetrating the armor; 15. P-47D-28 skin damage has been corrected (increased); 16. Airfields surface on Velikiye Luki map has been flattened; 17. It is now possible to lean to the gunsight closer than before on all aircraft; 18. Visual propeller damage corrected on Ju-52 (previously damaging the right propeller would visually damage the left one); 19. Inability to start a new Career from an old one (lack of available units) has been fixed; 20. After spending all ammo of one kind in a tank the interface won't erroneously show the full ammo; 21. Escape menu works correctly even if there are no vehicles in the mission; 22. Wrong waypoint labels corrected in scenario campaigns; 23. Mission briefings text rendering corrected in scenario campaigns; 24. The random mirroring issue of a pilot portrait in Career has been fixed; 25. Creating new Career in Stalingrad ToW has been fixed for certain units; 26. An issue of jumping reflections in the water caused by mirrors has been fixed; 27. Vehicle pathfinding issue that could cause slow performance loss has been fixed; 28. Formation movement AI on land and water has been improved - the leader won't slow down if it is possible; 29. Collision detection routine improved (the detailed tanks shouldn't twitch in certain situations anymore); 30. Formation movement has been improved overall; 31. The bug that caused AI pilots to miss ground targets has been fixed; 32. AI checks the altitude in a downward spiral maneuver; 33. Bombs and rockets equipped AIs should correctly engage ground targets in QMB; 34. Modifier object: it is now possible to assign negative values to a counter. Both the current value and trigger threshold can be set for a timer; 35. Timer: when a new trigger signal is received, the timer resets; 36. Modifier and timer: parameter index 0 now controls the current timer value while parameter index 1 controls the timer threshold; 37. Modifier and timer: timer can be reset and stopped by parameter index 0 and value -1; 38. Fw 190 A-8: canopy raindrops added for Sturmjager modification; 39. Fw 190 A-8: windshield cleaner corrected for Sturmjager modification ; 40. Fw 190 A-8: too dark materials corrected at some places; 41. Fw 190 A-8: rocket control box decreased in size; 42. Fw 190 A-8: pilot model holds the control stick; 43. Bf 109 G-14: pilot model holds the control stick. Please discuss the update in this thread.

Update 3.008 Dear friends, We spent the two weeks since the previous release on intensive work on important aspects of the project. In the not-too-distant future, we'll be adding some huge new features for our Early Access titles, so we've decided to take some time and concentrate on several smaller, but important and long-awaited improvements and create this update. The main feature of this release is revised airframe damage modeling - an important part of the damage system. Airframe damage system was completely overhauled to take into account additional parameters. The damage modeling as a whole was tuned and improved and bugs fixed - you can read the entire list below. There is large amount of changes and improvements in aircraft systems, their model and the AI. We added the new British pilot model to the sim and all Bodenplatte and Flying Circus pilots can now take their oxygen masks and goggles on and off. Multiplayer improvements also continue since the last version too. There are new performance optimizations for sea maps. Users who encountered stutters using Microsoft Force Feedback joysticks and TrackIR now have an option to tune FFB effect polling frequency using the additional setting in startup.cfg file. For mission designers we added a way to control Timer and Counter values dynamically. To do this, there are two new logical objects Modifier: Add Val and Modifier: Set Val. We plan to widely use them to alter various triggers in the future, but at the moment they can be used for: - modifying a Timer trigger value. A modifier can set, add or substract the time value in a timer by using the 0 index of the controllable value and 1-st field of the value vector. When set to a negative value, the time counter is reset and the timer stops until the next input. For example, this can be used to reset and stop a timer in a mission, delaying some events tied to it. - modifying a Counter trigger value and threshold (initiall set in a mission). To alter a Counter value, use the 0 index of the controllable value or alter Counter threshold using the 1-st index. For example, a certain mission event like a premature elimination of some targets can lower the threshold of a Counter to make sure the others are eliminated at the moment the player arrives to the waypoint. Main features: 1. Late war British pilot added to Spitfire Mk.IXe; 2. New control elements added to mission logic (useful for mission designers): "Modifier: Add Val" and "Modifier: Set Val". They can alter the values of other logical elements - Counter and Timer (when used with a Timer object, Set Val can input a negative value to reset and stop a Timer); 3. Force Feedback joystick owners who experience stutters can alter the new value in startup.cfg that governs the maximum frequency of FFB effects polling to try to eliminate them (update_freq parameter in [KEY = force_feedback] section can be set to a value from 0.5 Hz to 10 Hz, example: update_freq = 10.0); 4. Additional renderer optimizations for sea maps (Kuban, Bodenplatte in the future) allowed to boost performance on such maps even more; 5. AA searchlights now can follow Attack Area command which can be used to limit their search area and/or use them as visible beacons (useful for mission designers); 6. Multiplayer: 'allow other players to man stations' option now saved; 7. Multiplayer: various issues like statistics 'freezing', inability to start a mission, kill messages disappearing were fixed for high-load servers; 8. Multiplayer: missing AP hit sound effects and some other sounds restored; 9. A rare crash that could happen in high load situations like joint air-ground engagements with many units has been fixed; 10. keep_binary_log = 0 option in startup.cfg correctly removes binary logs from the game folder on exit; 11. Career: mission area correctly set while escorting transport planes in Stalingrad TOW; 12. Incorrect navigational markers won't be shown in a mission without player aircraft; Damage model improvements: 13. P-47D-28, Yak-7b and Spitfire Mk.IXe wings made less fragile when damaged; 14. Aileron control rods correctly damaged when Yak-7b, P-39L-1 or P-47 wing is damaged; 15. An overdone HE explosion effect on the primary structure of an aircraft has been reduced. 16. Damage calculations of the airframe take a hit angle into account; 17. Damage from direct hits and explosions on the skin and control rods has been tuned; 18. Minor visual damage correctly appears after a first hit; 19. The visual damage of a cockpit glass correctly appears after a first hit there; 20. Ju-52 instruments can be damaged now; 21. Aircraft primary structure won't erroneously receive double damage in case of hits on the internal components like fuel tanks, engine, radiators, etc.); 22. Airframe sturdiness tuned for all aircraft; 23. Armor of the internal components corrected whenever it was wrong; 24. P-47D-28 wing damage corrected (wing loss is preceded with a wing crack); 25. A weapon won't fire if its ammo supply was lost with a wing part; 26. Fuel tank fire probability corrected for Flying Circus aircraft; 27. Ammo detonation effects differ visually depending on the explosion power; Aircraft improvements: 28. Bodenplatte pilots put on and remove oxygen mask when needed; 29. Bodenplatte and Flying Circus pilots put off their goggles on parking; 30. Ignition box cover animated on Pe-2 series 35; 31. CB panel cover animation corrected on Fw-190 A3/A5/A8; 32. Gunner folding seat animation corrected on Ju-88; 33. Bendix course detectors animations corrected; 34. Dead pilot model position corrected on Pfalz D.IIIa; 35. Bf 109 G-2 cockpit lamp corrected; 36. P-47D-28 visual wing crack corrected; 37. Visible projectiles at high aircraft speed appear correctly; 38. MK-108 fire sound corrected on Bf 109 K-4; 39. Fuel tank fire effect corrected on Flying Circus planes; 40. Ejected cartridges correctly appear in multiplayer; 41. The maximum number of ejected cartridges corrected based on real time instead of a simulated one; 42. In multiplayer, all visible projectiles appear from gun muzzles instead of aircraft center; 43. Visible gun convergence corrected in multiplayer; 44. The delay between pushing the fire trigger and experiencing the gunfire FFB effect has been reduced. 45. Pfalz D.IIIa performance corrected; 46. Sopwith Camel description corrected; AI improvements: 47. AI pilots correctly perform Chandelle maneuver; 48. WWI AI pilots won't 'stuck' flying forward; 49. AI pilots evade ground even better; 50. Conditions for attempting vertical maneuvers corrected for all fighters; 51. AI pilots will bail out of aircraft with cracked wings or fuselage instead of trying to fight; 52. WWI AI pilots open fire sooner; 53. WWI AI pilots maneuver more aggressively; GUI changes: 54. Starting altitude won't reset in QMB; 55. Flare gun indicator won't be shown after restarting a mission in external view; 56. Flight frequency option in Career corrected; 57. The wrong message about timescale won't be shown on mission end; 58. Interface music can be turned on when interface sounds are turned off; 59. Airfields are correctly shown after changing the current chapter in Career; 60. Previously selected modifications correctly shown in QMB. Please discuss the update in this thread.

Original Message is from ShamrockOneFive posted over at Il2 Forums. It was posted in April, but right now it is a good time to reread it and maybe, buy it as an xmas gift for yourself Hey folks, I spent some serious time with IL-2: Battle of Kuban and particularly with patch 3.001 before I started to write my review. I decided I wanted to write a review for new players coming in or old players that were used to IL-2: 1946 so that they would have an idea of what this series is all about. I didn't want to hide the few warts that the series still has but I also wanted to put them in context of all of the great things that it does so well. At a little over 4,500 words I think I've captured nearly all of my main thoughts and feelings on the recent final release of the title and I try and cover as much ground as possible. This review isn't so much for you guys as it is for new players coming in. In short, I think IL-2: Battle of Kuban is a crowning achievement for 1CGS and one that points towards a very bright future for the series. https://stormbirds.blog/2018/04/11/il-2-battle-of-kuban-in-depth-review/ Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the review! https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/35878-il-2-battle-of-kuban-in-depth-review/

Hello everybody, Today we'd like to dedicate our Dev Blog to the tank part of our sim. We attempt not only to create the authentic visual models of the tanks and model their movement, armament, and damage realistically. We also want to create an interesting gameplay, based on historical events, as usual, that will not only entertain you for some time but let you experience what a real tank warfare in a meeting engagement situation was like. The air part of our sim started at the great battle of WWII that changed its course and the course of world history, the Battle of Stalingrad. Following this principle, we start the tank part with one of the key tank battles on the Eastern front that decided the entire 1943 campaign - Prokhorovka. Beginning the campaign development for "Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka" we faced the fact that a usual, common for flight sims approach just won't work - its unlikely that any single tank crew in July 1943 survived several large-scale engagements in a row (especially a Soviet one) and participated in all key points of the large Prokhorovka battle we'd like to reconstruct in our scenarios. Therefore we have decided not to link the scenarios with a personal story of one of the tank crewmen, but concentrate on creating a coherent story about July 6 -17 engagements. The mission briefings will include first-person remarks, but there will be several plot lines. This will allow you to experience the battle of Prokhorovka from several locations and command 2-3 different combat vehicles in the course of one campaign. "Breaking point" (tentative title) Soviet campaign This campaign will be dedicated to the heroic deed of Soviet tankmen of Rotmistrov 5th Guards Tank Army that disrupted the German offensive at the center of the southern part of the Kursk salient at the cost of their lives. The massive, but poorly prepared counterblow on July 12th stopped the German advance and eventually pushed them back to their initial positions. The later missions of the campaign will cover the subsequent, less known stage of the battle of Kursk on July 13th - 15th at the interfluve of Donets river. Timeframe: July 6th - 15th, 1943. Controllable tanks: T-34-76 mod. 1943, KV-1s Duration: 10 missions Average playing time: 5 hours "Last chance" (tentative title) German campaign This campaign will tell about the operations of the tank units of Army Group South during Operation Citadel. Having breached two army defense lines, German forces reached Prokhorovka as early as at the evening of July 6th and were close to capturing this key area. However, instead of continuing their advance they were forced to defend against numerous Soviet counterstrikes that culminated in the massive battle on July 12th. The second part of the campaign will be dedicated to German attempts to encircle and destroy Soviet 48th Corps at interfluve of Donets river and the forced retreat of the German 2nd Tank Corps to initial positions when the entire offensive failed. Timeframe: July 6th - 17th, 1943. Controllable tanks: PzKpfw III Ausf.M, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G, PzKpfw VI Ausf.H1 "Tiger" Duration: 10 missions Average playing time: 5 hours To make our feature about Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka more visual, we can show you several WIP screenshots of the new tanks made by our partners - Digital Forms. They are planned to be released in Early Access early next year: - T-34-76 mod. 1943 produced by Nizhny Tagyl tank factory #183 in name of Communist International ("Uralvagonzavod") and - Panzerkampfwagen IV (Sd.Kfz.161) Asufuehrung G produced by Nibelungenwerke of St. Valentin To accompany them, here are WIP screenshots of Prokhorovka map being developed by our mapping team. The new landscape scaling tech has been developed specially for this map - by reducing the total size of the map from 400x400 km to 100x100km we were able to make its heightmap 16 times more detailed. The detailed area of the Prokhorovka map is still in development, but other parts of this map are more polished. We'd like to note that it is suitable not only for tank engagements, but also for aerial ones and, of course, for joint multiplayer battles that unfold both on the ground and in the air simultaneously. To illustrate this, today we can show you the views of Belgorod that is also there: Aaand we are delighted to present you the finished tankmen models. We still need to animate an each crew member in each player controllable tank in the sim, but now you can already see how they will look: You can discuss the news in this thread

Update 3.007 Dear friends, We just published another IL-2 Sturmovik update - 3.007. In this update we release 4 new aircraft: P-47D-28 and Bf 109 K-4 for Bodenplatte and Sopwith Camel and Pfalz D.IIIa for Flying Circus. But of course, these planes aren't the only addition - the two months weren't spent in vain and we have added numerous improvements to the sim. First, as announced before, we're adding new mission types to the Career mode. Second, there are many fixes that should make the multiplayer experience smoother. Third, important changes in the game stats adjust the kill registering logic. Fourth, the damage modeling of simple AI controlled vehicles is much more detailed now. Fifth, FM now takes into account the compress-ability of the air at high speeds - this complex modeling was required for late war aircraft, but it works for any plane in our sim. Sixth, pilot AI has been improved. There are other numerous changes in graphics, user interface, physics and aircraft systems, etc. Some words on the new aerodynamics feature presented in this new update: Our physics engine now includes the aerodynamic effect of air compress-ability at high Mach numbers. Our lead engineer has done the hard work of adding this phenomenon to the simulation so we take another step forward in our physics engine. As it is well known, when an aircraft’s speed approaches the speed of sound, many aerodynamic characteristics change; the drag increases a lot, the lift changes in a complicated way, the center of pressure and the aerodynamic center moves backwards. All of these factors affect the maneuverability, the stability and control-ability of the aircraft. When this happens the available G-load factor goes down, the turn rate decreases while the radius of trajectory does up and when pulling hard the airplane enters a stall earlier. Some airplanes have a tendency to become unrecoverable while in a dive at extremely high speed. As we plan to have high-speed piston and jet airplanes in Bodenplatte we could not ignore this aerodynamic effect. However, all airplanes in the Great Battles series now has this feature. So, dog-fighting at high altitude and high speed is getting another step closer to reality You can read the whole list of 100+ improvements that come with 3.007 below: Main features: 1. P-47D-28 "Jug" available to all Bodenplatte owners; 2. Bf 109 K-4 "Kurfürst" available to all Bodenplatte owners; 3. Sopwith Camel available to all Flying Circus Vol. 1 owners; 4. Pfalz D.IIIa available to all Flying Circus Vol. 1 owners; 5. New mission type for Career mode: Cargo paradrop for Ju-52/3mg4e; 6. New mission type for Career mode: Special squad paradrop for Ju-52/3mg4e; 7. New mission type for Career mode: Free Hunt for fighter planes; 8. Major FM change: air compressibility at high speeds now modeled; 9. New late war Luftwaffe pilot models added to Bf 109 G-14 and Fw 190 A-8; 10. Multiplayer: a kill will be awarded immediately only if an enemy pilot was killed, bailed out or his aircraft crumbled; 11. Multiplayer: a kill won't be awarded if a pilot manages to return and land at a friendly airfield (with the exception of point 12, see below); 12. In mission statistics, an aircraft will be scrapped only if its fuselage or a wing at its base has been ruptured; 13. New, more detailed damage modeling is used for simple (AI controlled) vehicles - it is now possible to damage their engines, wheels or tracks, crew and ammo rack; Multiplayer changes: 14. Engine sounds of other players planes won't randomly disappear; 15. Gunfire sounds of other players planes won't randomly disappear; 16. Net traffic generated by multiplayer clients has been optimized, which should improve the performance of multiplayer servers; 17. Other players position prediction routine has been optimized, resulting in a smoother multiplayer experience; 18. The delay between a player pushing the fire button and other players actually seeing his aircraft fire has been minimized to the best possible extent; 19. Other players gun convergence displayed correctly; 20. APHE and HEAT rounds fired by other players won't generate a double sound effect; 21. Server ping values appear correctly in the server list; 22. The coalition flag in the game world switches correctly; 23. Binary mission logs are now saved correctly (needed for mission stats debugging); 24. An exploit linked to navigation markers on the fullscreen map has been fixed; 25. Right Ju-52 engine animation fixed; 26. AA searchlights function correctly in multiplayer; Visual changes: 27. FPS in forest areas with lots of trees visible has been improved a lot thanks to the tree rendering optimization; 28. Aerobatics smoke effect has been improved; 29. Wrong 'black debris' effect issue while hitting enemy planes has been addressed; 30. Distant forests won't appear too white in morning or evening fog; 31. Water drops now appear on the pilot goggles in VR; 32. Water drops on windshield have been removed during winter (unrealistic); 33. Oil drops from the damaged engine will appear on the pilot goggles only if he peeks out around the windshield; 34. Engine start effect has been improved; 35. Flying Circus aircraft now has the new fire and leak effects like the rest; 36. Mission designers can place colored smoke signals in custom missions; 37. Too subtle sun glare effect has been improved on the Moscow winter map; GUI changes: 38. Tank Crew commands now have their own input settings section; 39. Starting altitude shouldn't reset in QMB; 40. Wrong aircraft type issue in QMB has been fixed; 41. Air turbulence and wind direction randomness work correctly in QMB; 42. Wind direction randomness near the ground works correctly in QMB; 43. Precipitations during bad weather work correctly in QMB once again; 44. Mission track records will be named correctly; 45. Mouse pointer won't disappear after opening Settings menu while replaying a track record; 46. GUI shouldn't flash after alt-tabbing anymore; 47. With Imperial units selected in settings, the atmospheric pressure is indicated in mm Hg in Career missions forecast; 48. Speed tooltip appears correctly while hovering the mouse cursor over a waypoint; 49. Career interface won't glitch after exiting a Career briefing using the top navigation buttons; 50. Chat messages delay in singleplayer has been corrected; 51. A possible crash bug tied to changing settings during a mission has been fixed; 52. Technochat has been optimized, making the game smoother in many situations; 53. Technochat tips have been moved to the main chat area; FM and instruments changes: 54. Engine oil in case of a leak or engine failure won't be splattered on the windshield or pilot goggles for P-39; 55. Aircraft fuel tanks may detonate (the probability depends on the amount of fuel left); 56. Fuel tank explosion correctly nullifies the fuel reserve; 57. You need a greater sideslip motion to put off the fire on Flying Circus aircraft; 58. Collimator reticles look better; 59. Revi 16B sight reticle made more authentic (Bf 109 G-14 and Fw 190 A-8; 60. In addition to critical aircraft damage or loss of controls on one axis (lateral or longitudinal) the tip suggesting to bail out will appear in the following additional cases: - no fuel left, - engine damage makes a horizontal flight impossible, - fire on board; 61. Artificial engine assistant now uses different mixture control lever positions: - He-111 H6/H16: decreased from 10 to 5 positions, - Hs-129 B2: increased from 4 to 5 positions, - Spitfire Mk.VB: decreased from 3 to 2 positions, - Spitfire Mk.IXe: decreased from 4 to 2 positions; 62. Artificial engine assistant now uses less different cowl flaps positions on Fw-190 A5 and А8 (3 instead of 5, like on other aircraft); 63. Radio direction finders corrected for all aircraft (inverted); 64. An error in aerodynamic momentum calculations while pushing the Bf-109 G14 rudder to the left has been corrected; 65. Spitfire Mk.VB and Mk.IXe coolant boiling temperature increased from 115°С to 140°С (MSL) and for MiG-3 increased from 115°С to 120°С (MSL); 66. Different mixture error that appeared while controlling Bf-110 G2 left and right engine throttles separately and that caused the power difference between them has been fixed; 67. Bailing out tip added for Fokker Dr.1; 68. Indication errors corrected in Fokker Dr.I fuel and speed gauges; 69. Fokker Dr.I and SPAD 13.C1 descriptions corrected; 70. Bomb lever delay fixed on SPAD 13.C1; 71. The default amount of fuel in GUI corrected for different aircraft; 72. All FLying Circus airplanes ground collision made more detailed; 73. Fokker Dr.I and SPAD 13.C1 visual damage appearance corrected; 74. SPAD 13.C1: erroneous speed, water temperature and fuel tank pressure readings corrected; 75. SPAD 13.C1: upper wing fuel tank leak and fire effects added; 76. SPAD 13.C1: bombs can be dropped only one after another; 77. Oil leak effect added to all Flying Circus planes; AI changes: 78. AI fighters, AA guns, etc. will continue to engage a target even if is criticaly damaged; 79. AI planes pursuing a target evade the ground better; 80. AI wingmen following the leader evade the ground better; 81. AI pilots check their speed and altitude before attempting Split-S and downward spiral maneuvers; 82. AI maneuver more efficiently after passing each other in a dogfight; 83. AI wingmen keep formation a bit better; 84. AI pilots take off correctly from Nizhny Balikley airfield in Stalingrad Career; 85. Turrets aiming at enemy planes corrected; 86. AIs controlling detailed (Tank Crew) tanks takes into account the different ballistics of various ammo types; 87. AIs aim the tank guns better; Other changes: 88. Pilots bailing out from Flying Circus planes are animated better; 89. IL-2 mod. 1943 gunner bails out correctly; 90. Sound volume balance between engine and wind sound has been adjusted; 91. The issue when the first login attempt resulted in failure message has been addressed; 92. Burning fuel tanks sound added; 93. Mouse control pointer (in mouse control mode) won't disappear if aircraft suffers heavy damage; 94. MG fire heard from inside of a tank has been made different and more realistic; 95. Blazing Steppe campaign: secondary task labels removed, scenarios #3, 7 and 12 containing Ju 87 groups have been corrected; 96. Steam locomotive explosion power has been reduced; 97. Destroyed Pz 38t and Marder III H burn correctly; 98. Iron sights textures won't blink on IL-2 mod. 1943; 99. Water drops correctly appear on all He 111 H-6 windows; 100. Ju 52/3mg4e gauge dials made clearer; 101. Rogue (enemy) Pe-2 won't appear while playing for USSR after January 16th in Stalingrad Career. Please discuss the update in this thread.

Hello everybody, The last month of Autumn has begun and we're preparing the next update for our three projects. We plan to release it in two weeks (doh!) or so and today we'll tell you about the upcoming additions. Of course, the stars of the show are FOUR new aircraft, two for Bodenplatte and two for Flying Circus. USAF P-47D-28 Thunderbolt is one of the biggest, powerful and menacing single-engine fighters of WWII. Its radial 18-cylinder engine with turbocharger, intercooler and water injection boost system enables this monster to reach 700 km/h at 7000 m altitude. Eight 12.7 mm M2.50 Browning machine guns with 3400 rounds total give a new meaning to the phrase 'spray and pray'. In addition, for strike missions, this fighter can be equipped with six unguided rockets and up to three 500 and 1000 pound bombs (225 and 455 kg). Being a late war aircraft, it has many interesting design peculiarities you'll be able to experience in the near future. Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109 K-4 "Kurfürst" is a glaring example of the inconsistency of the late war aircraft production in the Third Reich. This plane combines the newest weapon and engine technologies with maximum possible simplification and cost-cutting of the secondary systems. Its engines are a pinnacle of DB-605 line - standard DB-605 DB with water-methanol injection system and DB-605 DC with higher boost and power - and both of them will be available in our sim. Armed with 30 mm MK-108 gun and 13 mm MG-131 machine guns, it could also carry 250 or 500 kg bombs for strike missions (this is the first Bf 109 modification in our project that can carry a 500 kg bomb). It is interesting to note that this modification could retract its tailwheel to reach higher speeds - up to 715 km/h at 6200 m. Royal Air Force Sopwith Camel was one of the mainstay fighters of World War I. It was a contradictory machine, but in the right hands, it could face any foe. Carrying 168 liters of fuel (a very big reserve for its time), it could go on long patrols. This amount of fuel hampered its performance and made it hard to control and inert in a dogfight while full, but with about a half of fuel spent, the aircraft got a second breath and its horizontal and vertical maneuverability became on par with the best fighters of that time. Its two 7.69 Vickers Mk.I machine guns (late modification with the rate of fire increased to 750 instead of 500 and 745 m/s muzzle speed) were linked belt fed instead of fabric ones, reducing the misfire chance. It could also carry four 20 lb Cooper bombs. The Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte Pfalz D.IIIa was a second line fighter mainly used for escorting bombers and attacking the enemy balloons. It had very simple cockpit instruments because of the cost-cutting. Its one-and-a-half plane airframe (a design previously adopted by the French) was sturdy enough to sustain higher loads during sharp turns and dives. Its armament is standard for a late WWI German aircraft - two 7.92 mm Luftgekühltes Maschinengewehr LMG 08/15 (based on the original design of Hiram Maxim) with 650 RPM rate of fire and muzzle speed of 825 m/s, fabric belt fed. This fighter had an advantage of an excellent field of view, especially in the upper hemisphere. For Tank Crew - Battle of Prokhorovka project we plan to release 4 new player controllable tanks and the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient, but it will happen early next year. However, you'll see the new functionality being developed for this project earlier - it should be noted it will benefit not only the tankers but pilots as well. For instance, in the coming update, you'll experience the higher fidelity damage modeling for AI controllable ground objects such as trucks and tanks. Before, there was no difference where you hit a truck, but in the new system, each 'simple' vehicle has many types of simulated parts - wheels or trucks, engine, ammo rack, fuel tanks, driver, turret, main gun. By hitting a simple AI vehicle at these parts you can immobilize it or render it inoperable by damaging a turret or main gun if any. Statistics system will consider it destroyed if its ammo, explosive cargo or fuel tanks detonated or its crew was killed or its engine was destroyed or its suspension has been rendered inoperable (at least two wheels or tracks damaged). All this not only makes the tank missions more interesting but also increases the simulation accuracy of the ground attack missions for pilots. We also develop two scenario campaigns (USSR and Germany) for Tank Crew, each one containing 10 missions set in the second week of July 1943 near Prokhorovka. Another important change in the upcoming update is the adjusted logic used for scoring a kill. Previously, an aircraft was considered destroyed and a kill was awarded for it if it was damaged enough to prevent it from continuing the mission (for example, heavy damage of the controls, no fuel left, engine damage). Now, the 'aircraft lost' and 'kill awarded' events will be separated and their logic will be adjusted. An aircraft will be considered lost if its fuselage or wing at the base is broken, its pilot is killed or ejected. The victory, on the other hand, will be awarded if the scored hits were followed by the mission exit or disconnect in multiplayer, 'aircraft lost' event or the landing far from an allied airfield. Thus we motivate multiplayer players to try to reach a friendly airfield even if their aircraft is heavily damaged - even a hard landing there (as long as you don't break a wing at its base or fuselage) won't count your aircraft as lost and your enemy won't get the kill. We'll have other multiplayer improvements in the coming update as well: we have managed to find a way to synchronize weapon fire events on different multiplayer clients better, minimizing the total time of the delay to the total client-server-client ping and optimize the net delay compensation routines for transmitting aircraft positions and orientations. Server ping calculations will be also corrected - this is required for further improvements in the multiplayer lobby. Of course, we never forget about the singleplayer experience too - in the same update, we'll add 2-3 new mission types for Career mode, including Cargo airdrop and Free hunt. You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear Pilots, I am wrapping up another trip to our Moscow studio where we discussed the current successes and future challenges that face our team and IL-2 Great Battles series. As always, we have a strong team and the will to keep powering on pushing the limits of ourselves and our products. Battle of Bodenplatte is coming along nicely along with the PO-2 which we will officially rename the U-2 to be more historically correct. This cool little bi-plane is finally nearing the final stage. Matter of fact, we had a real pilot who has experience flying an actual U-2 test our FM. He really liked it and gave us some small pointers that we will incorporate into the FM. Additionally, Flying Circus work continues as does Tank Crew work including tank platoon commands and the more complex damageable buildings for the Prokhorovka map. Before I catch my flight back to the U.S. here are some pics of the skins that will ship with the P-47 D-28 “Jug” and the updated faces of our American USAAF pilot and our WWI Entente pilots. Per your feedback we have made them look younger. Quite a rugged, good looking fellow custom fit for the part. See you soon when I’m back in America. Jason P.S. Some of the textures on the ordinance is not finished yet so don't panic. You can discuss the news in this thread.

Dear Pilots, Today we are launching our Autumn Sale on Steam and our IL-2 and ROF websites! The sale will run from Monday Oct. 22nd (10:00 PST) through Oct 29th (10:00 PST). https://il2sturmovik.com/store/battle-of-stalingrad/ The Discounts are as follows: -66% OFF IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad (Premium and Standard) -66% OFF IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Moscow (Premium and Standard) -25% OFF IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban (Premium and Standard) -30% OFF Collector Planes (Bf 109 G-6, Hs 129 B-2, La-5FN (Series 2), Spitfire Mk.VB) -40% OFF Collector Planes (Ju-52 and Yak-1B) -50% OFF Collector Planes (FW-190 A-3, La-5 (Series 8), MC.202 Series VIII, P-40E-1) -50% OFF Scripted Campaigns (10 Days of Autumn and Blazing Steppe) -66% OFF all ROF content https://riseofflight.com/store/

Hello Everybody, This week our Executive Producer, Jason Williams, paid a visit to our Moscow studio. Of course, we have many discussions about potential ways of improving the project in the near future and more distant plans. We can't disclose what we're discussing yet, but when we'll be able to tell you we're sure you'll be surprised and amused by the new prospects. Meanwhile, we continue our current work and can show you some new WIP screenshots. First, the new late WWII German pilot for Bodenplatte: Second, here are the first in-game Pfalz D.IIIa cockpit shots: And third, here is a sneak peek from our partners, Digital Forms - these images show the 3D models of the PzKpfw IV Ausf.G and M4A2 "Sherman" powertrains: You can discuss the news in this thread

Hello everybody, Today's Dev Blog will be a short one - we have a lot of work to do at the moment. Right now we're finishing five aircraft: Bf 109 K-4 and P-47D-28 for Bodenplatte, Pfalz D.IIIa and Sopwith Camel for Flying Circus and Po-2VS Collectors Plane. Two maps, Prokhorovka map (the map of the Southern part of the Kursk salient, to be correct) for Tank Crew and Western Europe map for Bodenplatte are also shaping up nicely. The engineer department continues their work on near-sonic aerodynamics required for late WWII aircraft. The interface is also being worked on - Marschal interface for multiplayer and tank (platoon) commander for Tank Crew. Speaking of more imminent changes, we plan to improve the in-game statistics and 'who gets the kill' logic in the next update. Today we can show you the in-game shots of Fw-190 D-9 Collector Plane: You can discuss the news in this thread

Hello everybody, We're another week closer to our target. We've made good progress in Bodenplatte development - Koln (Cologne), Brussels and Charleroi buildings are already placed on the map. The size of the cities and their number required to invent and successfully implement the new development approach. It allows recreating the basic city layout without compromising the schedule and visual quality. Here are some screens: It should be noted that Flying Circus map and its cities will be created in the same way, so Lille and Amiens would look like this as well. Meanwhile, our development partners for Flying Circus project were also busy and today we can show you the first in-game screenshots of the fourth WWI aircraft that will be released, German fighter Pfalz D.IIIa. Both Pfalz D.IIIa and Sopwith Camel are already working in the game engine and we're waiting for their 3D models and cockpit texturing to be finished. You can discuss the news in this thread

Hello everybody, Only two days have passed since the release of the big update 3.006, but the work continues according to the plan and today we can show you the new things to come for all three of our projects. First, detailed village buildings for Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka are nearly finished (they will be placed in the area of the map where the most important engagements took place). The work on the tank campaigns scenarios is underway. Today we present you the almost final look of these buildings and later we'll show you the new tech we'll be using to simulate their partial destruction. Nearly all the latest tech available in our project have been used to create them: Another neat stuff we can show you today is for Bodenplatte - the late war U.S. pilot model is ready and our animator started working on it. This new model, just like the two pilot models made for Flying Circus, has been made at the new level of detail allowing for the even more realistic look - its textures and materials are four times more detailed than older models: WWI fans will get the new toys this Autumn too - we plan to add Sopwith Camel and Pfalz D.IIIa to Flying Circus Volume I. The work on the updated 3D model for Camel will be finished soon and here are its first pics in the game engine. Since it was one of the iconic aircraft of the first air war, this is important for us: You can discuss the news in this thread