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Hello P-51 Lovers! We know you’ve been waiting patiently to see more of the P-51B, so today we show you what it looks like both inside and out! This new ‘Pony’ should be ready by the end of this month. It’s the Holiday Season and a time for giving, so there will likely be two updates in December! One with the new clouds and the DFWC.V and the other with the P-51B and maybe, just maybe new fuel systems and drop tanks for several Bf-109 variants. Of course, plans are subject to change pending testing. And as mentioned previously the Malcolm Hood has taken extra work to get it right, so that component is not ready to be shown yet. Without further delay… Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Friends, Welcome to a rare Monday edition that is our 300th Developer Diary which happens to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the release of the original IL-2 Sturmovik for the PC! Two decades on and IL-2 products are still going strong! Simply amazing! We know you would like this to be a super special diary today, but for us, it’s just another busy week at work trying to finish our projects. Please don’t think that we are not proud of this milestone, because we are, but there is just so much to do and we need to stay on task! However, we hope that there will be 300 more DDs and 20 more years of Sturmovik products to come! We also realize that we could not have gotten this far without the financial support of our customers and those dedicated people in our community that help us make Sturmovik week after week. We salute anyone and everyone who has contributed to the Great Battles series over the years either as an unpaid volunteer or professional partner. From painting skins to developing apps, making missions to beta testing, 3D modeling to historical to research, localization of text to voice acting and on and on, this 300th Developer Diary is dedicated to you guys! THANK YOU! No DD is complete without some news and images about current projects and today’s is no exception. Both of these projects have been undertaken by third-party partners – the C-47 cockpit is being built by Ugra Media and the IAR-80/81 is being built by our partner Ivan. Both of these models have been shown before and they have progressed since we last showed them, even if their appearance is not drastically different from before. There is lots of work being done to keep the poly and texture budgets under control and make the model not only beautiful, but also efficient. This is always a big challenge for anyone who makes models for us. C-47A IAR-80/81 The IAR will likely go on Pre-Order next week as well as our two new Collector Tanks which Jason will also announce next week. Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Friends, In today’s DD we want to show you some screens featuring our new cloud technology and renderer. We have been working on new clouds for a few months and we now have some WIP results we can show you. As you can see, they look more natural and have more variety and are larger than our previous clouds. They also have localized rain showers and react well with the lighting creating a beautiful scene. While other teams out there have more resources than we do to make amazing clouds, our new clouds are the work of just two motivated people on the Sturmovik Team (Sergey and Isay). And soon we’ll be working with community member and friend rowdyb00t who has previously made some cool cloud mods with our current technology. This new cloud technology has great potential and of course it will take some artistic talent to make it look it’s best. They should also offer better visuals with no loss of performance over the current technology, at least that’s what we see in early testing. We think you’ll like these new clouds and we’ll work to get these to you as soon as we can. The technology is being perfected as we speak and we will begin work on making the new cloud content shortly. Then they will go into testing with release hopefully in a few months. Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Pilots, Today we want to show you some WIP pics of the P-51B/C with the birdcage style canopy. It really changes the look of the P-51 and it's obvious why they changed to the bubble style canopy with the "D" model and some "B" airframes had their birdcage replaced with the 'Malcolm Hood' canopy which was a semi-bubble modification. We will also model the Malcolm Hood. Also, if you happen to have any detailed references on the Malcolm Hood's canopy frame, rails or emergency release mechanism please share them with us. We could use some more detailed pictures or drawings of it. The P-51B/C is unfortunately behind schedule and should have been ready by now, but she is getting ever closer to release and likely to be finished next month. Also, here is a pic of our American bomber pilot model ready to face some German flak! Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Pilots, Our Mosquito FB Mk,VI for Battle of Normandy is coming along nicely. Some very early WIP shots of it in the engine. Still much support work to do for it still. Will initially be available to fly with 8 squadrons in Career mode. Q. If it's made from polygons is it still a Wooden Wonder? Enjoy!

Dear friends, Despite the wonderful weather behind the window that would direct anyone's thoughts towards a vacation, the IL-2 team continues to work at the fastest rate possible in all planned directions. For the most massive one of them, the Battle of Normandy, a number of significant results were achieved during the last few weeks. For instance, the work on the Normandy map objects, including the ones needed for temporary ports in the beachhead area, German fortifications, unique city buildings, and stationary radars are nearly complete. We can already show you some of them in the sim: In addition, we started the final production stage of P-51B we're creating for the Battle of Normandy. We want to deliver this famous and long-awaited plane to all BoN customers as soon as possible. There are good news about Flying Circus Vol. II as well -the Western Front map is progressing well and we plan to show it in our Dev Blog soon, while today we can show you two coming airplanes at once: early SPAD 7.C1 with 150 HP engine and two-seater bomber Airco D.H.4: And finally, Sd.Kfz.10/5 with 20mm Flak 38, the second player controllable mobile AA gun, is nearly complete as well. Here are its screenshots in the sim: You can discuss the news in this thread

Dear Pilots, Tankers and Gunners, Today we have a short Developer Diary for you that shows progress on the Normandy airfields and the cockpit our P-51B/C. As with our Rhineland map, the Normandy map will include historically accurate airfields. Here you can see how we match up period photos with our in-game map as we build them. And work continues on the P-51B/C cockpit and below are some WIP shots. Of course, there are some missing details as the work is ongoing and still quite early. We are confident the P-51B/C will be really awesome when completed. Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Friends, Today we have a very straightforward Dev. Diary for you. We’d like to show you 4 aircraft that we have under development. Two from the Great War and two from WW2. First, we have the Spad VII.C1 which is under development by our partners at Ugra Media for Flying Circus Vol. II. She’s coming along nicely. Second, we have the powerful Airco DH.4 that gives Flying Circus some more two-seat bomber options. Such a great looking airplane. Next, we have the B-26 Marauder that will be flown by the AI in Battle of Normandy. This is one of Jason’s favorite aircraft because his Grandfather John served in a B-26 unit in England and France during the war. Finally, we have some pics of the Ar-234. Looks amazing! We continue to build other planes including the Mosquito, Me-410 and the P-51B/C and we continue to test Air Marshal. Also, our new more complex Fuel System modeling is finally entering the Beta stage. It will first be installed and tested on our Bf-109s. So, work continues on all fronts even as team members take hard earned summer vacations. Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Pilots, Today’s Developer Diary has two cool items to announce. First, you can’t stage a Normandy invasion without some dashing British gents jumping out of airplanes. So, we built some. Next, we are excited to announce that our next payware historical Scripted Campaign is coming soon and it’s called – Steel Birds! Pre-orders will begin next week! Created by our master mission-specialist Alex “Blacksix” Timoshkov, Steel Birds focuses on Fw-190 A-5 operations in the Kuban theater in late spring 1943. You'll take on the role of the newly appointed flight commander in 5. Staffel of the II./Sch.G 1. Under the command of Hauptmann Frank Neubert this Gruppe has just completed a retraining program and has relocated to Anapa airfield to support the operations of the German 17th Army. The campaign is set from April 14th to May 16th, 1943 and is centered around the struggle for a bridgehead at Novorossiysk (Operation Neptune), and two major Soviet offensives in the area of Krymskaya, which ended with the withdrawal of German troops to a new line of defense in early May. The sharp increase of the Soviet air strength in the Kuban led to one of the largest and fiercest air battles ever on the Eastern Front. In this difficult situation, you have to strike artillery batteries, transport and armored columns, airfields and battle formations of enemy advancing troops. We’ll have more about Steel Birds next week when we formally launch pre-orders for this historically bases campaign. Release is scheduled for August. Some images from Steel Birds are below. And finally, we have some images from the new Advanced Quick Mission interface that is coming later this summer. We saved our old “campaign” system technology and have laid it over the existing QMB to give you added depth for missions that can be created quickly. We think this will be an entertaining new feature that will allow you to fly missions with more structure, but not be as big a commitment as the Pilot Career or as simplistic as the QMB battles. This new AQM, alongside our other mission-making tools such as the existing QMB, Pilot Career and Mission Builder, plus all the great third-party apps like PWCG by Pat Wilson and EMG by SYN_Vander gives the Great Battle series an amazing number of options for creating entertaining mission content. Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Pilots, Summer is here and it’s very hot in both Moscow and Las Vegas, but we soldier on still working mostly from our flats and homes. This week’s DD features just a couple items, but one is quite a surprise as you will see. But first, let’s admire the upcoming 4K skins made by our steadfast ally and partner Martin “ICDP” Catney. The ugly duckling has become a swan with these new textures wouldn’t you say? With the new skins for the Hs-129, we are rapidly closing in on ALL planes in Great Battles being upgraded to the 4K standard. The Yak-1b should be next and eventually the Ju-52 will also get a refresh. The entire 4K upgrade has been a huge effort on Martin’s part as well as the previous contributions made by Francisco “BlackHellHound” Bindraban. Please join me in thanking them for their awesome contributions! A shining example of talented community members helping the developers and an effective international partnership. And now a surprise that came about very recently, but one that has a its roots in Rise of Flight history and one that should end in a positive result for Sturmovik. Today, we share extremely early WIP shots of an important fighter design that saw action against both Soviet and American air forces and late in the war, alongside them. Can you guess what plane it is? There are very few types that have this distinction. Hide contents That’s right, the Romanian designed and built IAR-80/81 is under development by a third party that we feel has the skills to make it a reality. This will take some time, but we are confident it will come to fruition. Please enjoy this little tease and when we the mesh is further along, we will offer it for pre-order as we always do. Why the IAR-80/81 exactly? Well, believe it or not, there is a lot of good reference information on this plane, so it is one that is possible to build by a single qualified modeler. A lot of what we do as a sim developer, can be described as the “art of the possible”. The IAR is indeed possible to make, so let's do it. And it’s a nice departure from our usual plane-set and is often overlooked in the history books. It will be sold as a Collector Plane, but it will certainly add some more historical flavor to the Battle of Stalingrad theater. There are some other planes we are working looking into finding a way to make. Your continued financial support is most important when we try to make new aircraft. And we continue to work on the new AQM feature, fuel systems with drop tanks, Air Marshal and even improved cloud technology. All of which I hope to show you pictures of in upcoming Developer Diaries. And Jason continues to work with talented mission makers on new mission content and Campaigns which we hope to have localized and released soon. On a serious note, the pandemic really slowed us down as we are prevented from being on our office and seeing each other face to face. Working from home is not always ideal for a collaborative effort like developing Sturmovik, but we continue to do our best and fill irritating personnel needs as soon as we can. We had hoped 2021 would bring a quick return to normalcy for us, but sadly it has brought a whole new set of challenges for us as a team beyond the usual technical ones as the pandemic sticks around. So please have patience with us and know that the team is doing their very best under less-than-ideal circumstances. See you in the skies and on the battlefield! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Friends! Today’s DD is pretty straightforward, we’d simply like to show you some shots of content that we have in the works for both Battle of Normandy and Flying Circus: Volume II. First, we have multiple renders of new objects, vehicles and ships that are being created by a development partner of ours. They are coming along nicely as you can see. They will be fully integrated into the engine very soon. Next, we have the first shots of the Fokker D.VIII which is development by our friends at Ugra Media. This awesome high-winged monoplane will grace your installs next month assuming everything goes to plan. We plan to release it along with the Typhoon Mk.Ib (which we showed in a DD269) in our next update, which should happen by mid-June. Again, assuming final preparations go well. Also, our great friend Luke 'Requiem' Campbell has created a very helpful video on how to operate the GAZ-MM 72-K and improve your accuracy when shooting at planes and vehicles. Check it out! Thank you to Requiem for making another great training video! GAZ-MM 72-K Steam Release! Additionally, we have added the GAZ-MM 72-K to our Steam store today where it along with the official webstore will have it on discount for another week. You can pick it up HERE. All other work continues and our efforts to expand the team a bit so we can finish Normandy as planned continues. Stay tuned to our DDs all spring and summer long as we continue to build out BON and FC2! See you in the skies! The Sturmovik Team

Dear Friends! Work on our next update, which is version 4.6 continues as planned and should be released before the end of this month. This update will be a pretty big one with new content, some new features and lots of small tweaks as usual. We also continue to make new airplanes and other models that will be incorporated into the sim this year and beyond. Work never slows down for us as you know. Today I’d like to share some screens of ongoing work that you’ll enjoy as we finalize the next update. Here are some images that help demonstrate our DVD system for our tanks and AAA vehicles along with our Tactical Codes technology. DVD definitely adds another interesting layer to our damage modeling. Work on the Normandy map is going strong and here you can see some towns that are taking shape. The terrain textures are not final and borrowed from the Rhineland map at the moment. And here’s the terrible vengeance weapon that terrorized Great Britain for many months during the war - the Fieseler Fi 103 or simply the V-1 “Buzz Bomb”. The British sarcastically nicknamed it the “Doodlebug”, but there was nothing cute about them in reality. It was the world’s first jet powered cruise missile, and it was a deadly, dangerous weapon that fell from the sky at seemingly random locations with little or no warning. About 8,000 V-1s were launched against Britain with about 2,400 of them getting through the defenses. Over 6,000 people were killed and many thousands more wounded by them. Over 44,000 Allied sorties were flown to try and intercept them along with the flak batteries that tried desperately to knock them down. Truly a flying terror. You’ll be able to simulate intercepting them before they are able to strike their targets along the southern coast of England when the BON map is ready. They were also used against targets in France and Belgium in smaller numbers as the Allies advanced. We also have added more railyards to BOBP cities and here is the current list that has increased to a total of 19. We apologize for not having pictures of them, but COVID has decided to interfere with this operation. Just a reminder that we are not totally out of the woods yet with the pandemic. Antwerp Liege Mainz Frankfurt Bonn Cologne Disburg Brussels Charleroi Dusseldorf Munster Koblenz Eindhoven Tillburg Nijmegen Essen Enschede Hengelo Osnabruck And before we end this DD, here are three new posters Jason has created featuring all three Spitfire variants found in Great Battles including the new Spitfire Mk. XIV. We hope you enjoy this artwork. Spitfire Mk.VB Poster Spitfire Mk. IXe Poster Spitfire Mk.XIV Poster And of course, here are a few pics of the upcoming Spitfire Mk.XIV and Nieuport 28. Enjoy your weekend everyone and stay safe! The Sturmovik Team

Hello everybody, Another week has passed and our work has moved another step forward. The Collector AAA vehicle, 25-mm automatic gun installed on the chassis of the GAZ-MM truck will be finished soon - the physical model of the truck is ready, as are the automatic gun animations and functioning, all animations of the chassis and the crew as well as gun ballistics and damage model are also done. The correction system for the gunsight that turned out to be incredibly complex kinematically is in. The unique audio and more detailed tech of the tires visualization and deformation are icing on the cake. All these elements have something new and are believed to be interesting for the end-user to familiarize with and learn something new. At the moment we're improving the visual look of the new vehicle, the texturing of the gun, and apply the new DVD tech we talked about in our previous Dev Blog to make the result the best. Meanwhile, a part of our mapping department works on improving the railyards on the Rheinland map (Bodenplatte project). They aren't the most striking or shiny detail of the numerous cities on this map, but they do improve the overall visual look of the scene and make the landscape more realistic. This time we can show you the screenshots of the railroad structures in the cities of Cologne, Brussels, Bonn, Duisburg, Liege, Mainz, Frankfurt am Mein.

Dear Friends, As some of you who frequent our forums already know, Jason has recently announced that we're developing a new tech called DVD and invited you to guess what that actually means. There were different guesses and some of them were near misses. The answer is, DVD means Dynamic Visual Damage. In a nutshell, it places an impact mark where a projectile hit. Among the many neat possibilities this tech brings, the size of the mark corresponds to the caliber of the projectile and/or explosive power of the shell if it was of the HE variety. They also look different depending on the material the projectile hit - whether it was armor, thin metal, or not a metal at all. There are also separate marks for ricochets of high caliber armor-piercing rounds. The look of these marks is thoroughly prepared by our partners at Digital Forms and is based on real-world photos of combat damage on different objects. The marks placed by this tech are not simple 2D textures - thanks to modern graphical techniques they have visual depth. Even the penetrations can look different such as near penetrations when the armor (barely) stopped a projectile. We concentrated on making these marks as realistic looking as possible. All in all, we think this new tech would make the visual part of the damage system much more interesting and appealing both for aircraft and tanks. Tanks will be adapted first and then aircraft. It is a long-term project that will take several months. Please be aware though that this tech is visual, it doesn't affect the physical interaction between the projectiles and aircraft and tank parts or systems. We're working on the improvements in the physical damage system as well, but we'll tell you more about that later. Speaking of this new DVD tech, we must note that due to ever complex issues of graphics performance and network traffic and stability, there are some limitations to what can be done. This may be apparent in some rare cases, but we have to mention them. In certain 'critical' cases the mark may not appear or a wrong mark type may appear (like a visual penetration when there was a near penetration in fact). There is also a limit to the total amount of marks that can be placed on the object. In multiplayer, you'll see the marks on your aircraft or tank, but you'll only see the marks on other player aircraft or tanks that appeared when they were in your view. To alleviate this limitation, we added a special transmission of the most recent marks to other players even if they were looking the other way. Because of these compromises, the DVD tech doesn't replace the current visual damage system completely. The current system of visual 'damage levels' guarantees that every player in a multiplayer environment will get the visual cues on how badly a certain object is damaged. DVD is designed to enhance the existing visual damage system and we made every effort to make them work harmoniously during its development. Nevertheless, in multiplayer you'll see the marks on your aircraft and the marks on your opponents’ aircraft - which is the most important and critical application of this tech. If you saw the hits of someone else projectiles on another player, you'll also see these marks. The limitations listed above, however, won't undermine the improved visual look of the damage system the new DVD tech will bring. We hope we have found the sweet spot between visual quality with the least impact on graphics performance and multiplayer. To illustrate the new system, we would like to show you these WIP in-game screenshots.

Hello Everyone! Time does not stand still, just as work on the Battle for Normandy project does not stand still. Work is underway on various technologies as well as development of ground equipment, maps, aircraft and ships. As you know, the Battle of Normandy is an event most closely associated with the navy. And in order to reproduce some of these events, new types of ships and watercrafts will be introduced into the project. Along those lines, today we will show you a screenshot of development progress of the landing craft LCI (L) (Landing Craft Infantry, Large). This is a specialized vessel designed to land infantry units directly ashore, for which it is equipped with two gangways, on both sides of the bow. And because Battle for Normandy is a project about combat aircraft, you are waiting patiently for news about the progress of aircraft in development. So here we have something new to show you today! It is the cockpit of the Hawker Typhoon Mk.Ib fighter-bomber. These screenshots were taken in the game world. Work on this aircraft is entering the final stage, and we plan to give it to everyone who pre-ordered the project at the very beginning of the summer.

Dear friends, So, here is the new year 2021! Like anyone else, we're going to hope that it will be better than the previous one. However, for IL-2 Great Battles, the last year was quite positive in spite of all complications. We hope that we'll build on this success this year - the plans are quite extensive. Let's start with the first in-game shots of the British fighter Hawker Typhoon Mk.Ib which is being developed for the Battle of Normandy. As you can see, it looks nearly complete, but in fact, there is still a lot to do - a hefty chunk of work is left on its cockpit instruments and the flight model. Nevertheless, we're expecting to finish everything before the end of this Spring and release it to all Battle of Normandy customers. Speaking of the Normandy map, the layout of the towns on its continental part is complete for the first iteration. A bunch of landmark buildings and a significant part of AI-controlled ground vehicles planned for Normandy are already done. We're researching the data for the Normandy Career mode. Meanwhile, the AAA trucks are also showing good progress - the GAZ-MM with the 72-K gun will be ready first. Its chassis is ready both in terms of the 3D and physical models while the crew animations and audio are being worked on. We've managed to find the authentic firing tables prepared by the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army and printed by the military publishing house of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the Soviet Union in 1943 and made the ballistics of the 25mm rounds and their armor penetration ability in various cases as close to the real thing as possible according to this data. We still have to research and recreate the really complicated correction system for the gunsights, that's what we're working on now while our partners at Digital Forms are creating the complex 3D model of the AAA gun itself as you can see on the screens below:

Hello everybody, Many of you ask us how is the development of the recently announced mobile AAA is going. The physical model of a wheeled vehicle is nearly complete while the visual model of the Soviet GAZ-MM with 72-K AA gun being developed by our partners at Digital Forms has made good progress. You can see the attention to detail on these screenshots, it's really a labor of love: You may wonder how fast the German half-track chassis can be developed since it is partly wheeled and partly tracked, but in our engine, the player controllable vehicles have a sophisticated module structure where a combination of various propulsion types is possible. We plan to start the implementation of the German AAA half truck soon. On the other hand, the AA gunsights are a new thing, but we hope to make them as functional as Tank Crew artillery sights. Meanwhile, we're working on updating all the existing aircraft in the sim with the new visual models of the crew. All the fighters were given the new pilot models where it was possible to do in a universal way previously, and now we're adding the new models to the planes where unique adjustments are required. In the coming update, you'll get the new pilot model for P-39L-1. More detailed pilot appearance aside, this also means that an American or British pilot will be displayed if a P-39 is set to one of the countries in the mission file. Also, our friend Martin =ICDP= Catney have created an additional RAF skin for this airplane. Another of the many questions we got recently after showing the video of the new terrain effect on the vehicles, is how the new detailed terrain roughness will affect the aircraft outside the prepared airfields when making an emergency landing for instance or taking off from a field (which is an even more difficult task naturally). We think the best answer would be another short video: Enjoy! The Sturmovik Team

Dear friends! We would like to congratulate you on the very important holiday - 75th Anniversary of the Victory in Europe! On this day 75 years ago the hard and long road to peace, that cost millions of lives, has finally come to its end at the European theater of the world war. The people of all nations got a second chance to live. Let's remember the heroic deeds of our ancestors and be thankful to them - even though that today's crisis and problems are significant, they can't be compared to the gravity of the situation and the hardships of those years of war. The life that was given to us by the heroic deed of our ancestors continues. Coincidentally, this is a small anniversary for our project, which is entirely dedicated to the World War II events, as well - you're reading its 250th Developers Blog. Our work on the sim also continues - in 2 or 3 weeks we plan to release the next update 4.006. It will bring not only the new player controllable machines - Yak-9 and Yak-9T Collector Planes and SU-152 assault gun for Tank Crew - but also the fundamental changes in the graphics engine: the renderer will be switched to Deferred Shading. At the moment this update is already in the beta testing and our team is working on debugging and finalizing it. The changelist will be a long one once again, it already includes more than 50 changes in different areas of the sim. To illustrate what these renderer changes add to the visuals, we want to show you the in-game screenshots of Yak-9T, which is a good aircraft to display the new graphical capabilities: Another pic we want to show you the WIP model of the early war German pilot which will be used in BoM, BoS and BoK timeframes. It's going to appear in the project a bit later, but it won't be a long wait: