:rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:

Amazing to think how far this sim has come since the original Il2. :yep:

Surely this must now be the end and on with the Battle of Britain sim.

:up:

Gah, I want to install it again, even if just for the new bombers. But no time :dead:

I must admit that IL2 never held my interest for too long. You go up, you fight a fight, and then the sky is dead after that! No extra aircraft to come get you, nothing.

The lack of a truely dynamic campaign clearly shows itself in this sim. I didn't buy Pacific Fighters because of this, though I do have all the IL2 add ons.

-S

JU88 and mosquito :rock:
I will fly some on online servers when we get them, although dogfight servers suck for groundpounders. At least in the mosquito we will have enough speed to disengage from fighters.
A typical dogfight server is 30 fighters and 2-4 bombers - boring. The offline campaign also gets pretty repetitive after a while. IL2 is like a hot woman with no intellect ;)

Yeah if it only had the dynamic campaign that Red Baron did it would be a truely great sim.

I must get a copy of Pacific Fighters, but since my aging rig barely meets the specs, it'd probably choke on it during larger battles. I still have plenty of fun with Il-2: Forgotten Battles, though.

I'd love another new version of Red Baron 3D on modern systems! Please please please!!! I miss flying my crappy plane (crate is a better word) behind enemy lines and blowing up trains! :) :rock:

-S

Yay! 4.03m... I can't wait! :D

Try this for a better dynamic campaign.

http://www.lowengrin.com./news.php

Excellent freeware replacement for the ingame dynamic campaign generator.

I agree on the campaign thing. I always thought that Oleg Maddox at least doesn't show great cleverness in concentrating so exclusively on the flying aspect alone, paying no attention to the overall experience they dogfighting events should be embedded in. compared to those guys who designed for example SH3 he is a bloody amateur, and takes care that his sims do not reach that interest level that they could have reached. Or think of the Falcon experience, that does not end outside the cockpit - you feel as part of something bigger, always.

The whole presentation and menues aren't very clever, I would say. Good planes and FMs is nice and well, but the rest of the package is just so... so damn cold. Kills longterm motivation, at least for me. I enjoy to fly it occasionally, but interst gets cold very quickly time and again. then I need to wait until it grew warmer again.

FB+AoE+PF over here.

I think Skybird hit it perfectly.

IL2 is a very nice sim in terms of FM and historical accuracy... but so lacking in terms of the war aspect. Although not too many games have succeeded in creating the destructive atmosphere of WWII, I'm crossing my fingers for BoB.

Guys, I agree with you, but really try the dynamic generator in the link above. There are also some single mission generators around, plus some very very well written community scripted campaigns. Sure the latter you can play once but hey.

Otherwise, for online you really need to find a good server to get a good experience. Coops or online wars, dogfight servers tend to "arcadish."

Doesn't change the fact that BoB really must have a better campaign system and thought to immersiveness, heck I recall with foundness my first serious combat sim, CFS1. The freeflight menu had country side sounds, a farmer, cow and ahem, cowbell...then a plane flying overhead. As I was learning to fly, I spent a lot of time there, and would take off from the "Switzerland" scenery. Very calming.

This is the only sim I have played this long. Oleg's team has supported this game from the beginning. Wish other people did the same.

Agreed again, Uberdemons QMG is very potent. But with every version he released it got more crowded, without him seeing the use of changing the layout and turning the super-miniatur-size buttons into something bigger. Sometimes even not all text fits into the mini-windows. Potent: yes, but low ergonomy.

but I will have a look at the campaign generator once it got adopted to 4.03.

I should define what i mean by Dynamic campaign.

It's NOT that my actions or the actions of my squadron could (or should) change the course of the war, but rather the map should always be filled with some activity either on the ground or in the air.

In IL2 or any of it's expansions, other than the 4-16 planes generated for the mission, the map is completely empty. You can fly for hours over completely deserted enemy territory and the front doesn't exist. You can even land at enemy airbases with impunity.

The largest tank battle in the world becomes a half dozen vehicles clustered around a bridge. That aint realistic in my opinion.

Well a well designed static campaign can do that....as can DCG (I mean Lowengrin's) within limits...never tried landing at an empty enemy base. I suppose the problem is the game engine as too many vehicles would grind the game to a halt. Still you can add a lot more ground traffic to it with DCG and even adjust it to your machine.

Sorry I am a fanboy of 3rd party stuff, especially freeware like this or some of the stuff for SH3.

Again should have benn in by default.

Unfortunately the replayability of a static campaign is very poor. No matter how many planes/ships/vehicles you put on the map they will always be in the same location doing the same thing. Play it once and you'll know where everything is. I hate that.

Red Baron on the other hand would generate a random mission with random waypoints for every AI squadron on the map every time you clicked the fly button. Therefore you never knew what you'd run into and you could replay the same campaign mission over and over again with a different result and situation every time.

As for having too many game units for the computer to handle, I have to wonder why that is. RB, a game designed for Pentium I'sn was able to get, on average, 100-200 planes flying simultaniously on a map as well as numerous AA, arty, train, balloon and even large infantry assaults across no mans land (RBII).

IL2 loved it but got shot down more than often. I became very addictive to Microsoft Combat Flight simulator 3. Dont know why cos everyone keeps telling me IL2 is the only ww2 filght sim your need. In the end i sold MCFS3 online as it practically took over my life!

Did you play MSCFS online or single player?