[Skybird]

Be advised that some people still report incompatabilities, although not as often as with the old software.

If the publisher dissapears and for financial reasons cannot maintain servers, you are screwed. You cannot install it then since you cannot activate it. That is a principal thing that always speaks against such installation schemes. In the early days of FS2004 this and the withdrawing of software licenses to make people paying againhas been a problem with some products. To be fair I say it is not a general problem, though.

Be aware that you need a fast CPU, that the grafix boards is said to play no major role, and that Dual and quad cores are not supported. There is a mod that worked around that, I read - and the programmers liked it, so I read somewhere. How well it works, I cannot say, nor do I know the details. But it is not being done by the programmers themselves. Which at least is a bit bewidlering for such a CPU-hungry title of the present time.

The functionality of the sim certainly is breathtaking, no doubt. But the graphics engine is 8 years old. Single CPU power is the criterion you need to watch for.

I do not own it myself, but have seen it on a buddy's system. He agrees with me: superb cockpit functionality and flight model, but hopelessly overaged graphical realisation. It'S the same engie they already used for Lock On - and that one is a polished version of the engine they used for the old IL-2.

Of not few people I heared that bought it, but found it impossible to run it decently on their not top-notch-CPUed systems. Check carefully that your system can handle it. Do not blindly trust system recommendations of the producers, these are almost always extremely optimistic.