Why the dig??? I will do you a favor and drop it. :)

is it 2443BW or the 2443BWX ?

Has SansFOV been mentioned in this thread? IL2 has a fixed ratio of 4:3, I think, so wont fit a wide screen. you either have it fitting side to side by editing the config file in which case you lose the top and bottom or you fit it top to bottom and have the black bars at the sides. What Sans does is fit the view to top and bottom but then adds the missing bits to the black bars. Whilst this is mainly of use when using multiple monitors side by side it still makes an improvement on a single screen. You can use the whole screen without the problem of losing track of the enemy so easily due to cropping. I have it working in Windows 7 with TrackIR and 6Dof with no problems.

Does SansFOV require multiple graphics cards?

This is what I do. I' have 1680x1050 widescreen monitor. Since it is not 4:3, I created custom resolution of 1400x1050 (i.e., 4:3) in my nvidea GUI. Then in my IL-2 config.ini:

[window]
width=1400
height=1050
ColourBits=32
DepthBits=24
StencilBits=8
ChangeScreenRes=1
FullScreen=1
DrawIfNotFocused=0
EnableResize=0
EnableClose=1
SaveAspect=1
Use3Renders=0

Everything fits. No cropping or black bars.

No, as far as I am aware it's a simple memory hack program, which reads the game's FOV in memory and alters it to force the game to use a wider FOV - will work with any setup. Here's the link.

I use San's FOV changer. It's a bit buggy sometimes, but can't live without it anymore. The default "wide" FOV in IL-2 is only 90 degrees in width. With 30" monitor with the looking distance that I use it looks like you would have a serious case of tunnel vision.

With 120 degrees it looks much more plausible, although causes some distortion between what you see on the center of the screen and what you see on the edges. The FOV is ofcourse fully adjustable in the San's app, can be much as 180 I think :)

The buggy part being that when I switch to smaller FOV(the default "wide" for example) it sometimes gets stuck so that you cannot switch to the higher "San's FOV" anymore. Only pushing the restart button on the San's app seems to help in this. And somehow this is related to the OS you are using, as on W7 it seems to do it much more than it did on XP.

-Untamo

anyone knows which are the real distances a pilot with a normal/good vision can spot a single engine/twin engine/four engine aircraft?

3 to 5 miles

i think a lot more than that if you know were to look for you can see a small plane from 10+ km.

also, planes back in hte day flew together wich also made them easier to spot.

i wonder from how far could you see a B17 formation? 50 km at least no?