The "1 step forward, x steps back" thing implies they are breaking stuff. In reality, these are gameplay bugs that have existed for a long time and still exist because they are not graphics bugs--> this series of patches is meant to fix what everyone wanted the most from the start: graphical performance.

The rest is just whatever they can squeeze in as time permits (eg, AI fixes, the 100 octane RAF fighters), but the focus is on stability and performance.

In the grand scheme of things, i think it's time to look at the big picture somewhat and gradually get the tools to recreate a bombing campaign.

We've had to wait a year and a half for a working gyrocompass on the Ju88 and we didn't raise as much of a fuss as the one some people are currently raising about the autogen bug with the trees :-P

And the reason is that there are too many people who will drown you out, because they care mostly about 2 things: having their favorite fighter to fly and acceptable FPS. The rest of the sim is largely lost to them, to the point that it's not that they don't care, but many don't even know that there are things needing fixing besides what they ask for.

I say let's report the remaining bugs and get them sorted. If this patching sequence is successful and results in an official patch that fixes stability/performance, the gameplay bugs will then be easier to deal with. For example, we could be getting mini-fixes that deal with a specific aircraft each week ;)

You mention graphical improvement BD, but many features seem to get worse in this department: the lighting, the cockpits, now the autogen...

...it adds up to the point where it feels it is two steps back. If the game engine can't currently handle such graphics, they shouldn't have been so optimistic in the first place.

we got siren on stuka now
just deploy your airbrakes

1. Stuka siren partialy works, but still no working red/blue air raid sirens.
2. Noticed large shock-waves given off from bombs when they explode. I don't recall seeing that before.

I have to agree with this post and to add to it I have to say the stability for me is worse then before, I am now getting launcher exe crash on most single player games after I exit with Esc, or if press to Restart to start a mission. I have to say I worry that it's taken 15 months to try and fix things like the Launcher exe crashes and yet they are still trying to fix it 15 months later. You talk about the other fixes BD, but to me it seems for every fix they make something else goes wrong. Surely after 15 months we shouldn't be seeing launcher exe crashes.

yeah, sorry blackdog, but i cant agree with your optimism either...
for me the game runs as bad as one year ago performance wise but:

they took away many of the graphics features(like shadows below clouds or reflections of clouds on water)
cockpits are still low resolution when the plane gets damaged
they introduced a major bug approximately one year ago:LOD problem in mid range, where planes disappear completely(not solved in anyway after one year)
the launcher crashes were introduced with the first rewrite of the graphics engine!

so if they really focused only on the graphics engine, its performance and stability, then the result until now is pretty poor.

Apart from the trees and the framedrop when Spitfire and german bombers meet in midair i have no problem at all! The sim is not perfect but it is worth now flying some Multiplayer coops! That what counts for me.

BTW: I installed the patch according to the list from blackdog! But before that i ran CCleaner und defragmentated my harddrive. I did everything i could to optimize my system. I get an initial frame drop when entering clouds but it normalizes almost immidiatly. Trees are an issue but a minor one to me. I had no Launcher crash for hours of flying with this new patch ...so everything is fine with me.

A lot of things still need to be fixed! I hope they can do that!

I played around with a few QMs and the AI seems better? Anyone else agree/disagree?

Customizable kill markings are still disabled...

Please could someone post a video of the new tracers? I'm dying to see them in action.