Now where are those posters of Crash's when you need them..

It made a couple of the middle 109's quite, quite good. That's for sure. It also made the separation of some of the FW models (like the A5-vs-A6) much wider. While their performance figures are almost identical the A6's armament makes it a much more formiddable opponent. Not saying that's a bad thing, just a fact.

For me personally it´s not about domination of one side(excellent comment Avimus, I learned a lot from it). It´s more or less about historical correctnes and this is not happening in the game.

You have a Polikarpov I-185, that never existed, with the best flying abilitys ever and great guns, where nobody knows how that thing was flying in the first place(2 prototypes that fell out of the sky). Fortunately not many servers have it.
And on the other side you have castrated planes or characteristics like the Browning 50 cal.(I´m not talking about blue planes now as many red pilots feel aparently offended if I do).

This simulator is said to be a WW2 simulation, so it claims to be a historical simulation and the community says it´s one of the best.
I love this sim too for this very reason, but seeing the arguments above, I must say, it has some aspects of a fantasy game.

Now why am I writing this? Not to provoke anyone or to put anyone off(especially not Oleg Maddox, as he has done more than anyone else for the sim-world)
This is meant as a constructive input. I would like things to be historically corrected for the future either for IL2 or SoW, in order to really be able to enjoy a historical simulation.

Truly historical accuracy in a simulation would make it unflyable for at least half the community population. Either because it would simply be too hard to put in the effort necessary to learn it (consider the fact people said exactly that about this sim 8 years ago) or it would simply be too hard for some to learn. Add to that the ridiculously complex physics and graphics computations and it's likely most pc's wouldn't be able to run it.

If realistic torque were modeled, people would bitch so loud you'd think Oleg was a lunatic, but the fact is, in this sim (and likely in subsequent sims) we will really only get a glimpse of truly accurate FM modeling.

If you had the accuracy you claim to desire, it's unlikely you, or many others, would enjoy it.

Understand I'm not advocationg for dumbing down FM's. I'm just saying that in reality the market for a sim as accurate as you describe is likely not large enough to support it economically...unless of course the military were to subsidize it as well. ;)

You´re absolutely right about your argumentation, but only half.
The things you point out might be too complex to program them correctly but some of the things that are implemented aren´t implemented correctly. Some are overpowered and others underpowered.
And actually these should be corrected.

Congratulations! +1

90% auor comunity like and want absolutely the max realism in FM, guns, velocity, aceleration, trying follow the tecnical data, fisicals and aerodinamics caracteristic.
I dont care about realism to start the engine.
Realism is not soo hard, this comunity is ready.

Emil I think you're having a bit of a disconnect between what a historical simulation is capable of (especially one that is now 7 years old) and how that history is interpreted. Oleg's done a marvelous job of taking a game that was meant to be a simulator for the IL-2 ...for use on old Pentium computers and turning it into a modern flight sim master piece spanning virtually the entire war.

Now a year or two ago a number of people took the average number of bullets the average fighter in WWII would sustain from weapons like a 20mm cannon and a .50cal machine gun. I can't find the thread on the Ubi forums anymore but basically it came down to the fact that the "average" number of bullets required in IL-2 and in data we could find from World War II and after was fairly close. I apologise for only being able to mention and not cite the exact information but I took away from it that what we have is close. Very close all things considered.

Its not perfect and in some ways we're at a disadvantage due to the inadequacies of the damage modeling system...but given the limitations of the technology and the limitations of time working on such a project I think what we have is so close to reality that anyone who is talking seriously...I mean seriously...is going to be splitting hairs over a couple of percentage points plus or minus.

The .50cal is a weapon that keeps coming up and I think that the biggest problem is the interpretation from years of watching The History Channel. It was not a perfect weapon but...in real life and in the game if you use it correctly then it will shred the enemy. Its biggest disadvantage is that its a weapon that breaks stuff inside the plane...and the damage model could stand to have a few more objects inside each plane that can be hit. But the average number of hits its still quite close to history if the numbers and testing are to be believed.

The I-185 did fly and presumably was tested so no doubt there is information to base the flight model on. Its probably optimistic and its fun to have...but its not likely to show up in a serious historical mission. Thats ok. It was a FUN bonus project (I believe it was third party)....and I think the real goal there was to show off what texture baking could do for the quality of cockpit. Its ok to have fun with history too.

i agree that is one of the most likely explanations, and is similarly valid for the explosive/destructive power of various munitions, the structural strength modeling of airframes, and aircraft speed etc... what we are dealing with is multiple "virtual variables", each with their own inbuilt imperfections, being mixed together to model one specific variable, for ex the destructive power of one munition on one specific aircraft surface. except that .............

when you look at the types of errors that are now surfacing when people look inside the il2 code, they indicate a strong bias for some of the russian planes/munitions on multiple aspects, and some blatant and recurrent errors that disadvantage the allied/axis side. some of these most obvious errors were never addressed despite repeated and detailed information being provided to oleg by users (like the 50 cal issue for ex)

after having been involved with il2 since the first demo was released, and seeing olegs various reasons/excuses given over time and this being compared to what is now found inside the il2 code, i can arrive at only one conclusion...... the errors in favour of the russian side are not random or coincidental, many are deliberate.

you could still argue that this is based on incorrect data being used in the programming, for ex russian historical documents being overly optimistic about russian equipment performances in ww2. but 50 years after ww2 there is fairly unanimous impartial conclusions that can be drawn from these historical data and information, and unless oleg has exclusively used russian sources there really is no excuse for this bias anymore in 2009.

there is only one solution to this imho for BoB, the modeled data for airspeed, turn ratio, climb rate, explosive modeling of munitions and their belting, has to be OPENLY provided in tables and figures at the release of the game. il2 fans can then have an informed argument about the validity of various sources and the facts of the matter, and if need be minor adjustments can be made when valid new facts outweigh the previous date.

oleg, no more concrete i-16 with magic ray guns please !! and dont expect us to just imagine everything is perfect and that "the pilot makes the difference, not the plane", first we need aircraft that are programmed correctly, then we can add the variable quantity of the skill of the pilot.

I think you're right, the damage model should be reviewed also. I read that the in the game code the damage radius of some 12.7 guns is 4 times less than other ones (e.g. 20 cm vs. 5 cm), with the same type of bullet. Can anyone confirm this?

Regards,
Insuber