IL-2 won't die till there's enough content out there for SoW, as for IL-2 making it to 4.12 and beyond, it depends on how motivated the voulinteers are once SoW comes out, i suspect they'll stop making the patches and start making stuff for SoW, and we might see 4.11b1m or something :P

and i doubt we'll ever see another flight sim engine thats specifically designed just for air combat(at the quality of SoW/IL2), we'll probably only see total war sims from now on, ground, air, sea, and in futuristic games, space, all in one simulation, just because their so darn expensive to produce at this quality, the only way to make it affordable is to make it open enough that it suits as many genres as possible, and 10 years down the road computers will be so fast that games like SoW will look to us then, like those screenshots in the earlier posts do to us now, and we'll be wondering why we ever played something that was so limited. don't forget moors law, and advances in not just cpu speed but peripherals, new screens, higher resolutions, even stuff like true 3D (not with stupid glasses) are all highly possible within the next 10 years :D anyway, the main thing to remember is that 10 years is a long time, and if you look at our advances in the past 10 years, you can clearly see that games of all genres have gone from near stick figures and plastered on textures, to highly dynamic multi-textured, high polygon tesselated, near real looking characters, hell even 5 years ago game engines couldn't render round wheels well, they were just like decagons.

It will last over 10 years because to develope something better will be a massive undertaking that only the biggest company will be willing to do.

HOWEVER, the changing face of games in general is also changing. Consoles are more popular then Computer games, and the new generation of players getting hooked on low quality sims.

There is a chance that there will never be another combat sim for computers, just consoles.

It´s just me or console games are getting worse every year?
I remember the golden age...I played the same game for 5 years.Newest games are made to last 1 month.

20 years ago, hardly anyone had a computer, it cost a few thousand dollars for a crappy one... there were also fewer games to choose from...today you can get a machine for 500$ that'll play most games out there, and in a family of 4, there could be at least 4 computers around the house... also a highschool student could make a game like doom or wolfenstein in his spare time today... even though in the "golden age" of games they were marvels of technology... and consoles today are just motorolla and intel processors, standard mac/pc's with custom bios's and operating systems, but still standardized hardware that we use in our home pc's/mac's

20 years ago I was still playing Activision's River Raid :D

http://img.brothersoft.com/screensho...245071917.jpeg

Dude, it's not like Pacman had more content...

at least two weeks

20 years ago I was playing Battlehawks 1942. The game that started my love for combat flight sims.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/battlehawks-1942

The main reason IL2 has survived is purely due to the fact that Oleg and 1C Team actually looked after their customers with free aircraft, maps and updates over the past 10 years,
and kept supporting their product unlike a lot of software houses that abandon their customers and leggit with the cash.

Not counting the IL2 series "essential" upgrades for example FB AEP PF Pe2 etc, etc
Now condensed into IL2 1946

Everything else has been free and constantly "improved/corrected"

And with TD taking over from 1C Team for free who know how long it will keep going :)

It's not the "free" thing, but the fact those upgrades exist at all.

Look, most of us spend several hundred $ for IL2 related hardware.

>ATI sux with il2? - ok, let's buy a nvidia card

>You suck at flying? Well, the you need at least a X52, plus eventually pedals.

> SOW needs needs new GPU? No problem, but let me now how many gigs of RAM it needs, so I can upgrade to DDR3 as well if i have to.

> Lack of SA? You go and order a TIR.(Or build a FT, if you can)

So, yes, I think most of us are[would be] willing to actually spend a few bucks on add-ons. ;)

just my $.02