This is getting better and better. Now, i just hope that by "mid-range PC with an older GPU" luthier means a previous generation quad core with a late series nVidia 8800...this would make my i7 920/Ati 4890 look more than adequate for running it. Or he could mean an i5 with an Ati 4870/nVidia 285 range GPU, in which case the performance difference wouldn't be that huge and i'd have to scale down on some detail, because i'm just engaging in wishful thinking
In any case, i'm glad to see that a mid-range PC running SoW can reach an acceptable compromise between performance and visual quality. In fact, that's exactly what i used to do back in the day when i couldn't run IL2 at max detail...i would use max detail on aircraft and low on the ground textures.