Luthier,
I have joined this forum just to say thanks to you and the team for your efforts on this. I have read a lot of comments here - some positive, some very negative, so I thought I'd add some feedback myself.
As some background, I have been playing IL2 sims since Forgotten Battles came out. I bought it by chance, as I had not read any reviews, and was not familiar with the original IL2 sim. It was just on the shelf at the shop I was in, and I hadn't played a flight sim since US Navy Fighters, and no historical ones since Red Baron (1990) so I thought, "why not?". Best purchase ever. I loved it, even though my PC at the time was a little under-powered for it! I then bought the Aces Expansion Pack, and Pacific Fighters (which was particularly great for me as I was able to fly for my own country (Australia), which is a rare thing in these games!). These all kept me entertained for years - and that was just the offline play, as I never dared dip my toe into the multilayer arena (I would need to have a ribbon painted on my plane, as I would be a gift for any half-decent pilot
). I was also always impressed with the level of support and the patches released.
SO, I recently got a new system, and was sad to discover the older games had trouble on Win7 64bit, so I then started looking for a copy of 1946, which does run on Win7. A friend suggested I try looking on Steam (which I already had for other games), and then when looking for 1946, I discovered that Cliffs of Dover was just released. This was too almost good to be true!
Well, actually, it WAS too good to be true, because a quick check of reviews and forums quickly revealed the state the sim was in upon its release. This was very disappointing, but I figured I would keep an eye on it.
After finding my way to this forum, and seeing your interaction with more serious fans than myself, and the fact that patches were released so quickly, I decided that it was worth giving it a go - it wasn't THAT expensive, after all. Sure enough, it was slow on my system , especially if I set it to full "pretty" mode.
But I have to say that after swallowing my pride, and dropping back the video settings a bit, it is very playable and my learning curve is starting again. It is better for me after this latest patch too. (I have even acquired a new HOTAS system for it, and started playing with head tracking options).
Anyway, I know that was a bit of an essay, but I guess my point is that your support and passion for this sim is obvious. And while it may not (will not) make everyone happy, it has certainly been enough to get me onboard, and enjoying myself. And while I know it is not a perfect product at the moment, I know from past experience that this software will have a team of people constantly working on it over the coming months/years.
Keep it up!
Rock Doctor
Win7 Ultimate 64bit
i7 980x
8GB RAM
ATI 6870
60GB SSD OS disk
2TB data disk
running at 1920 x 1080
FacetrackNoIR