[X]

I temporarily went off of the mods because of the furor they caused, and because they seemed silly to me---I wasn't concerned about whether my engine sounded exactly like the correct one or not, and I was indifferent to using a great number of former AI aircraft now fitted with ad hoc cockpits. I was unable to get the 6 DOF mod to work. Well, a friend sent me a note which told me the 6 DOF mod was perfected and easily installed. I reinstalled 46, which bored me to death, installed the sound mod, and installed the 6 DOF mod.

Simply put, you would have to be totally insane to not use this. You would have to be the the most reactionary diehard in the world to want to go on using the standard sight emulation system. With 6 DOF 46 is a brand new, nearly state-of-the-art combat flight sim. Now I love IL-2 again---it is my favorite flight sim. My favorite 46 airplane is the I-16. Prior to 6 DOF you were dead blind aft---totally, completely unrealistic. This was one very big reason I threw 46 off of my HD---without 6 DOF it was ludicrous---a dated product. 6 DOF is not a gimmick. It is not a luxury. It is not fun. It is the core of a flight sim. Without it your situational awareness is massively reduced. Without it your relationship to your gunsight is artificial. Without it all the beautiful modeling of the effects of the telescopic sights is wasted. With 6 DOF in 46 you have to depress your virtual head to squeeze your eye into the F2A-2's tele sight. You do not lose SA while using a tele sight because you can quickly glance left and right out of the sight to track your target. Tracking targets is much easier. People who have never used 6 DOF cannot have a conception of what it means. You can ID a target by quickly moving your head closer to the windscreen. Your visual activity is natural, not artificial.

Thus, the mods are doing some great things, but I place this at the top. You recall, we were "authoritatively" told 6 DOF was impossible in IL-2.

I wonder if Oleg let things come to a boil just to see how inventive the IL-2 people are, how creative, how imaginative? The online people wanted IL-2 frozen. Now it is wide open in an explosion of creativity. IL-2 will live for years now rather than being "Oleg's first essay---now obsolete thanks to BOBSOW."