[Chivas]

The game engine is still influx, modding would be folly at this time. If major improvements are made most people will move on to the Sequel. I would expect a coherent 50 person development crew who have the sim tools, and understanding of the game engine would be able to make more improvements in the next year or two than community modders. Whether or not the development survives, the time to mod would be after the Sequel. Thats not to say that some modding wouldn't work, if those mods can be integrated into the changes made by the developer in the Sequel.

Gaijin sims do look good overall, if you don't look too closely, but when you fly only a few minutes, a message flashes on the screen "you are leaving the battle area" and a minute more your automatically turned 180* is an immersion killer. It will be interesting to see if their future sims will have larger maps that can keep the overall decent look with decent performance. I think the COD terrain is just OK, but the development is still working on the terrain engine and tools that will allow the community to improve it as well. Even as is I prefer the size of the COD map and its more complex transportation infrastructure, which allows far more complex and immersive missions and campaigns. That said I hope Gaijin has learned from its previous sims and will have sim options that will attract the IL-2 community into buying their sim as well. This would be very good for the genre.