[zapatista]

i had a look again at the BoB preview addon cd that came with 1946 on the WE, i think the video was intended as an alpha stage "teaser" but it gives a good idea of the level of progress made at that time. the video was released at the end of 2006 iirc, and by all indications at that point their development team was still in full swing to try and get BoB out the door soon and they were making good progress. early screenshots of BoB work in progress were even posted as early as dec 2005 (see this thread for a good summary of all earlier screenshots posted on BoB work by olegs crew http://forums-de.ubi.com/eve/forums/...4/m/4641029783). we had further indications progress was still continuing in late 2006 that oleg was promoting BoB previews at a couple of aviation/game fairs (remember the old puma video interview with oleg).

after that there was a long long period of total silence, completely unexplained, and the removal of olegs room at ubi

in oct 2007 the !C il2 forum was opened, and on 10-15-2007 oleg showed signs of life again, and posted here

Here we begin to post development news of BoB.... some time, but not so rare... I hope once per 2-3 weeks or so .... and more close to beta - each week like in old good time with IL-2

on dec 21 2007 oleg posted at simhq

New constant BoB development updates

and posted a url link pointing to this forum

we then once a month for 3 or 4 months get a few aircraft WIP screenshots and oleg answering some questions (great, news at last and signs it is still being worked on !). the answers given are however very general and indicate a lot of issues are still undecided and open ended, almost as you would have expected from a sim still in alpha stage, but this is now more then 2 years after we already had extensive alpha previews from his older interviews, and the "1946 cd addon video" previewing BoB. the screenshots posted in 2008 are also still only a few closups of WiP aircraft with generic blue backgrounds (yes nice looking aircarft, i aint complaining about them, why you'd want to be working on obscure italian aircraft in a way overdue BoB sim is another question).

then without reason again total silence from feb 2008 for 3 months and our active forum moderator disappears at the same time.

we then get sudden news from 3e party sources that il2 is about to be released for consoles, and the preview press release specifically mentions the BoB era, and shows BoB scenery that is very similar to olegs nov 2006 preview video. the sim also is very advanced and has a release date and preview video's and press reviews. predictably pandemonium breaks out in the main il2 forums and long term oleg supporters start jumping out of windows.

a couple of brief post from oleg then follow attempting to reassure some of the fans there is still a BoB pc sim in the works, but the only new screenshots posted at the same time to indicate "work is proceeding as usual" are again only a few WiP closeups from aircraft with blue background screens (indicating they are 3D models in a graphic editor program, not a near finished object flying in a 3D world), worse, those models arnt even WiP from olegs team himself but are made by another group working on their own sim project (yes, we'll all be happy with the new korean sim, dont get me wrong). in a worst case scenario, those same aircraft models could even be used for the console games and might have nothing to do with the pc project we are waiting for.

now again almost 3 months of total silence and no signs of life or "New constant BoB development "

forgive some of us for being slightly skeptical the pc project is proceeding at a normal pace and is still on track, or that some of us now doubt it will happen at all.