This was possible in the old European Air War. It had varying levels of time compression and just like IL2, in the lower levels the screen just went faster but to do the higher ones it couldn't render it fast enough. In IL2 we are presented with a black screen, EAW had a map that showed your plane moving along its flight plan.
The single thing it had extra was a "skip to next waypoint" function and it worked really well (that game had some very long missions, like bomber escort from the UK to Germany and back, so it was very useful). What it did was switch to a fly by view and afterwards it loaded the appropriate triggers for the next waypoint while switching your view back to the cockpit. What impressed me was that it didn't disengage smack in the middle of combat but up to 5 minutes before the engagement took place, giving you enough time to set things up. The incentive to not use it was that it disengaged only when enemy aircraft where near or when a waypoint was approached, while if you went with time compression only you could pick up randomized targets of opportunity along the way like vehicle convoys.
For IL2 and SoW however, most maps are way smaller due to the higher detail. Time compression works just fine thanks to the reduced distances (the pacific is indeed a concern though). Another thing to note is that EAW missions relied mostly on triggers, while in IL2 and i guess in SoW as well most of the other flights (enemy and friendly) don't just spawn out of nowhere a few miles away (though it's possible) but are already well into the mission flying a route of their own by the time you meet them. I don't know how feasible it would be to calcutate the appropriate data for all flights in order to make a "skip to next waypoint" function.
If this series lives as long as IL2, like we all hope it will, and we get big pacific maps or a unified european map for strategic bombing missions, then it might be worth it to revisit the idea a few years later, we'll be having more powerful PCs to run it on as well.
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