Il2 forgotten battles ace expansion pack

[Bearcat]

AS a 411 ... here is an exerpt from The Nugget's Guide

IL2 Sturmovik - The original sim. It is not compatible with any of the later versions and is patchable to v1.22ov. A milestone for sure, and a classic for a collector... but if you want to fly NOW with people there are not a lot of servers that run IL2 left. It is 8+ years old.

Forgotten Battles 1.0 - Originally conceived as an add on for IL2, it wound up becoming a separate stand alone product in it's own right.

The Aces Expansion Pack AKA FB 2.0 - As the name says an add on expansion pack bringing in more planes and enhancing the move west. (Bear in mind that IL2 started out as an Eastern Front sim..).

Pacific Fighters AKA FB3.0 - This is where things get.... confusing for some... Pacific Fighters can be installed as a stand alone sim (FB3.0) with just the Pacific content... or it could be merged with FB 2.0 (FB3.0merged ). Many people came here after buying PF and installing it as a stand alone... but most of them came around and wound up getting the other parts and merging the sim. *NOTE* PF standalone can only be patched as far as 4.04.. there are no more patches for PF standalone after that. All subsequent patches and updates are for the merged version of the sim and IL2 1946 ONLY.

After PF came out there was a major patch for the sim that brought it up to FB 4.0 and FB 4.0m for the merged version of the sim. After that there were a few more patches that eventually brought it up to 4.04...from there on out all upgraded versions were the results of the add ons..... There were patches throughout all the versions.. but IMO they aren't worth mentioning since the final incarnation of the sim ... is IL2 1946 which is what I recommend that you get if you have anything other than that. That includes the FB GOLD, or the Ultimate Flight collection, or that combo CD set that had FB,the AEP & PF all on one CD. IL2 1946 is the way to go.. but just for the record so that you know.... the addons after FB3.0 were:

Pe-2.... an add on that only works on FB3.0m. Originally it was going to only be released in Russia... but after much weeping and gnashing of teeth... it was released online as an add on to FB4.0. Pe-2 brought the sim up to FB 4.05m

Sturmoviks Over Manchuria... and 46 were originally planned as separate add ons... but after the release of Pe-2 and the problems associated with the release it was decided to hold off on the release of the final two products individually and they wound up being released together in the IL2 1946 DVD, version 4.07m of the sim which also contains all the previously merged versions.

The IL2 1946 DVD contains IL2 FB, The AEP, PF, AND the Pe-2, Sturmoviks Over Manchuria and 46 addons. There will be only one desktop icon.

Hope that helps to clarify things..