The real IL2 focus group (Everyone come in here)

[Axe99]

lol - I'm a little surprised at how seriously everyone is taking this. Anton, by the sound of it you're doing a _brilliant_ job of managing expectations for the game, which I'm looking forward to more than any game this year (and while I love my sims, I was/am also pumped for Killzone/Uncharted/inFamous/MW2 - IL2:BoP has these in it's wake though ).

I also voted that I'd prefer redouts and blackouts in the game, as they do help keep the actual maneouvres possible more realistic. BUT, as Anton has well described, I'd be very surprised if the console crowd is ready for it - especially in a game that I'm sure all of us are hoping will sell well. As far as I know, Energy Airforce, for the PS2 is the only console game I'm aware of that had redouts and blackouts, and it was no-where near popular (or realistic) enough to have prepared the Blazing Angels and Ace Combat crowd for a 'real' sim. What BoP will do (hopefully) is lay the groundwork for many more sim-style flyers on consoles, and if it has to make a few concessions to do this well and good. BoP looks like it will be a _really_ good game, and takes flight games further than they've ever been on console before.

Of course, if it was possible to have a 'hardcore' mode added through DLC, with blackouts/redouts and whatnot else, I wouldn't complain, and would get right into it - but I think that BoP will be a great game without it, and will still be plenty satisfying to the sim crowd (particularly the sim crowd that have lapsed due to the expensive nature of maintaining a PC set-up, who are likely to be a bit more relaxed about these things - and there's a _lot_ of them out there ). Bring BoP on as it is I say, and then it's up to gamers like us on these forums to make it successful, and then there'll be sequels with more hardcore options. I pre-ordered my copy last week, and am counting down the days .