18th winter flying IL2, who's left?

[Jumoschwanz]

What is left of my hair is now grey, and my eyes don't let me see the monitor during flying well anymore, still enjoying IL2 here and there though.

I can still remember my first online flight with the full(non-demo) version of IL2 back in the winter of 2001/2002. We were flying CFS2 on Hypberlobby too sometimes, but IL2 quickly sent it to the scrap-heap.

I got onto some server in an La-5 and 609IAP Relentov was on there with his buddies chasing me around trying to shoot me down, the La-5 was fast though and I kept running away, looping back and doing head-ons with them. I can't remember now but it probably ended up with me getting blown out of the sky.

We flew on dial-up for years and had to download all those big patches with a 56k modem! I would start a patch download before I went to bed and hopefully it would finish up sometime before noon the next day without dropping the line so I had to continue it or start the whole thing over....

Everyone was flying the official patches, there were no mods, and the servers were packed full, lot of them, and there were a LOT of hard-settings servers too.

Jumo.....

[Marabekm]

I am afraid the list only seems to be growing smaller. Though occasionally we get a new old guy, or an old new guy. Some people come back from COD and BOS every once in a while.

[Treetop64]

Still here. Been around since the old Ubi forums days, and raaaid's hilarious "science" threads.

Never flew that much online. Primarily Offline.

Still play the game regularly, now in modded form though I prefer the ala-carte method with ModAct v6.4 over the bloated mega-mods.

[Jumoschwanz]

The other thing was our hardware, my first IL2 computer was an AMD Athlon 900mhz with a 200mhz front-side buss and a pretty crappy video card, like a GeForce MX. Some people flew with Pentium II or III rigs too, and it was really borderline running IL2 on those machines!

The crappy CRT monitors used to burn your eyes out after so many hours, if they had not come out with alternatives I would have had to quit ten years ago.

I learned that if you are buying a gaming video-card, then save up for something really good because it is cheaper than getting a so-so card then a pretty-good card then a really good card later. I think I may have been the first one to have a GeForce 3 Ti-500 for flying IL2, and it was heaven for sure.

[DKoor]

Eh, those were the days.
During that time one could enjoy UBi Zoo slaughterhouse as much as one could enjoy actual gameplay. I think it really culminated somewhere around that time when Hristo's have been banned from WarClouds because of actually listening to allied TS chat ... at least for me. In spite of me being attached to the game years after, for me it never got so heated like it was during those days.

But yes, sooo many things happened in the meantime (one of the most important things for me is that I've become a dad of twin girls), so much time passed as Jumo said... I remember both of you Tree and Jumo from those days. Can't really believe how much time has passed.

I think WarClouds were the peak of my experience with the game... I still have quite a bit of online TRK's ...
Long ago I even uploaded one where I miraculously ended up alive flying one of my fav ac types after getting pounded by the oppo I lost sight of;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e9bNiq07kw

[dimlee]

DKoor,

Good fight. As someone who flew P-38 a lot (and FW 190 was my no.2 "blue" a/c) I really enjoyed watching it.

You could take a look at Orel (http://www.letkaorel.eu ) if you have time. Currently there are 2 or 3 maps with P-38 in rotation. And with FW 190

[Janosch]

Letkaorel does lots of things right - they rotate existing maps and sometimes update them, for example. Unfortunately, some of the maps are cluttered with AI planes and soft ground targets. It's a double whammy. Still, it's probably the best server today.
Vinni Puh (a Russian server) was unfortunately neutered by long absence, the removal of 99% of the maps outside the 109/190 vs La/Yak formula and lack of HyperLobby presence, so there aren't any players.

[dimlee]

Originally Posted by Janosch

Letkaorel does lots of things right - they rotate existing maps and sometimes update them, for example. Unfortunately, some of the maps are cluttered with AI planes and soft ground targets. It's a double whammy. Still, it's probably the best server today.
Vinni Puh (a Russian server) was unfortunately neutered by long absence, the removal of 99% of the maps outside the 109/190 vs La/Yak formula and lack of HyperLobby presence, so there aren't any players.

I welcome AI planes on LetkaOrel maps for two reasons:
1. Deficit of human players. Sometimes the server is just empty.
2. My eyes are not sharp anymore so I avoid dogfights and prefer to intercept bombers. Just wish there were AI escorts to spice things up.
3. AI bring more fun and diversity. For example, hunting for floatplanes.
Agree that many ground targets are soft. But again, with few pilots in the air anything "tougher" would mean no chance to win the map.

Is Vinni Puh still online? I was active there long time ago. Stopped to follow around 2014 as too many players used the game for "political" discussions.

[ElAurens]

I'm still around, though the Pigs rarely fly anymore.

Still have '46 on the hard drives, and take up one of the old planes every once in a while.

[DKoor]