I think I will reserve judgement until I see what it looks like in the game, strikes me as funny that its almost like some people think that Oleg and the team don't know what they are doing or something.

Let's cut them a bit of slack.

If there is one, might not be for awhile, this game needs a dynamic campaign system along with a good pilot career mode, similar to what there adding to rise of flight.

Luthier did make it clear recently that CPU was the bottleneck, not GPU.
He said that in testing they even made each object appear as a single pixel and it made little difference. A flight sim has a heck of a lot of complex calculations to make compared to your normal shoot em up....flight model, engine management, air AI, ground AI, weather, line of sight calculations for radar and AI etc. etc.

I reckon just figuring out who can see who based on the position of clouds and hills could be a massive resource hog in itself...one of the reasons no sim has done this adequately to date.

To my eye the above example of weathering looks quite poor. The random splotching with a photoshop brush and the childlike exhaust streak are at odds with the jet black/neon white national markings. Certainly not on a par with the best 3rd party skinners of Il-2.

I think you vastly underestimate the amount of CPU it takes to create decent physics in a combat flight sim type game such as COD. Think of all the forces that have to be calculated lift, thrust, drag, weight, torque etc. and this isn't one big simple calculation, it is many many calculations that have to be applied to many surfaces and objects continually and will change based on other things such as altitute or damage sustained. Then you have to take into account all the other things that are modelled such as ballistics and other ground based objects.

The difference with a RTS game is that your units will not have any physics at all to compute. Each unit is a list of numbers which go through a relatively basic calculation to determine which number is bigger i.e. who wins. The reason RTS games are CPU intensive is because of the large numbers of units possible. Path-finding is indeed CPU intensive but do you think that there is no path-finding in COD? Path-finding in 3d space is exponetially more CPU intensive than on a single plane.

The point being that yes, both types of games are CPU intensive but for very different reasons. As others have said larger formations will be possible but this is a product, and you sell a product to as many customers as possible - it doesn't mean the game has been coded badly or they are trying to dumb the game down to remove all your fun.

Besides, as others have said if your computer can handle it there'll be plenty of big formation missions built by the community. Goodluck shooting down 20+ bombers when they come along. :-)

+1, im hoping that the skinners can rectify the weathering so we dont have to use the built in one which to my eye appears poor. also that matt manager will work with COD.

An extra slider for the exhaust would be great.
The 109 could be more dirty but the exhaust is a bit overdone imho.

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/5443/109new1.jpg

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4379/109weathered.jpg
Here is the other picture Luthier put up to show the contrast between full weathering and no weathering. Comparing the exhaust stain to RL pics of heavily weathered Bf109s, the color is right but its too well defined and in RL the staining follows the top of the wing instead of the side of the fuselage.

Don't forget the weathering is a slider though, not an on/off switch, so the weathering doesn't have to be so pronounced.

If those models and skins that appear in the menu are the actual ones that are in the game proper (As it was in IL-2) then I'd have to say I'm a tad disappointed. Buuuuuuut! We don't know how old that pic is, and what has been changed since then.

As was mentioned by Feathered_IV, the contrast between the two aircraft is almost negligible, and the markings look to be factory fresh.

Still, "Pre-Release", hopefully this has been changed.

p.s. If Oleg or someone is reading this. Will skinners be able to create transparent portions to their skin so bare metal can show through? Maybe a specific colour that translates to transparent?

Also the slider is al the way to the other side, which is rather exceptional I think, the ground crew would clean the plane once in a while, I think it comes pretty close when after a year of service and no ground crew cleaning/ maintaining.

Nothing wrong with it.