You did get a BOB map in IL-2, built by the community. It is unfortunate that the COD was released unfinished and the development eventually had to move on to stay in business, but that certainly doesn't mean there will be no further content for the channel map.

The standalone COD is probably dead, but the channel map, content, features, and aircraft will improve continually over the life of the series. The devs and possibly third parties will be building aircraft for the Sequels that can be used historically on the Channel Map. The community will use the map SDK, supposedly being released with the Sequel to improve the channel map. The community will use the improved AI, AI Commands, FMB introduced in the Sequel to make much better missions and Campaigns for the Channel Map.

Not to mention computer improvements and sim optimizations that will allow far more aircraft in the air with decent frame rates. That said my current system allows enough aircraft in the air to simulate most possible BOB missions. The current missions and campaigns built by the developer had to be dumbed down for use on average computers, not to mention the poor state of the game engine when these missions were built a few years ago.

The ghost trees do suck big time, hopefully the devs will eventually be able to further mod the Speedtrees to accept a damage model with decent frame rates on their huge map. Or get rid of Speedtrees all together.

Hehehe before it use to be ghost planes. Now its ghost trees. Hehe

well about the trees it would be possible to put poles scatterd best at random at an interval that does not affect frame rates to much so to discourage flying through them.
the effect being somwhat of a minefield and not historical correct but neverthe less hiding in the trees would become highly dangerous.
for now maybe a solution.

Wait a second...I think if you look off shore from Dunkirk about 25 miles I found the SS minnow floating around.

The S. S. Minnow is a fictional charter boat
what I dont get, but Im Dutch so should be forgiven, how it relates to the post(s) above.

Its in the game. I've seen it. Trust me. Its there.

I'm always looking for something out of the ordinary to show up. Do you remember the discussion with luthier about having a few surprises. I would not be surprised if they are tied to hours flown, or something like that.

You evil man now there is someone searching the sea off dunkirk for the ss minnow...

I hope Mary-Ann and Ginger are still onboard.

I would not be too suprised!!

In that this would not be the first flight sim to simulate the SS minnow!

microprose pacific air war 1942 (PAW) had an 'extra' island out in the pacific map.. And if you flew close to it.. You would start reciving radio message (text) from the 'folks' living on that island! Get closer and you could see the ship and people sitting on the beach

It was a great sim.. One of if not the first PC game to impliment a true 6DOF flight model.. Though it was fixxed point math and not floating point.. It was still far better than the other sims at that time (AOTP, AOE, RB, CYAR, SWOTL, etc).. It was also the sim that lead the way to microprose european air war (EAW)