KG_26 Alpha pretty much sums up my thinking with his last post on this subject.

I have installed mods and flown them both off and online in the past. The extra features and aircraft and hollywood effects they offered were interesting but I never thought they were worth risking the flight sim and community for.

I tried track IR too, bought one brand new for myself, and it seemed more trouble than it was worth. I don't know how many guys I have flown with that had it go wacky on them during a flight and had to bow out to get their **** back together and working for them.

Very often I always told newcomers to IL2 that all they needed to fly online with anyone toe-to-toe was an up-to-date installation and a twisty-stick with a good hat-switch. It is all I have been using for many years. My Microsoft Precision 2, which I recently bought for $5 at a thrift shop, is installed and used with all default settings.

That is the way to sell the sim to those newly interested in it as far as I am concerned. Then they can just have fun instead of worrying about gadgets and extra software that they certainly do not need at all to have fabulous times with IL2 Sturmovik.
Later on after they get their sea-legs then they will do whatever they want, but Like Alpha said, I have seen dozens of people on Hyperlobby chat struggling for no good reason with mod installations and fancy hardware, and I would not blame them at all for quickly deciding that it is all too much compared to their gaming boxes and simpler distractions out there.

After over a decade I still enjoy flying the official version of IL2 and using the same stick because it does the job and I don't have to think about anything unless I feel like it.

Thank you to all the modelers and coders who have helped Oleg and company and TD work on the sim to keep improving it, and no thank you to those who have put themselves before it. That has always been my point.

Nowhere did I call anyone a fool. If that is not how I roll. If you interpreted my statement as saying you or anyone else was a fool then I apologize, but you misunderstood (If that was indeed your interpretation of what I said). What I said was that this argument or debate if you will, over mods is a foolish waste of time.... and I stand by that firmly. The sim is modded and has been that way for at least the past 5 years, and will be that way from here on out therefore to even debate mods is a waste of time. What will save this sim in the long run is for as many well done mods as possible to be incorporated into the stock sim where and if they can be and for whatever new stuff TD can come up with based on their having the green light from 1C, that the mod community will have to piecemeal being added as time and resources permit thereby making the stock sim more appealing to a broader spectrum of simmers. Evidence for this is already seen in that there are more people flying stock now than any other time since the whole mod community took off. I believe that this is because TD added some of the better, more functionally imersive modsntonthe stock sim and added more of their own content as I said. I think it is great and I would like nothing more than to be able to go into a few decent stock servers, coops ot otherwise, and have a blast. That will be more likely as long as TD keeps going in the direction it is going. That is all I am saying.

easy online = new pilots?
are we losing?
the online arguments are okay.
but if we discuss "pilot losses" then one question must also be asked: where are these new pilots recruited from?
online in some sort (forums, mail, newsgroups, other online sims) or do they have an offline providence of some sort?

A lot of new guys are coming from Steam's IL2 1946 and Cliffs Of Dover.

Also, especially on a few squads I speak with, one guy tries it and tells his friends etc etc.

4 new members of the SAS have discovered how to fly a "tiger moth" on my desktop... two months ago.

2 of them never considered flying a plane before at all - to them, they were just flying buses with toilets and stewardesses.

Their luck - Monday the youngest of them, 11 years old, beat all of the others: he was the first to be able to take off, place a set of rockets on target and land properly.

Full switch, in a T-6 Texan. It lasted no more than ten minutes, but the Kid was exhausted after that. X-52 and TrackIR... sure got his brain heated up. The others are soon to follow.

they felt the pressure, and are sending me UP/DBW tracks everyday.

;)

cough cough... stock 4.11... ;)
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/d...9/grab0116.jpg

[QUOTE=_1SMV_Gitano;389602]cough cough... stock 4.11... ;)

LOL

I saw that too but thought surely he must know :)

Yes, but i can't choose the skin myself, that's the difference.

Would love that to be a stock feature though.......

We are referring to the fact you were talking about automatically changing the skin for the map in your earlier post.

Also

You can select the skin as the default skin for the map in v4.11.

Precisely .. make it so there is a default .. and a variable slot .. even if there is only one variable.. and if that is set to say 0 in the config file then it will automatically use the default .. but if set to 1 it will use whatever custom skin you have selected.

.. and guys just be absolutely clear on this .. I use mods .. I like some of them .. but IMO as I have said .. the future of this sim lies with TD and their work.. whatev4r mod pack tat makes itslef most compatible with the stock sim will be on my HD .. but the work that TD does isn ivaluable to keeping this sim alive and IMO if it were just left solely to the mod community we would have even more fracturing. The fact that there have always been dedicated stock servers on HL says a lot .. the fact that there are more now ... and that they are being utilized says even more.