[ElAurens]

While I prefer more difficult settings for some things, the whole notion that "more difficult = more real", and strident comments like Janosch made, is what is slowly and surely killing this genre.

"Hard core" players have always made up the minority of those playing the IL2 franchise, yet, because we screamed the loudest on the various forums, the game (yes it is a game guys) became more and more a niche playground for those the like the most difficult, if not the most realistic, settings. Thus, the majority of players that paid the bills for the thing in the first place, were left behind, and by and large went offline or stopped playing altogether.

Any future combat flight sim has to be scalable and inclusive of all game play types to be successful, otherwise we end up with two totally divergent camps, study sims like DCS that offer little content for big bucks, or arcade shooters like War Thunder, neither choice is acceptable to the majority of players that made IL2, to this day, the best WW2 virtual air combat title ever.