hello luthier!

[Blackdog_kt]

Of course, the language barrier is also a factor
Anyway, i'm glad we're all coming to our senses again.

My one simple suggestion at this point is to go out and play the game, drop some settings if you must as a workaround for known issues but just go ahead and fly.

I avoided flying online because other people had told me of the sound bug and i was busy testing things offline anyway for the most part but guess what, i hadn't actually tried it for any length of time apart from a short test run a couple of patches ago.

Tonight i got on skype with a buddy i recently got back into flight sims (started him out with IL2:1946 and he then purchased CoD too) and we decided to try some multiplayer. I wasn't in the mood to start fiddling with the FMB so we just joined Syndicate to have a ready-made sandbox to fly in.

He had some trouble with his freetrack setup, i had some trouble due to running Skype on top of the sim with my limited 3GB of RAM, we had a couple of cases of spawning on the same places which resulted in our aircraft colliding, but after some experimentation (2-3 tries all in all) and taxiing a few yards away from the spawn point before the second one of us spawned, we got into the air and flew two sorties of about one hour each, maybe more.

The first one we started on 303 Polish squadron's airfield so as to be away from the furball area and have some time to get things running properly and distance to grab some altitude. It was completely hilarious, between fiddling with my compass and directional gyro and keeping tabs on the whereabouts of my less experienced buddy who was all over the sky, we ended up back-tracking twice over a meeting point before we got familiarized with our surroundings and started navigating towards Dover in a loose formation.

We encountered a couple formations of ghost contacts (dots that disappear as you close by), he ended up blowing his governor and at that time i got bounced by a 109. Not sure if he was AI but he might have been, as we descended in a left-hand spiral all the way to the deck with me evading his shots. After a while i tried to suck him into some scissors and force an overshoot, i over-controlled my Huricane and entered a spin. The result was getting a fuel leak and getting wounded. My buddy was safe on the ground by that time in Hawkinge, i landed with 1 gallon of fuel in the main tank due to the fuel leak (remembered to switch to reserve just in time) and he told me on skype to taxi next to him.

I jokingly said something about snapping souvenir photos, he said it was a good idea and i ended up getting screenshots of his nosed over Hurricane from within my cockpit. His engine had just quit a bit before touch-down and that's why his propeller blades were not all broken when he nosed over. In fact, his Hurricane was balanced on one of the prop blades itself!

Next sortie we decided to spawn in Lympne, got our bearings faster, set up a CAP circuit between Folkestone and Dover to protect friendly ships and then we saw a flight of AI Blenheims going across the channel so we decided to escort them, hoping they would draw some attention.

That's when my buddy started having trouble with keeping station again and drifting away. At some point and while dividing my attention between the bombers i was circling over to my low 4 o'clock and him wandering off to my 9 o'clock i hear him say he's being shot at. I tell him to go full power and race to his direction, as i pick up a contact behind him.

He managed to stay alive, i closed the distance and decided to spray and pray a bit to discourage his attacker, so i managed to save the guy (felt like babysitting rookies for real). At that point a Spitfire joined in and scored some hits on the 109 so i thought it best to go back north in order to regroup and grab some more altitude.

Being tail end charlie and focused on guiding my buddy back over the friendly coast (he's terrible with navigation and being unfamiliar with the map makes thing complicated for me too ), the 109 which at that point had either downed or evaded the Spitfire gave me a good rake from possibly point blank rage. My screen went black in an instant and i saw the damage and pilot kill messages on the text window.

In one of the sorties (don't remember which), our airfield also got bombed as we were just starting our take off roll.

Long story short, i had so much fun that after having dinner i got back in, this time solo, picked up a 109 and set up a cap between Folkestone and Dover. Seems like most people fly low for the time being because i was trailing a contrail for an amount of time equal to half a fuel tank at economy settings up at 6-7km, along with the enemy flak bursts marking my position, but nobody was around for me to engage. After a while another 109 attacked me by mistake and damaged my pneumatic container, he told me he was sorry, i told him not to worry and to have fun and i set course for home since i was on half a tank of fuel anyway.


I got into only 3 fights, didn't get a single kill, died one time and had to RTB another one and it still was the best 3 hours of flight simming i've had the past few months. Just the sense of ambiance and sheer scale of the environment, the uncertainty and running for home flat out on a power dive from 7km amid the evening haze was enough for me.


As a side note, before spawning i set forest to very low (i already had it on low anyway), disabled music and voice in the sound options and didn't have any issue at all with the sound cutting out.

Just drop a couple of settings to ensure a stable game and go fly the planes that work, there's a good amount of fun in that while the next patches are baking in the oven, the servers are more stable (at least the one i was in) and i was surprised and pleased to see there were new people flying that don't even know how to start up their engines yet and everyone was helping them out.

Turn off your FPS counter, drop your texture detail a notch or two and give it a go, despite the remaining bugs and problems it still beats arguing with me on the forums