The real IL2 focus group (Everyone come in here)

[Yossarian]

It's not a deal breaker for me. I am going to buy the game, I would have liked to see blackouts in, but after what Anton said about publisher pressure to not include a sim mode at all I will count myself lucky to have this game with any kind of sim mode, it is more about the flight model than anything else for me.

There some strange choices for sim campaign mode, unlimited ammo, fuel and no blackouts but it's not a deal breaker compared to what other flying games there are for consoles.

Also from reading Anton's comments it looks as if people with different difficulty settings can play in the same server, so us blacking out would give us a serious disadvantage online.