It's out and noone commented on it?

Allright, so I'm the first. And I am almost at a loss for words. To sum it up in the briefest way: If you like IL2, you're better off sticking with IL2 1946 for now.

At least from what I can gather by the ten or so minutes I tried the training.

first, the pros:

• the shadows look amazing
  
• insane detail, like grass, random bicycles standing around etc.
  
• clickable cockpit instruments
  

now, for the cons:

• performance is abysmal, even on medium details (i7 870, 4 gb RAM, gforce GTX460)
  
• Many controls don't work, even though assigned in the options. Many controls not to be found in the options at all, or at least not easily.
  
• some textures are missing (most notably on the training plane, which just sports a yellow bumpmap)
  
• radio chatter sounds odd and too fast/cut off
  
• special effects like smoke and fire look worse than in Il2 1946
  

special training issues:

• Instructs you to fly through rings, which are invisible.
  
• no prompts for the controls.
  
• explains procedures without letting you do them.
  

To sum it up, it looks and feels like a very half assed ww2 combat mod for FSX

And here's a screen, with everything maxed out. It sucks more than neccessary due to steams screenshot compression though.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ ... A7B7FF568CFBFF9254C8C1CB/

Agree Coleus. It runs like turd. I just bought a Gainward GTX 460 GLH edition mainly for this and it still can only run it on medium settings while lagging horribly over land. The way objects on the land pop-up is horrible aswell. It plays like it's still deep in beta. Waste of 30 quid really, expected way way better.

It's exactly what I thought it would be. Shame, good job I didn't spend money on it though.

Thank you for the community reviews though Coleus & Gills, I'm sure you've saved alot of people from some wasted money, including myself..

Hopefully the problems will get patched out but I can't believe they actually released the supposed "full version" of the game in the state that it is in. It needs a lot of work. Maxed out it looks beautiful, but it's like watching a ****ing slideshow. :sadbanana

I think that flight sims fans have forgotten that that genre have ALWAYS demanded the most current , most expensive hardware. This is not Crysis or Need for Speed or even iRacing, the massive scale and complexity of modeled world is on a different level.

Whenever a new flight sim came out, one knew that he had to get the best PC available at the time of the release to enjoy it- original Il2, LockOn, FSX, A-10 to metion but the most recent ones and that trend was always the same.

Top of the range processors and graphics cards are a must. If you read 1c forum you will see that people with nice i7s and top radeons and nvidias are enjoying CoD now.

You are right Borsch, but in those days hardware was generally cheaper. Alot of people when the original IL-2 came out, were only just beginning in home computing, so there was no demand for the hardware like there is now.

Quote from Borsch :

Top of the range processors and graphics cards are a must. If you read 1c forum you will see that people with nice i7s and top radeons and nvidias are enjoying CoD now.

I see people barely reaching 30fps. It should be optimised better than that regardless of how demanding the game is, it's still buggy as hell. So many objects randomly pop up and flicker. It doesn't look good on land, it just looks really busy and buggy. Over water it runs much better. I can run it pretty much maxed out over water without too much problem, and the water does look beautiful. My computer is far from slow and it's struggling big time over land. At the moment I can run Battle of Britain 2 maxed out with the latest patch and graphical updates and it looks much better over land particularly and runs way smoother. CoD needs fixing mate.

1C released a post on their forum acknowledging the complaints themselves and said they are optimising the game a lot further. So even they are identifying problems. It's not all down to my PC being too slow, my PC is pretty up to date and still runs the game like a slideshow. They say that they will be optimising performance over terrain to get around double the fps possible at the moment over London. They are also enhancing multicore support which they say "easily" doubles the fps. If these things were done before release then there wouldn't be a problem. The game was released unfinished, saying the game is so visually intense that it will only work well on the most recently released hardware because it is a flight sim is a load of bollocks. If what 1C say is true, once they've made these tweaks the game should run smooth as silk on my system and on systems far worse than mine.

Performance wise, it feels like an early alpha, if even that.

I was hoping the disabled epilepsy filter would have fixed it, but seems like the performance problems lay in the foundations of the game engine. I reckon my Q9650/GTX580 should handle it quite well, but the game crawls to a slideshow when flying at low altitudes. It's not constant low FPS either, it's like it runs smooth, but then stutters to a crawl for a little duration, then continues running smooth again until the next stutter. This happens at constant intervals. When doing small dogfights over the sea, it's somewhat playable.

I wonder what kind of computers Ubisoft rented from NASA to record all those silk smooth running trailer videos though.

Quote from Gills4life :

I see people barely reaching 30fps. It should be optimised better than that regardless of how demanding the game is, it's still buggy as hell. So many objects randomly pop up and flicker. It doesn't look good on land, it just looks really busy and buggy. Over water it runs much better. I can run it pretty much maxed out over water without too much problem, and the water does look beautiful. My computer is far from slow and it's struggling big time over land. At the moment I can run Battle of Britain 2 maxed out with the latest patch and graphical updates and it looks much better over land particularly and runs way smoother. CoD needs fixing mate.

1C released a post on their forum acknowledging the complaints themselves and said they are optimising the game a lot further. So even they are identifying problems. It's not all down to my PC being too slow, my PC is pretty up to date and still runs the game like a slideshow. They say that they will be optimising performance over terrain to get around double the fps possible at the moment over London. They are also enhancing multicore support which they say "easily" doubles the fps. If these things were done before release then there wouldn't be a problem. The game was released unfinished, saying the game is so visually intense that it will only work well on the most recently released hardware because it is a flight sim is a load of bollocks. If what 1C say is true, once they've made these tweaks the game should run smooth as silk on my system and on systems far worse than mine.

I'm not arguing against a general statement that it was rushed, it is buggy. I am only saying that no optimisation will make it fly on high settings on average computers. I could be wrong as I only make an inference based on the past sims, but like I said, in the past ALL major sims were complete system hogs (IL2, LockOn, FS9, FSX, A10). To run them with eyecandy one had to wait several years for affordable hardware to be become powerful enough (heck, I could not run original LockOn maxed out 4 years after its release on affordable C2Duo/8800gts), or buy the absolute top of the line stuff and still turn many options down. Just like you, I have gtx460, it is a "reasonably priced card" and I never expected it to pull the weight of CoD. I'll have to wait and upgrade.

Crysis2 is amazing looking, but it has very limited play area, nowere near the 1000km sq of CoD. Wings Of Prey has small maps (50km sq?), very limited draw distance with lots of fog, almost no graphical damage modeling.

So basically, I am only saying that flight sims have always ran badly on reasonably priced systems upon their release. Such is their nature. I do not believe that some "optimisation" will change that for CoD, at least not for us with gtx460s it wont.

Look here- top hardware, med-high settings, bomber intercept over London=40 fps.
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthre ... he_compl.html#Post3256346

Quote from BlueFlame :

You are right Borsch, but in those days hardware was generally cheaper. Alot of people when the original IL-2 came out, were only just beginning in home computing, so there was no demand for the hardware like there is now.

Well, my my mum bought my first PC in 1999- pentium2 400MHz, 64mb RAM, 8mb Voodoo2 graphics card. 1800£. My current Dell C2D 2.66, 2Gb ram, 8800gts(now 460gtx) - 500£ two years ago.

I am making the point that my PC is not average. I updated components to some of the lastest and fastest just for the new IL2, and yet it is still running like a slideshow over busy terrain particularly at low altitude like Matrixi stated. The land objects don't even look that great because they flicker and pop up!

Quote from Gills4life :

I am making the point that my PC is not average. I updated components to some of the lastest and fastest just for the new IL2, and yet it is still running like a slideshow over busy terrain particularly at low altitude like Matrixi stated. The land objects don't even look that great because they flicker and pop up!

You do not say what your PC is made of, but you video card is "chevrolet lacetti" equiv.

Here is a vid from a guy who does not get slideshow above land. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcHFQ9dSb1I

Quote from Borsch :

You do not say what your PC is made of, but you video card is "chevrolet lacetti" equiv.

Here is a vid from a guy who does not get slideshow above land. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcHFQ9dSb1I

He's saying Above average is hard for an average joe to afford. Note the word average. You get what you pay for, but for a game the same price as other new games, you'd expect it not to take so much out of your PC, more than other games brought out at the same time do. That's why alot of people are shifting to console gaming, as for the computer, making a new game generally demanads more from the customers hardware, nobody wants to pay 50$ for a game but another 300$ to actually play it with sufficient clearity and linearity.

Quote from BlueFlame :

He's saying Above average is hard for an average joe to afford. Note the word average. You get what you pay for, but for a game the same price as other new games, you'd expect it not to take so much out of your PC, more than other games brought out at the same time do. That's why alot of people are shifting to console gaming, as for the computer, making a new game generally demanads more from the customers hardware, nobody wants to pay 50$ for a game but another 300$ to actually play it with sufficient clearity and linearity.

I know what you mean! But flight sims NEVER worked that way Top hardware was always needed to play freshly released flight sim.

Here is another vid- intercepting a flight of mobers with figther cover. My 460gtx is not capable of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... ure=player_embedded#at=11

Quote from Borsch :

I know what you mean! But flight sims NEVER worked that way Top hardware was always needed to play freshly released flight sim.

Here is another vid- intercepting a flight of mobers with figther cover. My 460gtx is not capable of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... ure=player_embedded#at=11

Well yes you're right but, when people struggle to find the money for their internet bill, and can afford a game as a treat, to have to upgrade gets tedious, just for one game (although you will benefit in the long run).

No NASA computers, but people play with 45-50 fps in 50 planes battle (36 of them- bombers).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pBiR...embedded#at=11

Some "crazy" people even dare to fight bombers over land that was so shocked it even forgot to turn everything into slideshow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... p;feature=player_embedded

Developers said that next patch will sort out bad fps over towns.

I'm sorry, but if you're flying over the English channel at a consistent 125+ fps, it should not suddenly drop to below 60 frames after adding 5 or 6 planes. If you think that it's just because the game is so incredibly visually intensive, then you're being delusional. It needs work, end of. Yes people who have [Dr Evil] ONE MILLION DOLLARS [/Dr Evil] worth of PC hardware are going to be able to have a playable experience, but frame rates should still be a lot higher on those ridiculously expensive rigs too. I can run any other game maxed out with no problem at all, including other flight sims, and because of the bugs in CoD at the moment, it doesn't even have the incredible visuals that I would expect to be causing my PC to struggle SO much!

I feel for what you're saying, I'm in the same boat as you (down to 460gtx), lets hope we get the sim playable on our "not the very best" machines.

However, once I see reliable posts that some particular hardware is running it maxed out without dropping fps I will be upgrading. Just for this game and its sequels (remember IL2 had many reiterations).
I want this:

That's one amazing looking flightsim. I expect it'll be a while before a 'normal' PC can run it with all the bells and whistles.

Looks fantastic in screens which is partly why I am so disappointed. When in motion objects pop up so horribly and flicker. No wonder it needs an epilepsy filter.

It does look nice sometimes

I wonder why no developer has taken the plunge to make a console flight sim. PC gamers and especially flight sim enthusiasts usually don't have a problem spending $2000+ on a rig that can run any game at the highest settings with high fps, which is something that a $200 console is designed to do. I played flight sims the same as probably most of you here: keyboard and joystick, and I don't really care what they're plugged into as long as it works. The sacrifice in overall graphics capability would definitely be balanced out by the reliability and low price of a console.

For instance if Microsoft decided to port FSX to the 360 and separately sold a controller that equaled the playability of a joystick/keyboard for ~$150 plus $60+ for the game disk(s) I would go out and buy it today. Am I the only one?

Birds of Prey would fit under that heading- though I'm not sure as a few of the sim elements were stripped out if I remember right- not sure which ones.

Market focus and technical considerations are probably the main reason you don't see more flight sims on the consoles, but there's probably nothing stopping developers from creating 'sim-light' flight sims anytime. It's probably more a market consideration than anything. Faced with Hawk X and DCS: A10C Warthog on the shelf at the local gaming store, I imagine most would go for Hawk X.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more console sims. Birds of Prey became a great PC WWII sim in Wings of Prey- so there are potential benefits to the sim community as a whole.

the performance in this is very disappointing, i dont even want to play until its fixed.
Another problem ive found is the flight control movements aren't smooth, they seem to jump in steps as you slowly move the controller, which makes these planes even harder to fly because you cant make small enough control inputs.
Hope all this is fixed because so far, apart from the awesome gfx, this is a step backwards from the older il2 version.

Its alive again, its got PULSE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... p;feature=player_embedded

Amazing vid As is this one http://youtu.be/0-CZvp2YQRA

On a more constructive note: new beta patch is out and performance issues have been nearly sorted- no micro freezes, mega explosions of oil tankers no longer halt the egame, London is now flyable!