Hey guys,

As you know, my two great loves in the flight sim world, are helos and WWII machines (mostly USA airplanes, with the occasional Luftwaffe birds). With that said, some of my dearest memories in the last 25 years of flight simming, have been flying Oleg Maddox’s brilliant “IL-2 Sturmovik”.  I have over 100 self made missions dealing with everything from a historically correct campaign featuring the 555th FS in the P-38 (and later when they transitioned into the Mustang), to flying off the flattops in the PTO. Love that stuff…who doesn’t right?

So, I’ve been following IC’s “IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad” since day 1, and it has (quite frankly) left me flat. Don’t get me wrong, it is a VERY GOOD single player flight sim. There are some niggling things that drive me to drinking in the S.P. world, but as a multiplayer experience, it’s just not lived up to what I was hoping for. Unless you like 100% dogfight servers, with vulchers killing everything that moves at each other’s airfields, rinse and repeat, then (IMHO) it’s pretty sucky.

That seems to have changed…more on that in a bit.

They’ve been promising the new “summer” maps for quite some time now, and they FINALLY released them a few days ago. For those of us that are (insert adjective here…”stupid”, “lucky”, etc) enough to live in the “snow-belt” here in the USA, the thought of saddling up the trusty FW-190 and cruising around above the vast white wasteland sweeping the skies of the Rooskie hordes, just well, left me empty.

That’s too has changed.

Here are some screenshots of the new summer world, and it’s superb.

(spoiler alert…if you’ve flown 777 Studios “Rise Of Flight”, then you’ll recognize some of the amazing landscape)

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Evidence of the gorgeous scenery. LOTS of little niceties…dirt tracks on the DIRT RUNWAYS (whoohoo), small dust clouds when you power up the big BMW…

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A great user made skin…hence the swastika (can’t use them in the campaign…one of those niggling things that irk me). This is from a “Quick Mission” that I set up. I selected everything on the ground that you could find and blow up (no air resistance), and I was mainly looking to find the “ships” that they promised…

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Found them! Two big-assed barges on the Don River west of Stalingrad. I had no bombs, so I hosed them down with my cannons. I got this guy smoking, but couldn’t send him to the bottom. Off to find other stuff to kill!

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I found a couple of unlucky dudes cruising along in their “Commie Prius”. Gave them a little squirt, and they bailed out and headed for the hills! I love it when they do that!

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I came back around and turned their “Stalin Subaru” into a million pieces. I STILL think that the explosions in this sim are some of the best ever!

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The dirt tracks mentioned earlier.

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Decided to try out the new campaign. This is mission 2 (where you can pick the airfield and/or the machine), in mission 1 you are stuck flying a “Friedrich” -109 on a CAP mission over a Soviet airfield. Tangled with some Migs taking off, then was surprised as some of those little I-16 bastards showed up. Fun as hell to mix it up with those little buggers (they are actually from the upcoming "Battle of Moscow" release, but since I didn't pre-order it, I can't fly them...just shoot at them as A/I. Same for the P-40, etc… can't wait to tangle with one of those!). Here, “Wolfgang” and I are off to sink some boats on the Volga.

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Under the “Normal” setting, you can turn on/off the icons (and mini-map) as you like. The one thing I don’t like is that you need to have the icons selected to read the radio communications (unless you speak German and/or Russian). Would love to have the option to have the icons off, and still see the radio comms….

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One of the cool new features is that you can bring up the full page “Tactical Map” and see what the hell is happening in the “big picture” world. With icons selected, you see your spot on the map, with them off (or selecting the “Full Realism” settings), you just have to navigate by dead reckoning and/or pilotage.

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“Wolfgang” is hanging in there with me quite well. The A/I was pretty dicked up early in this sim, and they seem to have been allocating lots of time trying to get it right…it does in fact seem better. So far…so good.

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Stalingrad summer map. I’ve always thought the smoke effects in this thing are superb…still are.

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Ships found, bombs dropped, and target missed….lol.

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So, again, IMHO, this is a really good Single Player fight sim. But what about MP? If you're like me, I LIVE FOR (did I just say "LIVE FOR"?) a good COOP multiplayer exerience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dogfight servers are fun....kinda. Take off (if you get lucky enough to find a break in the "vulching" at your airfield), get in a turning fight with some yokel, send him down, rinse and repeat. Fun for your ego...for a little while at least.

So I spent some time on the BOS forums looking under the MP titles for mentions of any sort of COOP MP offers. I found a server last night (Called TWB....not sure what that stands for), and it was fun as hell. Was I alone? Yep...but it didn't seem "wrong" for any reason. I had stuff to do! On the Luftwaffe side, I had to either fly the He-111 on "med evac" missions into some sketchy airflieds next to Stalingrad itself (and return the wounded Wehrmacht soldiers to my aifield), or fly the -109 or -190 to protect them, ... or fly combat patrols, ... or fly ground attack missions. I spawned in on one mission right as a message flashed across saying that Soviet ground forces were attacking in the vicinity of some jerk-water little town SW of my airfield (it said that I had to stop them or we would LOSE THAT SECTOR...???). OK, I took off, and spent the next :45 blasting the Commies on several roads in and around that little town (we had some Wehrmacht units in the town, and they were fight back too). Fun as hell actually trying to stop an attack...

Oh...and I did fire up the big Heinkel and attempt a "rescue" mission....but apparently I need some time in the seat, for shortly after take-off, I "damaged" the starboard engine and had to abort the mission and RTB....

Soooooo.....maybe some of these servers are leaning toward the COOP world. That would be a HUGELY good thing me thinks!

Bout time.

later,

BBall

Nice shots mate....downloading the update now

Thanks BBall, il have to update my IL2 , looks like some great improvements there. Thanks for the "debrief". As always very good.

I haven't been on Il-2 in a while so maybe it's about time I jumped on and killed a few bad guys to make me feel better...thanks for the up-date BBall.

NP my brothers.

My version of "heaven" is:

- more of a Vietnam world in DCS (Cobra, Kiowa [Gazelle will do ], Chinook, and some mud movers...Spad, etc)

AND

- a TRUE WWII COOP flight sim.

Will "Battle of Stalingrad" (or maybe the vapor-ware known as DCS WWII) scratch the second itch? Not sure...but if some of those BOS server maestros can whip up some COOP stuff, then that's a good thing IMHO!



BTW....be sure and try this! Driving one of these things off through the boonies...it'll rattle your molars! As my dear ol' Dad used to say as he would bounce my ass off into some obscure part of a golf course (he always insisted on drving the golf cart)..... "hang on to your hemorrhoids!"

Il-2 BoS has great visuals and audio, great damage model, good ground units (visually and functionally) and a good flight model (not DCS level but still alright). And now it has a good map.

What are its deficiencies? Barely present uninteractive ATC, ground handling which is hard and unrealistic, and a systems model which though very good is uninteractive (i.e. no clickable cockpit).

As for COOP that's just a player issue really. Especially on a public server, it is always difficult to incentivise players to work together (that has been my experience in Il-2 1946 and Il-2 CLoD TF mod).

Isn't there a mission builder now? You just have to make some missions and grab some friends and off you go. In fact the AI is quite good and uses good tactics so you can put a human flight or flights in and rely on AI units for other friendly and enemy aircraft. And that how you get a nice COOP experience.

The RoF/Il-2 CLoD sim group I fly with on weeknights has a mission builder who understand the RoF mission builder really well and I believe that Il-2 BoS uses a similar builder. Through that group I know people from another virtual squadron who have been flying BoS regularly and making COOP missions for it. So I know a few people who could help out if we wanted to make some missions.

Andrei,

Yep...it's essentially the same M.E. as in "Rise Of Flight" IIRC. I'll admit that, although I felt completely at home in the legacy IL-2 mission builder, I never felt very comfortable in the ROF thing. Just didn't resonate with my idiot brain. I haven't tried the BOS builder, but if you have friends that would make up some good COOP stuff, that would rock!

FWIW....anyone that might be searching for a good "library" of vids to get up to speed on the BOS machines, this guy is superb.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwV5RLX7mkaDy5gTIiuwGmg

He goes by "Requiem", has recently gotten his RW licenses, and seems to be quite knowledgeable on all things BOS.

Now back to boning up on how to fly that damned Heinkel!

I'll download the update later. Like you said, the Single player is great and immersive, but there is nothing like sharing your victories and failures with squad mates, hence why BOS has sat in the back corner of my 'hanger' for so long...

Might be worth a look now though.

I'll see what I can do.

I have not spoken to guys in that virtual squadron for a few months but other members of my weeknight WWI/WWII sim group are in constant contact with them. I checked their forum just now, and they have built a few missions but the server they run their forum on appears to had a major malfunction of late so they appear to be in a bit of disarray.

The best options will probably be to either pull some missions from the Il-2 forum or learn to make them ourselves. I'll check with my friend about the ME but did find this nice guide:
http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/17721-prangsters-il-2-bos-mission-building-guide/

I guess the questions is what sort of aircraft and missions do you want to fly?

(To my mind, I would rather stick to the German side, because the Soviet aircraft don't do much for me and German aircraft are just well...better.)

Agreed, Deutschland uber alles

I look into it this weekend (provided I don't get distracted too much by DCS).

Maybe a semi-historical campaign where a special FW-190 unit is deployed to Stalingrad, with bombers flyable in some missions?

In real life FW-190s did not fight at Stalingrad, but instead were deployed at Leningrad in September 1942. Still I do like the 190.

Ok, I got to say Il-2 BoS's system for multiplayer and COOP mission building is hardly intuitive.

So to run your own server you need to apply for a server account to run a dedicated server. This can take a couple days.

Then as for the ME it is a little complicated. I'll need to research it a bit but it appears to be optimised for two types of missions: single player missions and multiplayer death matches...

I already have an account for a dedicated server if we need it. I applied waaaay back...

Yeah, Andrei, et. al,

As you can see, the good folks over at 1C didn't make it "easy" for a group like us to get up and running in their MP (COOP) world.

- Sounds like Highway did the DED server thing...so we got that going for us.
- Either your mates (or your brainpower) can hook us up with some missions (I'll do a tad bit more looking under the hood of the M.E. and see what I can come up with...but no promises).

As far as missions, what we need are "storytellers" as it were for ideas (Showtime?). Here's my basic lineup of mission types when I would put together a group of missions in the old legacy IL2:
- A "vanilla" mission whereby the entire squadron transits in from Germany/Poland, etc. to our new "home".
- A few local orientation missions to get the lay of the land.
- Escort missions (either He-111s and/or Ju-52s). I loved the whole "med evac" He-111 missions in that server the other night...was a cool idea.
- Jabo missions for trains/ trucks/ etc.
- Free hunts for VVS machines.
- Airfield attacks.
- (one of my favorites) Scrambles to intercept inbound attackers
- A "transfer" to another local field (for tactical reasons)...I tend to do these in really shitty weather, starting with low fuel, etc....makes for a fun NAV problem. Never forgetting that many, many pilots were lost in accidents simply attempting to transit to their respective A.O.s  (mostly in the PTO, but the ETO had its issues obviously).

(I too love the FW-190, for lots of different reasons. It's sexy as hell, packs a huge punch, can hold it's own with just about anything. It is their version of a "luxury vehicle" whereby the systems and ergonomics of the cockpit were very advanced and easy to work with. I LOVE the auto features that keeps one from playing "flight engineer" as it were (fiddling with radiators, etc., is NOT my idea of fun.) I've often said that if I desire an experience working with cantankerous engines, I'll just go start up my lawnmower and diddle with the throttle/choke, etc, for an hour or so. I'd rather concentrate on the combat...but that's just me)

I spent some time last night attempting to find that TWB server, but it didn't happen. The "Wings Of Victory" (or whatever they call it) was run by the TWB, but each time I attempted to join it, I would be kicked by to the MP GUI...never figured that one out. I joined some random other (empty) servers and flew around a bit (working on getting that He-111 sorted out....kinda like it actually).

Maybe this thing will have MP legs in the near future....our own server running some great COOP missions....that would rock!



We may be on to something here...

The TWB server is still there. It is called "Bandits -TWB- The Eagle's Nest -wwwthewetbanditorg-".

At this early stage, maybe a server raid is the way to go before we get some missions up and running?

Still, I love the storytelling emphasis, BBall. I suggest we go quasi-historical and say that we are an elite German fighter/Jabo unit tasked with field testing the FW-190 on the Eastern Front. The unit can operate within real events of the Battle of Stalingrad.

Outstanding!

Hmmmm....storytelling. An elite unit sent to the hell of the Ost Front to debut the newest Luftwaffe machine. Some truly incredibile books to work from ("Black Cross/Red Star", etc...) Unfortunately, all of my books are packed away in anticipation of our upcoming move!

All we need now is a writer.....hmmmm....where might we find one of those?

It's very slow, and you may need a coffee or two in order to make it to the end, but it is a good overview of how the editor works...

Part 1


Part 2

Hmm, well designing missions looks doable then.

All we need now is to figure out what we are designing for each mission. i.e. what's the story, what will the situation and objectives be, the flight routes, number of enemies etc.

What I would like to get is some data on historical events and facts re Luftwaffe operations at the Battle of Stalingrad, and then build missions consistent with these facts and events. 109 operations and Jabo operations should be the focus, as we can superimpose 190s over them.

...and then we need to figure out server arrangements. Highway, you have a dedicated server account, but the question is what is your upload and what would be the ping for our US and European based pilots?

I have no objections to anyone hosting it, my upload is less than 1/2 Mbps, so I can't host anything

Ok, been flying this sim for past week and lets say I have run into two serious blockers to MP sessions:

1. Mission Building for MP: the ME is not really designed for it and frankly spending the time to build missions would take a lot time (re research and mission building) which I don't have. I had hoped that we could just port the SP campaign missions over but my research on the IL2 forum says this is impossible.

All that said, PWCG for BoS (see below) may get its multiplayer mission feature working on its release, so that could be an option.

2. Dedicated Server: currently none of us have the two things in combination needed to run an MP session, these being:
i) a dedicated server accound, AND
ii) an upload that can support a session.

Anyway, pretty significant issues.

However, some good news on the SP front. Pat Wilson has been asked by 777 to port his campaign generator from Rise of Flight to Il2 BoS. Currently, the PWCG is in Beta and I have been testing it. The details are in this sub-forum: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/99-pwcg-bos/

PWCG IMHO gives you a far more immersive and realistic SP experience than the stock Campaign. It has many features, including but not limited to:
- completely dynamic mission generator, with adjustable settings so you can adjust missions in relation to your PC's performance, level of realism and number of a/c in mission.
- you join a specific squadron, and can follow that squadron throughout the Battle of Stalingrad (or even apply for a transfer to other allied squadrons). Each squadron has its own roster of pilots, which get better with experience as they progress and can be killed, captured or wounded.
- in the release version there will be historical aces you can encounter.
- no 'mission success' criteria to advance the campaign. Surviving the mission is enough to advance
- you create a pilot and develop a career. You can earn medals,get promoted and become an ace.
- one of the options you can set is Dead is Dead. Nice and realistic. See how long you can survive before some little punk shoots you down. You can also be captured (game over) or injured (out for a few weeks).
- more realistic aircraft encounters. Flights (friend and foe) are generated dynamically and have their own missions. They are not solely designed to be encountered by the player. Think Falcon BMS dynamic campaign and you get the idea.

Anyway, the Beta was just released in October and Pat still has some work to do. But when this campaign generator is released, trust me you will never as want to go back to the stock Campaign again.

Andrei, et. al,

First of all, THANK YOU for all the effort towards this. I can assure you, I went down much the same path wondering if I could "easily" figure out (and/or) convert the "Rise of Flight" missions from SP to the MP world...it proved to be exactly what you described here. Shame really, for (IMHO) ROF is an unbelievable flight simulation. My worst fear, in terms of "Battle of Stalingrad", is that it WOULD NOT live up the lineage of the old legacy "IL-2: Sturmovik" in terms of ease of play in the mulitplayer arena. It seems that is indeed the case.

Oh well.

AFA the Paul Wilson campaign generator. I've used his amazing work in ROF, and you are EXACTLY correct, once you try it you will NEVER return to a stock campaign. It (at least the ROF version) is everything you describe, and if the "BOS version" is half a good as his first one, then this will be fantastic.

Thanks again for all your efforts...it would've been great to have the gang all in the virtual WWII skies again. I guess there's always "DCS: World War II"....right?        

Oh, don't you worry, Bball, Once DCS WWII is fully released, I am going to be flying in those virtual skies over Normandy a lot.

Hmmm... Or will we... Further developments on the I'll-2 BOS front today from their Facebook page...

And the fourth thing today is the one we've been asked about many times. Player controllable tanks. Now there is a small story that consists of different parts.

Part 1. How did they appear in the first place
Tanks in our engine appeared even before we committed to Battle of Stalingrad project as a demonstration of its capabilities for simulating various machines. A tech demo has been created to showcase this, including a sophisticated (especially for that time) physics modeling engine for ground vehicles. Modern tanks were chosen for this demo and you may have saw it already since we published it in the developer diaries, but here it is in case you've missed it:



We found that developing this in our engine has great potential; at the same time we considered the possibilities of increasing map detail at the cost of reducing its total size to better suit ground warfare and the results were good as well. All in all, it was a very interesting experience and we learned how we can use the engine for different tasks. After that, we started Battle of Stalingrad and the work on ground warfare prototype has been suspended until the base of IL-2 sim has been released.

Some time ago it turned out that we have a spare time in 3D modeling department (there is usually a fine balance between the tasks of 3D and Engineer departments which works on FM, but creating FM takes more time, so sometimes 3D modelers have spare time) and we decided to use this opportunity to try player controlled ground vehicles in Battle of Stalingrad. High detailed 3D models of T-34-76 made by Stalingrad tank factory and PzKpfw III Ausf. L were created. The technology has been upgraded somewhat as well to make handling and damage modeling more realistic, since in the modern tanks prototype shown above a more casual approach has been used. At the moment, controllable tanks are in beta state and will be added to the game in 1.105 if everything goes well.



Part 2. Degree of realism and handling
Base engine lets us to create reasonably realistic tanks. At this stage, everything has been tuned to correspond to the references. Here are some highlights:
1) Engine and suspension. Engine physics model, transmission, tracks/ground friction, movement modeling - all these things are modeled at the same level of fidelity our planes are, resulting in believable tank behavior during its movement, reached speeds, acceleration and braking, turning and gradeability limits.
2) In spite of the advanced physics model, tank movement can be controlled with just 4 cursor keys or a joystick thanks to control system that translates these limited signals to forces applied to gas, clutch and brake pedals, gearbox selector and steering clutch levers (it's like driving a vehicle with a robotic gearbox).
3) Armament: main gun and coaxial MG for now. Ballistics, armor piercing capabilities, rate of fire - all such things were modeled with the same detail level as for a plane. There are two types of shells currently modeled: AP and HE.
4) Armor model includes all main armor sheets placed at correct angles.
5) Tank is considered destroyed when ammo racks are hit. It can also be immobilized by damaging engine or tracks and the crew can be knocked out.
6) You can control a tank either single-handedly (switching between driver and gunner) or with another player who will occupy gunner seat.
7) Gun sights are modeled to a reasonable degree of realism, including their field of view, authentic reticle marks, sight adjusting (vertical for both tanks, T-34 sight also has the horizontal adjustment ability), correct optics. At this stage, gunner sight can be considered minimally adequate.

Part 3. What we want to achieve and the future possibilities
You may have noticed that modeled tank systems are reasonably realistic, however not everything has been created yet (although there are some things not to be found in other recent projects about tanks). This can be explained by what we want from adding the tanks to our sim.

We made basic functionality to show potential possibilities of controllable tanks in our project and understand the player reaction to them. Mainly, would you like them? We demonstrate our approach (realism over balance, cooperative play in one vehicle, detailed systems modeling) in some kind of a Kickstarter-esque manner. If the existing community and new players would like the new toys, we'll assign more resources to improve and expand on the basis we have now, adding new systems, more detailed damage modeling, other features, and new vehicles.

Very interesting.....

Pz III L? I would have thought a Pz IV F2 or G would have been better.

Still it looks interesting.