Hey guys,

Since it’s going to be a few month before the next WWII release, I decided to revisit a flight sim that hit the streets a few years ago. Being a HUGE fan of the original “IL-2 Sturmovik” series, I was pretty excited about this one. Alas, it was released in worse shape than a sailor coming off of a 3 day shore leave in the P.I.! It had glitches, bugs, stutters, missing features, and features that didn’t work...so our little group here in the upper Mid West flew it for a couple of months, then dropped it like a hot potato.

Along came the folks at Team Fusion and with their bag of tricks have as much as resurrected what was once an ugly girl (like my Prom date in High School), and made her look like the babe on the cover of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated (well, maybe not that good, but darn close!).

That’s the good news...the bad news is that a (very) few little bugs still remain. Key commands that are a bit wonky (I've never gotten the “padlock enemy air” to work), but all in all, it’s very flyable and tons of fun. Also, since I have lots of experience in the FMB from the “old” IL-2 days, I feel quite at home in this version. In the video, I’ve cobbled together an airfield, have us launch in our trusty “Emils” toward the coast to intercept some incoming Blenheims. Griff and I flew it last night online, and it was a huge amount of fun.

A couple of notes:
- Do select the “HD” feature.
- I tried watching it in “Full Screen”, but it looks far too washed out (I prefer “large player”)

I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW_iwlCcY1I

later....

Thanks BBall,

Awesome video!

Nice...I gotta get my IL2 reinstalled

(HHC/229) flyer wrote:Nice...I gotta get my IL2 reinstalled

Yes you do Sir, yes you do...I have been tinkering around with the new IL2 and enjoying ever minute of it. I managed to get two kills on the server the other day, one with guns and the other with my aircraft, lol.

Show

Might give it a go.

Wow, I remember Cliffs Of Dover as being totally unplayable due to the many bugs it had on release. Even the first patch did not change a bloody thing. That's why I uninstalled it from my computer and never looked at it again.

Is that all sorted out now or did you just get your PC straight from NASA? It sure is running smooth.

Razorback

Hey guys,

Yeah, like I mentioned above, this thing was uglier than a mud fence when it first released.

The folks over at Team Fusion (or the Air Tactical Assault Group)... http://www.theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/ ...have, IMHO, made it like an entirely new flight sim.

It’s a bit convoluted, but you first have to install “Cliffs of Dover” (and even ifyou have it on disc, you still run it through Steam...so an account with Steam is obviously required), then if you have the updates to your Steam games set on auto (within the Options IIRC), then it’ll update to the latest “official” patch from 1C Maddox.

After that, you go here and begin the journey:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5058&p=52711

also here:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6431

And, NO, I don’t have an uber computer from NASA (actually, I just dug it out of the trash can behind the NSA/CIA building....just kidding of course). I built my rig about two years ago, and have only upgraded the vid card since then. I would consider it a “mid-range” machine, and it does a fine job (I have everything maxed out in the Options). The only slowdowns I see are when HUGE explosions happen...

Good luck!

Later all...

I downloaded the Team fusion mod a while ago, but forgot all about installing it!

You need 3.0 3.1 and 4.0

Show.

I have been using sweetFX, the game looks great, still working out the crashing issues but I think I have it figured out. Had to uninstall a windows update. I will run another test tomorrow. It looks so good that I dont want to fly with out it now.

Six, What is SweetFX? Just tried to look it up and found nothing that explains it.

BBall...Which would you say is better IL2:1946 or IL2: Cliffs of Dover? I have IL2:1946 and loved playing this one. I've been so caught up with the UH-1 in the last six months that I haven't played it in a while (don't even have it installed right now). I'm going to re-install and start flying IL2 again but wanted to get your take on both sims to see which I might want to install. Please advise...

My 2 cents is that IL2 COD is a better game with the mods, but it's limited in the number of aircraft you can fly. There are still some kinks in it, and I haven't flown it MP yet, but I'm up for a go.

As for Sweet FX, install the package that I've listed in the C Coy standard mods section into your JSGME for DCS and hit fly... Then once "you've seen the light" ;)I'll tell you how to install it in other games if you like it.

Thanks highway...I'll have to get with you sometime this week and get JSGME...I don't have that...

Flyer my man, that’s the $64,000 question.

Me thinks that Hwayman pretty much hit the nail on the head, but let me expound just a tad bit.

Like you, I have had a long standing love affair with “IL-2:1946” for years (it started with the very first IL-2 when it released about a hundred years ago). We’ve flown it at our LANs for years, I’ve made one complete campaign (and started two more) with the FMB (all historically based mind you), and we even flew the piss out of it last November when a (brand new to flight sims) buddy of mine (another airline puke) attended our LAN. We knew that DCS would be way too much for him, so Griff and I bit the bullet, fired up the old girl and away we went over the skies of Europe and the Pacific.

But with that said, she’s starting to show her age...I mean, hell, even Christy Brinkley is friggin SIXTY YEARS OLD! (when the hell did THAT happen?) It will probably never leave my HD, but with “Cliffs of Dover” being pulled out of the toilet by the geniuses over at Team Fusion, and the “other” IL-2 on the horizon (“Battle of Stalingrad”), and that last WWII sim gestating in the belly of the beast (DCS WWII), it looks like we could be re-fighting the Second World War for many years to come....a good thing IMHO.

So that still leaves your question...which one?

If I had to choose, I’d go with “Cliffs of Dover”, and not because it’s a far better flight simulation, but because (like Christy) “1946” has probably been reworked and tweaked as far as it will go.

Likes (COD):

1) Graphics are amazing, but what isn’t nowadays (have you seen the new “CryENGINE” stuff?). It is, after all, a VISUAL experience. I love what BMS has done to the “Falcon world”, but I don’t fly it for many reasons, one of which is that I hate the terrain tiles.... I’ve been to Korea a million times, and it’s actually a beautiful country, but Falcon (even BMS) makes it look like crap. Like my women, I want my flight sims to look stunning....this one does.



Griff and me inbound to “ol’ Blighty” on the hunt...

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On our way back to France...

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2) I LOVE the FMB! It’s 99% like the one in “1946”, so I feel like I’m putting on an old pair of shoes when I’m using it. One of my HUGE pet peeves with mission makers is that they make their airfields look (and feel) like an empty golf course. Nice enough looking, but NOTHING going on. I grew up on Army airfields (and later on civie ones), and they’re usually busy as hell! I try very hard to make mine “feel” alive (see pics). In this FMB you can do that (thank you Jesus for the 3D viewer), but in the ME in DCS, if you attempt to do that, you’ll be lucky to get a 10 fps "slideshow' when you’re done. Somehow, Oleg and his boys figured out a way around that.




Pic 1 showcasing the airfield I “built” in the FMB. When I started, there was an empty field with a couple of “houses” to park planes.

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Pic 2 showing some flak/AAA positions I put in.

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Pic 3 showing an inbound Me-110. For those that have flown my “1946” missions over the years, they know to ALWAYS be on the lookout for traffic (both ground and air). We’ve had more than a few missions restart because of a “killer Jeep”, etc. Like in RL, one must keep one’s head on a swivel at a BBall constructed airfield.

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LOL....doesn’t mean I don’t do my own ATC at times.   

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3) Dynamic weather (still working on it). IMHO, the “HOLY GRAIL” of flight simulations. I take off in the calm sun and land in the windy rain all the time at work (and vise versa), so why can’t we do that in the virtual world? When a flight sim (or even the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto XX”...lol) releases with actual dynamic weather, then I’m in like Flynn!

4) FM seems quite good. No actual Bf-109E/4N time in the old logbook, but it does seem good enough.

5) Multiplayer seems stable enough to have lots of your homies online getting shot down right along with you (Hey...there’s room enough in the old POW camp for all of us...right?)




Showtime, Griff and myself joining up over the St. Omer airfield...

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Dislikes (COD) Even though TF has ironed out lots of the HORRIFIC wrinkles that this thing shipped with (stutters, etc), there are still some that make me want to bite the heads off of baby bunnies:

1) Key commands that are wonky (why on Earth wouldn’t the “PRNT SCRN” button work for taking screenshots? I’ve assigned it to other things, and when I go back into the game, the line is blank! Figure that one out!) I've re-mapped it (again} to the F12 key and that seems to make it happy...(?)

2) An MP GUI system that only visitors from the planet Mongo (or Russia) would understand. “So I click on the little flag, then what? Look for a small airplane at the field to click on? What? Wait, I clicked on that, and now I’m in the cockpit of a Luftwaffe Cessna 150? WTF?” After doing it about 50 times, I finally have it figured out (kinda).

3) No friggin FSAA? You kidding me? How the fork am I supposed to make beautiful screenshots? (see #1 above). With nVidia’s FXAA, and now “Sweet FX”, that seems to be a thing of the past...but still.

4) A view system that’s “OK”... I use TrackIR, and it’s awesome, but when I zoom in, I get this “snuggle to the gunsight” type view that I have to “zoom in” to back out of so I can look around again. Again....a WTF? I’ve NEVER gotten the padlock to work (except the EXTERNAL version of a padock...but who wants to look at a view from OUTSIDE the machine back over your crate to padlock the enemy???).

5) Cannot toggle icons. I know, I know, BBall, if you weren’t such a friggin pussy you wouldn’t need icons. Well, I don’t NEED icons (just like I don’t NEED to drink beer), but I like the options to use them if I want to (and not to have them either ON or OFF in the process). In the old “1946”, to ID our LAN mates, we would have each other turn on their NAV lights, or flash their LANDING LIGHT, or something like that (even toggle icons on for a second)... in this bad boy (at least in the Emil), you don’t have that option. Now I’m fairly sure in RL, they had SOMETHING to turn on to light up the world, but here....nadda. You’re left with a huge amount of...”Showtime, is that you over the airfield in a flat spin?” “Griff, is that you over England with 8 Spits on your tail?”  I would much prefer having some VISUAL way of getting a positive ID on my mates ...

6) COMMs that less than the best. Not really a huge deal here, but for God’s sake if “Falcon 4.0” could get COMMs right about 50 years ago, why can’t anyone else do it? (vent mode = OFF)

7) No REAL documentation to refer to. Not a huge deal, but I spend far too much time on “Al Gore’s internet” as it is, and spending an hour looking up stuff (like how to get all the funky little text off of the screen) just kinda riles me.


All in all, it’s still a GREAT flight sim that was shipped in a horrible (some say “criminal”) state, but has been reworked to be really good.

Will it still be on my HD after “Battle of Stalingrad” and “DCS WWII” are out and doing their thing? Who the fork knows? If their MP world is great (or at least very good), then it may be collecting dust. But until then, it’s kinda the best way to get back into the “yank and bank” skies of WWII...





Hope to see ya in the skies over France/England in the near future!

“HORRIDO!”

BBall, thanks for the breakdown. I ordered the game yesterday and should get it sometime this weekend. A couple of questions...will the ordered game come with all of the bugs or is the game that I ordered in it's fixed state...will I have to "up-date" the game when I get it...you may not know these questions but if you do...please tell...thank in advance.

Here’s the scoop.

Even though you’ll have the game in your grubby mitts (like I do), you’ll still have to install it and “run” it through Steam. Do you have a Steam account? Get one.

In the Steam options, there’s a box to check to have your games auto-updated (don’t know if it’s checked on or not by default). Make sure it’s selected, then Steam will update your sim to the latest patch that the boys over at “IC Maddox” released right before they threw this one uder the bus. You can start it up and monkey around with it all you want, but I’m guessing stuff that you set and/or assign might not carry over once you get it patched up to the “Team Fusion” stuff.

Go here:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5058&p=52711

and here:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5058&p=52711

to get the skinny on the patches.

Get it patched up, and if you want to know things like:
-How to get all that stupid text off the screen (or have it fade away quickly like I have),
or
-How to get the “Hakenkreuz” (swastika) showing....
...etc, just ask me, Showtime, Griff, Six, PD or the others that are flying this thing.

Also, a good source of info (FAQ) on the v4.00 patch:

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6431

I was planning on spending a good amount of time this week making some missions for us to fly online, but alas that stupid thing called “real life” reared its ugly head. I leave on Friday for a 2 week Asia trip, and the “Generalissimo” was hoping I would have all the tax info ready for the dude by the time I left. I’ve been up to my ass in tax garbage whilst my heart was wishing I was up to my Hakenkreuz in Spits and Hurricanes!

Oh well, maybe when I get back....(oh yeah, I have my six month “attitude check” in the 767 simulator down in ATL on the 3rd/4th of March...so out come the manuals, etc)...well, maybe by mid-March sometime...

Lol...

Good luck!

Flew my first successful mission on ATAG's online sever last night. A 1.5 hour bombing run on a target last night with OX, Showtime & PD. I actually managed to find my intended target and hit it with bombs. 40 minute flight time each way, landed and parked with no damage. I destroyed one small ship. Not sure on other guys kill's, but they kept the enemy fighters distracted, allowing me to make my bombing run and return to base unmolested. I am not sure how much longer that missions like that are going to keep me interested in the game. Look forward to playing with some more people online.

I'm in....after some small frustrations dealing with steam, I'm all patched up and configuring controls. BTW got my new GTX760 video card..WoW what a difference vs my HD7950. 50% increase frame rates. Makes DCS way more enjoyable.

Stop teasing us AMD Boys Colt!!! ;-)

Just noticed today that my PCpilot magazines have good IL2 Cliffs over Dover articles in them. I have a lot of reading to catch up on. I think the next plane I am going to study up on is going to be ether the Ju-88 or the 110. Between FSX, DCS, ARMA & IL2 its getting hard to keep it all straight.

Okay, I'm impressed; I just bought IL2 CLiffs of Dover off Steam. If you're interested get it now, it's on sale for 12.99. Downloading as we speak...

Clod is pretty incredible. I've been tuning up for a week or so. Flying Hurricanes and Spits. Went on ATAG server yesterday and today. Good bunch of fellows, very helpful. Let me know if you want some help or have questions. Fine tuned my puter too. Great fps now with everything turned up.

Team Fusion update 4.3 update out at 6PM on the 18th March.

Readme for the changes is here and it is Oh My Long... with some fantastic work involved.

Be sure to take a look at this one if you're a CLODder

http://www.pcpilot.hu/dokumentumtar/il-2-sturmovik/cliffs-of-dover/2928-repuloter-terkepek-airbase-maps.html

Some great maps for the game.