Jason Williams took to the forums this morning to showcase some new screenshots of the Kuban map for IL-2. The images are stunning!

A small update with a lot of screenshots

We know a lot about 1CGS’ plans and so this week Jason didn’t have too much to say except to drop a dozen or more screenshots and that was all we really needed.

Showing off the summer tileset for the Kuban map, these images really show off the different terrain that we’ll be flying over. Kuban region has flat plains, planned farms divided in near equal parcels of land, lake regions where glaciation carved out thousands of small lakes, and some impressive mountain ranges along the Black Sea.

I’m impressed. The visuals look astounding and we get to see a lot of the different zones on this map. The mountains are particularly impressive in the way that these screen shots show them handling cloud cover that is lower than them.

The original IL-2 always faltered a little with getting the rendering right for low lying clouds in mountains but this new engine seems to be able to do it just fine.

There is flat terrain in this region too and many thousands of collectivist farms were created in the 1920s and 1930s which is represented by the many square parcels of land that you see in some of these screenshots (and you can see on satellite imagery too).

The biggest gripe people have right now about the way things look is the short draw distance and how quickly the haze appears. On a hot summer day this seems appropriate but there are times where it could be nice to see further – that is further exemplified on the Kuban’s mountain ranges. That is, I think anyways, a small complaint to just how compelling these images are.

Go visit the forums for the full dev diary and dozens of screenshots!