One of the best things about the original IL-2 is that it had a strong multiplayer community. That community coalesced around a third party utility called HyperLobby which let players chat, organize games and join servers. This new generation of IL-2 still needs something like that for things to really come together… and maybe we’ve found it.

Discord what?

When I first heard of Discord I immediately ignored it. I had no idea what it was but on second look I realized what it is. Discord is a combination of features: A chat room, a voice comms server, a community hub, and everything that comes with it.

Discord is similar to TeamSpeak in that it lets you organize voice channels and use VOIP communications to chat with your fellow pilots/squadmates/etc. But it does more than TeamSpeak. It shares a lot with the IRC chat channels of old and with the modern day productivity suites like Slack. If you’re familiar with any of these pieces of software, imagine ramming them together in a fairly slick interface and you have Discord.

This isn’t an ad for Discord nor a feature comparison but if you’re really interested, the official website for the app has that done already.

Compared to HyperLobby this App doesn’t have the multiplayer launch features but it does do everything else. And it appears to do it well.

Convincing the community?

Right now flight sim flyers tend to use TeamSpeak to organize voice chat. TeamSpeak is great. I’ve used it for years and I’ve had few problems with it. But the user interface can be clunky at times and you just have to learn to deal with it.

What the IL-2 community lacks right now is a central hub. There is an official TeamSpeak server setup but it seems vacant unless there’s an official Q&A session going on.

Discord offers greater persistence – sophisticated chat functionality that you can count on still being there the next time you login. Its also a chance to have more of a chat-room environment while also being able to break out into voice rooms and coordinate the rest of your multiplayer match from there. You can chat generally to the public or have private chat rooms and conversations. It’s all part of the platform which is great!

The software also shows who is in game which can be helpful in finding a multiplayer match.

I hopped on there tonight after learning about it and flew a mission with channel organizer ‘milopugdog’. It was a lot of fun to voice comm through a mission again after flying alone for so long and I hope to do it again soon!

Something like this is the kind of ‘shot in the arm’ that the IL-2 multiplayer community needs. I joined and ended up flying a mission online that I otherwise wouldn’t have flown tonight so there’s maybe something to this.

One thing is certain: I need to get a new headset for multiplayer.