IL-2 had one of its most popular multiplayer days this past Sunday!

2–3 minutes

If you were online this afternoon (Eastern time) you were among over 500 players that had signed in to IL-2 multiplayer filling many of the most popular servers in the community to their maximum capacity. It’s a small yet important victory for the series that is worth celebrating!

Five hundred plus!

Large group team-ups are happening more and more frequently on IL-2 multiplayer servers.

In a post on the IL-2 official forums, community member LF_Gallahad shared a screenshot showing Wings of Liberty, Combat Box, Tactical Air War, Air Combat Group – Campaign Server, and Flying Circus Flugpark all at maximum or near maximum capacity with most of those servers supporting 84 players at a time.

With those servers full, we also saw Finnish Virtual Pilots – Dynamic War, EU Official 1CGS Server Planes and Tanks Normal by DED, Attention EFront tanks and aircraft, and the Combat Box training and dogfight server all at least half full. Also great to see! Not on the list but also deserving of some attention is the KOTA server group who have worked hard on their server as well.

In total, there were more than 500-players on IL-2 multiplayer servers flying WWI, WWII aircraft as well as several filling servers that also have a mix of tanks and aircraft together. Although in the heyday of the original IL-2, we saw those numbers and more, it’s still a great thing to see as the series continually gains more pilots and tankers.

Organized teamplay or chaotic dogfights, we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of players over the last few years.

Community makes the difference

IL-2: Great Battles has progressed to a point where it offers variety of content, deep discounts during sales that make it more accessible, and it also appears to be benefiting a growing interest in aviation and the hobby of flight simulation in 2020.

As much as this is a credit to 1CGS and the IL-2: Great Battles Series, it’s also a notable achievement for the community. In the last year, I’ve seen the IL-2 multiplayer community pull together more than ever to create fantastic servers, offer help and advice, and try and answer questions on diverse places from the official forums to YouTube channels to Reddit, Discord, and Facebook community groups. It’s the kind of positive interaction that new pilots to our hobby need to see as much of as possible.

Great to see this and hopefully to many more busy days on the servers!

9 responses to “IL-2 had one of its most popular multiplayer days this past Sunday!”

  1. [DBS]T}{OR Avatar
    [DBS]T}{OR

    There could be a lot more pilots if they fix the dreaded spotting, which is by far the worst immersion killer in this game, let alone especially important in MP. Until then, I am spending my time and money with other hobbies and flight sims. And I am not the only one.

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Hey Thor!

      Spotting is definitely an issue. I’m writing some material on that now but I’ve been taking my time trying to wrap my head around some pieces. Part of the issue is that there are now two spotting systems supported and most of the multiplayer servers have elected to use the one that is worse in my opinion – a few players seem to have complained that the other spotting system lets people see aircraft too far away.

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  2. [DBS]T}{OR Avatar
    [DBS]T}{OR

    Hi Shamrock, it has been a while. 🙂

    The one system letting people see aircraft from too far away, and another not seeing at all. Therefore, in my book both are flawed, each in certain areas. Both are equally bad at medium ranges where one should be able to see planes around without any problems. I have a longer thread ongoing on official forums, most of the issues relate to the planes simply not being rendered depending on zoom level, combined with poor contrast issues and lack of scaling based on the resolution used (gets worse with larger screens). Then there are disappearing icons also dependent on zoom level (most obvious with ships) etc. TL;DR the whole system is inconsistent and a huge mess. This is no way to simulate perhaps one of the most important aspects of a flight sim that tries to simulate realism.

    To make matters worse, as you said, we now have two systems in place. Completely unnecessary and further splitting the already small community when compared to the other MP titles.

    Last but not least… there are also a few of the very vocal die hard fanatics completely opposing any means of scaling to solve the issue, even as a compromise solution. And few of the developers share the same view. Very unfortunate, especially since some of the real pilots (forum users) were as vocal in stating how unrealistic and difficult visibility is in this game.

    Keep the articles coming, you have a strong audience. I may not post often, but I do read most of the stuff you put here. 🙂

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    1. bigalrico Avatar
      bigalrico

      Couldn’t agree more with you. I don’t like both of them that much, but there is not even the choice anymore since no ones offer the “alternative visiblilty” in MP. So i hope that we see this year a more suitable solution to this issue.

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      It has but always great to hear from you!

      I’ve had the pleasure of flying with a couple of real life pilots recently and they definitely seem to agree on all points that spotting is an issue.

      I’ve heard that 1CGS hasn’t considered the issue closed so hopefully both the alternate and original spotting mechanics will ultimately be phased out in favour of something better.

      If scaling does the trick to make it make more sense in the bigger sense, I’d like to see that happen for sure. Not an easy thing but one worthy of some work.

      I am curious if anyone has any opinions on spotting in DCS World. So far my experiences have also been mixed with spotting sometimes being impossible in that sim as well.

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      1. [DBS]T}{OR Avatar
        [DBS]T}{OR

        DCS is notoriously bad at spotting as well, and it has been for longer than IL-2. Not surprising, since AnPetrovich is also involved in its development and thinks both are realistic as far as spotting goes. By now you get the idea why similar features are being announced for both sims. 🙂

        DCS’s saving grace is that there for modern planes you have targeting pods and radars etc. No such thing in IL-2. A while back they (DCS) did announce they would look into improving spotting. However, just like with IL-2 I’ll believe it when I see it (pun intended 🙂 ).

        As soon as both camps realize how much sales this is costing them, the better it will be for the rest of us. Or when they stop listening to certain die hard anal fanatics that oppose even mentioning scaling on the forums and throw pitchforks at you when you do. God, the old IL-2 1946 had a symple system with black dots, but it was one that worked. Now we have a flashy new graphics and a sim that doesn’t do the job at certain key areas. I guess typical of today’s video games. 🙂

        I might be wrong, but from what I was reading and posting myself, is that we wanted the stupid 9.5 km bubble removed and medium distance spotting improved. Instead – they gave us a flawed solution similar (or same perhaps?) DCS attempted few years back, which just shows how much they don’t even understand the problem. No one was asking for 40km visibility range and they gave us one. Perhaps they didn’t have the time to deal with it and they just slapped the same code DCS tried using, I don’t know – this is guess work on my end… Jason said not so long ago that they want to look into spotting again, but this time get it right and not miss like the last time (current options).

        More importantly, I’ve done some comparisons – and it seems that actually we had a better system with 9.5 bubble in. It was easier to spot stuff at medium ranges. Few users also share this opinion with me. The dots were larger at the edge of spotting range (bubble) than at the same distance we have in current version of the game…

        Liked by 1 person

  3. [DBS]T}{OR Avatar
    [DBS]T}{OR

    Meant it gets worse with smaller screens with higher (than HD) resolutions, not the other way around. 🙂

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  4. Lentolaivue30 Avatar
    Lentolaivue30

    500 pilots was like a normal Tuesday evening with ’46 back in the day. I’m still saying if we’d have a lobby and easier way to play coops ( and online wars based on coops ) those numbers would be reachable again.

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Things have changed since I posted this. Steam player count has jumped up in the last two weeks and that’s probably only accounting for maybe 1/3rd of the player base.

      Servers are full on a regular basis now and that number is only improving. It’s certainly the best we’ve seen with the new series and a good sign.

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