In this episode, AnPetrovich races an ATV in an airplane and Jason Williams talks about what stage the Hurricane Mark II Collector Plane is at for IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles series.

A fun ‘Top Gear’ style video

For anyone not familiar with the show, Top Gear was, for a long time, a BBC production hosted by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. It’s gone through several shifts over the years but back several years ago they were really well known for plenty of vehicular stunts and fun dramatic moments – usually featuring cars but also including races between different types of vehicles. An RAF Typhoon vs a Bugatti Veyron? Yeah they did that.

Yesterday, Jason Williams shared with us a fun video that 1CGS’ Principle Software Engineer, Andrey (An.Petrovich) Solomykin put together featuring an ultra-light aircraft racing an ATV across a course with the obvious goal of flying out to the point, turning around and coming back the other way to cross the finish line. It’s definitely inspired by the Top Gear style and it’s a fun watch (although not for Jason Wiliams who says it gives him a heart attack ;)). It’s also a fun behind the scenes look at what the brainchild behind 1CGS’ flying and physics model does in his free time.

A tiny bit of Huricane news

The question everyone in the community is asking right now is. Where is that Hurricane? Announced around this time last year, the Hurricane Mark II Collector Plane has been in the oven for a long time and the anticipation for the new aircraft release is quite naturally at a high point.

In a response to one of those questions, Jason Williams, IL-2’s Lead Producer did let us know where the new aircraft is at.

The Hurricane is getting close, but has not entered Beta testing yet. This week you’ll see pics of the cockpit in the DD.

Jason Williams

It’s good news but not having yet entered beta testing suggests to me that this module needs a little more time before it’s done. With five variants included, I can understand the prolonged development period and I suspect on release we’ll hear about what the team needed to do to make this all come together.

With a sale on right now and 1CGS typically not looking to do a release during a sale, I would guess that actual release date window will start somewhere around November 3rd or any time after that.