A note posted by IL-2’s Lead Producer, Jason Williams, on the IL-2 forum has indicated that there will be no developer diary update this week in lieu of full announcement on Flying Circus Vol 2 next week. Although we know very little about the project, I can make some guesses and read between the lines on this next project. Let’s have a look!

Next week it is!

I wasn’t sure how long we’d be waiting until we learned more about Flying Circus Vol 2 following the teaser announcement last week but now we know. Next week, we’re going to see the full announcement of Flying Circus Vol 2 and pre-orders will be opening then or shortly thereafter.

No DD this week as we prepare and update for next week and FC2 announcement and pre-orders.

Jason Williams on the IL-2 forum

Judging by reactions around the community, there’s plenty of excitement about Vol 2 and there’s growing anticipation of what the new title will contain. We’re going to learn very soon just what they are planning. Here are some of my thoughts.

Vol 2 will increase the scope

Flying Circus Vol 1 was something of an experiment. If it worked out, at least well enough to justify a Vol 2, then Vol 2 seems like the opportunity to really cement the series within a series and recreate some of the glory days of Rise of Flight. The World War I flight sim community is a bit smaller than the World War II community so far as I can tell but it is a dedicated one and the promise of Flying Circus Vol 2 is a good one.

Right from the logo that Jason released last week, we can gather that Vol 2 will be including heavy (by WWI standards) bombers. Pictured in the teaser was the Handley Page 0-400. With three gunner positions including nose, upper tail and belly gunner position, the aircraft is an ambitious project to bring back to the series. Rise of Flight also featured the Gotha G.V which featured two gunner positions and a similar bomb carrying capacity. Both of these aircraft expand the scope of the air war right away bringing in more strategic types of missions. Their size and defensive gunner positions also open up gameplay with bomber formations drawing in friendly and enemy aircraft in multiplayer as well as opening the door to more people joining these behemoths as a gunner.

We also have confirmation that Career mode is coming to Vol 2. We don’t know what that will look like but it will undoubtedly draw on the same technology used throughout the rest of the series. I would be surprised too if it didn’t end up making full use of the aircraft of Vol 1. Vol 1 users may end up being upgraded to have this feature as well as in the case of Battle of Stalingrad and Moscow. Though I caution that we don’t know that for sure.

Not having Career mode and the infinite replayability that it offers in Vol 1 was considered a miss by the community and it caused many single player only players to miss out on the good parts of the Vol 1 release. Though the somewhat smaller scale of Vol 1 clearly meant that adding a time consuming feature like Career to be missed out on, it is clear that adding it in for Vol 2 is something that should go a long way to making this version much more highly desired by single players.

We don’t know what the map will be yet but I have a sense that it too could be more expansive either in size or in details. Ugra Media has done phenomenal work with their DCS: Syria map so I a second attempt on an IL-2 series map may be a much more impressive piece. We’ll see!