A new IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles Series developer diary is here and its full of new information including news about the next patch as well as plans for what is coming after. Here are the key points that you may want to know about!

The next update

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Update 4.603 is on its way and it’s coming packed full of features. New content includes the Sd.Kfz. 10/5 Flake 38 vehicle plus three aircraft from Flying Circus Vol 2 – the SPAD VII, Pfalz D.XII and the Airco DH.4. Steel Birds is also set to release as part of the update. The SPAD VII will come in the 150hp variant first and the 180hp version will come slightly later.

It also looks like the new Complex Fuel Systems and Drop Tanks feature are due in this next update. Jason’s update today explained that other aircraft will come later as they are short on a couple of positions within the company right now and the work to retrofit every aircraft in the series will take time.

Career mode is also getting an upgrade with 8 new fighter-bomber missions worked on by Viks and LukeFF. It sounds like additional efforts will be going into the Career Mode after this update as well.

The next update is due to come out next week so look for that sometime mid-week if 1CGS keeps up their traditional release window.

The next couple of updates after that

Meanwhile, efforts from the team continue with work ongoing in all kinds of areas. First, aircraft, because we all love to know what’s going on there. The V-1, P-51B/C, Mosquito, Ar234, B-26 (AI) are all being worked on.

There’s a new American bomber pilot model being worked on that looks superb.

Ugra Media meanwhile is also working on the rest of the Flying Circus Vol 2 line-up and on the C-47. They are also busy with creating the map for Flying Circus Vol 2 and today we got a whole bunch of new screenshots aimed at showing off some of the details. Ugra Media’s map creating abilities have leapt forward not only for their DCS World projects such as DCS Syria but also for this map as there are clearly more details than we’ve seen previously a bunch of new objects aimed at making these places come more alive than before.

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Work continues on Air Marshal and the Advanced Quick Missions system. AQM looks to be set for a fall release while Air Marshal does not have an exact ETA but is in the testing stages.

Finally, another mention has been made of IL-2’s new cloud technology.

This should bring our clouds up to a new level of beauty, variety and realism. We also plan to work with a talented community member on this project and we hope it will bear fruit in the coming months. But before we get into worrying about artistic quality, we need to perfect the technology part of it. And we think, based on early tests, that these clouds will also improve performance, but yield a prettier result. We’ll have pictures for you once we have something worthwhile to show you.

Jason Williams

All in all, a lot of interesting and significant updates to the IL-2 series are due over the next several months and some of them will likely be real game changers while others will add to the already impressive content list.

Jason also teased that he is working on planning for the future projects. We will apparently learn about these by end of this year or early next year. That timeline should put us close to the end of Battle of Normandy’s development.

It’s also worth noting that he said projects in the plural so it’s undoubtedly the case that there will be more than one announcement. Time to speculate? I feel a future editorial piece on that coming up soon!

Read about all of this and more on the latest IL-2 developer diary.