If you were wondering what was next in queue for the IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles Series your questions will have been answered as we have a new roadmap from IL-2’s Executive Producer, Jason Williams. In a new post in his Ready Room thread, Jason talks about the challenges and accomplishments of the past year and also what they are planning for 2022. Let’s have a look!
Successes and challenges
Before we dig into the new stuff, Jason did a really nice job of summarizing what the team was able to accomplish over the last year. It has been a challenging year for all and the 1CGS team struggled with many of the challenges that are going to be familiar.
This was a very hard year for us, even more so than 2020 thanks to the prolonged pandemic and lingering half-open, half-closed nature of major cities and office environment coupled with our busy development schedule. In addition, we had several team members get sick and require time off, plus family members who got sick needed the attention of team members to aid in recovery. Also, doing remote work, which can have advantages, is not always ideal for our development work. Our office environment has always been one of our strengths where problems and discoveries can be easily shared and discussed much quicker and focus can be better maintained.
Jason Williams
At the end of the day, all flight sim developers that I cover have been dealing with these ongoing challenges and despite a string of successes this year, its important to remember the humans behind the software and that they too have struggled.
Despite that, they have released a bumper crop of aircraft and content including a couple of new campaigns, and about a dozen aircraft including many of the aircraft for Flying Circus Vol 2 and the vast majority of Normandy’s aircraft set too.
Jason does finish out his summary on a positive noting that the team has pushed to do more complex projects and that they intend to continue to push in 2022.
The road ahead
With all of that in mind, it’s good to know what the team is planning. And there’s quite a lot to be excited about. Jason notes that both Battle of Normandy and Flying Circus Vol 2 are intended to be finished up by summer of this year. That’s roughly 5 months left on both projects before they are completed and there are some big items on the list.
Here’s the list as published by Jason:
- Western Front WWI Map – Scheduled for Q1 2022, might slip to Q2 if quality issues. (Made by Ugra Media)
- Normandy Map – Scheduled for Q2 2022
- Sopwith Triplane – Scheduled for Q1 2022
- Ju 88 C-6 – Scheduled for Q1 2022
- Handley Page 0-400 – Scheduled for late Q1 2022
- Gotha G.V – Coming in Q1 2022
- C-47A – Scheduled for Q2 2022 (Made by Ugra Media)
- B-26 (AI) – Scheduled for late Q1 2022
- V-1 Cruise Missile – Scheduled for Q2 2022 (new engineering needed to make this to launch and fly right)
- Ar-234 – Scheduled for Q2 2022
- Mosquito FB Mk.VI – Scheduled for Q2 2022
- Me-410 – Scheduled for Q2 2022
- IAR – 80/81 – Second half of 2022 (Made by Ivan Shirshov)
- Churchill Mk.IV Tank – Summer 2022
- Stug III Mobile Assault Gun – Summer 2022
- Siemens & Schuckert D.IV – Scheduled for 2022 (Made by Ugra Media)
- Sopwith Snipe – Scheduled for 2022 (Made by Ugra Media)
- Li-2 – After C-47 (Made by Ugra Media)
The team has been busy pushing on a lot of these projects throughout last year and so I expect that the pace over the next 5 months to be relatively rapid. Major releases such as the Western Front WWI map and Normandy map are likely to arrive in the spring, over the next two months we should see the Ju88C-6, Sopwith Triplane, Handley Page 0-400, and Gotha G.V. Oh and the B-26 AI too.
The back half of the year is much more of a mystery as we know that some projects like the Churchill and StuG III tanks, the IAR-80/81 and potentially even the S&S D.IV and Snipe will come in before the year is over.
This of course begs the question what comes next. There we are offered few clues except this:
Our main goals are to release BON and FCII by the summertime and work to release the Collector Planes and Tanks we have previously announced. As we do that, we will begin planning for future titles and continue to try and beef up our personnel so we can have better options then we’ve had previously for parallel development and new technology.
Jason Williams
Parallel development is notable and it suggests to me that perhaps 1CGS is going to once again attempt to take on three projects at once, albeit with additional resources in place to support the projects. Ugra Media and other third party developers have played supporting roles in past projects and surely are gaining experience in their parts of the cycle.
Does that mean that we’ll see a new Tank Crew, Flying Circus (Vol 3 – which is all but confirmed at this point anyways) and WWII title in development at the same time? Exciting times are ahead for this series!
Stormbirds 
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