The Great Battles side of the IL-2 series has a new update out and its packed full of content. Update 4.703 includes a brand new sky model that’s been discussed in recent updates, new lighting, flight model fixes and changes and its pacing three new aircraft including the Ju88C-6, the Handley Page 0/400 and the Gotha G.V.
New content, features
First up, we have the Ju88C-6. This heavy fighter development of the Ju88A-4 bomber features a nose packed full of machine guns and cannon and it retains much of the A-4’s bombload which means that its a competent attacker as well. Used on both eastern and western fronts, expect to see this aircraft used in a variety of scenarios.
Handley Page O/400 and Gotha G.V are additions for Flying Circus Vol 2. These two represent the most unique additions to the series yet being large, twin engine, “heavy bombers” of the era rather than the scouts and light bombers that we’ve seen so far. The 0/400 has a 1,800lb bomb load while the G.V’s 700 kg load is ever so slightly smaller.
The G.V is also quite a handful to fly from what I’ve read and heard so it should make for an interesting piloting experience!
Speaking of experiences, if you own both Battle of Bodenplatte and Battle of Normandy Premium, you’ll have access to the new ‘His Majesty’s Griffons’ by campaign author BlackSix. It’s a free campaign provided you have access to the Spitfire XIV and Bodenplatte map.
Finally, among the big highlight features are the new sky system which includes more accurate sky colours, reduced or eliminated colour banding, and new sky objects that are more accurately positioned based on the map that you’re flying over. This combined with the new clouds should really remake the look of the sim.
Tweaks and changes too
There’s also a long list of changes to various systems in the sim. There’s a new “Traffic interdiction” mission type for German pilot careers, a series of flight model updates to the Bf109 series, tweaks to the AI’s aim when shooting with secondary weapons, new cockpit textures for several aircraft, and more.
Stormbirds 
This is a solid update; quite impressed by the new lighting. The attempt at mitigating colour-banding doesn’t seem to be quite there sadly, I can clearly perceive banding even in clear skies; not just cloud covered ones. But apart from that, there’s something about the new lighting that really makes the scenes a bit more vibrant and combined with the new clouds and variable weather conditions makes for some really beautiful scenery. Plus contrast seems to have been bumped a tad making spotting distant contacts against terrain/forest a bit easier.
Night flying is also more enjoyable due to the changes as well, but again it’s down to the lighting and sadly not not so much because of the new skydome. I find the latter to be a tad cartoony/exaggerated as far as star/planet sizes go – it’s almost like some sort of astronomy-for-beginners smartphone app highlighting the most popular constellations by depicting them as blobs.
Sadly I haven’t had time to give the new content more than a cursory glance. The new Ju88 looks like it’s up to the usual standard of modelling and I hope to find some time for the new campaign as I really like BlackSix’s other work.
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