Three big items to see in the latest IL-2 developer diary as the team buckles down to cross the home stretch for IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Normandy. There’s some exciting stuff in here so you’re going to want to have a look!

Normandy, V-1, and beach invasions

I’m pretty sure my exact words were “Oh damn!” when this latest developer diary arrived. First off, new images of the Normandy map showing more than a half dozen images of what appear to be nearly complete segments of the map. Large cities and suburbs, airbases, coastal regions, and farmers fields round out the visuals. Here are just a few:

Next up we have the V-1 and its launcher. 1CGS have ensured that the V-1 isn’t just a target that spawns in mid-air but one that has an actual launch facility and that can be realistically launched from its base towards a target. V-1s rained down on southern England during the summer of 1944 and aircraft like the Tempest, Spitfire and Mustang were employed to intercept them. Other forces were sent on “Crossbow” missions to silence the launcher at the source.

Finally, we have a very interesting development. 1CGS are showing off their Normandy beach invasion assets and they include infantry. Yep, you heard that right. According to Jason Williams, the Executive Producer, the team have found a clever way to make infantry be relatively convincing. The soldiers can advance, shoot and die.

Meanwhile you can see various landing ships bringing in these soldiers as well as tanks to the beaches. The beach scenes are not from the Normandy map (looks like Kuban) but it should give us a good sense of what is possible. I wouldn’t expect massed invasion scenes across the entire map but some well placed landing craft, infantry and vehicles still should be pretty convincing.

It also hopefully portents some more infantry appearing in the future for both pilots and tankers to deal with.

Check out all of this and even more screenshots over on the latest IL-2 developer diary!