We’ve got a few updates from the IL-2 team this week with a Q&A done between parts of the team and YouTuber Enigma who asked them some questions about the future, about four-engine bombers, and more. We also have couple of looks at the IAR and a work in progress vehicle. Let’s go!
Q&A with Engima
The big news item this week is that parts of the IL-2 team did a Q&A with YouTuber Engima and they had some interesting things to say. Enigma was joined by Han, Andrey (Sneaksie), and Anatoly. Enigma talked about several different items including the business side of the project, talk about the future of the series and even some talk about Pacific and about four engine bombers.
I encourage you to visit Enigma’s channel and listen to the whole thing if you want. If you’re pressed for time, here’s a short summary of just the key points:
- Sales of the various battles over the years have been surprisingly even except for Battle of Stalingrad which has sold more.
- When asked about a new simulation engine, the answer was that they are always upgrading the engine and that they don’t see the need for a completely new engine.
- Four engine bombers are possible in the engine. Han joked that sixteen engine bombers are possible technically. The issue remains the need to model the whole bomber including the different stations and that the work involved is equivalent to several one or two seat airplanes or maybe an entire ‘battle’ product release.
- The next product has been chosen and the team is beginning to work on it. The next product will not feature a major urban area, it will still feature piston aircraft and be historical, it will push the state of the art, and it will feature something new in the Great Battles series.
- On issues with the Pacific and carriers, they’ve said in the past that carriers are a risk and that land battles like New Guinea are possible.
IAR and M8 Greyhound
We’ve got a new update featuring the third party IAR 80/81 project. The new images show the aircraft fully textured and in the sim engine for the first time. This is a key moment for the project as it means that it’s starting to be integrated. This project does incorporate several modifications and versions so we should be on the lookout for more there before we start counting the days. Still, it’s good news.
We also see an M8 Greyhound in its constituent pieces.
This is an interesting update because we’ve already seen the M8 in renders so I’m not sure this is an intermediate step before integration or not.
Read about all of this and more over on the IL-2 forums.
Stormbirds 
hopefully we will get an announcement at the end of the year. it will be very interesting to see where they go next
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I’ve said before, probably the only reasonable way to do strategic bombers in Il-2 would be to do something like the Mighty 8th based in the Great Battles engine, and include a couple already released fighters from either side, and with a bomber escort/bomber interception campaign system.
Sort of a Tank Crew like spin-off under a spin-off type brand, but with some additional features that let the fighter pilots join in.
As I understand it, The Mighty 8th was initially well received but ultimately failed because it’s game engine was incredibly unstable and they were never able to get it reliable or the flying believable. But the Il-2 engine works great and should be a good starting spot for that sort of a thing.
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Yep, I couldn’t agree more. I think they’d have to do something like that where it was a purpose built expansion. I suspect the concern then is that it may not “offer enough” for people to buy in with the kind of numbers that would be needed to make such an effort financially viable. But … I also hope they take a risk on it. I anecdotally think the numbers would be there.
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I would buy that.
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Battle of Guadalcanal please 🙂
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Never mind the podcast indicates it won’t happen.
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IF we see that I think we’d see it with Battle of Midway. The two are close in aircraft set and the carriers would play a factor. So probably not in the nearer term from the sounds of things.
New Guinea maybe!
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Might early order the IAR.
So: Piston-engines, no urban area but ‘something new’
– Filling out EF
– Sicily
– Guadalcanal
– Korea
I am not sure what would be ‘new’ about Oder front or similar. Sicily / Malta would have the larger maritime area as ‘new’ over and above Crimea. Could test potential for naval modeling as would Solomons, but potential flak for lack of CVs and frankly their aircraft are a little limited.
Same novelty true of Korea, building on the recent jet types but scratching the high-performance piston-engines itch. Maybe a carrier add-on pack.
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All good speculation. I haven’t yet landed on what they mean by it. I also have learned that sometimes what they mean by new as a developer and what we think is new may be a bit of a divergence point. So… Oder I think is on the table. Maybe there will be some new technology that helps them build it. Who knows.
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Not having a major urban area is a weird one. Only thing other then the pacific that comes to mind would maybe be the north africa, since while there were plenty of urban areas around, a lot of the fighting was pretty remote.
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I’m curious what this means because its highly subjective by wording. I suspect it rules out having Berlin on the map but does major also mean the urban areas that we’ve seen in Normandy and Bodenplatte? I don’t know. Doing Korea, Sicily, etc. would all involve some urban areas.
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Yeah I think its a bit of a translation error and they just mean its not based around a single urban area like Berlin. I would hope so anyway because virtually anywhere there was air combat there was some sort of urban space around. Except the pacific but we know its not going to be that.
I really hope its Korea personally. I’m not sure if they said it will only be piston aircraft or will still have piston aircraft. Still no carriers though which is sad because I want some Fleet Air Arm action.
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Yes, I think you are correct and that meant no major city. Seelow Heights, therefore, is perfectly feasible or 1940s Palermo (possibly Naples?)
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So. We have B-17, B-24 & Lancaster, with flyable examples in Eu Gb & USA. Any would be great. Confused as to why Carrier is so difficult as we had carriers in previous iterations of the game
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1946 though was a different game engine (and different people, il2 being a ‘name brand’ that they aquired). this il2 comes from rise of flight, and in rise of flight there was a carrier mod but to make it work the carrier had to be modeled technically as terrain so while it looked like one it was completely static. i think too the mod later broke. i guess they think making a carrier work with things like AI in addition to getting it to behave right makes them think it is better rather put their effort into other projects that they know can succeed. kind of dont blame them, imagined if it flopped like the DCS supercarrier
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