A new developer diary update is coming in hot today with 1CGS showing off the next couple of aircraft headed for arrival into the IL-2 Great Battles Series with the latest Collector Plane and two additions to Flying Circus Vol 3. Meanwhile we have the tiniest of updates behind the scenes to unpack as well.

Nieuport, Albatros

In this latest update, we’re treated to the latest images of the next two aircraft to grace Flying Circus Vol 3. The legendary Nieuport 17 is finally coming to Flying Circus and its being joined by the Albatross D.II.

The Nieuport 17 is coming twice in Flying Circus Vol 3 with both the standard French and British RAF versions announced. How the two distinguish themselves beyond livery will be interesting to pick apart. At the moment it appears that we’re looking at the French version only.

We don’t have too much else to go on but clearly both are in the sim now and being tested to get them ready for release. I expect these aren’t too far away from release.

Li-2 updates

Meanwhile, we’re also getting an updated look at the Li-2, a Collector Plane coming soon to the Great Battles Series. We already know nearly everything about this license built modification of the famous DC-3 airliner so we’re just waiting for its release.

Note in the screenshots that you can easily make out the turret as well as forward mounted machine gun.

Other updates

The news this week is that we’ll be getting new Career Missions including a new intruder mission type and a new deep strike into enemy territory mission. Its unclear if these will be available across a wide swath of careers or only specific ones but they sound generic enough to potentially be added in for quite a few different career experiences. More variety there is definitely good.

We also have a line from the beginning of the update talking about increasing staffing levels at 1CGS.

During the year, the IL-2 team has grown at a record pace – 17 talented professionals have joined us. These programmers, artists, and other specialists have now finished their training, settled into the project, and are working full-time on all kinds of neat stuff, both announced and yet to be announced.

It appears that some of the new hires are working on some of the previously announced content such as the Ta152, I-153, Spitfire IXc, La-5 Series 38, and WACO CG-4A.

Others are working on unannounced materials. We’re still no closer at this point to knowing what that content is but of course we can go back to the live stream from last year indicating new technologies were on the horizon.

More when that develops!