If you’re on the latest version of IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles and you own any one of the Flying Circus series, you’ll have the latest updated Western Front Map. It’s seen a series of updates over the last year adding features like five different seasonal options and added details in different sectors. The latest update gives us Paris including some famous landmarks. I thought it’d be fun to check the famous European capital city out and, of course, fly under the Eiffel tower! Let’s go!

Paris and its landmarks

The Great Battles engine is certainly reaching the limits of what it’s capable of doing and while the team are busy working on the next generation with IL2 Korea, third party developer Ugra Media together with 1CGS have added Paris to the Western Front map.

Paris and its surrounding suburbs are represented on the map thanks to the update. You’ll see plenty of buildings around the city with smaller structures and houses around the outskirts. It, like many examples of cities in the Great Battles Series, is kind of limited by the available technology and artwork. Most of the buildings are of a generic European style row building. Typical of many cities in the area but they lack some of the unique flavour that you’ll find specifically in many of the areas around Paris. It’s a minor disappointment, however, given the scope of the project and the map I can understand the need to simplify the experience somewhat.

The landmarks in Paris are good ones. Eiffel Tower is the most obvious and famous selection and its quite well represented. A mix of modeling and texturing techniques hold up under decently close inspection. It’s only when you get right up close to it that you start to see some of the ways that the modelers have aimed for efficiency in performance on the older sim.

Champ de Mars, the park next to the Eiffel Tower is there but doesn’t have too much detail. There is quite a bit of detail at the other end of the park in the form of the École-Militaire – the famous French military school is also there with its multiple structures.

You can see the Notre-Dame Cathedral, Louvre, Hôtel des Invalides and Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre among several of the unique buildings scattered through the city. Most others are generic offerings. That’s ok because I think the job of offering up a big city with some notable landmarks is working well enough here.

Arc de Triomphe is unfortunately missing from the selection. A shame too because next to the Eiffel tower this would be the next monument that I’d most like to try and fly a bi-plane through – something Charles Godefroy did in a Nieuport 27 in 1919.

Did I fly under the Eiffel tower? Of course I did!

Of course I did! Multiple times! The best method is to overfly École-Militaire and the Champ de Mars on your way under the arches. The width of the tower is more than I expected and so most aircraft in the sim can easily fit under there.

Fitting into the Flying Circus

I think this is a great addition as it expands the scope of the map and it opens up new scenarios. Paris was targeted for aerial attack by Zeppelins, scout aircraft and later by Gotha bombers like the one we have in the series. It’s a novel experience for the Rise of Flight and then Flight Circus series after it to have such a large city target as a possible mission type.

So far as I know, no missions in the career mode currently take Paris specifically into account, however, nearby airbases now can rely on the landmarks of the city to help navigate to their home field. Similar to how Moscow has an outsized impact on navigating on that map if your home field happens to be in its vicinity. Paris ends up being better as you get to fly over it!

Final thoughts

Ugra Media and 1CGS have updated the Western Front map with more than just the addition of Paris. Countless other updates have been made adding towns, industrial centers, small details, and airfields all around. But as with all things, the attraction of a big city with multiple points of interest around it has drawn my eye and that of other simmers.

It’s not the most accurate recreation of 1918 Paris but it is still a good one that blends engine limitations and a focus that is not specifically centered on Paris but on the wider western front. This map update does not push technological barriers forward for the series and neither does the city of Paris in it. You’ll still see plenty of popping in as whole suburbs and row house are loaded in when rapidly bringing the city into view – its an issue that this sim continues to have. None of that is a new problem and its great to see the project come together after years of updates.