We’ve got a new update coming to us from the Team Fusion Simulations team on the status of the latest updates for the IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover series. The team announced in September of 2023 a new title in the series called Fortresses and Focke-Wulfs with a projected release by the end of 2024. That didn’t pan out and the team are reporting in on the status of the project and on parallel efforts to finally bring VR to the sim. Let’s have a look!

Delayed but in progress

Team Fusion Simulations has given us an update on the status of their efforts with the team working on a substantial VR update for the sim as well as generating new content for the series. Fortresses and Focke-Wulfs when announced was projected to launch sometime in late 2024, however, with the end of the year now upon us its clear that the sim isn’t launching this calendar year.

Buzzsaw, one of the leaders of the Cliffs of Dover series team, has provided updates across multiple channels on the latest status of the project. First, on the delays to the project there are some stark realities that the Team Fusion Simulations team has to deal with.

Unfortunately although we did have every intention in meeting our hoped for release date…  due to circumstances beyond our control, the DLC will not be released in 2024. The reason… a loss of critical team members.

The update adds to the statement.

Primarily to competitors who can provide compensation in a more timely manner… unlike Team Fusion, these competitors have access to direct funding and can pay salaries up front, Team Fusion’s license does not allow that… we can only provide revenue share after publication.  We have also lost members to simple attrition… TF members who find real life demands in the form of work pressures or family demands preclude them continuing their work.

Buzzsaw is referencing the unique way in which Team Fusion Simulations was created first as a community driven modding team and then later gained official status and licensing for the IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover series. The team then went on to successfully launch the Desert Wings Tobruk release before announcing the team would return to the channel front with Fortresses and Focke-Wulfs.

Despite the somewhat dire sounding situation, Buzzsaw goes on to report that the team has recruited new members.

The good news is we have recruited multiple very talented new members into the team to replace those we lost, and these new members are now integrated and working on tasks.  However, it does take time to learn our complex 3D modeling systems and/or how to work with the CLIFFS source code and these new members have required some time to come up to speed… beginning with smaller tasks and learning.

Fans hoping for the VR update aren’t left out with the update.

As mentioned, we are continuing to make steady progress, obviously not at the pace we had hoped for, but we are still confident we will complete both the Visual Update/VR and TF 6.0.

The message goes on to report that while they don’t have any new release dates, they are hoping to have these updates and content releases go out as soon as possible.

For the full report including some additional discussion on licensing related issues, read the post here on the IL-2 forums.

Updated

A video has been released showing off some of the sim’s upcoming improvements. I missed this earlier!