It’s been a reoccurring comment over the years and just recently that we can have great graphics, flight models, sophisticated physics systems and all of that other good stuff that underpins a flight sim but at the end of the day it needs good gameplay and user experience. I’m seeing some nods to that with the latest IL-2 Korea dev blog as we look at the control bind interface and at the interface for the map.
Interface updates
The first part is focused on the interface user interface (UI) with two new images of the control binding system and the graphics systems. The changes here reportedly have taken into the wishes and complaints about the equivalent UI experience in Great Battles and expanded on them. Logical groupings for graphics settings, FSR and VR API choices, and a VR optimized graphics preset are among the new features on that display.
Then we have the control bindings. I often joke that the control bindings system is like a (frustrating) mini-game that all flight sims ship with. You have to play the mini-game first before you fly the actual sim. The new system has a search feature (added recently to Great Battles as well), various categories, numbered listings, and the ability to assign multiple controls to the same binding – more than the limit of three from Great Battles.
They also say that a wizard will help you setup this when you start the game for the first time. Encouraging.
Location, location, location
We’re also getting a good look at the map for IL-2 Korea. This appears to represent something close to the final state of the map and the high res version above lets you zoom in reasonably well to see airfield locations and details. It’s a large map with a lot of terrain detail and they say that a new platform (called Noesis API) will mean better performance than the old system. There are more terrain details, more detailed vegetation, and layouts of different settlements are better represented.
Great Battles has always had a great map experience letting you navigate by terrain features and landmarks. This looks like its an iteration on the prior version. Again, that’s encouraging.
They go into a little more detail in the developer diary on how they make the maps, the technology involved to do it, and so forth. If you’re interested, read about it here.
Stormbirds 
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