How is my money best spent?

[atcarter714]

I'm kind of trying to save money, but I have money. I'm gaming on an ASUS laptop with a cheap Logitech stick (I'm not investing heavy into hardware until I build a new next-gen desktop, once I decide to take some profits out of Bitcoin and Ethereum lol) and I've got decent face-tracking view control working without IR. My portable flying rig is not bad at all with a Ryzen 5 CPU, GTX 1650 GPU and 24GB RAM (got it all under $350!). And I recently bought IL-2 BoS Premium on sale for $11.99. I was a previous player and modder of 1946 and CloD (modded with AAA and TF years ago). But, I'm a junkie and I want more lol ...

 

I'm wondering which DLCs and expansions are really worth it? Should I just buy them all while they're on sale? Or are any more/less recommended than others? I really like a wide variety of aircraft, and I'm also a fan of late-war models. I'm mainly a Luftwaffe pilot. I really like playing the "underdog" and experiencing the perspective we never learn in school I guess. So what you guys recommend?

 

I'm also considering investing in a Delanclip for IR head tracking. I'm guessing it will perform significantly better than face-tracking software? Any recommendations on that?

 

And lastly, what about mods these days? I've been away from PC gaming for over 4yrs and just coming back to it ...

 

Thanks,

[RedKestrel]

1 hour ago, atcarter714 said:

I'm kind of trying to save money, but I have money. I'm gaming on an ASUS laptop with a cheap Logitech stick (I'm not investing heavy into hardware until I build a new next-gen desktop, once I decide to take some profits out of Bitcoin and Ethereum lol) and I've got decent face-tracking view control working without IR. My portable flying rig is not bad at all with a Ryzen 5 CPU, GTX 1650 GPU and 24GB RAM (got it all under $350!). And I recently bought IL-2 BoS Premium on sale for $11.99. I was a previous player and modder of 1946 and CloD (modded with AAA and TF years ago). But, I'm a junkie and I want more lol ...

 

I'm wondering which DLCs and expansions are really worth it? Should I just buy them all while they're on sale? Or are any more/less recommended than others? I really like a wide variety of aircraft, and I'm also a fan of late-war models. I'm mainly a Luftwaffe pilot. I really like playing the "underdog" and experiencing the perspective we never learn in school I guess. So what you guys recommend?

 

I'm also considering investing in a Delanclip for IR head tracking. I'm guessing it will perform significantly better than face-tracking software? Any recommendations on that?

 

And lastly, what about mods these days? I've been away from PC gaming for over 4yrs and just coming back to it ...

 

Thanks,

All the DLCs have their good points, a lot of it is a matter of taste. Also if you are flying Online in multiplayer its better to have as many planes as possible so you have good choices available for servers and scenarios. I have all of them and the various planes and maps all have their own perks to them.

Battle of Bodenplatte has the late war birds which are generally very fast and have a very different feel than the earlier war planes. If you are interested in the Western front, this is the one for you. The map for this one is a bit intensive in the hardware department.

Battle of Kuban has a gorgeous map and a nice diverse planeset, with lend-lease planes, mid-war Russian planes, and the workhorses of the Luftwaffe.

Battle of Moscow is peak early war. Some very interesting planes. The map is pretty flat and honestly difficult to navigate, but its not that it's bad - just an accurate reflection of the approach to Moscow! Worth it for the I-16 and the MiG-3 alone IMO. 

And of course Battle of Normandy is in early access, so there is no map or career mode yet, but there are a few planes already out: 109G-6 late, 190A-6, P-47D-22, and just today the beastly Spitfire XIV. If you are playing single-player for the most part, especially career mode, I would put your money towards another module just to make sure you maximize the content you get for your money. 

[CountZero]

For axis player i would buy now when things are on sale from this web shop, BoM standard, BOS premium, BoK standard and BoBp premium. If your not 190 guy then all 4 can be standard versions and you skip on A3 and D9. From collector only you have 109G6 that i would skip, and jus wait 1-1,5 years and got 109g6late from when BoN gets on some sale.

If you wont less then that , then BoS standard and BoBp standard is more then enought, but BoK have best map in game so that one is hard to give up on if your offline player, if you lay online then you can still play on it even if you dont have BoK. 

[Frogface]

@atcarter714 check your dms/email! I sent you a copy of Battle of Kuban  

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Buy them all on sale and get into vr ?

[=LD=dhyran]

get them all as premium on the spring sale, its over in just 2 days

[atcarter714]

10 hours ago, Frogface said:

@atcarter714 check your dms/email! I sent you a copy of Battle of Kuban  

 

I wish, that'd be nice! Lol I did buy Bodenplatte and the FW-190D-9 today.?

I wonder if I should get a Delanclip IR tracker or try to go full VR? I'm averaging about 59-60 fps, so it seems to me that VR would work just fine even though my laptop isn't extremely powerful. What you guys think?

[Dutch2]

Despite some will claiming: I’m running VR at 90fps straight on my RX580 or GTX1060, I know from my experience thats not true, so for VR I would stay away while using that laptop. Better wait for the better prices/stock on hardware and at that point DDR5/PCIe5 are also being introduced to the market. 

[Zippy-do-dar]

1 hour ago, Dutch2 said:

Despite some will claiming: I’m running VR at 90fps straight on my RX580 or GTX1060, I know from my experience thats not true, so for VR I would stay away while using that laptop. Better wait for the better prices/stock on hardware and at that point DDR5/PCIe5 are also being introduced to the market. 

I can confirm this i'm running a Ryzen 7 CPU & GTX1070 Ti. In VR I will get 40-50 fps with my setting which is playable. But when the map gets busy i can drop down to 10-20 fps.

[Frogface]

@atcarter714 did you not receive the key? I sent it through the store page.

I'm pretty sure they get sent to your email address, double check your spam folder.

 

If you still don't have the key, let me know and I'll contact support

 

[atcarter714]

7 hours ago, Frogface said:

@atcarter714 did you not receive the key? I sent it through the store page.

I'm pretty sure they get sent to your email address, double check your spam folder.

 

If you still don't have the key, let me know and I'll contact support

 

Sure didn't, big brother. At first I thought you were joking with me. But I pm'ed you my gmail address to make sure you got the right one.

On 4/23/2021 at 3:25 AM, Zippy-do-dar said:

I can confirm this i'm running a Ryzen 7 CPU & GTX1070 Ti. In VR I will get 40-50 fps with my setting which is playable. But when the map gets busy i can drop down to 10-20 fps.

 

That happens to me too if I select "Dense" frontline activity in a career mode mission. My fps counter will say 59/60 but the game will be moving at a snail's pace. Also, the 2x, 4x and 8x time speed feature doesn't even work. It's like it just turns off sound and keeps running at normal speed.

 

It's kind of odd, because I've done some game programming before. The "heartbeat" of a video game is the main loop, which typically calls methods/functions called Draw() and Update(). Draw renders the graphics and Update performs calculations for object movement, physics (at least physics that aren't deferred to the GPU, user input, etc, etc). The Update function typically has precedence over the Draw function. Also, the Update function generally takes an elapsed time parameter telling it how much time has passed since the last update was ran, which is used to "scale" things like movement speed in the game. This keeps things from moving really fast on a powerful computer and very slowly on a slow computer. Objects will move at the same speed even if the weaker computer can't draw frames fast enough. For some reason, it seems like IL-2's engine isn't doing this and doesn't use any kind of performance monitoring to adjust itself. I'm kind of confused why they would program it that way ... it would be better for the game to run at 45fps and maintain proper speed of movement than to maintain 59-60fps but the speed of all motion be cut by 1/3 or 1/2 ... ?

[Frakkas]

"How is my money best spent?"

spend it on your wife!

[Ribbon]

31 minutes ago, Frakkas said:

"How is my money best spent?"

spend it on your wife!

It's not nice to spam forums trough your husband accounts, he may get mad if he finds out!

[RedKestrel]

55 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

It's not nice to spam forums trough your husband accounts, he may get mad if he finds out!

No she's got a point. A judicious amount of funds spent on one's wife turneth away wrath when you splurge on new hardware later.

[atcarter714]

I just went thru a lil "divorce" (figuratively speaking) ... I don't think I'm ever going to get married for real for real!!! You see, I had an absolutely beautiful 23-year-old girlfriend (I'm 32) who was everything a man could expect in a very beautiful young woman: she was mean spirited, seemed to have a split personality disorder, demanding, dramatic, discontent, the whole package ... and she absolutely hated to see me enjoying myself on a PC, so much so that she "confiscated" her laptop from me because I enjoyed it too much and that just kind of killed the whole thing for me! I didn't really like her anymore after that episode! ?

 

And she's lucky I was only playing Stellaris and Crusader Kings III at that time, and that her laptop didn't have enough GPU to run IL-2 and ArmA 3 cuz I'd have really went off on her for interrupting highly important combat operations! It was already bad enough she tried to disrupt the running of my prosperous kingdom and harm my powerful dynasty! ?

Edited April 24, 2021 by atcarter714

[spreckair]

On 4/24/2021 at 10:15 AM, RedKestrel said:

No she's got a point. A judicious amount of funds spent on one's wife turneth away wrath when you splurge on new hardware later.

Right, so buy her BOS and a nice gaming rig.  Oh, and don't forget the VR.

[PatrickAWlson]

Attempt at a serious answer:

If you want to fly western allied planes then Bodenplatte is the only released module.

If you like German or a Russian planes then any of the other three.

If you don't have a pretty good flight sim rig (throttle and pedals) then German planes need far fewer buttons.  However, there are game options to automatically manage mixture and cooling if you don't have enough buttons to do it yourself.

This game does have a fairly steep learning curve, even without playing full real, so whatever you pick up, take your time. 

 

[NoelGallagher]

your money will more than best spent on battle of bodenplatte expansion

 

when it's in normal price it's still a striking deal

 

when it's on sale it's like almost free give away

 

i bought bodenplatte at normal price 60$

 

and i bought kuban on sale at 15$ 

 

and i still think bodenplatte was better deal than discounted kuban

On 4/23/2021 at 3:45 AM, Frogface said:

@atcarter714 check your dms/email! I sent you a copy of Battle of Kuban  

what a great community 

awesome to see this !!!!!!

Edited July 6, 2021 by NoelGallagher

[Gambit21]

There are no poor plane sets - all are great...can’t go wrong. Kuban is the best map if you stay near/over the mountains and away from the northern-northeastern portion of the map. That said...Mountains + water - the best map by a huge margin. 

 

Stalingrad is a nice map with it's procedural textures...it benefited from a nice update in this regard. I like this map.

 

Moscow is nice too - I quite like the fall and winter versions. In fact winter versions of all the maps are the most convincing (exception Kuban which lacks a winter version)

 

Bodenplatte is good for the P-38 and Mustang, or Jug...or if you like Spits and 109’s/190. Basically late war stuff. 

Winter map is serviceable.

 

Basically, get them all - they all offer something worth the investment.

[B_Tank88]

On 4/24/2021 at 9:25 AM, atcarter714 said:

That happens to me too if I select "Dense" frontline activity in a career mode mission. My fps counter will say 59/60 but the game will be moving at a snail's pace. Also, the 2x, 4x and 8x time speed feature doesn't even work. It's like it just turns off sound and keeps running at normal speed.

This same thing happens to me, on an area with high activity. I've been scratching my head as to find my bottleneck, when all my GPU CPU and RAM stats look fairly normal. I wonder if anyone has investigated this at all?

[ShamrockOneFive]

6 hours ago, B_Tank88 said:

This same thing happens to me, on an area with high activity. I've been scratching my head as to find my bottleneck, when all my GPU CPU and RAM stats look fairly normal. I wonder if anyone has investigated this at all?

 

This has been nicknamed the 'time dilation' effect and it usually means there's just too much going on for your CPU to handle. There may be some game engine limitations too. I also find that its dramatically worse by recording a track file. If you are recording track files, stop, and the issue should partially resolve.

[Gambit21]

13 hours ago, B_Tank88 said:

This same thing happens to me, on an area with high activity. I've been scratching my head as to find my bottleneck, when all my GPU CPU and RAM stats look fairly normal. I wonder if anyone has investigated this at all?

 

Yes, we've talked extensively about this condition - do a search.

 

"Time Dilation" and "TD"

[Venturi]

S&P500 ETF

 

oh, you meant something else…