Official Historical Campaign "Steel Birds"

[percydanvers]

8 hours ago, BlackSix said:

OMG, 46 planes in the ground-attack campaign? I really tried to meet the interests of all parties and make the most diverse missions, but didn't expect such a result 

I was a little surprised myself. I had a lot of luck. A lot of damaged enemy planes limping out of nearby dogfights with 109s crossing my path that I finished off. 

[Jiggs]

I’m struggling to get through this campaign. The frame rate loss makes a great campaign hard to enjoy. It feels like every mission is in slow motion once you arrive to the target.

[BlackSix]

I'm sorry to hear that. Could you tell me the configuration of your PC?

[Jiggs]

I have a Ryzen 7 2700 8 core 3.2Ghz

RTX 2060 6G

500GB SSD

16GB DDR 3000MHZ

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, Jiggs said:

I have a Ryzen 7 2700 8 core 3.2Ghz

RTX 2060 6G

500GB SSD

16GB DDR 3000MHZ

 

You need to lower your detail settings with specs like that. 

[Jiggs]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

 

You need to lower your detail settings with specs like that. 

On my graphics card or in the game menu? About all I know how to do with my computer is turn it on,LOL!

[Ghost666]

In Game

[Tigre91]

by far, one of the best campaigns I have bought in IL-2

 

 

[KPnutskgwanchos]

Sorry to ask this but are there long flight times to / from targets in this campaign?   .... I really struggle to find large chunks of time to sit around looking at the view ... wonderful tho it is ?

[unlikely_spider]

5 minutes ago, KPnutskgwanchos said:

Sorry to ask this but are there long flight times to / from targets in this campaign?   .... I really struggle to find large chunks of time to sit around looking at the view ... wonderful tho it is ?

I am only a few missions in, but have not found that to be the case.

The description states about 8 hours for 15 missions if that is any indication.

[Jiggs]

I changed my graphic settings and restarted the campaign. It made a huge difference. I’m really enjoying how busy and intense the front is. Great campaign.

[BlackSix]

7 hours ago, Jiggs said:

I changed my graphic settings and restarted the campaign. It made a huge difference. I’m really enjoying how busy and intense the front is. Great campaign.

I'm glad it solved your problem but anyway I plan to do some optimization in the future. 

 

11 hours ago, KPnutskgwanchos said:

Sorry to ask this but are there long flight times to / from targets in this campaign?   .... I really struggle to find large chunks of time to sit around looking at the view ... wonderful tho it is ?

The flight from Anapa to area of the village Krymskaya is the main distance in this campaign. You can choose Fw 190 A-5 in the Quick mission mode, take off from Anapa and check time to Krymskaya at 430 km/h))

[[LeLv34]Lykurgos88]

I just finished the campaign. Overall my feel is "eh = good but could be somewhat better also".

 

I played on Core i7 920 (@ 3,4 Ghz), 24 GB DDR3 and Geforce 1660 Ti using MS Sidewinder 2 The missions did have some slow motion when a lot of enemies were nearby. But at the same time I totally approved the overall intensity; in the end I think it's the engine that needs to support larger scale battles. It's unfair to ask mission designers to limit their vision because of optimization issues with the engine. Engine needs to adapt, not the missions.

 

The overall lore of the campaign is once again excellent and fits well. Missions have a bit of repetition, but there were also some welcome twists and turns.

 

So what is my major complaint then? I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity with regards to the U17 modification. I understood that the U17 mod entered service in June 1943 and the campaign ends in May 1943. I really wished to get my hands on the U17 mod and enjoy additional boost and payload. However I was disappointed that the campaign didn't continue further.

 

For comparison my favorite campaigns so far have been the "Hell Hawks over Bulge" and especially the excellent "Ice Ring". Both of them had plenty of air to ground missions yes, but they also had a lot of variation in armament. In Ice ring I had missions with only cannons against Ju-52, then missions with little bombs and rockets, then missions with rear turret and the even missions with heavier rockets. In Steel Birds I only had SC 250 (and SC 500 in one mission) and no U17 modification or additional FF cannons.

 

One might argue, that maybe the II./Schlacht didn't ever have U17 mod. Fine, but then again we are talking about a game here. One anachronistic airplane modification (and not even by much) doesn't really destroy my suspension of disbelief.

 

I feel like FW-190 should have another campaign in the future. Maybe with A6 or A8 and their plentiful armaments I had some good action time with FW 190 and got a lot of kills (screenshot included).

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, [LeLv34]Lykurgos88 said:

One might argue, that maybe the II./Schlacht didn't ever have U17 mod. Fine, but then again we are talking about a game here. One anachronistic airplane modification (and not even by much) doesn't really destroy my suspension of disbelief.

 

Well, that's the point of official campaigns like this - you fly and fight with the weapons and equipment the real unit had at that time. And, besides that, I can see from your stats that you did quite fine without the U17 mod. ?

1 hour ago, [LeLv34]Lykurgos88 said:

In Steel Birds I only had SC 250 (and SC 500 in one mission) and no U17 modification or additional FF cannons.

 

You also have the SC 50 for attacks on vehicle convoys. 

Edited August 25, 2021 by LukeFF

[[LeLv34]Lykurgos88]

8 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

You also have the SC 50 for attacks on vehicle convoys. 

Good point! Somehow I forgot about those.

[BlackSix]

1 hour ago, [LeLv34]Lykurgos88 said:

I just finished the campaign. Overall my feel is "eh = good but could be somewhat better also".

 

I played on Core i7 920 (@ 3,4 Ghz), 24 GB DDR3 and Geforce 1660 Ti using MS Sidewinder 2 The missions did have some slow motion when a lot of enemies were nearby. But at the same time I totally approved the overall intensity; in the end I think it's the engine that needs to support larger scale battles. It's unfair to ask mission designers to limit their vision because of optimization issues with the engine. Engine needs to adapt, not the missions.

 

The overall lore of the campaign is once again excellent and fits well. Missions have a bit of repetition, but there were also some welcome twists and turns.

 

So what is my major complaint then? I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity with regards to the U17 modification. I understood that the U17 mod entered service in June 1943 and the campaign ends in May 1943. I really wished to get my hands on the U17 mod and enjoy additional boost and payload. However I was disappointed that the campaign didn't continue further.

 

For comparison my favorite campaigns so far have been the "Hell Hawks over Bulge" and especially the excellent "Ice Ring". Both of them had plenty of air to ground missions yes, but they also had a lot of variation in armament. In Ice ring I had missions with only cannons against Ju-52, then missions with little bombs and rockets, then missions with rear turret and the even missions with heavier rockets. In Steel Birds I only had SC 250 (and SC 500 in one mission) and no U17 modification or additional FF cannons.

 

One might argue, that maybe the II./Schlacht didn't ever have U17 mod. Fine, but then again we are talking about a game here. One anachronistic airplane modification (and not even by much) doesn't really destroy my suspension of disbelief.

 

I feel like FW-190 should have another campaign in the future. Maybe with A6 or A8 and their plentiful armaments I had some good action time with FW 190 and got a lot of kills (screenshot included).

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

 

This Gruppe started receiving U17 modifications in June 1943 and I could extended the campaign to this point. But on the other hand, I already had in my plan the next campaign, which was to take place in May and June 1943. They will overlap a little in time anyway, but I didn’t want the same events to be shown there.

 

Thus, this Fw 190 campaign shows the first and second battles for the Krymskaya and Operation Neptune, and the next Yak-7b campaign will tell about the battle for the Kievskaya and the end of the spring battle for the Kuban.

[Trooper117]

It may be a flight sim 'game', but I for one enjoy that you make things as historical as possible... please keep your future campaigns wherever and whatever you decide to make as historical as you can... thanks!

[BlackSix]

I'll try, but some compromises are always inevitable. 

[ShamrockOneFive]

Hey folks! I wanted to share my review of Steel Birds with all of you. Another fun campaign that's got some great missions that are short, sharp and plenty of fun. But it is definitely pushing my PC to its limits and I think it might be time to retire my 6-year old system and build something new.

 

 

Enjoy the review!

 

https://stormbirds.blog/2021/08/25/intense-and-action-packed-my-full-review-of-steel-birds-for-il-2/

[BlackSix]

Thank you very much! 

[AtomicP]

On 8/14/2021 at 1:52 PM, BlackSix said:

Yes, some missions put a heavy load on the CPU. This is the price to pay for a busy battlefield. This was noted by beta testers and I reduced the number of aircraft by about 20% and made many artillery batteries non-firing. Lowering the graphical settings won't help here, I suppose. If there are many complaints about performance, it will be necessary to further reduce the number of units...

 

I've made threads about this elsewhere and so have others, but I wondered whether you are aware of the developers attempting to optimise the code to alleviate the limitations? I read about folk with top end systems, probably more power than the game devs, but they still have problems with time dilation (TD). To me it's a real shame because unlike graphical settings that you can easily adjust to suit performance/quality, it's basically impossible to solve with scripted campaign for the end user. 

 

Anyway, I'm hoping my 5600X is powerful enough to run your new campaign. Cheers!

[BlackSix]

Sorry, I can't answer anything on this question, since this is not my area of responsibility...

For my part, I'll just have to reduce the some number of objects in missions. Obviously, the attempt to create such a loaded battlefield was premature. Now I'm finishing another campaign and it has already lost about 30% of ground objects in advance((

[sevenless]

2 hours ago, AtomicP said:

Anyway, I'm hoping my 5600X is powerful enough to run your new campaign. Cheers!

 

You should have no problems. See here:

 

IL2 VR online sheet.xlsx - Google Tabellen

 

 

[Gr3y]

On 8/24/2021 at 9:52 PM, KPnutskgwanchos said:

Sorry to ask this but are there long flight times to / from targets in this campaign?   .... I really struggle to find large chunks of time to sit around looking at the view ... wonderful tho it is ?

 

Well, this is a little bit of a cheat, but I'm also struggling with longer free time periods, so I have found quite nice walk-around, which can be used anywhere.

 

To the point, I enable Autopilot in "simplification" settings, then I just play the mission normal way (it never takes me more than 1 hour to taxi, take off and get the objectives done) and when my "time runs out", I let the ai pilot get back to the airfield on it's own.

 

Sure, this way I won't have a chance to land or sometimes I might skip some action (that happens on the way back) but still I prefer it over having to wait for an opportunity to play for many days or at worst skip entire campaign (like A20 or P38 ones). 

Edited August 31, 2021 by TrueGrey

[JSOflyer69]

Congrats on this scripted campaign I enjoyed it very much.

Worked flawlessly on my mid range pc.it helps when it’s on the best map and one my fav planes fw190 ?

Edited September 11, 2021 by meplanes1969
S

[BlackSix]

Ok, I've reworked all missions and hopefully this will free up 15-20% of the CPU power. Since I initially didn't observe any time dilations and had stable 60 fps on my PC, I can't say exactly how much the performance will improve, I don't see any difference (and this is a problem for me).

 

First of all, I was engaged in the optimization of missions (for example, now three AA batteries at Anapa disappear when you move 20 km from the airfield and appear again when you approach it, which turns them off from the CPU calculations during main mission time), which made it possible to save the number of targets in the zone your attack, the battlefield will still be heavily loaded.

 

Most likely, the campaign update will be available in the next patch.

 

Also, work on the next BOK Yak-7b campaign is progressing very well. Over the past month I've chosen 12 scripts and drew front lines for them and already started creating missions.

[FTC_Zero]

I also have crazy slow motion issues on this campaign. But I see you are working on it. I will try again, it would be otherwise pitty, not being able to enjoy such cool missions, even though such dense battlefield was intentionally.

 

P.S.: is there a way to let the game show the actual game speed when it slowed down? FPS counter seems not to be a reliable indicator for how fast the game actually runs. I know how to switch on FPS and FOV counter, but a game speed indicator to troubleshoot such issues would be nice.

Edited September 12, 2021 by ZeroCrack01

[BlackSix]

10 hours ago, ZeroCrack01 said:

P.S.: is there a way to let the game show the actual game speed when it slowed down? FPS counter seems not to be a reliable indicator for how fast the game actually runs. I know how to switch on FPS and FOV counter, but a game speed indicator to troubleshoot such issues would be nice.

I suppose you can use some kind of third-party program that shows the CPU load.

[AtomicP]

FPS is not a reliable indicator for time dilation unfortunately. Nor is raw CPU load as it happens when the cores are not totally loaded. In the past I've used Process Explorer to look in detail about what the process threads are doing when time dilation occurs. It's been a while since I monitored it but I seem to recall that one of the main Il-2 threads was hitting 100% when there were TD problems. 

 

Not a lot you can do about it with scripted campaigns except get as fast a CPU as you can, but even then as you'll have gathered, that's no guarantee. It helps, but does not eliminate the problem. I suspect there's some bug that has been around in the code for years that wasn't evident in the early BoX games with smaller maps and assets but has surfaced in light of the larger maps with more numerous assets. 

[BlackSix]

All Steel Birds missions were optimized for better performance in the 4.604 update. I hope this improves the situation a little for weak CPUs.

[FTC_Zero]

Tried fresh run on the campaign. 1st mission runs better than before for me, but 2nd mission again ultra slow motion again with +65 FPS. I have an i7-4790K. To be honest, that is the first time i had so much troubles in a scripted campaign. 

[firdimigdi]

Keep in mind there is a potential hotfix pending which addresses the tracers causing framedrops.

 

[BlackSix]

5 hours ago, ZeroCrack01 said:

Tried fresh run on the campaign. 1st mission runs better than before for me, but 2nd mission again ultra slow motion again with +65 FPS. I have an i7-4790K. To be honest, that is the first time i had so much troubles in a scripted campaign. 

Ok, I see. I created the first half of the campaign using i7-6700 and I didn't see any problems. There is not much difference between these CPUs...

My advice is this (although not very good). Just skip the second mission, it's the most overloaded mission in the entire campaign. Use the autopilot, which does everything by itself or fly to the Verhnebakansky (WP03) and return back to base. The airfield usually turns on for landing 5 minutes after your take-off.

Further, all other missions will be much easier.

 

47 minutes ago, 335th_grFirdimigdi said:

Keep in mind there is a potential hotfix pending which addresses the tracers causing framedrops.

Yes, maybe this will correct the situation a little.

[FTC_Zero]

3 hours ago, 335th_grFirdimigdi said:

Keep in mind there is a potential hotfix pending which addresses the tracers causing framedrops.

 

Srsly?  Thanks for the info

2 hours ago, BlackSix said:

Ok, I see. I created the first half of the campaign using i7-6700 and I didn't see any problems. There is not much difference between these CPUs...

My advice is this (although not very good). Just skip the second mission, it's the most overloaded mission in the entire campaign. Use the autopilot, which does everything by itself or fly to the Verhnebakansky (WP03) and return back to base. The airfield usually turns on for landing 5 minutes after your take-off.

Further, all other missions will be much easier.

 

I also dont think that my i7 is on the weak side, but similar simulation heavy games like graviteam tactics also such slow down issues, caused by ai and physics workload rather than graphics. The devil lies in the detail, i suppose

[DN308]

All finished campaign. 
It’s was really nice and a lot of fun.

Looking forward for the next one and collaboration with Alex ?

[BlackSix]

39 minutes ago, DN308 said:

All finished campaign. 
It’s was really nice and a lot of fun.

Looking forward for the next one and collaboration with Alex ?

Thanks for the feedback and especially for the French translation of the campaign texts ?

[jollyjack]

Thanks Alex for all the (also extra) efforts you obviously put into Steel Birds; i sort of feel embarrassed that i bought it at a Steal Price with Jason's promo code ...

But it's a job well done.

[DN308]

The only thing if I can suggest is that a wingman tends to crash after take off on the hill in front of the airfield (4 out of 5 times).

Dont know how to solve that

[BlackSix]

Try to gain altitude more quickly immediately after takeoff. If you fly low over the top of the mountain, then the wingmen who always flying a few below you can crash into the mountain. You can start any mission and turn on autopilot to see the optimal climb trajectory.

[DN308]

I tried that. I even tried some turns just after take off to avoid the hill trajectory. But he still went on low and crash.

poor guy, he must have a ton of bureaucracy papers to fill during this campaign for only half an hour of flight duration in his record

?