BoN compared to the other Normandy maps

[lwalter]

I have IL2 GB, IL2 CoD, DCS and FS2020. They all allow you to fly over Normandy. So I decided to go for a short flight, covering mostly the D-Day landing beaches, an area I know rather well and that I visited several times.

I can already say that for me the IL2 BoN may not be perfect, but it is definitely one of the best, if not the best of the four.

In the following posts, I'll show how some of the landmarks looks like in each simulator.

Let's start with Caen, its castle and the men abbey next to the town hall.

Real pictures:

In IL2 CoD, you will only see a big town but you won't see any specific landmarks

In FS2020, the AI generated houses instead of the castle walls and generic buildings for the town hall and abbey.

 

In DCS, I couldn't find the castle, but I the town hall + abbey are not too bad.

Finally, look at these beautiful models in IL2 BoN

 

 

Another landmark is Pegasus bridge.

Real picture:

In IL2 CoD, the bridge doesn't exist.

In FS 2020, there's a bridge....but a generic one.

In DCS, it's properly modeled.

As well as in IL2 BoN

 

[Riderocket]

Ramagen Bridge in Bodenplatte is also very nice

[lwalter]

Let's continue with the "Pointe du Hoc", famous for the very tough battle the American rangers had to fight climbing these cliffs!

Real picture:

In IL2 CoD, you won't see anything special.

In FS2020, again generic houses and trees generated where they shouldn't be...

In DCS, it's a very good rendition.

In IL2 BoN, very good too.

 

[Trooper117]

Good to see some of this, thanks!

[lwalter]

Let's continue with Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, not so relevant for D-Day, but it had some German bunkers during WWII on the Tatihou island.

The real picture:

In DCS, the island is missing.

In IL2 COD, the island is there but not many building all around.

In FS2020, the island's shape is nice but again, the AI gen is not doing a great job

The nicest model is definitely IL2 BoN

 

Let's finish this round with the beaches and their fortifications.

I'll skip IL2 CoD, because the beaches are let's say non-existent.

In FS 2020, they're good, although it's difficult to find any fortifications. And here I mean, even the ones remaining today. Here's JUNO beach (nowadays), with the memorial/museum in the center. There should be few German bunkers left on this beach, but none is visible in this picture.

In DCS, we have in the 1st picture JUNO beach too, but a little further East. Since it doesn't serve DCS well, I also added another one, in the area of UTAH beach, where you see some fortifications.

And now IL2 BoN, again the best one. First, near UTAH beach, then the Longues-sur-Mer coastal battery:

 

I know everybody, including myself, would like even more details and famous buildings or features including in the Normandy map, but the development team did an amazing job on this map. Kudos to them!

 

Next time, I'll do the same kind of comparison for the French coasts on the North-East of the map: from Le Havre to Dieppe and from the Somme estuary to Calais.

This may be interesting, especially because CoD is more focused on this area for the Battle of Britain, and DCS has the dedicated and more recent Channel map.

[Guest deleted@50488]

Superb post !!! THANK YOU !!!

 

I subscribe your points, and have to say that although I do not use ( or seldom do... ) use IL-2 Great Battles as an Air Combat Simulator ( I use it to be able to taste what I still consider to be the BEST overall flight dnamis experienced among all flight simulation platforms I ever tried... ), the release f tNormandy / BoN made me start IL-2 aain just to enjoy the quality of the scenery, the light, the flight dynamics, the overall "feel of being there" with incredible smoothness !

 

I am VERY HAPPY and grateful to 1C / 777 for greating us with their tallent and dedication !

[Hawks5]

Yep, great post.

 

Nice to provide the devs some positive feedback about what they have done well as opposed to coming in and complaining about what isn't accurate.

[LuftManu]

It's really great!

I took today some pictures at the worst possible time 12:00.

 

Le havre looks really good on Il-2. Looks at those great cliffs near Octaville!

 

 

 

From up high, the stream can be seen! an some fields take up the north part.

 

 

This is Caen. it's bridges and railway station on the middle

 

Carentan

 

And finally, Ouisterham with the Stream and river also visible. What a beuty!

 

 

Such a great job and rendition by the Il-2 team!

[Jade_Monkey]

DCS Normandy didn't age very well. Those washed out greens and certain desolate areas of the map are now more obvious than ever.

 

IL2 provides a much more consistent coverage, no matter where you go in the map.

 

However, every game has something they do better than the others. We can nit pick all of them and find a good argument why one is better for each person.

[CountZero]

1 hour ago, Jade_Monkey said:

DCS Normandy didn't age very well. Those washed out greens and certain desolate areas of the map are now more obvious than ever.

 

IL2 provides a much more consistent coverage, no matter where you go in the map.

 

However, every game has something they do better than the others. We can nit pick all of them and find a good argument why one is better for each person.

Yes GB have best Normandy map

CoD can have 100s of airplanes and ground units on map so you dont even look at map because your enjoying real air battles

and DCS have B-17s as AI so you can attack real bombers.

MS2020 is for bus drivers , they dont even notice if building is in wrong place on map from all the button clicking, clouds glazing and chating with ground control.

So if your into flying on sterile enviroment depicted slightly better, then yes GB normandy is for you ?

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by CountZero

[lwalter]

Here's the last part of my trip along the French coast, this time from Etretat to Dunkerque. For DCS, I'm using the Channel map.

Starting with Etretat and its famous cliffs.

Here's a real picture taken during WW2 (taken from the other side of the town)

Nothing is recognizable in IL2 CoD or DCS.

IL2 BoN is good.

FS 2020 is the best. Looks like they updated this landmark recently.

[lwalter]

Next the Somme estuary. It's actually very hard to get it right, because it changes a lot between low and high tide.

See this picture

DCS is a bit off, with its bright colors:

IL2 CoD is not bad:

Neither is IL2 BoN

FS 2020 is OK, although with a weird southern bank.

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by lwalter

[F19_Haddock]

Good stuff! 
DCS has aged badly... Those razor sharp coastlines. Ouch. 

[Ribbon]

1.dcs channel map

2.il2 BoN map

3.dcs Normandy

 

For me landmarks aren't crucial, rather overall variety and scale.

Il2 BoN map beats down DCS Normandy map but dcs Channel map remains the most detailed and live ww2 map. 

[Gunfreak]

I'm very happy with the BoN map, it feels very real flying there. It's also noticeably larger than DCS (103km2 vs 92km2) 

It will be interesting to see what happens with the DCS Normandy map expansion. It will make it the largest map by far covering this area. But if they don't upgrade the graphics it won't be that great.

[blockheadgreen_]

3 hours ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

1.dcs channel map

2.il2 BoN map

3.dcs Normandy

 

For me landmarks aren't crucial, rather overall variety and scale.

Il2 BoN map beats down DCS Normandy map but dcs Channel map remains the most detailed and live ww2 map. 

The DCS channel map looks good but it's utterly unplayable with the worst optimisation out of any DCS map I've tried.

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

I'm very happy with the BoN map, it feels very real flying there. It's also noticeably larger than DCS (103km2 vs 92km2) 

It will be interesting to see what happens with the DCS Normandy map expansion. It will make it the largest map by far covering this area. But if they don't upgrade the graphics it won't be that great.

 

I also expect that a lot of people won't be able to run it on their older machines  

Edited September 12, 2022 by Avimimus

[S10JlAbraxis]

I just flew out to the Chausey islands.  Was suprised to find they existed in the sim and more suprised to find they included the fort and other details.  These islands do not exist in in the other sims except for MSFS of course.

 

[Avimimus]

I'd be a bit curious to see how X-Plane 12 stacks up. That said, I think it may be a bit unfair to compare DCS, Il-2 or other historic simulators with FS2020 or X-plane for the simple fact that modern maps have a lot more digitised data (modern road maps, satellite imagery etc.) available... whereas recreating the historic maps requires using old paper maps and aerial photographs - which is much more labour intensive.

[Buzzsaw]

Hello All

 

Team Fusion congratulates the GREAT BATTLES team on the great work they have done on their Normandy map!  ?  It looks like a great package... Jason and his guys have done a wonderful job.  ?

 

In the defense of Team Fusion and CLIFFS OF DOVER, yes, the current publicly available map is somewhat dated.

 

However, everyone should be aware our upcoming Visual Update will include as well as 4k terrain, a lot of terrain improvements as well as new buildings and more ground objects added.  We feel those will significantly upgrade the eye candy and bring CLIFFS up to the level of NORMANDY.  More power to the IL-2 series!  ?

 

These improvements will be available to both BLITZ and TOBRUK owners, so be sure to try out the new version when we release.  (no date yet, planning is for this fall)

[lwalter]

Finishing with some pictures of Le Touquet, Calais and Dunkerque.

I'll skip the IL2 CoD pictures, because they're not great, although they nicely recreate the harbor layout for both Calais and Dunkerque.

 

• Le Touquet

FS 2020 does a good rendition, but it's the modern town and it's lacking beaches (tide too high?)

DCS does a good job too

And IL2 BoN too.

Difficult to choose...

 

• Calais

In FS2020, can't find the known landmarks

In IL2 BoN, I can see at least the town hall.

In DCS, I can see it too, but I have a slight preference for how IL2 BoN models the waterways.

 

• Dunkerque

In FS2020, nice modeling overall, but again the missing landmarks

In IL BoN, no landmark either (or I couldn't find them) but nice rendering too

And finally on DCS, nice modeling too and they added a couple monuments (sorry, they difficult to see in that picture)

 

 

Here are my final thoughts after making this trip in all 4 simulators, which I like all for different reasons.

I know some of you will say that the ground is not so important, especially for air to air combat. I agree, but I like to do ground attack and I like to navigate based on recognizable terrain features. So, it's a nice touch when you have landmarks in a town, could be a church or another monument, roads, tracks, etc... to use as references.

IL2 CoD is the worst of the 4 in terms of map modeling, but it's the only one so far, where I can see some of London's famous monuments ? More seriously, it's still a joy to use: very fast to launch, the planes are very detailed, you can fly unique planes and bombers variants and have fights with tens of other fighters without a glitch.

DCS has a good Channel map, but an outdated Normandy map, although the latter has a nicely modeled Mont Saint Michel ? I enjoy DCS for its very good modeling of individual plane systems and for its modern jets too. It just doesn't offer some consistent package for a given time period as IL2 does.

FS2020 can have both amazing terrain and weather and sometimes not so exciting parts of the map. For example, I wasn't impressed by FS 2020 Normandy. Still the best sim to discover the world, if you can wait for its never-ending loading/updating time and the screaming ventilator of your graphical card, because it's the most demanding of all 4.

To finish with IL2 BoN, I'm really happy at the work that was done on the Normandy. It's well-balanced. I would call IL2 GB the most balanced of the 4 simulators.

 

[Sandmarken]

29 minutes ago, Buzzsaw said:

Hello All

 

Team Fusion congratulates the GREAT BATTLES team on the great work they have done on their Normandy map!  ?  It looks like a great package... Jason and his guys have done a wonderful job.  ?

 

In the defense of Team Fusion and CLIFFS OF DOVER, yes, the current publicly available map is somewhat dated.

 

However, everyone should be aware our upcoming Visual Update will include as well as 4k terrain, a lot of terrain improvements as well as new buildings and more ground objects added.  We feel those will significantly upgrade the eye candy and bring CLIFFS up to the level of NORMANDY.  More power to the IL-2 series!  ?

 

These improvements will be available to both BLITZ and TOBRUK owners, so be sure to try out the new version when we release.  (no date yet, planning is for this fall)

Il be your first customer when vr is done ?

[kestrel79]

Great comparison! I love seeing this stuff from all the different sims.

 

It's a tradeoff. You want super detailed everything...but then you want it at a playable fps in VR. I think we can all agree IL2-GB does this balancing act best. 

[Ribbon]

1 hour ago, Lythronax said:

The DCS channel map looks good but it's utterly unplayable with the worst optimisation out of any DCS map I've tried.

They did optimize it and i do run it well in SP.....in VR, was nicely suprised......not sure how it handles in MP as Normandy is used more which is a shame as it seems to run almost the same on my pc as Normandy.?‍♂️

Don't want to derail further this thread.....

[mazex]

Thanks for the comparison images. I must say I was a bit surprised about the good looking the Normandy map is in IL2 BoN. I had expected a decent map with rather bland country side - but with all the aircraft in the full BoX package it would win anyway... But in the end I realized that the BoN map really is impressive. A lot of details look just right - I think that it is my favorite WW2 Normandy interpretation. 

 

But as the map is so big covering most of the Channel it really feels wrong to call it Normandy. And yes - I guess we need a Spitfire Mk I and a 109 E3 now (as we already have the Hurricane MK IIa). And a Bf 110 C... And a He 111 H3... We already have the Ju 88 A-4 that at least saw some time in the air in BoB. And how about a Do-17? That would be nice. And maybe a Blenheim for the allied bomber pilots

[Legioneod]

Wow, I never realized how aged DCS Normandy looked until I saw some of these comparisons. Il2 team really did a good job.

I would like to see more detail on the beaches though. Not that important of course because this is a flight sim.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Legioneod

[Gambit21]

7 hours ago, Lythronax said:

The DCS channel map looks good but it's utterly unplayable with the worst optimisation out of any DCS map I've tried.

 

Huh...never had any problems with it...but then I have a strong system.

[sevenless]

7 hours ago, lwalter said:

 

To finish with IL2 BoN, I'm really happy at the work that was done on the Normandy. It's well-balanced. I would call IL2 GB the most balanced of the 4 simulators.

 

 

Thanks for your work to put all this together. Owning all of your mentioned games and maps (except MS Flightsimulator) and having played every and all PC Flightsim which dealt with this terrain and conflict since Their Finest Hour and SWOTL by Lucasarts and Aces over Europe by Dynamics I agree. They really did a good job on this map. Only nitpick (minor) I have is that we don´t have enough traffic on the map in SP ground attack missions. May it be ships, trains, lorries etc. However that doesn´t take away that much immersion for me and I realize well that this has to be balanced out with map performance (CPU Utilisation).

[150GCT_Veltro]

Don't forget that DCS Normandy is by Ugra too. So, this IL2 map is really a great step forward for Ugra Media.

 

 

 

 

 

[Gunfreak]

50 minutes ago, 150GCT_Veltro said:

Don't forget that DCS Normandy is by Ugra too. So, this IL2 map is really a great step forward for Ugra Media.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They also made Syria for DCS, which is still probably best looking map in DCS. So it's obvious they've learned a lot since DCS Normandy.

[Luftschiff]

I do miss those quaysides in the big channelside cities...

[DD_fruitbat]

The height map in the dcs channel map is by far the best, when flying over kent its the only map i can recognise hills and valleys that i see every day in real life, and it has good representation of villages too, including my own.

[Picchio]

3 hours ago, 150GCT_Veltro said:

Don't forget that DCS Normandy is by Ugra too. So, this IL2 map is really a great step forward for Ugra Media.

 

2 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

 

They also made Syria for DCS, which is still probably best looking map in DCS. So it's obvious they've learned a lot since DCS Normandy.

 

Once and for all: Normandy for IL-2 is developed internally, not by Ugra.

 

Also, in the context of historical maps, I don't see the point of these comparisons, considering that Normandy 1944 for DCS was released almost five years ago, not to mention CloD...

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Picchio

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, Picchio said:

Once and for all: Normandy for IL-2 is developed internally, not by Ugra.

 

Also, in the context of historical maps, I don't see the point of these comparisons, considering that Normandy 1944 for DCS was released almost five years ago, not to mention CloD...

 

 

Well, they were all created by artists and historical researchers... long after the events took place.

 

That said, I do see how MSFS 2020 with its budget, focus on graphics (at the expense of some other features), and modern datasets has quite an advantage in the looks department on account of it being so recent.

[lwalter]

Just got DCS Normandy 2.0 and started flying around. It's not the final version yet and there will be fixes, but I couldn't resist flying over this area in both IL2 GB and DCS.

I won't post comparison pictures yet, because there are some bad scaling issues with DCS Normandy 2.0 (factory chimneys and churches way too large).

Another change from my original post is that I'm now flying in VR and I have to find out how to easily take a screenshot.

My first thoughts:

- I still have a preference for IL2 BoN map. It feels like the authors of this map made very good compromises and very good choices about which parts to detail or which monuments to model. Last weekend, I was amazed at finding the cathedral of Chartres modeled despite it being on the southern limits of the map.

- beach fortifications look better in IL2 + we have 2 variations of the map (before and after d-day, with the Mulberry harbours)

- DCS map models Paris and London. Don't get me wrong, they nicely modeled the main monuments... but these 2 capitals have some many monuments that any rendition will look pale in comparison to FS2020. Maybe I would have preferred them to add more details to the rest of Normandy.

- both maps still miss the Versailles palace. Neither model the palace, nor the gardens. What is weird is that IL2 BoN models the "piece d'eau des Suisses", a less important body of water next to the palace, but not the main body of water of the gardens "the grand canal". Ugra media promised to model Versailles palace for DCS. I hope it will be done for BoN as well. At least I can still hope for it

[IckyATLAS]

34 minutes ago, lwalter said:

they nicely modeled the main monuments

 

Have you flown over the mount St. Michel in IL2 Normandy map? Here it is as seen from a P47 ? 

 

Is the one in DCS as good as this one ? (I have no idea I do not fly DCS)

 

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by IckyATLAS

[Skycat1969]

[Bilbo_Baggins]

2 hours ago, Skycat1969 said:

 

Where is this on the map?

[Freycinet]

Going for a week to Boulogne-sur-mer, looking forward to enjoying the whole coastline....

[Skycat1969]

6 hours ago, Bilbo_Baggins said:

 

Where is this on the map?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont-Saint-Michel

I was responding to IckyATLAS's question. I have the new DCS Normandy 2.0 map.