Developer blog #349: career mode updates, next Flying Circus planes, Lavochkin La-5F progress report

[LukeFF]

Dev blog #349 has been posted here: https://il2sturmovik.com/news/816/dev-blog-349/

 

[tattywelshie]

Great stuff, really excited about the new missions on career mode and the Luftwaffe numbers update over Normandy is definitely needed.

 

That LA-5F looks wonderful, I love flying the LA-5, so will definitely be buying this beauty. Great work team! 

[354thFG_Panda_]

Looks great. Will be a nice bridge in performance between the current variants 

[BMA_FlyingShark]

Looks great, nice attention to all those details.

Increase in graphical quality is really noticeable.

 

Have a nice day.

 

[Lusekofte]

Thanks ?

[LukeFF]

BTW, the reduction in Luftwaffe air density will also apply to Rhineland.

[kestrel79]

That cockpit looks great compared to the other Russian cockpits. Hard to believe they are 10 years old now wow.

[migmadmarine]

Nice to have the writeup on the La-5F, I had kinda wondered what would make it stand out from the other two. Still would love to see either a earlier or later version of the LaGG-3 though, that seems like a bigger gap to fill. 

[sevenless]

Looking forward to the La5F. Too bad we won't see the Yak-3 in GB. Anyways glad to soon have some action flying in the east again.

 

[easterling77]

? Beautiful - instand grap for my love to radials

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

Nice surprise, thanks!  love it!

The Yak-3 would be mega surprise!

Edited October 6, 2023 by =gRiJ=Roman-

[Mtnbiker1998]

Career improvements sound good!! Looking forward to any and all improvements to Normandy and Bodenplatte. Fleshing out WW1 is a good thing too, looking forward to snagging fc2 on sale. Couldn't care less about Russian planes though, especially just another variant.

[SKG51_robtek]

Yeah, the allied planeset absolutely needed another improvement, if the russian planes would also get the ****** plexiglas they had in RL it would be even better.

Edited October 6, 2023 by LukeFF
profanity

[Bert_Foster]

Will the improved cockpit be applied to the other two LA5 models the LA5 and LA5FN ?

[LuftManu]

Nice to hear about Luftwaffe reductions in th air. This will help massively for inmersion in those late years.

Kind regards,

[Guest deleted@219798]

Looks like no update to fix abysmal Flying Circus AI.

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

Cannot wait for career improvements, especially the reduction of axis planes in Normandy and Rhineland will be most welcome. 

[15[Span.]/JG51Chajas]

Buen trabajo.

 

[BladeMeister]

It is good to see 1C fleshing out BOX more and even offering some new collector planes while moving ahead with the new project,...whatever that is. It is really awesome to see FC growing, but please 1C have the AI programming guy fix whatever got broken in one of the previous updates. The AI enemy just fly around like they are out for a Sunday cruise. They hardly engage their enemy and are simply flying targets. Please resurrect the ability in the AI to actually try to shoot their opponents down. It's a turkey shoot now, and this from a ---- WWI pilot.

 

S!Blade<><

Edited October 7, 2023 by LukeFF
Profanity

[Monksilver]

4 hours ago, BladeMeister said:

 Please resurrect the ability in the AI to actually try to shoot their opponents down. It's a turkey shoot now, and this from a ------ WWI pilot.

 

S!Blade<><

I have to agree. Too often I have come across a flight of Albatrosses that simply fly in formation while I come up behind each one and shoot it down (not quickly either) with no reaction from them. I think I've been shot down by an enemy twice in career mode, the vast majority of my deaths are from my being careless enough to collide with someone.

[cmbishop]

I totally agree. It's not fun to play FC with this AI.

Enemy planes don't engage you. There's no threat in the air ! The only way of being killed is to be shot by AA or collision. Please fix it !

[Trooper117]

Two hopes... 

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

The work that the development team does is fantastic, but I wonder two questions:

 

1) I would love for us to have the BoB SIM in the same engine as the Il-2Sturmovik so as not to have two installations and secondly, we could have fantastic pilot careers.

2) For Normandy you need some B-17 fortress and also the paratroopers of the 101 Airbone, plus the Willy Jeeps and road crossing police as well as a small map of the city of Bastone.

 

How do you see it? Would it be possible to make a four-engine like the B-17?

Otherwise, as always, the work is fantastic as well as the Skins. P.S. Can someone tell me where I can get the Bf-F4 diamon SKIN? I know this has to be asked in the SKINS and TEMPLATES subforum but I've already done it and haven't gotten any answers.

 

Thank you all for the magnificent work you do non-stop.

 

 

Raúl Suárez Jiménez (1/JSpan_Guerrero)

[Skycat1969]

1 hour ago, 1/JSpan_Guerrero said:

2) For Normandy you need some B-17 fortress and also the paratroopers of the 101 Airbone, plus the Willy Jeeps and road crossing police as well as a small map of the city of Bastone.

- Bastogne is on the Rheinland map in Battle of Bodenplatte.

- There are jeeps in both Battle of Normandy and Battle of Bodenplatte.

- The flyable C-47 can drop paratroopers. I don't own the C-47 to confirm, but WIP renders show the US paratroopers wearing the 101st Airborne patch. Link.

- If you look carefully on the Normandy map beachhead area, there are security checkpoints on the roads.

- There has been conflicting information whether adding four-engine bombers (in any form) would overtax CPU resources within the game. It seems though that adding a B-17 is technically possible; but it would be too costly to make a flyable version with gunner stations, etc. Unfortunately, even ever having an AI B-17 seems unlikely.

[IckyATLAS]

13 hours ago, 1/JSpan_Guerrero said:

or Normandy you need some B-17 fortress

This is a a very old request since many many years and a longstanding debate too. After some controversy about the graphic engine not able to cope with such four engine bombers, the Devs said in the a couple of years ago is that their engine can very well handle 4 engine bombers in terms of "CPU/GPU" resources. This is not an issue.  BTW as time goes by, with the continuous improvement of CPU power and GPU power, for me this is not a debate anymore. In over ten years now the CPU and GPU performances have increased massively. CPU clock speeds have stalled but the overall performance of a CPU and GPU has massively increased, hence also a big improvement in visual quality, high framerates at 4K with antialiasing etc.

The problem is, as far as I understand it, the work volume and cost to develop a fully flyable B17 with all the functionalities.  This would eat too much of the resources of the Dev team for a single plane. The latest info we have if understood well is that the Dev team has increased very much (nearly doubled?).

There may be a moment in the future, were there could be enough development power to have such a collector 4 engine bomber. Who knows, I strongly hope so but only time will tell.

[Marcio]

       "... new mission types will be available in more theaters of war..." and the launch of the La-5F Series 38 seem to be great news for version 5107, especially if "...more theaters of war... " mean, for example, the Belarusian scenario of the Bagration operation with the addition of aircraft such as the La-7, Yak-3, Tu-2, P-63 King Cobra...

 

       However, there is one topic that I do not consider an improvement but rather a setback → "...the amount of Luftwaffe presence in the Normandy and Rhineland missions will be reduced...". Please just don't do that! It will be as bad as the announcement in a previous Dev blog # and subsequent implementation of the reduction in the maneuverability of bombers like the A-20 and the Pe-2 in A.I. I remember that before this change I "flew a mission" intercepting a reconnaissance aircraft in that an A-20 maneuvered very well, greatly increasing the difficulty of shooting it down!

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Marcio said:

However, there is one topic that I do not consider an improvement but rather a setback → "...the amount of Luftwaffe presence in the Normandy and Rhineland missions will be reduced...". Please just don't do that! It will be as bad as the announcement in a previous Dev blog # and subsequent implementation of the reduction in the maneuverability of bombers like the A-20 and the Pe-2 in A.I. I remember that before this change I "flew a mission" intercepting a reconnaissance aircraft in that an A-20 maneuvered very well, greatly increasing the difficulty of shooting it down!

 

Huh? The problem has always been that there are way, way too many German planes on these maps in career, with the result that the player is typically outnumbered when flying for the Allies. It's the exact opposite of reality. The Germans just didn't have the manpower to effectively counter all the operations the Allies were undertaking by this point in the West. 

 

I recently did a study of 19 Squadron's missions from June 6 to the end of the month, in 1944. They were in constant action over Normandy with their Mustang IIIs at that time. In all, they encountered German fighters on a mere 15 percent of their sorties. In other words, about 8 times out of 10, they went about their missions with an enemy plane being seen. 

 

And yes, on higher difficulty levels you'll still see a lot of planes, but it's not going to be like before. 

[Marcio]

Thanks for the feedback Luke FF!
 

Bombers like the A-20 and the Pe-2 maneuvering like hell in A.I. as happened a few years ago and "...the player is typically outnumbered when flying..." is exactly the level of difficulty in the campaigns that I, my son and some other players appreciate it! Situations in which you can manage damage to simply return to your front area and parachute jump are very interesting!

 

Regarding the historical reality in the Normandy Campaign → "... they encountered German fighters on a mere 15 percent of their sorties ...", ok, it's really true. However, for much of the Ardennes and Rhineland Campaign, the air forces were "equal".
 

In his book, The Big Show, the RAF ace, pilot of Sptifire and later Thyphoon and Tempest wrote: "... Allied numerical superiority was only felt by the reserves, as there were not enough airfields to house, at a reasonable distance from the combat front, more than a thousand fighter and assault planes, which formed T.A.F.'s Groups 83 and 84...".

[Marcio]

Continuing, the same RAF ace, Pirre Clostermann, wrote:

 

"On the contrary, the Luftwaffe, skillfully spread across a hundred small airfields grouped around the most important bases in the Arnhem - Osnabrück - Coblence triangle, could operate at the maximum of its strength!

[EAF19_Marsh]

1 minute ago, Marcio said:

Continuing, the same RAF ace, Pirre Clostermann, wrote:

 

"On the contrary, the Luftwaffe, skillfully spread across a hundred small airfields grouped around the most important bases in the Arnhem - Osnabrück - Coblence triangle, could operate at the maximum of its strength!

 

Clostermann is not a reliable source. A lot of what he said is border-line fiction. Basic and available statistics indicate that Luftwaffe operations were limited. Whatever nominal strength they might have had, POL and spares were the limits on actual flying time.

 

Try Sheddan etc for a different view of 1945 air war, or books like Caldwell and the Shore's 2TAF series. They are much more credible that Pierre's romantic tales.

 

 

[LukeFF]

16 minutes ago, Marcio said:

However, for much of the Ardennes and Rhineland Campaign, the air forces were "equal".

 

The air forces of the two sides were nowhere close to being equal during the Ardennes and Rhineland campaigns. A typical comment one reads in RAF mission reports from the time is "Do the Germans still have an air force?" It's page after page after page of reports saying "nothing to report." On the German side, even before Bodenplatte, these guys were getting hacked to pieces any time they ran into Allied fighters - and often you read of German fighters turning away before engaging, because the few remaining veteran leaders of these formations knew they stood little chance of making it out alive (largely because the formations were filled with rookies who had no business being at the front lines).

 

I see someone else already commented on Clostermann, so I'll stop here. ?

[EAF19_Marsh]

Just to add, the loss rate to German flak was horrendous.

 

In one of his 1844-45 rants, Hitler suggested he should disband the manned fighter arm in favour of diverting all resources to the anti-aircraft units. A silly idea, but with a kernel of truth about it.

 

Going totally left-field / OT, this is a service to the Russian Front that is rarely mentioned; most of the big and small barrel guns and ammo went Westward from 1943 onwards, which made a huge difference to German defensive capability in the East and hence success of Russian air and armoured operations.

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

I would just add that in my last two ground attack campaigns (120 missions in Typhoon, 30 missions in P-47 so far) with the current settings we were intercepted in roughly 80-90% of time by significant numbers of LW aircraft and most of the squadron looses came from enemy fighters rather than flak. Our whole flight was quite often wiped out when escorts failed and in most cases ground attack missions could not even be completed because of significant enemy air opposition. I was able to rack 40 kills in a Typhoon where most of the times I would just try to drop bombs and run on medium career speed, with realistic one I would achieve maybe hundred kills. This goes just too much against any historical accounts/realities that it makes the campaign unrealistic and very hardly playable in ground attack scenarios. IRL those campaigns were historically mostly about ground attack. I am therefore looking so much forward to correction of these force ratios (less Luftwaffe aircraft and hopefully more German FLAK). 

[tvcasualty]

Looooong time supporter of IL2 here, absolutely love the franchise and the money it is costing me in the latest VR gear is something I could never have imagined when I started PC gaming back in the early 90s.  IL2 is my go to simulator of choice and will be for some time period.  There has been a ton of new content lately too, and I am honestly struggling to keep up with it all and I think that's a good thing.

 

WARNING: B-17 request ahead, continue reading at your own peril.

 

I just read this week that the new highly anticipated series Master of the Air is scheduled to be released in January of 2024.

Microprose is probably one of the only companies that will be able to pull me out of my IL2 seat at this point, however I do not expect them to be able to beat IL2 in single fighter combat.  And as I endlessly wait for their new VR B-17 simulator, I have to say, an AI controlled fleet of heavys flying in combat box formations seems like a complete missed opportunity.  I expect this series to be extremely inspiring much like the movie Memphis Bell was to myself so many years ago now.  I know the shear numbers of bombers may probably be impossible to replicate, especially in multipayer servers, for some time -but 12 bomber stacks can certainly be done.  (I've been scratching the itch with B-25s now for some time, although I am still missing the combat box formations).  I sincerely hope the team here takes advantage of this up coming heavy fever.  And why on earth not?  We already have all the supporting aircraft flyable and that's the hard part...  Don't let DCS be the sole holder of this corner of the market when that time comes.  Get'er done!

[Marcio]

       Just observing the argumentative logic with which Clostermann argues that, at least during part of the Ardennes and Rhineland campaign, the numerical balance between the Allies and the Luftwaffe was equal in some areas, his report, especially from a logistical point of view, seems coherent!

 

       "Allied numerical superiority was only felt by the reserves, as there were not enough airfields to house, at a reasonable distance from the combat front, more than a thousand fighter and assault planes, which formed T.A.F.'s Groups 83 and 84.
On the contrary, the Luftwaffe, skillfully spread across a hundred small airfields grouped around the most important bases in the Arnhem - Osnabrück - Koblence triangle, could operate at the maximum of its strength!"

 

       However, other people are commenting that this is RAF ace Clostermann's fantasy and pointing out other sources that I haven't actually read.

 

       It may be true...I just hope that, with the possible reduction of Luftwaffe aircraft, myself, my son and other simulator users who prefer to fly campaign missions with action and excitement will not be disappointed to the detriment of those who prefer to fly calm and peaceful missions, like a walk in the park...

[migmadmarine]

I'd still be in favor of allied/axis aircraft numbers in career being tied to a career setting so you'd have the option of "Historical" or "Action". The current state of things drives me nuts, so I'm glad of the change, but I can get why some might want their action-packed variation. 

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Marcio said:

It may be true..

 

It is. ? There are many, many, many holes in Clostermann's writings that are easily refuted by original source material (he also claimed the Tempest carried far more ammo than it actually did, among other things). 

 

There is no point at which the Luftwaffe controlled the skies from June 1944 to the end of the war. A look at the sheer sortie rate between the two sides alone makes that clear. 

 

Besides the books above, if you want an honest look at the Luftwaffe in the last year of the war, have a look at Six Months to Oblivion. 

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

I am extremely pleased to see career improvements. It seems that more than ever devs are listening to users and how they feel. Thank you so much @LukeFF for your great work. 

 

Oh and I am absolutely getting that new La5F! 

[EAF19_Marsh]

6 hours ago, Marcio said:

       Just observing the argumentative logic with which Clostermann argues that, at least during part of the Ardennes and Rhineland campaign, the numerical balance between the Allies and the Luftwaffe was equal in some areas, his report, especially from a logistical point of view, seems coherent!

 

       "Allied numerical superiority was only felt by the reserves, as there were not enough airfields to house, at a reasonable distance from the combat front, more than a thousand fighter and assault planes, which formed T.A.F.'s Groups 83 and 84.
On the contrary, the Luftwaffe, skillfully spread across a hundred small airfields grouped around the most important bases in the Arnhem - Osnabrück - Koblence triangle, could operate at the maximum of its strength!"

 

       However, other people are commenting that this is RAF ace Clostermann's fantasy and pointing out other sources that I haven't actually read.

 

       It may be true...I just hope that, with the possible reduction of Luftwaffe aircraft, myself, my son and other simulator users who prefer to fly campaign missions with action and excitement will not be disappointed to the detriment of those who prefer to fly calm and peaceful missions, like a walk in the park...

USAAF fighters bases in the UK could offer hundreds of aircraft to escort the thousand bomber raids. Meanwhile the US 9th AF (not sure Clostermann realised it existed) was operating in hundreds 10 times on a daily basis.

 

His writing is fantasy. Read what the German pilots said. Their operational rate was appallingly low. There is a reason that the West was termed ‘the great fighter graveyard’. By Spring 1945 virtually nothing was left.

 

If he thinks that the Luftwaffe in 1945 had much ‘skillful’ about it, well…

 

He flew in sections of 4 - 8. When Luftwaffe fighters did sortie he may have felt outnumbered. That is not a view shared by other pilots and certainly is put into context by actual historical studies (which are a great read).

 

i really would drop him as a point of reference.

[Marcio]

15 hours ago, tvcasualty said:

Looooong time supporter of IL2 here, absolutely love the franchise and the money it is costing me in the latest VR gear is something I could never have imagined when I started PC gaming back in the early 90s.  IL2 is my go to simulator of choice and will be for some time period.  There has been a ton of new content lately too, and I am honestly struggling to keep up with it all and I think that's a good thing.

 

WARNING: B-17 request ahead, continue reading at your own peril.

 

I just read this week that the new highly anticipated series Master of the Air is scheduled to be released in January of 2024.

Microprose is probably one of the only companies that will be able to pull me out of my IL2 seat at this point, however I do not expect them to be able to beat IL2 in single fighter combat.  And as I endlessly wait for their new VR B-17 simulator, I have to say, an AI controlled fleet of heavys flying in combat box formations seems like a complete missed opportunity.  I expect this series to be extremely inspiring much like the movie Memphis Bell was to myself so many years ago now.  I know the shear numbers of bombers may probably be impossible to replicate, especially in multipayer servers, for some time -but 12 bomber stacks can certainly be done.  (I've been scratching the itch with B-25s now for some time, although I am still missing the combat box formations).  I sincerely hope the team here takes advantage of this up coming heavy fever.  And why on earth not?  We already have all the supporting aircraft flyable and that's the hard part...  Don't let DCS be the sole holder of this corner of the market when that time comes.  Get'er done!

 

       I have also been “piloting” the IL2 simulator since the 90's, when it was created by Oleg Maddox and his team.

 

       Even today I “play” at intercepting, with the Luftwaffe, a box of two dozen B-24's, B-17's or Tupolev-2's, escorted by eight fighters or even 32 B-29s using the Ki-84!

       Not to mention naval air battles, operating from aircraft carriers in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific.

 

       And speaking of "It seems like more than ever developers are listening to users and how they feel." I and many users would like the work of Maddox and his team to be replicated and, who knows, even extrapolated to theaters of operation such as the Korean War, Arab - Israeli Wars, Vietnam War...

 

       It is true that the physics present in the current IL2 are more refined, but the new multi-core processors, memory sticks, video cards and DirectX interfaces have also evolved a lot. At least a 2×3×2 box of a dozen flying fortresses escorted by ± 8 fighters or an aircraft carrier flanked by 2 escort destroyers would be possible, right?

       

       It would really be a shame if "DCS or another Company is the sole holder of this market segment."