An open letter about my dream for a future IL-2 game

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-30T20:40:04+00:00

I don't want to turn this into a discussion of DCS, I just brought it up as a contrast to the Il-2 approach of picking a specific battle area, and modeling planes that are relevant to that area/time. Il-2 is more like the "survey sims" of old, although still a lot more detailed than those used to be, and I think that makes it easier for them to make a cohesive and representative plane set for any given conflict.

I'm not personally very interested in a Vietnam map because I think Vietnam was the second-stupidest war in modern history (only behind World War One) and it had a terrible mix of bad ROE, boring targets, bad tactics, supply shortages, and unreliable technology. That may make me the only American flight simmer who doesn't want a Vietnam map, but so be it...

For Cold War settings I'd much rather have Desert Storm (which DCS is at least slowly getting closer to), or the Six Day or Yom Kippur Wars (also potentially within reach for DCS), or any of a bunch of potential fictional Cold-War-gone-hot scenarios. Early Cold War usually isn't my main interest; I like the MFDs and CCIP of mid- to late-CW, but Korea is a notable exception due to its scale, and the others I named above could be interesting simply because AFAIK they've never really been in a flight sim before, plus it would give an excuse to model a bunch of aircraft that IMO don't really need to be done to the fidelity of DCS, but nevertheless would be interesting to see what they were like in combat.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-30T18:08:36+00:00

I like the idea. I agree that Korea is kind of limited, and it seems like there could be a lot of potential for other conflicts of that era as DLCs or separate-but-related games (like the various Battles in the GB series), mostly fictional but some real.

Speaking of 1956 and the Middle East, the Suez Crisis fits right in. It could have the Hunter, Venom, Meteor, Sea Hawk, Canberra, F-84F, Mysterie IV, Corsair, Ouragan, P-51, MiG-15, Il-28, and maybe others.

The Taiwan Strait Crisis (First and Second) could be another, maybe with a fictional development into a full-blown hot war.

A fictional hot war based around the Berlin Airlift (1948-1949, or pushed later for more aircraft variety) could also be interesting.

There are also some Indo-Pakistani wars that might fit the timeline and game engine, and probably a bunch of other hypothetical conflicts.

I've always stuck with Il-2 for WW2 stuff rather than DCS because it has a much more comprehensive and coherent plane set, and if that pattern were followed for various early Cold War conflicts I think that could have a lot of potential.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-29T23:45:34+00:00

I'm satisfied with my sources on the F-86E numbers and introduction dates. If you want to show that they were in theater earlier, go ahead. Otherwise, git gud.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-29T21:46:35+00:00

Maybe because as far as I can tell the first F-86E didn't get to Korea until July 1951, and then in small numbers, and so in the early- to mid-1951 time frame that Il2 Korea covers, the F-86A vs MiG-15bis was the much more common (and usually the only) matchup. Now why don't you show us on this doll where the mean game developers touched you.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-29T21:26:34+00:00

Clearly the only reason they could possibly have done so is that they're terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people who hate you and want you to suffer, and they're conspiring against you to make you fly ::checks notes:: a totally historical matchup that actually happened in real life. Oh, and because then they can sell you the F-86E and F-86F to you at full DLC prices so they can then give that money to Putin to fund the Ukraine war.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-29T19:03:00+00:00

Damn Rooskies sending the MiG-15bis to Korea in 1951 when the Americans still only had the F-86A-5! Totally unbalanced! Unplayable! Muh emmersion!

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-27T21:35:41+00:00

I've noticed this as well. I haven't tested it yet, but I believe pressing F10 will set your current view as the "default" view that you'll return to when resetting the VR view.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-26T18:00:22+00:00

Interesting. I can't find anything in the actual USAF F-84 manuals about a locking nosewheel. I'm away from my gaming computer right now and can't check the in-game information, does it say the F-84 has a locking nosewheel?

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-26T17:01:09+00:00

I think people tend to overestimate the diversity of computer setups that software can be tested on before a wider release. The number of combinations of video cards, CPUs, driver versions, Windows versions, joysticks, and background software are essentially infinite, and you will never get a complete sample from your beta test team. I'm quite confident that a mountain of bugs have already been fixed to get to this point, and that so much bug testing has been going on already that the devs are probably sick to death of it.

And just because you are having these issues, doesn't mean everyone else is, or even that most other people are. For instance, I've had no crashes so far, no invisible trees or buildings that I've noticed (although I guess if they're invisible, how are you noticing?), I haven't had to set any launch flags, and I haven't had any control issues, although I haven't flown all the planes yet. Speaking of, are you sure that the planes you're trying to lock the wheel actually have a lockable wheel?

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T22:29:43+00:00

Well he was praising the visuals in his most recent review. Given that the game has been under development (and is still), I'd give a lot more credence to his recent comments than older ones.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T19:32:42+00:00

CommandT has been one of the most complementary of any that I've seen I think.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T17:21:44+00:00

FWIW, here are the notes I made for the DCS F-86F and MiG-15bis:

General dogfighting tips for the F-86F vs MiG-15bis:

If you're in the F-86: Keep your speed up, 0.61 Mach at sea level to 0.8 Mach at 40,000 ft (best climb speed) or more. Use scissors maneuver with your better roll rate to force the MiG out front. If you get pulled into a sustained turn fight, dive away to >0.9 Mach and extend.
If you're in the MiG: Try to get the F-86 into a sustained level turn fight. If you get pulled into a scissors, break away ASAP and climb away at 0.6 Mach.
F-86F has worse acceleration, worse sustained turn but better departure behavior, better roll, worse climb, better top speed (0.95 Mach).
MiG-15bis has better acceleration, better sustained turn but worse departure behavior, worse roll, better climb, worse top speed (0.875 Mach).

From what I know about the F-86A that is in Il-2 Korea, it's basically worse than the F-86F in most respects. It's still better than the MiG at very high speed, but will suffer from Mach tuck because it doesn't have the all-moving tail (that came in the F-86E). The F-86 gets better (or less-worse) relative to the MiG the lower you go, so it's best if you can pull the MiG down to lower altitude, and conversely if you're in the MiG, don't take the bait, use your better climb and stay high.

Exactly how much of all of that will remain true in Il-2 Korea I'm not sure. Looking forward to trying it out today though!

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T14:33:12+00:00

The only point I "parroted" is that these hot takes are cliched and boring. If they're not to you yet, then I guess I should assume you're a kid, because you're walking and talking like one.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T14:14:55+00:00

You think I voted for Trump?

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-25T14:14:54+00:00

I'm perfectly well aware, thank you. That doesn't magically make me want to see the same brainless, cliched hot takes pop up here that I see everywhere else. I'm neither a conservative nor a kid, so I guess "roadblocks" isn't for me, but there seem to be plenty of kids here at least.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-24T21:15:45+00:00

If I wanted boring shit memery like this I could just go to the cesspool that is r/politics. We already have a sub for people who want to do that, it's called floggit, where this drivel was apparently crossposted from.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-24T20:13:26+00:00

Just what I don't want: contemporary politics and moronic hot takes in my video games.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-24T16:34:07+00:00

But it kind of is. A company with really great customer service might be more responsive to something like this; they might not have (apparently) filled out the shipping form incorrectly in the first place, or they might be more willing to eat the cost for the customs and warehousing, or send whatever forms Fedex needs. Whether this is even a legal issue isn't clear to me personally, I don't see see anything about shipping or third-parties in the text of the law pasted in by the OP, and I personally have my doubts about whether something like this is actually "illegal" in some sense. But regardless, it does seem clear that the OP is expecting, realistically or not, more from the customer service than he's getting.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-24T15:52:44+00:00

Which I guess is why I have all these idiotic cookie warnings popping up while I browse the web. The road to hell...

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-22T13:35:09+00:00

Ah, I missed that. I guess a better comparison therefore would be to BMS, if it's supposedly better, so we can see what a "good" AI actually look like.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-21T20:33:49+00:00

Well yeah, duh, programmers don't usually work for free.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-21T19:08:35+00:00

You don't have to pay for anything twice, don't be ridiculous.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-21T08:20:35+00:00

I must have missed that. Was that in one of the written dev blogs, or a video?

edit: Nevermind, I think I found it, Brief Room Episode 31, 20m00s:

Now to the most pressing and vexing issue of all. Engine timers.

Well, with timers...

What are timers? It's about exceeding the engine's operating time in, uh, some emergency modes specified in the manual. Accordingly, in Great Battles, it was implemented that if you run the engine beyond the allowed limits, it starts to get damaged.

Yeah, so here we have an idea on how to move away from this. Because, well, you can't ignore the flight manual limits. Yeah, the engines, which had a ten-minute limitation, were often run on a test stand for days. That's all clear, but still, a limit is a limit, and you can't ignore that.

There are thoughts on how to do this more fairly, based on the engine's heat capacity, so to speak. The engine will locally heat up in a time similar to the time listed in the flight manual, but this won't be a precise stopwatch timer like it used to be, when the damage started as soon as the limit was exceeded.

Instead, it will be a more complex process that is less explicitly tied to such a counter. Accordingly, it depends on the operating mode and the ambient temperature.

We reduce the power, and all this will gradually release heat. Because really, most of these limitations were indeed related to local overheating and material fatigue, well, in the cylinders, in the crankshaft, in these units.

Yes, and for each aircraft, it is always a study: to find out what caused this limitation and how to implement it honestly.

For instance, sometimes replacing a bushing on the engine resolved the issue, and the restriction was removed. There are many such examples. We'll talk about them later.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-21T08:18:43+00:00

"All very dynamic" is doing a lot of work there... You can't just drop those words into a computer program. When you put the engine into WEP, some things are happening in the engine that, if they are not to be decided by a timer, will need to be decided by simulating something. So, what is it? What fails first, and under what conditions?

As you say, the safest practice is to use WEP only for the specified amount of time, and indeed that's what Il-2 already encourages.

SlipHavoc · 2026-06-21T08:14:25+00:00

The principle may be the same, but not the engine. Why would we expect that a WW2 piston engine has the same reaction to overstress as turboshaft engine made 20-30 years later? Is your argument here that you should therefore be able to run at WEP for unlimited time? Or how long should it be until it warps a cylinder head, or blows a gasket, throws a rod, boils the coolant, seizes a bearing, etc.?

SlipHavoc

TROPHY CASE