WWII Combat flight simulators

[Jon H]

As a curiosity does anyone fly any pc flight sims?

I ask as I fly a WWII based sim called Il2 battle of Stalingrad and its a really rather good. I wasn't sure if anyone else flew any of the online sims

[Phil 9]

I did try a WW1 sim called Rise of Flight

I did enjoy it for a but got frustrated and gave up on it because my pc was not up to the job of running it properly,

looking online I found some people really go to town on a flight sim setup with cockpit recreations and multi screen setups. even head movement tracking that adjust you view as you look left or right.

a complete hobby in its own right

[Jon H]

I have rise of flight also. very good but I prefer the WWII aircraft.

I do have a head tracker but that's all. I was considering rudder pedals but I don't have the space and my twisty joystick works fine.

In the early days rise of flight was very system heavy, now its not so bad and I have built gaming pc's for my friends for under £250. Its nowhere near as expensive as in days gone by

[Phil 9]

I would be interested in your £250 gaming pc setup

[Jon H]

pm sent.

[Tom Thomas]

Years ago I was a member of the FS squad n skies of valor server playing IL2 , amazing online sim.

What I think ruined it a bit was all the unofficial "mods" and add ons, yes some made it better but to a newcomer it was very daunting to know what to download to use where etc.

When cliffs of Dover came out i never got round to buying it and lost interest, but it's by far the best ww2 sim you'll find.

[Kevin Fairgrieve]

CFS3 7 installs.

CFS2

CFS1

Il-2 Cliffs Of Dover

Il-2 Battle Of Stalingrad (Steam)

IL-2 1946 (Steam)

WOFF

WOFF UE

ROF

 

Oh heck look.

 

Kev

 

Edited By Kevin Fairgrieve on 11/11/2017 07:46:40

[Jon H]

aww MS CFS. I had/have all 3 and have fond memories of them all with the possible exception of the 3rd which was not their best work.

If you fly il2 battle of Stalingrad online you should join us. it gets pretty heated when the 109's descend from the heavens! we use teamspeak to hurl abuse at each other an on occasion work together. Last night 3 of us in spitfires got 20 kills between us for the loss of only 3 aircraft with no pilots lost. Really fun night with great cooperation.

Tom, I remember skys of valour and flew in there a lot on the 1946 version of il2. I agree with you about the mods but I am not sure where you came in to that whole scene. To start with the mods were brilliant, better sounds, improved prop detail when spinning, nicer clouds and the ability to fly the b17's and so on already in the game. There was only one place offering the mods and it wasn't too tricky. In the end though about 4 groups were offering packs, some with really naff/untested code and it was just a nightmare. we had so many compatibility issues it did sort of kill it. FFolk would also cheat by modding thir aircraft with more power or whatever. a sad end to an awesome game.

Cliffs of dover was a poorly optimised mess when it came out and I abandoned it. Since then one of the old mod groups has fixed it and their beta version is available through steam. It is much improved and I will be trying it out once more.

[Tom Thomas]

What was your nick in 1946 Jon? Wonder if we ever duked it out?

[Jon H]

i always use the screen name carosel43 in my games.

I ended up with it as the arc carosel was the first model I built myself and 42 other people had the same idea before me

[Tom Thomas]

Hmmmm doesn't stand out to me? Was a good few years ago mind, I was FS~Cougar.

Didn't gel with the squad so I quit.

A great sim though.

[Jon H]

yea the new one is great too. flippin hard work, but very rewarding once you get it right

[Tom Thomas]

Were you one of the ones that used to organise mass bomber runs?

[Mark Kettle 1]

Here's a flight sim. Watch at time 4:58 a fault in the graphics the plane in the back ground isn't coloured in.

 

 

 

 

Escort mission with Alpha and Brizzly on the Dogs of War server. We push our engines to the limit to catch up with the bombers, then tangle with the Luftwaffe at 30,000 feet.

 

 

From - Digital Combat Simulator World.

Edited By Mark Kettle 1 on 12/11/2017 08:40:31

[Kevin Fairgrieve]

Many years ago...

 

 

 

CFS3 back in the very early days. I flew lots on line. Me I am the poor shot in the rear of the Swordfish.

 

My handle in those days and still is on some forums was NSS.

 

Kev

Edited By Kevin Fairgrieve on 12/11/2017 09:11:26

[Jon H]

Posted by Tom Thomas on 12/11/2017 03:03:10:

Were you one of the ones that used to organise mass bomber runs?

we did in our own servers but not online as it was often too difficult. We now fly groups of up to about 5 bombers all together and have a good old time.

This is a video of one of me limping my crippled Pe2 into land in the current game. I had a section of flap missing so had to land flapless, it was an exciting time!

Edited By Jon Harper - Laser Engines on 12/11/2017 10:47:35

[Edmund Comber]

I used to be interested in Flight Sims, I have dabbled with MS FSX and CF3 (for which Kevin Fairgrieve kindly sent me a bunch of updates and add-ons on CDs) and Lock-On Gold, but even though I had a good spec home built PC, I could not get them to run really well and I got bored with them. I was using Phoenix with my RC Tx up until I went to Windows 10, when it would no longer work because of requirements to run old DirectX version. I still have the CFS3 and FSX but not installed as I don't know if they would work with Win 10, but I guess they should fly with my current spec machine.

I am looking for a replacement for Phoenix to practice RC flying, but still not settled on any. I subscribed to AccuRC on Steam, but although the flying physics are good, the interaction interface between the model and the scenery and landing surfaces are very poor compared to Phoenix -it is a pity that Phoenix development has stopped. Maybe the new RealFlight will be the one......

Would love to know the spec for a £250 gaming machine as I can't imagine what it would be when you have to pay more than that for a good Graphics card, let alone motherboard + CPU + PSU + case.

[Jon H]

Hi Edmund

The systems I built for my friends were based on old business machines picked up cheaply on ebay. They lack some of the fancy bells and whistles, and have bland cases but who really cares. They are also built for reliability and long life which is always nice to have. I then upgraded the cpu's, RAM and fitted a graphics card. Where necessary I upgraded the power supply as well.

As processor advances have been relatively small in recent years older generation processors can still keep up, especially if paired with a mid range graphics card.

The system I currently have available is as follows:

I5 2500 cpu 3.3ghz base clock 3.7ghz boost
8gb DDR3 Ram
AMD R9 270x dedicated graphics card
new 500w power supply
320gig hard drive and a dvd drive.

To be clear, its not the fastest gaming pc its possible to make, but its more than capable of playing the new il2 flight sim and the cheapest new pc I found that offers a similar level of performance is 650 quid. Its also still possible to upgrade the graphics card further on the system I built as you wont start to see a bottleneck from the cpu unless you spend about £450 or more on a graphics card

Edited By Jon Harper - Laser Engines on 12/11/2017 11:53:10

[Edmund Comber]

HI Jon

Thanks for the reply, now I understand, and that is a really good way to get a reasonable machine for what is effectively pocket money. Windows alone costs a big lump in a new machine build.

My current machine is just over 5 years old and I am thinking of building a new one, so I was very interested in your spec.

[Jon H]

Posted by Edmund Comber on 14/11/2017 19:40:40:

HI Jon

Thanks for the reply, now I understand, and that is a really good way to get a reasonable machine for what is effectively pocket money. Windows alone costs a big lump in a new machine build.

My current machine is just over 5 years old and I am thinking of building a new one, so I was very interested in your spec.

As it started life as a business machine it comes with a windows licence key on the case. If you are interested in it I still have it for sale.

[Tom Thomas]

Posted by Jon Harper - Laser Engines on 11/11/2017 20:25:31:

i always use the screen name carosel43 in my games.

I ended up with it as the arc carosel was the first model I built myself and 42 other people had the same idea before me

The more I think about it the more I'm sure I remember a good nights combat on the valor server with you either coordinating or being part of a bomber fest?

We took off from a water borne runway in twin engine bombers, German or Russian I think and had a blast trying to get home.

Either that or I need to stop licking the soap

What is the current il2 version and how much is it?

[Jon H]

I am sure we flew in valor as well. There was a group of us and some of the other guys were arcticviper, lightning squad, riffraff, whatgoesup....cant remember the others. It used to be a good time though and we often flew black and red B17's

The new game is currently in 3 parts. There is Il2 battle of stalingrad. This is the base game and comes in two versions (standard and premium, all 3 games do this) the other difference being you get two 'collector' planes with the premium version. Those planes are the La5 and Fw190 in BOS. You can get the standard version from as little as 20 quid on amazon.

The next installment was il2 sturmovik battle of moscow which i didnt buy as it didnt excite me greatly and i felt a bit stitched up on the price. long story short, i bought the first game at full price in pre production to help support the project. I helped with beta testing and all the rest of it. They then released the game, and a month or two later announced battle of moscow was in pre production and you could buy it, again at full price. At the same time they reduced the original game price by 50% but didnt give the guys who bought in early any kind of deal on the 2nd game which i thought was a bit rich.

Anyway the final installment (currently in the works) is il2 battle of kuban and this time they offered previous early access customers a 50% discount so i bought it. It has a bunch of planes i like too so it was an easier sell. i am eagerly awaiting my Yak7, P39 and A20. I already have the Spitfire and a few other planes as they release them to early access as the game is developed.

So, if you buy just the base game, you can fly all of the maps in the game, various offline campaigns and the online multiplayer. All that happens is the aircraft from the other games you dont own are greyed out and you cant fly them. If you then buy the next game (moscow or kuban) then it unlocks the content in your game (planes, new missions, campaigns etc etc) and its off to the races.

Each game is £50 ish at full price, but they have sales from time to time so if you are patient you can save a chunk of change. Be aware that its not an easy game. Very realistic, but as a result not easy. It has a high frustration factor as its all too easy to get jumped by an enemy and you are dead before you knew he was even there. That said, when you are on the other side of the exchange, or have a real tight dogfight and get someone its quite a sense of achievement so there are highs and lows in equal measure. I get a great deal of enjoyment from just flying my Pe2 bomber in formation with the other guys i fly with. The maps are very pretty, graphics detailed and its actually nice just flying around.

Depending on how good you were at old il2, assume you wont make it back from 40-70% of your missions and are likely to not score an air to air kill in a realism (no aircraft labels or map markers, cockpit view only and so on) server for at least a month and you wont be too far disappointed. Its a steep learning curve but well worth it, and there are servers with simpler settings to get you going. if you get it you can join us on teamspeak and we can help guide you a bit if you want.

This link is to my stats page for the realism server i fly mostly. I am having a really good month but you can clearly see how many missions i dont make it back from and im 23rd out of about 2000 on the server.

**LINK**

[Tom Thomas]

Impressive stats! Good K/D ratio

Maybe one day I'll come back, when I have the money!

Thanks for a great thorough update

[Tom Thomas]

Is AFJ Panther still stalking the clouds? I knew anytime I saw him and didn't scream toward the ground it was game over!

He could have been flying a piper cub with me in a zero n he would still have beaten me!

[Jon H]

Posted by Tom Thomas on 15/11/2017 23:59:44:

Is AFJ Panther still stalking the clouds? I knew anytime I saw him and didn't scream toward the ground it was game over!

He could have been flying a piper cub with me in a zero n he would still have beaten me!

I recognise the name but not much more so im not sure. Most simmers never really go away so he could still be out there.

If you do return to the cockpit i recommend you start with dive bombing in the Pe2. Its an easy plane to fly, the engine management is easy and the ground is easy to hit. Its also pretty tough. Fighters are pretty tricky as you are looking for the enemy and they are looking for you! in a bomber, you are trying to hide so its a bit easier.

And the base game at 20 quid is all you need to get started. You can add the rest as and when you like. 

 

Edited By Jon Harper - Laser Engines on 16/11/2017 10:38:19