Battle of Kuban

Interesting news from @777Studios_Jason

It is my honor and pleasure to announce our current and future plans for the modern IL-2 Sturmovik Series. As you know we have released Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Moscow and now we are ready to announce - THE BATTLE OF KUBAN! In addition to creating the Battle of Kuban we will be adding several new technologies, gameplay modes and community centered features to the Sturmovik series that will setup future titles based in the Pacific theater. We see the further development of the Sturmovik series as a marathon and not a sprint. We hope you will continue to support us and cheer us on the entire way as we make, what we consider to be, our shared vision a reality.

Lots of info in there, including lists of new aircraft, single player career mode, DX11 & VR future support, plus a Pacific Theatre / Midway map.

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/25072-announcing-battle-kuban-and-development-plan/

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DX11, career modes, and coop stuff is all very welcome. But, that price point is still steep. Hopefully, they’ll make a '46-esque collection in the years to come.

Nice! 777/1C makes some pretty games, and I’m looking forward to the Pacific Theater.

This is what I really liked about Jason’s post:

Our long-term vision includes the following battles, but not necessarily in this order and final selection is not concrete.
_ _
Battle of Kuban
Battle of Midway
Battle of Okinawa
Battle of ???

I used to be in a squad of guys flying IL-2, and in fact the original squad was called the 777AVG. Jason was the founder and CO. Seems like a long time ago (2001). He gathered a pretty great bunch of guys, but eventually had to leave for personal reasons. The squad continued from the early days of IL-2 to Forgotten Battles and then Pacific Fighters in 2004. In fact we reorganized and split as the 4th Fighter Group and JG77 meeting a couple of times a week to fight, usually some sort of persistent campaign. We had the Battle of France, Battle of the Ardennes, Battle of Berlin, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Okinawa, etc, and I guess that this went on for 4 or 5 years. BTW, the JG77 guys were really good, and we all had to be flying way above average on the nights that we were their equal or better.

Anyway, we had some epic Pacific battles, the JG77 evolving into flying for Japan. Some of my best memories of simming were flying Dauntlesses. Wildcats, and Corsairs off of a boat. Sure, the Dauntless was a death trap, but if you were lucky enough to get through the fighter screen, there was huge satisfaction coming in steep with the dive flaps out and putting a bomb through the deck of a Japanese flat top. Torps were fun too.

One thing that I can tell you about Jason is that yes, he is a businessman, but he has also sat with a joystick in his hand for many many hours flying with his squad mates in a cockpit that he built in his garage (we thought he was crazy), It took him a failure or two to get going, but anyone who can make an earning in this very niche industry deserves a tip of the hat, IMO. Very much looking forward to Midway. We should have hi def VR by then :slight_smile:

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Doesn’t this Il-2 series already support DX11?

they announced aswell battle of midway and okinawa after kuban (subject to change) and i freaking love the pacific campaign i really cant wait for that one to come up !

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DX9 I think, which why the Rift devkit time was working very promisingly up until the Oculus SDK update dropped dx9 support.

Holeeee shait. That’s frakking hot. Love it! Go 777!

I know somewhere on the forums there they said it would be near the end of 2017 for release of Kuban, which i guess puts the pacific into at least 2018, maybe 2019?

Let me give credit were credit is due first, 777/1C do an excellent job of getting stuff done when they say they are going to get it done. The occasional thing that has slipped past the projected arrival date with BoS and BoM were ready shortly thereafter. At most that I can recall was maybe a month, probably less.

I personally though am going to have to take a pass this time around. I’ve already spent 3 years flying over a front and in planes that I don’t particularly care for. Wish them luck though, sure it will be fantastic if that’s where your interest lies.

I’m… curious about Battle of Midway. Don’t get me wrong I’m not in the business of rejecting naval stuff, but Midway is primary interesting from a strategic and doctrinal perspective rather than a tactical one.

Tactically it’s just Zero’s running riot over Marine Air, then Massacring some Torpedo bombers, then missing some Dauntlesses, then Massacring some Wildcats (with the exception of James Flipping Thatch), then going home. From a campaign perspective it is not varied, nor prolonged with the vast majority of battle taking place over a single day. From how I understand the IL2:BoS campaign screen works, the Solomons would appear to be a much more viable setting with similar assets. They feature a prolonged ground engagement, daily raids/counter sweeps, two of the five carrier battles in history and a metric crap ton of related naval activity. Okinawa is equally interesting.

All that said I could also see Midway being extremely easy to develop on the map side, ocean and a few atolls, and the majority of time could go towards developing the plethora of aircraft (Dauntlesses, F4F-3s, F2A-3s, TBFs, B-17s, TBDs, Zeros, Kates, Vals, Judys), and ships necessary. Still, it’s good news for us.

Dauntless is best plane! Rugged, maneuverable, long legged, and with more than enough firepower to tear apart any over zealous Zeros.

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I think any new sim with either a Spitfire or a Carrier in it is an easy instabuy for me.

When I look at some of the AAA games I’ve bought over the years that didn’t really deserve it, the flight sim niche probably deserves the dollars more than most.

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We should do a Mudspike fly in where we play as the Hornet CVW. Critical Navigation Error Simulator 2017.

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This could seriously become an absolute blast- plus a serious contender in WWII sims vs the DCS module (forgetting the difference in sim-depth)…

As much as I love deeply modeled simulations, I still get a lot of enjoyment out of the"lighter" sims. I’ve spent thousands of memorable hours in IL2 1946 and would gladly hop into it again (I still have all of 2GvSAP’s missions!). Battle of Stalingrad is a worthy successor and I’m looking forward to seeing more about these follow ons. Ops from carriers as well as against them were a lot of fun - I can only imagine what it will be like with modern graphics!

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Cuncur. Hope I didn’t give the wrong impression.

Battle of Midway and Battle of Okinawa are basically the same battle. They encompass a relatively small area of operations whereas the Guadalcanal and the Solomons campaign would be a lot more challenging if they tried to encompass its entire area of operations.

Looking forward to watching these new developments. :slight_smile:

Wheels

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Sounds really nice. I love what 777 are delivering.

If only they would have sticked to the Rise of Flight price model.

I really don’t like buying a bundle up front but instead pick single planes during sales. In total I still spent a lot on RoF, it just didn’t feel that bad…

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you can already buy collector planes. for example you only need to own Stalingrad to play on the Moscow map and you can freely buy the Moscow collector planes P40 and MC202

Different game engine software; for the Cliffs of Dover version. CLOD is ran on the Oleg Maddox teams scratch built engine. Which Team Fusion mod’ed to have DX11 API work with it.

Where -as the IL-2 Bos is built on the Digital Nature engine by NEOQB, which was then bought out by Jason Williams, and Albert Zhiltcov, of 777Studios. which is now being produced by 1CGames and 777Studios; IL-2 Battle of Kuban and other series soon to be announced.

IL-2 1946 the 7th year addition of IL-2 Sturmovik, is built on the IL-2 engine made by Oleg Madoxxs team back in 1998…

hope this clears things up for you some one should make a wiki for this information.

EP?

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@NEVO so… I’ll admit I’m a bit out of thouch here- You’re saying that by having Battle of Stalingrad- I can still play on every map the’ve released so far and possibly future ones as well?!