IL-2 Great Battles Dev News

So… Steam VR is on and nothing wrong with the Rift. When I start IL2 I get no video on the Rift. Im so mad right now. I want some Jug time… Help

I shot down a Dr.1 with the new Camel (which completely outclasses the Dr, btw). Down it spiraled into the edge of a forest. And a tree fell! I can’t recall having seen that before.

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Is there planned Thanksgiving discounts or promo codes available?

Only thing that I can think of other than the obvious omission of not launching the sim in VR mode is that earlier in the year a driver caused the same behavior (Oculus detected but no video output). Maybe check for Oculus updates and/or try a beta version of SteamVR? No idea otherwise.

I hate it when it “Suddenly” starts working. I have no idea what was wrong. Thanks for helping thou.

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@Maico,
Check the cable connector on the HMD. I have read reports that it can come loose, so I have secured my cable with a couple of strips, to the HMD harness.

God Help Me…The Big,Throaty sound of The Thunderbolt’s Radial and 8 .50(I mean business) cals are making this plane my favorite so far.

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I know! I’ve got a bass shaker connected to the base of the speaker stand I use for the stick, as a simulated “force feedback” device, and I swear it feels like I’m arm wrestling a lawn mower!

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Hello everybody,

Today we’d like to dedicate our Dev Blog to the tank part of our sim. We attempt not only to create the authentic visual models of the tanks and model their movement, armament, and damage realistically. We also want to create an interesting gameplay, based on historical events, as usual, that will not only entertain you for some time but let you experience what a real tank warfare in a meeting engagement situation was like.

The air part of our sim started at the great battle of WWII that changed its course and the course of world history, the Battle of Stalingrad. Following this principle, we start the tank part with one of the key tank battles on the Eastern front that decided the entire 1943 campaign - Prokhorovka.

Beginning the campaign development for “Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka” we faced the fact that a usual, common for flight sims approach just won’t work - its unlikely that any single tank crew in July 1943 survived several large-scale engagements in a row (especially a Soviet one) and participated in all key points of the large Prokhorovka battle we’d like to reconstruct in our scenarios.

Therefore we have decided not to link the scenarios with a personal story of one of the tank crewmen, but concentrate on creating a coherent story about July 6 -17 engagements. The mission briefings will include first-person remarks, but there will be several plot lines. This will allow you to experience the battle of Prokhorovka from several locations and command 2-3 different combat vehicles in the course of one campaign.

“Breaking point” (tentative title)
Soviet campaign

This campaign will be dedicated to the heroic deed of Soviet tankmen of Rotmistrov 5th Guards Tank Army that disrupted the German offensive at the center of the southern part of the Kursk salient at the cost of their lives. The massive, but poorly prepared counterblow on July 12th stopped the German advance and eventually pushed them back to their initial positions. The later missions of the campaign will cover the subsequent, less known stage of the battle of Kursk on July 13th - 15th at the interfluve of Donets river.

Timeframe: July 6th - 15th, 1943.
Controllable tanks: T-34-76 mod. 1943, KV-1s
Duration: 10 missions
Average playing time: 5 hours

“Last chance” (tentative title)
German campaign

This campaign will tell about the operations of the tank units of Army Group South during Operation Citadel. Having breached two army defense lines, German forces reached Prokhorovka as early as at the evening of July 6th and were close to capturing this key area. However, instead of continuing their advance they were forced to defend against numerous Soviet counterstrikes that culminated in the massive battle on July 12th. The second part of the campaign will be dedicated to German attempts to encircle and destroy Soviet 48th Corps at interfluve of Donets river and the forced retreat of the German 2nd Tank Corps to initial positions when the entire offensive failed.

Timeframe: July 6th - 17th, 1943.
Controllable tanks: PzKpfw III Ausf.M, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G, PzKpfw VI Ausf.H1 “Tiger”
Duration: 10 missions
Average playing time: 5 hours

To make our feature about Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka more visual, we can show you several WIP screenshots of the new tanks made by our partners - Digital Forms. They are planned to be released in Early Access early next year:

  • T-34-76 mod. 1943 produced by Nizhny Tagyl tank factory #183 in name of Communist International (“Uralvagonzavod”) and

  • Panzerkampfwagen IV (Sd.Kfz.161) Asufuehrung G produced by Nibelungenwerke of St. Valentin

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To accompany them, here are WIP screenshots of Prokhorovka map being developed by our mapping team. The new landscape scaling tech has been developed specially for this map - by reducing the total size of the map from 400x400 km to 100x100km we were able to make its heightmap 16 times more detailed. The detailed area of the Prokhorovka map is still in development, but other parts of this map are more polished. We’d like to note that it is suitable not only for tank engagements, but also for aerial ones and, of course, for joint multiplayer battles that unfold both on the ground and in the air simultaneously. To illustrate this, today we can show you the views of Belgorod that is also there:

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Aaand we are delighted to present you the finished tankmen models. We still need to animate an each crew member in each player controllable tank in the sim, but now you can already see how they will look:

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That’s a mighty sexy update. Between this and DCS who’s got time to… er… work.

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Orr cut the grass or feed the children. Or bathe for that matter.

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Dear Friends,

The Вattle of Stalingrad was one of the decisive events of the World War II and there is still a lot of interest in it. New historical research and data from archives allow us to continue to reveal little-known, but important events and facts. The Blazing Steppe campaign, released in 2017, told the story of Soviet fighters in August-September 1942, but this time we invite you to experience the battle from the German side.

We are proud to announce a new historical campaign - “Fortress on the Volga” for IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad. We are now accepting Pre-Orders!

The campaign is scheduled to be released later this month.

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The campaign is set during the peak of fighting between the Red Army Air Force and the Luftwaffe during Autumn 1942 in the skies above Stalingrad. Continuous German ground assaults on the destroyed city were met with ever more powerful Soviet counterstrikes. The fight for air superiority was just as furious and dangerous. You’ll be the deputy Staffel commander in I./JG 52 that has been redirected to Stalingrad from the central part of the Eastern front.

Although a completely independent campaign, “Fortress on the Volga” continues to tell the story of a German pilot that began in our “Ten Days of Autumn” campaign.

All missions are based on historical events and contain a number of additions and innovations compared to the previous Scripted Campaigns:

  • While “Ten Days of Autumn” was a semi-educational campaign that introduced you to the new game mode, “Fortress on the Volga” (like “Blazing Steppe”) offers a normal difficulty level. It will be challenging!

  • The mission structure has been changed. Now there is a possibility that additional aircraft groups will appear in the vicinity. This can either simplify or substantially complicate your task, ultimately increasing the replayability of the whole campaign.

  • Whenever possible, air and ground battles will continue for another 15-20 minutes after the mission’s objective has been completed.

  • A large number of new maps and operation records available from the Ministry of Defense archives allowed us to recreate the movement of the front-lines not only near Stalingrad, but also at the defense lines occupied by the Soviet 57th and 51st armies to the South of the city and along the Don to the Northwest in detail.

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Hmm. I guess we have differing views on the definition of “normal”, unless we have very different views of “challenging.”

I consider “normal” to be “unlikely to be shot down unless you make a dumb mistake” while challenging is another way of saying hard, usually “you will be shot down often between air and ground fire” and easy is “you’d have to be asleep or drunk to crash”.

I admit I have not flown the TDA campaign yet so I cannot say what difficulty I consider it, but perhaps I should give it a try soon.

I think you have to read that quote in the context that TDA was an educational campaign.
The new campaign is more like a normal campaign. Normal, as in not educational.

Sweet little patch flew in under my radar yesterday. Of course I was busy preparing for and celebrating the Dutch festivity of “Sinterklaas”.

Today I got some time in and yes, Flying Circus is coming along nicely. I also found it’s far more fun without labels, even in VR. Count wings, is that thing blueish? get some! get some!

Main features:

  1. Late war British pilot added to Spitfire Mk.IXe;
  2. New control elements added to mission logic (useful for mission designers): “Modifier: Add Val” and “Modifier: Set Val”. They can alter the values of other logical elements - Counter and Timer (when used with a Timer object, Set Val can input a negative value to reset and stop a Timer);
  3. Force Feedback joystick owners who experience stutters can alter the new value in startup.cfg that governs the maximum frequency of FFB effects polling to try to eliminate them (update_freq parameter in [KEY = force_feedback] section can be set to a value from 0.5 Hz to 10 Hz, example: update_freq = 10.0);
  4. Additional renderer optimizations for sea maps (Kuban, Bodenplatte in the future) allowed to boost performance on such maps even more;
  5. AA searchlights now can follow Attack Area command which can be used to limit their search area and/or use them as visible beacons (useful for mission designers);
  6. Multiplayer: ‘allow other players to man stations’ option now saved;
  7. Multiplayer: various issues like statistics ‘freezing’, inability to start a mission, kill messages disappearing were fixed for high-load servers;
  8. Multiplayer: missing AP hit sound effects and some other sounds restored;
  9. A rare crash that could happen in high load situations like joint air-ground engagements with many units has been fixed;
  10. keep_binary_log = 0 option in startup.cfg correctly removes binary logs from the game folder on exit;
  11. Career: mission area correctly set while escorting transport planes in Stalingrad TOW;
  12. Incorrect navigational markers won’t be shown in a mission without player aircraft;

Damage model improvements:
13. P-47D-28, Yak-7b and Spitfire Mk.IXe wings made less fragile when damaged;
14. Aileron control rods correctly damaged when Yak-7b, P-39L-1 or P-47 wing is damaged;
15. An overdone HE explosion effect on the primary structure of an aircraft has been reduced.
16. Damage calculations of the airframe take a hit angle into account;
17. Damage from direct hits and explosions on the skin and control rods has been tuned;
18. Minor visual damage correctly appears after a first hit;
19. The visual damage of a cockpit glass correctly appears after a first hit there;
20. Ju-52 instruments can be damaged now;
21. Aircraft primary structure won’t erroneously receive double damage in case of hits on the internal components like fuel tanks, engine, radiators, etc.);
22. Airframe sturdiness tuned for all aircraft;
23. Armor of the internal components corrected whenever it was wrong;
24. P-47D-28 wing damage corrected (wing loss is preceded with a wing crack);
25. A weapon won’t fire if its ammo supply was lost with a wing part;
26. Fuel tank fire probability corrected for Flying Circus aircraft;
27. Ammo detonation effects differ visually depending on the explosion power;

Aircraft improvements:
28. Bodenplatte pilots put on and remove oxygen mask when needed;
29. Bodenplatte and Flying Circus pilots put off their goggles on parking;
30. Ignition box cover animated on Pe-2 series 35;
31. CB panel cover animation corrected on Fw-190 A3/A5/A8;
32. Gunner folding seat animation corrected on Ju-88;
33. Bendix course detectors animations corrected;
34. Dead pilot model position corrected on Pfalz D.IIIa;
35. Bf 109 G-2 cockpit lamp corrected;
36. P-47D-28 visual wing crack corrected;
37. Visible projectiles at high aircraft speed appear correctly;
38. MK-108 fire sound corrected on Bf 109 K-4;
39. Fuel tank fire effect corrected on Flying Circus planes;
40. Ejected cartridges correctly appear in multiplayer;
41. The maximum number of ejected cartridges corrected based on real time instead of a simulated one;
42. In multiplayer, all visible projectiles appear from gun muzzles instead of aircraft center;
43. Visible gun convergence corrected in multiplayer;

  1. The delay between pushing the fire trigger and experiencing the gunfire FFB effect has been reduced.
  2. Pfalz D.IIIa performance corrected;
  3. Sopwith Camel description corrected;

AI improvements:
47. AI pilots correctly perform Chandelle maneuver;
48. WWI AI pilots won’t ‘stuck’ flying forward;
49. AI pilots evade ground even better;
50. Conditions for attempting vertical maneuvers corrected for all fighters;
51. AI pilots will bail out of aircraft with cracked wings or fuselage instead of trying to fight;
52. WWI AI pilots open fire sooner;
53. WWI AI pilots maneuver more aggressively;

GUI changes:
54. Starting altitude won’t reset in QMB;
55. Flare gun indicator won’t be shown after restarting a mission in external view;
56. Flight frequency option in Career corrected;
57. The wrong message about timescale won’t be shown on mission end;
58. Interface music can be turned on when interface sounds are turned off;
59. Airfields are correctly shown after changing the current chapter in Career;
60. Previously selected modifications correctly shown in QMB.

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The way that wing bent before snapping was impressive.

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Reminds me of what they do in ROF with the biplanes. You never get “fine with holes” to “snapped off” instantly there.
Nice to see the metal wings in Il-2 get the same treatment.

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Update 3.009

Dear friends,

Trying to squeeze in more functionality, new content, improvements and additions for you before the holidays, we’ve prepared another update 3.009. This time, the main feature of this update is the new content: Collector Plane, famous Soviet light bomber U-2VS. At the moment it can be used in QMB and multiplayer modes, but we’ll add new Career mission types especially for it (Stalingrad and Kuban ToWs) next month.

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There are two new scripted campaigns available. One made by =BlackSix= happens at Stalingrad after ‘Blazing Steppe’ and continues the story of the German pilot that started in ‘10 Days of Autumn’ campaign, while another made by =Gambit21= is dedicated to A-20 squadron operating in the skies of Kuban.

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As usual, the update also brings numerous improvements and additions, upping the overall quality of the sim:

  1. New Collector Plane U-2VS;
  2. New scenario campaign ‘Fortress on the Volga’ by Alexander =BlackSix= Timoshkov;
  3. New scenario campaign ‘Havoc over the Kuban’ by =Gambit21=;
  4. New Career mission “Troop concentration night bombing strike”;
  5. New Career mission “Enemy airfield night bombing strike”;
  6. New Career mission “Railway hub night bombing strike”;
  7. New Career mission “Supply dump night bombing strike”;
  8. New Career mission “River crossing night bombing strike”;
  9. Our community enthusiast =BlackHellHound1= remade all outer textures of Bf 109 F-2 (main texture, bump, specular, damage) and made historically accurate skins for it in 4К;
  10. Three new skins for Fokker Dr.I;
  11. Two new skins for SPAD 13.C1;
  12. The delay, when a new player connects to a server, has been minimized for other players;
  13. Projectile hits at turret gunners now calculated properly (they weren’t counted properly before);
  14. 76 mm APHE rounds won’t erroneously damage the internal components without penetrating the armor;
  15. P-47D-28 skin damage has been corrected (increased);
  16. Airfields surface on Velikiye Luki map has been flattened;
  17. It is now possible to lean to the gunsight closer than before on all aircraft;
  18. Visual propeller damage corrected on Ju-52 (previously damaging the right propeller would visually damage the left one);
  19. Inability to start a new Career from an old one (lack of available units) has been fixed;
  20. After spending all ammo of one kind in a tank the interface won’t erroneously show the full ammo;
  21. Escape menu works correctly even if there are no vehicles in the mission;
  22. Wrong waypoint labels corrected in scenario campaigns;
  23. Mission briefings text rendering corrected in scenario campaigns;
  24. The random mirroring issue of a pilot portrait in Career has been fixed;
  25. Creating new Career in Stalingrad ToW has been fixed for certain units;
  26. An issue of jumping reflections in the water caused by mirrors has been fixed;
  27. Vehicle pathfinding issue that could cause slow performance loss has been fixed;
  28. Formation movement AI on land and water has been improved - the leader won’t slow down if it is possible;
  29. Collision detection routine improved (the detailed tanks shouldn’t twitch in certain situations anymore);
  30. Formation movement has been improved overall;
  31. The bug that caused AI pilots to miss ground targets has been fixed;
  32. AI checks the altitude in a downward spiral maneuver;
  33. Bombs and rockets equipped AIs should correctly engage ground targets in QMB;
  34. Modifier object: it is now possible to assign negative values to a counter. Both the current value and trigger threshold can be set for a timer;
  35. Timer: when a new trigger signal is received, the timer resets;
  36. Modifier and timer: parameter index 0 now controls the current timer value while parameter index 1 controls the timer threshold;
  37. Modifier and timer: timer can be reset and stopped by parameter index 0 and value -1;
  38. Fw 190 A-8: canopy raindrops added for Sturmjager modification;
  39. Fw 190 A-8: windshield cleaner corrected for Sturmjager modification ;
  40. Fw 190 A-8: too dark materials corrected at some places;
  41. Fw 190 A-8: rocket control box decreased in size;
  42. Fw 190 A-8: pilot model holds the control stick;
  43. Bf 109 G-14: pilot model holds the control stick.

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Hello everybody,

So, this is the end of 2018. It was a very interesting year for us, it brought many new, but long-awaited changes and improvements to the project. Almost 500 points were listed in the update changelists in total and there were more minor, unlisted ones which are impossible to count. All this combined upped the quality of the sim to a new level. And right now we continue the development of our three Early Access projects: Battle of Bodenplatte, Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka and Flying Circus Volume 1.

For the main project, Bodenplatte, we’re working on several new aircraft at once. Having completed the implementation of the air compressibility and significant improvements to the damage model (they are already in the public version of the sim), our Lead Engineer is creating the physical model of the jet engine for Me 262. Of course, this work opens up the possibility to widen our aircraft pool in the future.

Our partner Ugra Media makes the new WWI aircraft for Flying Circus - Fokker D.VII, Fokker D.IIF and Sopwith Dolphin. They’ll start the work on the Arras area map (1918) soon.

The new tanks for Tank Crew that are being made by our partner Digital Forms are more than half complete already: M4A2, T-34 mod. 1943, PzKpfw IV Ausf.G and PzKpfw III Ausf.M. Meanwhile, we’re making the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient ourselves. Soon we’ll be able to tell you more about the tank commander and tank platoon commander functionality which will be the backbone of Tank Crew gameplay. 3D models of Soviet and German crewmembers are ready and will be added to the sim as soon as their animations are complete. The scenarios for two, German and Soviet, tank campaigns are ready, so soon we’ll start to make the missions themselves. The detailed buildings tech that includes higher detailed 3D models and the physics of their destruction is nearly finished and we had a bit of time to make this short video for you:

To complete this Dev Diary, we’d like to show you some screenshots. First, here is the finished Fw 190 D-9 cockpit. Also, the community enthusiast Martin =ICDP= Catney upped default and official P-47 skins to 4K quality:

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