IL-2 Great Battles Dev News

Hello everybody,

Before we return to telling about the Battle of Bodenplatte and Flying Circus in our DDs, today we’d like to tell you more about Tank Crew. The most important thing is that we prepare the next big update that will include two new tanks, M4A2 “Sherman” and Panzerkampfwagen III Ausführung M, that were used in Kursk area and the map of the southern part of the Kursk salient made for joint ground and air warfare. But of course, we work not only on the new content.

The main areas of the Tank Crew development at this moment are:

  1. Improving the damage and armor-projectile interaction model both for the player controlled tanks we’re making for Tank Crew and the other objects. Several consequent updates for the sim we released this month contained most part of this work, but this was only a part and we continue. Ricochet modeling will be improved and ‘simple’, non-player controllable, vehicles will get even more detailed armor (which will be noticeable especially when you attack them from the air). We’re beginning the work on the detailed systems of the player controllable tanks (fuel, electric, transmission, cooling, etc.) which will allow for more variable and realistic damage of Tank Crew vehicles. We also plan to make them repairable in the field.

  2. Developing and expanding the tank and tank platoon commander functionality. The basic commander functionality is done - a commander can give all the orders we planned for this stage of development in relation to the current position, target, firing, maneuvering and some additional commands that make the playing experience more diverse. A commander will be able to give orders to other players in his tank in multiplayer and to AI crewmen alike. It looks like the commander role will be the most interesting one.

  3. Developing AI for crew members. Again, the basic functionality is done and now detailed tanks controlled by AI can follow the orders that can be specified in a mission like the simple AI vehicles always did. This means that detailed tanks can be fully used in a mission scenario. Now we begin the work on implementing the functionality that will make possible for a player to give orders to crewmen of his tank and other tanks in his platoon. We hope to have this functionality mostly done by the end of Spring and release it into Tank Crew Early Access.

  4. Developing the scenario campaigns which should carry out the main idea of the project - let you experience not the fictional gladiator-like balanced tank duels, but the tank warfare of July 1943 with its balance of power and technical characteristics of the armored vehicles involved. Moreover, we’ll try to show the historical events since the scenarios will be based on the tour of duty of the units that participated in these events. Later we’ll tell you more about these scenarios.

All this - detailed, true to history tank models including interiors with crews, the historical map with variable detail level, buildings with detailed damage modeling, realistic movement kinematics, improved tank damage modeling, detailed weaponry, all important crew roles, especially the commander one, acting as a part of a tank platoon, history-based and educational scenario campaigns telling about the major event of WWII, ability to control one tank with several people in multiplayer - all this combined should give you the new experience and impression you can’t get anywhere else.

To make this DD less dry, our studio and our partners Digital Forms prepared several WIP screenshots for you that show what will be released in the next big update:

The map of the southern part of the Kursk salient you’ll see in the game. The zone containing detailed buildings developed for tank warfare and scenario campaigns in the historical events of Clash of Prokhorovka project is marked inside (106x106 km, the detailed zone is 19х23 km):

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KV-1S crew:

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PzKpfw III Ausf.M impact shot demonstrating the improved damage modeling with certain parts detaching:

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M4A2 “Sherman” interior renders:

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PzKpfw III Ausf.M interior renders:

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9 Likes

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/12826-game-updates/?do=findComment&comment=744096

Update 3.012 is out.

2 Likes

Holy cow, I might have to go drive a tank around that new map just to mess some stuff up :grin:

  1. Fw 190 D-9 “Dora” fighter is available to Battle of Bodenplatte Premium Edition owners;

  2. Prokhorovka map (Southern part of the Kursk salient) is available to Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka owners;

  3. M4A2 tank is available to Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka owners;

  4. PzKpfw.III Ausf.M tank is available to Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka owners;

  5. Fokker D.VIIF fighter is available to Flying Circus - Volume I owners;

  6. UDP output API for moving platform simulators was added, details are in attached document;

  7. Locomotive tenders are destroyable once again;

  8. The oxygen system capacity corrected (increased) on Fokker D.VII;

  9. The sound of a damaged engine made more pronounced on all aircraft;

  10. KV-1s, Pz.VI-H1, M4A2, and Pz.III-M have night gunsight illumination;

  11. KV-1s and Pz.VI-H1 turrets bend their antennas when rotating;

  12. Rocket exhaust flame corrected - it cuts immediately when the engine of a rocket stops and its smoke trail disappears faster;

  13. A game freeze (when a statistics screen was visible on top of the other menus) has been fixed.

4 Likes

Wasn’t part of the group but I was pretty sad when the old website went down. Some of it is still accessible via the Internet Archive though.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120103155528/http://777avg.com/

Wheels

1 Like

Thanks Wheels. Lots of good memories with Jason and the boys.

Dear friends,

The Summer is in full swing and we’re working on finishing the Bodenplatte project. P-51D, P-38J, B-25 and Tempest 3D models are nearing completion, their textures are being made right now. Today we can show you the cockpit of Hawker Tempest Mk.V:

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As we announced before, all Bodenplatte planes will have 4K external textures. Here are Bf 109 G-14 shots that show the texturing made by Martin =ICDP= Catney:

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In addition to the models, we’re working on the important features like more detailed pilot’s physiology effects. Fatigue caused by a high G stress, (in)ability to bail out and other such things. After that, we’ll get to repairing, refueling and refitting the aircraft on the ground.

At the moment we’re moving to a newer FMOD version and our sound designer converts all the sounds to the newer sound engine. The main result of this work should be a fix of the disappearing sounds issue after playing for a while that was caused by having too many of them. We also started the research on making the aircraft and ships visible from several times farther distances. This task is very complex since it involves many various parts of the project - we can’t make it at the cost of a significant performance loss in the graphics and network subsystems.

The work on the Bodenplatte map is nearing completion and we’ll be able to show you the screenshots showing the result of this tremendous work soon. This also means we started the work on the Career mode for it that will be called Battle of Rheinland. Starting on September 17th, 1944 and ending on April 1st, 1945, it will include several new mission types characteristic for this timeframe on the Western front. All the required information - squadron histories and emblems, pilot biographies, awards, news, etc. - was accumulated with the help from our community members and we’re very grateful to those who participated in this task.

Another important thing we must tell you is that American, British and German infantrymen models for Bodenplatte project are finished - they will man the guns, drive the vehicles and appear as airfield personnel. And here’s the model of the Royal Air Force pilot for Summer of 1944:

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Now let’s talk about other our projects. For Tank Crew, the next update will bring Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.G that has autonomous electric turret turn mechanism for instance. And in September we plan to release the two scenario campaigns for Tank Crew - Breaking Point and Last Chance, telling about the fighting near Prokhorovka. Players will be able to participate in the battle from both sides. Today we can show you the title art for these campaigns that were created using in-game tank models and the screenshots of Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.G in the sim.

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The next update is planned to include two - actually four - new aircraft for Flying Circus - Halberstadt CL.II, Halberstadt CL.IIau, Bristol Fighter F2 Falcon 2, Bristol Fighter F2 Falcon 3. After that, to complete this project we’ll have to release Amiens-Arras-Lille map that will come with improved visual models for ground vehicles. Here are the screenshots of the coming planes:

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Love the Brisfit!
Looks like it will be an eventful autumn…

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Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

:raised_hands:

Jason’s company is slowly building into an empire! I love it!

2 Likes

Mein Gott im Himmel, one hell of a screenshot, IMO.

10 Likes

That must be from the campaign art, not in-game. I’d love to be proven wrong, though!

1 Like

That makes two of us…
Edit: I mean… The grass alone is obviously not a rendered art asset.

226

Hello everybody,

This time we’ll start with a small release. As we said before, we began working together with Mikhail =HH=Pauk Zemskov who makes great gameplay videos. The first fruit of this cooperation has been presented to you in April in Dev Blog #222 - that video was dedicated to our first WWII project - Battle of Stalingrad. And today we present you his second work - Battle of Moscow. As always, =HH=Pauk captured the spirit of the project, its vibe, very well. See for yourself:

In the meantime, the Bodenplatte release comes closer and closer. We told about the work we’re doing at this stage in our previous Dev Blog, and today we want to show you some visual results - it is better to see once than to hear a thousand words. Even better - to see in the sim engine already. The hero of the day is the British fighter Hawker Tempest Mk.V series 2. It turned out to be very complex and simultaneously very interesting to recreate - like all British flying machines which were always famous for their distinctness and original design decisions:

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As always, we constantly update our previous releases. As part of our plan to have all the aircraft in 4K eventually, Fw 190 A-3 Collector Plane for Battle of Stalingrad will be available in 4K in the next update thanks to Martin =ICDP= Catney:

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Now let’s move to the news about our other projects. Scenario campaigns for Tank Crew - Clash at Prokhorovka are nearly finished, soon we’ll record the voices for them and start their beta testing. Our partner Digital Forms is finishing the interior of Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.G and it’s beta testing will start this weekend:

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Flying Circus is also moving forward: Halberstadt CL.II and Bristol Fighter F.2B airplanes have their cockpits finished and they are going to this beta too.

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All in all, we progress in all directions and the closer the development is to the release the more interesting details about the coming additions we can tell you.

4 Likes

Not just their flying machines. As anybody who’s ever tried to work on the electrical systems of old Triumphs, MGs, or Jaguars already knows.

Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here in the corner, hugging my knees and crying.

7 Likes

Sooo Different…but Sooo much Style!!!

1 Like

The SwAF used the Percival Pembroke, back in the days. I spoke to a techie that worked on them. They had both hydraulic and pneumatic systems. Pneumatic for gear and flaps, and hydraulic for the windshield wipers…! :wink:

3 Likes

That sounds about right.

Ever worked with vacuum-operated windshield wipers?

No, but I fly the DHC8, and it’s wipers looks and behaves like the legs of a giant spastic spider… :wink:

3 Likes

Tempest is so nice. Cant wait for this beast. Is this on the next patch?

1 Like

Probably the next big ‘update.’ Wouldn’t surprise me if we get a more minor patch before then, with the new content likely being some more 4K textures.