I spent the most time with Aces of the Pacific and Pacific Air War 1942.
They both had their share of issues but they were fun. For some reason I can’t recall I skipped CFS2. By the time I decided it might have been worthwhile it was already obsolete.
I played a little CFS1 and didn’t care for it compared to EAW which got the lions share of my end-of-90s WWII simming. I wonder if that colored my perception of CFS2…
I did get CFS3 and really enjoyed it, especially the 3rd party planes I found, but the community embraced the less-polished Il-2 instead. I had a lot of PacWar planes for it, but there were no carriers, so I could fight USN vs IJN over Western Europe but it wasn’t really the same. Too bad, CFS4 would’ve had CBI as well as Pac I think.
I just never really got into Il-2 PF, the carrier ops didn’t engage me the way they did in AOTP/PAW42.
You cannot argue that in Oct 2002, when CFS3 was released, Il-2 was more polished. There is nothing to support that. CFS3 got I believe 2 patches in total and was stable, consistent, reliable, and free of all but minor bugs.
Il-2 in 2019, or 2010, or even 2005 is irrelevant, because CFS3 had already been abandoned by then. CFS3 had less than 6 months before it was relegated to the dedicated fans alone, most of whom embraced it for the mods.
Unless of course your definition of “polished” is incorrect. I am using the established dictionary definition.
We are talking about the original IL-2 Sturmovik, right? Released in '01? Because I remember playing the demo, then buying the full game, and having no problems with the game. The largest issue I can recall was the Berlin map being hard on my system at the time. If you look around, many other users at the time reported that CFS3 was riddled with bugs and problems vs IL2, which was stable and easy. IL2 lacked a dynamic campaign, but more than made up for that in aircraft detail and enjoyment. Yes, it had problems and needed patches, but out of the box CFS3 did, too.
We have to be honest though, in that IL2’s success was primarily due to the multiplayer component, which worked very well. When coupled with Hyperlobby, it was very difficult to beat, and the closed nature kept cheating at a minimum versus CFS3, which was inherently “play only with people you trust” deal – like CFS2 before it. The successive expansions were building up on that success and even though Forgotten Battles introduced the DGen campaign system, multiplayer was still where it was at.
CFS3 should have been a bigger title than it was. I think Microsoft would’ve done well to leave it in the oven for another year and they likely would’ve owned the WWII combat sim market. As it was, they released it way too early and half baked, hardly realizing the true potential of what it could’ve been. I remember many within the IL2 community looking forward to it and then being sorely disappointed.
It is way too janky and old n busted for the asking price, but it has AI and according to some, oodles of that je ne sais quoi that seems to be missing from DCS and Il-2. soul perhaps?
That’s exactly what CFS3 should have been. As it stands, I’d rather spend a little more and get Flying Circus. Of course, I already have FC, so my mind has been made up…
My reaction to the first IL-2 demo was that it was better than any flightsim ever released, and it was just a demo.
At the time we had CFS and CFS2 arrived shortly after, AFAIK.
CFS3 was a couple of years after.
The CFS titles enjoyed the benefit of shared components with the MSFS series and were pretty polished.
IL-2 wasn’t just patched, it was updated. We got more aircraft, maps and features along with bugfixes.
So we can’t use the number of patches as an indicator of how well polished the sims were. But sure, the CFS titles all worked well.
I immediately preferred IL-2 over CFS because of the flightmodelling, but I remember many of my flightschool friends were partial to CFS because you didn’t have to use padlock or a view hat. Just follow the cone and press the trigger.
I guess CFS was easy to use and the MSFS lineage was evident in everything like menus and settings, so everybody knew how to use it even before they got it.
I’m with you Troll!!! CFS was ok until il2 demo was released. There was no comparison in realism, modeling or combat. It was night and day. Then il2 came out and patches kept u interested. New planes, maps and scenery. That didnt stop for years. It was so deep and diverse. Fly in Finish colors or fly in Noth Africa. It was like “who do you want to be today?”
When I tried to go to CFS3, It was so Broken I could not believe it. Sad but the Russians beat the pants off the Americans at combat flight sims. Most of all what I enjoyed was the ai. To this day, few can compare to the intensity of a 8vs8 dogfight in il2 1946. I quit it to dedicate myself to the new BoS and DCS. But to this day, I sometimes miss it. Oleg was the best!
I was there when the Oleg and Iliya swore they would have created the new IL-2 on the main Kickstarter page…
Their names were what convinced me to drop dosh on that project.
It’s all there to be read, if you go and look.
Ahh Ok. I tend to pin that on Olya. I thought that Oleg was pulled in as a PR move and was only partly involved but I am obviously mistaken on that. I remember IL-2 being Oleg’s baby, and he did a lot of great work on that. Maybe I am giving him a pass because of that
Not what I implied.
But I don’t intend to dig a past long forgiven.
It was mostly a snarky remark.
I am really so happy on how my Dora and (upcoming) Jug are in DCS that I can still honestly admit that Kickstarter was a win for me anyway since I got a LOT of stuff for my 20€.
In no small part thanks to the moral rettitude of Eagle Dynamics.
