I'm happy to announce that IL2 update 2.011 has been released!
The main addition of this version is, of course, the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.VB Collector Plane.
They were sent to USSR via the lend-lease program and took part in the Battle of Kuban. The aircraft is quite interesting and unusual, and their engineer who worked on its flight model wrote a detailed article about it earlier: Dev Blog 162.
This plane highlights the pros of their flight model. The Spitfire is neutrally stable along the pitch axis. Piloting this plane is quite different to piloting classic, statically stable aircraft. This is especially noticeable during intensive maneuvering when instead of moving the flight stick backward and keeping it this way during the maneuver the quick double movement backward and then forward is required so the aircraft will begin the maneuver and stay in it. This effect is especially noticeable during a landing when the landing flaps are extended. It should be noted that these peculiarities don't cause a discomfort, they just make the piloting more interesting and give you the feel of control when you understand what is happening.
To summarize, this aircraft should have a significant advantage in a low altitude and slower dogfight thanks to its very low wing loading and high power reserve at low speeds.
The second main addition of this update is the new historical campaign Blazing Steppe, consisting of 15 scenarios and telling about the tour of duty of the 11th IAP during the battle of Stalingrad, which you can purchase on their website.
And of course the update brings many enhancements to the simulation:
Version 2.011 core changes:
1. Supermarine Spitfire Mk.VB Collector Plane is added to the project and all Battle of Kuban owners can fly it now;
2. The new historical campaign Blazing Steppe is added to the game (you need to also own Yak-1 series 69 from Battle of Stalingrad to play it);
3. 3D Vision support is added thanks to the earlier Open VR API implementation;
4. Cockpit instruments were made more contrast on all planes for easier readability both in VR and on regular screens;
5. Forest drawing distance is increased by 1.5 times on Ultra graphics preset. The performance hit this causes is negligible on high-end video cards this preset is intended for;
6. The new graphical effect is shown when an aircraft impacts a water body and explodes;
7. The new graphics setting 'Grass quality' has been added with three possible choices: Normal, Distant and Ultra;
8. Forests drawing is optimized even more, improving performance at medium altitudes significantly;
9. LOD levels for many static objects were corrected, this should eliminate or reduce 'popping' issues;
10. The vertical line on AMD cards in the main menu is gone (it was caused by the undocumented AMD/Nvidia shader incompatibility);
11. Battle of Moscow airfields were reworked to reduce their performance hit, makes judging the distance to the ground easier and improve their overall visual image. Please note that on middle-end video cards performance may degrade over any airfield if you increase the grass option setting;
12. New hotkeys were added for quick switching between the aircraft stations (RShift+0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 where 0 means the pilot and other numbers mean different gunner positions);
13. Aircraft ammo detonation probability was reduced;
14. LaGG-3 rudder over sensitivity was reduced;
15. IL-2 mod. 1943 startup procedure messages are shown correctly;
16. There is new option TacviewRecord=true/false in .sds DServer config files that can be used to prevent possible cheating on a server;
17. New parameter tacviewrecord = 0/1 is added to startup.cfg that turns TacView export on and off (off by default).
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you, and be sure of this, I will be with you always even unto the end of the age. Mathew 28:20
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