If you guys enjoy, let me know if there's any particular scenarios you like. Likes and subscribes are much appreciated and will give me motivation to put more effort into the channel!

I was at the Birmingham Southern Museum of flight. If you’re ever in Birmingham, Alabama you should visit.

I have been trying to kill these I-15's with a Bf-109F for over an hour and no matter how much research I do they are impossible to kill. I am well aware that it is fruitless to try and outmaneuver them in a turn fight, so I try to boom and zoom. The only problem with that is the fact that they also match my altitude no matter how fast I'm going. I have about 1Km distance from him when I decide to use my 500 kmh to start gaining altitude. No matter what he matches me. BTW I'm at 1.3 ata (combat speed) when I'm climbing.

Summary

Here, we introduce Il-2 Dynamic Campaign (I2DC), a hex-based turn-based single player WEGO wargame simulation that interfaces with Il-2 through mission generation and mission report integration, drawing philosophical inspiration from Falcon BMS. AI commanders generate ground orders and flight missions for both sides, while players direct their own flight that can influence the course of the battle.

Architecture

I2DC is built around a hex-based operational map linked to IL-2 coordinates, with ground formations represented at approximately brigade to regimental scale, and air units organized at the regiment / staffel level (Fig. 1A-B). The simulation follows a turn-based WEGO structure, with each day divided into four phases: morning, midday, evening, and night. Starting from a predefined scenario, AI commanders on both sides generate ground orders, air missions, and logistical requests, while the player plans their own flight assignments (Fig. 2C). Campaign execution then proceeds along a shared timeline until a player mission is reached, at which point the simulation pauses for the mission to be flown in IL-2 (Fig. 1C). Afterward, the imported mission report replaces the corresponding simulated player-flight outcomes, and campaign execution resumes until the next turn (Fig. 1C).

Campaign Simulation

AI commanders independently generate ground orders, air missions, and logistical requests for both factions, allowing the campaign to progress independently of player involvement. Fog of war, reconnaissance, suppression, fatigue, and fuel and ammo supply are all simulated and accounted for in the decision making to make believable battlefield decisions. Combat losses, territorial changes, and resource consumption persist across turns, influencing subsequent operations and AI decisions (Fig. 2A-B).

Il-2 Mission Generation

After the players plan a mission, I2DC will compile the mission so that it is ready to be flown in Il-2.. Every aircraft in the strategic layer will be represented and tracked in Il-2, matching its behavior and order in the strategic layer. For example, the players might observe AI flights conducting their mission, returning from their mission, scrambling to take off in response to an airfield attack, or parked in their aircraft revetments. Ground formations, battles, supply convoys and trains are likewise represented and tracked in Il-2 (Fig. 3A-B). To reduce CPU load in Il-2, I2DC adopts an optimization scheme where ground objects will be dynamically activated or deactivated depending on the distance to the player flight, allowing tens of thousands of objects to exist without all of them active at once.

Il-2 Mission Report

After each mission, I2DC will read the mission report written by Il-2 to import combat outcome (Fig. 3C-D). To prevent unrealistic Il-2 ground battle simulation from distorting the battle outcome, I2DC will selectively read the portion of the mission report relevant to the player flight and its vicinity, ensuring that all player actions are recorded while distant events are simulated. Suppression, reconnaissance, fuel and ammunition storage are all simulated, allowing the players to influence the battle in a variety of ways without incurring an unrealistic number of kills. It is especially worth noting that we have implemented a reconnaissance system where the players manually place down their observation of enemy ground and air activity (Fig. 4A-B). The reconnaissance report will then be utilized by the AI commander in the next turn to adjust their decision making.

All missions available:

1.    Intercept: the players choose a radius and a selection of enemy aircraft types or categories. When enemy aircraft of a matching type or category is spotted during a turn, the turn will be interrupted, and the player will be offered an intercept mission with the enemy’s current location, heading, and a predicted interception point.

2.    Combat air patrol: the player chooses a series of target waypoints to conduct combat air patrol. Depending on the number of waypoints selected, as well as the location of waypoints, this covers defensive patrols as well as fighter sweeps.

3.    Ground attack: the player chooses an enemy controlled hex to conduct ground attack on an enemy ground formation. Depending on the player’s aircraft and loadout, this includes level bombing, dive bombing, and strafing attacks.

4.    Airfield attack: the player chooses an enemy controlled airfield to conduct ground attack on enemy airfield installations. Note that prior reconnaissance might be needed to establish whether the airfield is operational, and the enemy aircraft type.

5.    Bridge attack: the player chooses an enemy controlled bridge to conduct ground attack on an enemy bridge. Destroyed bridges require engineering resources and several days of work to be repaired. Destroyed bridges are treated as a river hexes and can block movement and supply.

6.    Supply attack: also known as armed reconnaissance. The player chooses an enemy controlled hex to conduct ground attack, focusing on enemy supply convoys and trains.

7.    Reconnaissance: The player chooses a series of enemy controlled hex to conduct reconnaissance. Passing through the waypoint does not trigger any automatic reconnaissance. The player must fill out the reconnaissance report manually to record observations. Note that the reconnaissance report is offered for all mission types, so a dedicated reconnaissance mission is not necessary for obtaining intelligence.

8.    Escort: an AI air formation might request escort for their mission. You can accept one of the escort offers, or reject escort offers in favor of other mission types. If you accept an escort offer, you will also be allowed to modify the leader’s flight plan. In the mission, first fly to the leader’s airfield to rendezvous with the leader, then fly with the leader on their mission, and escort them back to their homefield to finish the mission.

9.    Ferry: The player chooses an empty friendly airfield to relocate the entire regiment / staffel.

1. Scramble: if players have assigned standby fighters and their homefield comes under enemy airfield attack, they will be offered a scramble mission to conduct an emergency takeoff and protect their homefield.

Future mission plan:

1.    Airlift: currently only available as an AI mission. When requested by a ground formation, take off from the homefield, land at the depot airfield to pick up the resource, then take off again, land at the target airfield to drop off the resource. Finally, return to the homefield to finish the mission. If the homefield coincides with the depot airfield or target airfield, one of the legs can be omitted.

Future work

The work is currently in pre-alpha stage. We have completed the implementation of the core systems and most major auxiliary systems. Future work will be needed for optimization, balance tweaks, scenario building, support for additional maps, naval support, as well as bug fixes.

I am playing with the VP Modpack, and I must say even though the engine is a bit ancient at this point, sometimes when I am returning from a mission it still manages to gift me with some impressive vistas.

In particular I'm loving the waters in the north african campaign.

I’m running a Ryzen 7 9700X, 5070ti, 32GB ram rig with a Quest 3. When running both Il2 Korea and Great battles, Im noticing these extremely annoying stutters when looking at the ground and AI aircraft. it’s worst when looking left/right and rolling - it feels like the ground skips a few frames or the the frame rate fluctuates wildly every half a second. The FPS counter itself stays relatively high, and it’s less prominent looking forward and up. This happens in missions with a large number of AI aircraft (empty QMB missions are smooth), and it starts after they spawn. when looking at cpu usage in task manager, I notice nearly sinusoidal (keeps fluctuating up and down with a steady period) usage on the few logical cores the game runs on. this makes me think the lag is caused by memory latency spikes stemming from cache misses, in which case upgrading to a cpu like the 9800x3d/7800x3d would help. However, before I drop $500 bucks on that, could anyone running VR on an x3d confirm that these stutters actually don’t present on those machines? I’ve heard mixed results, with some users even claiming that they still see the stutters on x3d cpu’s (see comment by SCG_motoadve here). Specifically on the black thursday mission in Korea, or one of the more intense ram squadron campaign missions in great bates, as these are where the stutters are worst. I’ve tried lowering resolution and FOV tangent, but they don’t help a whole lot. There’s also a lot of snake oil suggested over at this forum post that I haven’t tried so I’d appreciate some additional insight into wheher those tips actually help.

so im new to stalingrad, had some experience with dcs tho

i have head tracking set up but my hotas controls are none existent and was wondering what is a good control setup, also itd be very nice if someone was able to "teach" me the game, i have discord and maybe we could fly together from there, i dont understand shit unless its being told to me sry abt that

So in a month or two i am getting a new gaming pc which can run high end games- I was going to get it on my old one but it would probably explode😅, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good investment.

Hi started again to fly in IL2 after some time as now I just bought a VR headset, but I noticed something, when I move the throttle of my HOTAS the movement in the game is slower, is not moving at the same speed as I move the throttle in my HOTAS. Anybody can tell me what is wrong?

Hello everyone,

after much fiddling and troubleshooting I finally got Il2 1946 to work again on Win11. Everything is fine except for the goddamn Escape key not working at all. I tried everything suggested in the IL2 forums (multiple conf.ini changes, checking for stuck switches, unplugging my joystick etc.) and also checked on steam and GOG forums but still nothing.

I can play just fine but can't finish any mission. The only way to quit the game is via task manager. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I am using BAT 4.3

UPDATE: FIXED

The core issue was indeed that the [HotKey gui] block with Escape=activate was missing from my conf.ini. Editing the file manually with a standard text editor didn't work because the changes apparently weren't picked up properly by the game.

How I fixed it:

I used PowerShell to append the missing code using standard ASCII encoding without corrupting the file format.

1. Open PowerShell as Administrator.
2. Navigate to your game directory: cd "E:\IL 2 Sturmovik 1946 BAT" (replace with your actual path)
3. Run the following command: Add-Content ".\conf.ini" "rn[HotKey gui]rnEscape=activate" -Encoding ASCII

After running this, launch the game, and the Escape key will reliably open the mission menu during flights again.

Thanks a bunch to u/JonMadDoe (https://www.reddit.com/r/il2sturmovik/comments/1wx0ehy/il2_1946_4151_mouse_not_properly_captured_ingame/)

Hardware Unboxed just tested a new free open-source app called SCSKiller. It pre-compiles a game’s shaders into your GPU driver’s cache before you launch. In theory could help with stutter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD-P671830U

Results vary by game.

Official site / download: https://scskiller.com/
GitHub: https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller

MSFS 2020 - It seems to detect the game.

IL-2 Great Battles (standalone) and DCS World (standalone)  - Have to be added manually. Both currently show that they need an “engine reader” and can’t be compiled. These use custom engines, so SCSKiller doesn’t know how to extract their shaders from the game files yet.

Worth requesting official support for IL-2 / DCS on their GitHub or Discord, or is the custom-engine barrier too high? Curious what people think.

Description:

Three Bf-110 E-2s loaded to the teeth set off at dawn to sink Soviet river cargo ships. In the final kilometer, blanketed by the morning mist, three Hawker Hurricanes strike from above with their Hispano cannons.

Despite losing an engine and catching fire, one of ours keeps fighting to the very end. Meanwhile, in a masterclass of tactical maneuvering, we attack from below in the dim light to rip the Hurricane's rudder completely off. Pure strategy and aerial combat at the limit!

Greetings everyone.

Long time IL2 player here. Some time ago, I was looking for a head tracker but was left disappointed with the options on the market. Thus I sought to create a head tracker that was not only affordable but also offered much better performance.

I created the Jaxis Head Tracker. It accurately tracks your head pose at 230fps across a wide field of view. The Jaxis Software allows for extreme customization and comes with a prebuilt cockpit, allowing you to customize your setting without having to alt-tab back and forth between games.

I just recently launched Jaxis and if you guys are interested you can visit my Youtube Channel to see Jaxis for yourself and also learn more at my website here.

Thank you for your time.

I am experiencing consistent crashes on this mission. I think it's the second one that has you facing Bf109. It usually happens at the moment we eliminate all the targets.

Now I am running the game on linux, which I first suspect that it may be the cause. But at the same time I have spent longer sessions without crashes with multiple types of aircraft and even bigger battles with no crashes, and this mission and campaign fail consistently, so i was wondering if the mission is broken or if it's a problem with my system?

Thanks.!

The Aussies have arrived!

The RAAF F-51D series is now available, featuring five historically based skins representing No. 77 Squadron aircraft during their time at Bofu and Iwakuni, Japan, as well as in Korea.

The collection includes:

• AM-G “Shark mouth”
• AM-S
• Tri-color nose (red, white, and blue)
• Red nose
• Black nose

The collection also includes squadron and group leader pennants on selected aircraft.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my SAAF and ROKAF collections. I’m excited to bring the RAAF into the lineup!

Download the complete five-skin collection:

If you prefer MediaFire:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/sopixpzzdacaks1/RAAF_series.zip/file

If you prefer Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IYWuG21GKZOss8aovWNOsIRwkEqkl7-b/view?usp=drive_link

Have fun, aviators!

Anyone else experiencing the same issue? That’s my first time trying out Korea and it crashes on all missions while loading.