Il-2 Sturmovik: 1946

[Kryten]

Il2 is at the end of the day a game, it's flight models are the authors interpretations of the limited amount of data available about the aircraft, they have done thier best to produce a flight performance as sensibly close to reality as they are able with the information at hand!

The final version of the aircraft may not meet your expectations based upon your own perceptions, likes and dislikes, but noone can in reality produce a flight model that is factually correct simply because the parameters are too varied and the information is not available!

You quote top speed figures, but this is an arbitrary figure quoted at a certain altitude, what the figure does not give you is how much fuel was the plane carrying, how much ammo, how long does the aircraft take to reach this speed?
if your climbing to intercept a bomber flying straight and level the climb slows you considerably, when you reach the required altitude how long does it take to accelerate to an intercept speed, how hot is your engine? how far away from your target are you, the list of parameters is endless!

the real problem playing against the AI's is that the computer flies the AI planes at thier maximum, the AI pane will always be climbing/diving/turning at the optimum for those conditions in the programme, unless you understand the full performance envelope of the aircraft you are flying then you will not achieve the same peformance that the computer does!

I play the game online and am currently running the Ultrapack 2 mod on UKdedicated 3 server, when you play online the game makes much more sense as the human players you fly against are in the same position you are with regard to performance, the games not perfect but it works well enough to make online missions and dogfights a truly entertaining pastime!

a few tips I can give you, with regard to the FW190, if you try and turn fight with a Spitfire/Yak3/9, La5 etc you will lose just about every time, the FW190 strength is in its ability to maintain its speed in dives and climbs, position yourself above your target make a controlled diving attack then full power zoom climb back up out of harms way, if you miss , you miss, reposition and try again!
The Fw190 had the edge over the MkV Spit but if you fight the spits fight in the turn you will lose, if a spit gets behind you dive away, if your fighting at low level your in trouble anyway so you need to maintain a reasonable height to allow you to escape, also keep your speed up, if you end up chugging along at 160mph the FW's acceleration will leave it gasping and your a sitting duck, if you cant get a firing position pull off and get some space!

it is in reality the tactics used in the second world war and if you copy the techiques used by those men you find the game much more enoyable, its so easy to get suckered into a turning fight on the deck, once your down there its game over, its just something you have to learn!

its a very good game, not perfect, and certainly not a fraud, but judt because you think your favourite plane should do this and that, bear in mind the game developers had a lot more info to work with than you, and still had to make compramises along the way!

regards
Mike.