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Great Sim, confusing game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As a flight simulator, it is near perfect! Incredible realism and attention to details. It consumes you so much, that you will always remember the day you shoot down your first Me-109. At the same time, the game has extremely confusing, not particularly user-friendly interface. It just takes way too much time to figure out how things work. For example, the way the missions end in the 'career mode' is not only counter-intuitive, but also plain boring.

So, if you love aviation and ww2 air combat and are ready to forgive some idiosyncrasies of the game ' il2 Sturmovik is for you. Just be patient and persistent. And use il2's great online community for the answers. Also check out third-party add-ons to the game, such as Il-2 Campaign Generator, Il-2 Stub, il-2 Manager and others. Most of them are free (this game has a lot of friends) and make the game much more user-friendly and interesting.

good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am not too much of a sim fan but this game is really good. The graphics are beautiful on the higher settings (machine gun shells spill from under your fuselage, vapor trails from wingtips at high altitude, the clouds are amazing, starry night skies etc..) and the many choices of viewpoints are cool as well as very helpful. I am not giving it 5 stars because of the annoyingly LONG and BORING flights to and from the target areas. I know this is a realism thing but it really hurts the gameplay. I have put the game on 8x speed, gone and get something to eat, and come back after five minutes and I'm still not there! Otherwise, this is a must have for all you simmers. Real super fun.

Poor flight model

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've logged over 70 hours on MS Flight Simulator X (including beating the course record on the challenging Red Bull time coure), so that is my standard for flight model realism. By that standard, IL-2 is garbage. If planes actually flew that poorly in WW II, half of the pilots would have crashed within minutes of take off because they couldn't get the aircraft to generate enough lift or speed. Unless I trick the P-39 sim model by doing stupid little 20 foot drives to build up speed, it flies flat at 170 for minutes, even at max throttle.

Once the pilot gets the plane above 200 it handle all right, but most of those lucky WWII pilots who made it off the ground would have died after their first moderately aggressive bank, because the planes stall precipitous without warning into full-on, unrecoverable flat spins. In FSX, the immediate signs of a stall are sharp yawing and pitching. You have to react very quickly, but if you break conditions precipitating the stall, you can recover.

I recommend trying the FSX and IL-2 demos before you consider wasting money on this one.

"Best Seen To Date"

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm not normally a big fan of flight sims. I find they're usually too touchy, this as well as the lack of full vision, makes it harder to "fly" most sims than actual aircraft let alone fight them properly. Additionally, WW2 combat flight simulators don't fully understand how reflector sights (especially gyro-stabilized sights) really worked/were employed. So it was with pretty low expectations that I installed IL2. Needless to say, this sim is outstanding in nearly every respect.
First the joystick interface has enough built in "feel" that a lot of the typical over-sensitivity is dampened. Also if you throw in a force-feeback joystick you will find the aircraft much more "realistic" in control. Secondly, the problem of flying while looking through a soda-straw is minimized by either using the "hat" on the joystick or the mouse. Also the direction you look stays until you move it; rather than the disorienting quick look in other sims. Once you get used to it, the mouse works quite well with the joystick. Finally, the sights ALMOST work as their actual counterparts did. The reflector sight was developed primarily to keep the pilot from having to align his sight line with the aircraft-if his head was moving in rough air/maneuvering then he could not accurately shoot. A reflector sight keeps the sightlines constant; and you see this as the sights seem to "move" as one maneuvers. FIrst time I've ever seen this. The other reason was to estimate range: when the target wingspan fills the circle, it's in range. To this end, most sights had an adjuster that the pilot could set for his target. This part is not implemented in IL2-not a major problem though.
The sim itself has much historical detail with just about every major German and Soviet combat aircraft available, plus well rendered ground targets. (The historian in me especially likes any medium that brings the WW2 Eastern Front to the average western consumer.) The detail is such that one can even adjust the harmonization of your own guns (this is the range that all the guns merge their fire-most successful pilots used 200-250 meters). Given the technical sophisication of the sim engine, plus the outstanding historical research, this sim is highly recommended for the gamer or even a military simulation enthusiast.

Sim Junkie

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Do yourself the biggest favor this holiday season and pick this sim up if you don't already have it. I've enjoyed every aspect of this awesome game for about a year now. This simulation raises the bar for all combat flight sims. Nothing else even comes close to this masterpiece. Warning to those who are married: Sturmovik will test the character and patience of your spouse as hours of game play will literaly have you attempting to "save the world". Enjoy at your own risk. Highly Recommended!

good and bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: June 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

the graphics in this game are truly amazing. and if you have a high end computer and like to dogfight 4 versus 4 it is great. the flight models are good, with a strong russian bias however. But if you want to have lots of ground activity and lots of planes in the air, forget it this game cannot handle this without stuttering and the screen becoming a slide show. And I have an excellent high end computer! The sound in the game is terrible. Much static and problems. Offline campaign is terrible. It really is an on line game. Having said all that, you should buy it. The graphics are stunning and the flight models are good. Just for this it is worth the money.

IL-2 Redux...I tried again

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 18
Date: October 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

OK,

I loaded this thign up again. After seeing all the hero worship about this game, I thought I may have missed something in my first attempt at it, so here we go again.

Visuals: I still like the planes in CFS2 much better, IL-2 looks too shiny, somewhat like a plastic model. Clouds and terrain, i will give IL-2 the advantage over the stock MS ones, but that equals if you use after market stuff for CFS2.

Flight models/Damage models: In the flight model department, stock out of the box, a slight edge to IL-2, but only slightly. After flying a 1%, the edge back to MS. Damage models, MS has it all over IL-2, or at least, all over IL-2's soviet planes.

Gameplay offline: MS, no contest

Gameplay online: IL-2

General comments: I still wanted to like this thing... The game loads slow throughout the various screens, settings are counter-intuitive, and I didn't care for the interface, but beyond that, there is a definite, built in, bias to everything soviet. Makes me wonder how the Luftwaffe racked up such amazing scores flying against such aircraft as the YAKS are in this game. Oh well, history is wrong, Oleg the sun god is correct.

The eastern front has never been a very interesting area to simulate, precisely because it was so lopsided. I guess you could simulate not having replacement parts and gasoline, that would make it historically accurate. But once airborne.....

Back to the shelf...here's hoping CFS3 supports carrier operations.

Can't load it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 19
Date: September 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have a Pentium III 700 mhz and XP operating system with an ATI rage 3D card..
I can't get this sim to run at all....CFS II and Strike Fighters run great on my computer. Microsoft makes the best flight sims.

The best one

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: September 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The game has lot of advantages: graphics, flight and damage models, sound, on-line playing. First time when you start it, it is a kind of surprise. Man can smell leader and gasoline. Bullets tracers dancing in night, engine roaring, plane shaking as approaching stalling... Horizontal rudder hit by cannon dropped from plane in front of you, hit your windshield and jump aside. All repayable on tracks. Regularly maintained and upgraded by publisher.
Only problem is a bit "unreal" performance of Russian planes. YAK 1 can overdrive Fw 190 a8, and climb almost equal as Me 109 g6. But, compared to CFS I....

Not Amazed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: November 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

After reading all the great reviews for IL-2 I decided to buy it and I really am not impressed. It's really realistic, the graphics and gameplay, but it's just not that fun.

Overall it's an ok game..

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