Dev's Diary...

[Phantom88 3,287]

Update 4.003

 

Dear friends,

We have decided to release a bugfix update to prepare for the coming winter holidays - it doesn't bring new content, but its fixes are important enough. The most of them are AI improvements - we have spent a lot of time this month to improve dogfighting algorithms and we'll continue to improve AI further. There are also important fixes for the player controlled ground vehicles and our friend =Luke FF= worked on improving the Career mode. The full list of changes is following:

AI improvements
1. AIs finish a ground attack run by pulling up harder, which should improve their survivability rate in hilly terrain;
2. AI bombers drop the bombs better;
3. Advanced AIs won't 'stuck' in an endless circle during dogfight anymore;
4. AIs perform "Low Yo-Yo" and "High Yo-Yo" maneuvers better;
5. Detailed AI tanks engage the nearest targets by default like simple AI tanks do;
6. AI drivers of self-propelled artillery and other ground equipment with a fixed main weapon now face the target to aim if the priority of the mission command being executed is LOW;
7. Ground vehicles won't 'jump' on steep slopes;
8. Ground vehicle AIs won't turn their engines off immediately after stopping;
9.  AI ground vehicles have a variable exhaust effect when moving;
10. The steam locomotives won't turn on the lights during the day;
11. AA guns and machine guns mounted on trains follow mission command priority;

Aircraft improvements
12. The game won't crash when repairing a dirty airplane canopy;
13. Fixed excess clicks of triggers in the cockpit for missing weapon groups;

Player controlled tanks improvements
14. There is a turret ventilation sound in Pz.III Ausf.M, Pz.IV Ausf.G, Pz.VI Ausf.H1 and T-34-76UVZ-43;
15. The master switch is turned on not only when the engine is turned on, but also when the headlights, lighting, signal, tower control with electric trigger or fan are turned on;
16. Fixed the "loss" of the camera when switching from a gunsight to the normal view;
17. Detailed tanks gunsight adjustments are displayed in technochat;
18. Opening and closing of various hatches is displayed in technochat;
19. Startup procedures, the operation of turret and gun systems of the Tank Crew tanks are displayed in technochat;
20. Sub-caliber armor-piercing rounds now lose their stability and ability to penetrate further armor barriers after breaking through the first one;
21. On SU-122, the problem with displaying the commander’s sight in VR was fixed (the second eye was not deactivated);
22. On SU-122, when choosing the DG-460A HEAT shells, the slider of the scope scale is now correctly set to the third scale;
23. Added gunsight settings for firing using a gunner’s sight to the description of SU-122;

Career mode improvements
24. Awards in career mode adjusted to better reflect the historical reality for all nations;
25. Awards text descriptions updated;
26. US careers: medals are awarded according to the criteria set forth by the US 9th Air Force in 1944;
27. German careers: new AI pilots in the squadron with previous flight time now have the possibility to have campaign awards from earlier battles (Eastern Front Medal and Kuban Shield);
28. Soviet careers: new AI pilots in the squadron with previous flight time now have the possibility to have the Medal 'For the Defense of Stalingrad' from December 22, 1942;
29. Soviet careers: Order of the Patriotic War 2nd Class, Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class, Red Wound Stripe, and Yellow Wound Stripe no longer erroneously awarded during the Battle of Moscow;
30. British careers: Mentioned in Despatches can now be awarded multiple times;
31. More stock aircraft skins added to all phases of career mode;
32. German fighter and attack pilots will now fly an airfield attack strafing mission on January 1, 1945, in career mode;
33. Aircraft weapon loadouts and modification restrictions updated for all phases of career mode;

Other improvements
34. Loaders in player controllable tanks, Ju-52 Co-Pilot and A-20 Navigator are invulnerable if Invulnerability difficulty option is turned on;
35. All aircraft GUI previews updated to have a similar style;
36. Simple AI vehicle sounds completely overhauled (all large artillery guns, tanks and assault guns, GMC-CCKW, WillysMB, M16-AA, 72K).

 

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

IL-2 Sturmovik Forum

Developer Diary 236 - Discussion

1 minute ago, Han said: 236 Dear friends, The year 2020 is here in full force. Lets hope that the new decade will bring good changes to our world. We in the IL-2 Sturmovik team are beginning the work on the new project, Battle of Normandy....

 

 

236

 

Dear friends,

The year 2020 is here in full force. Let’s hope that the new decade will bring good changes to our world. We in the IL-2 Sturmovik team are beginning the work on the new project, Battle of Normandy. For instance, the production of 3D models for several new planes has started already. We’re researching the possibility of moving the rendering engine to Deferred Shading tech. The map team has begun the research of the new map. We’re making design documents on new buildings, ground vehicles, ships and motorboats.

We’re continuing our approach of improving our sim constantly - the incoming update 4.004 will bring many improvements for our already released projects. It will also add the new tank for Tank Crew - Pz.Kpfw.V Ausf.D “Panther” - and additional airfields and visually improved banks of the countless rivers and canals on the Rheinland map.

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

Update 4.004

Dear friends,

We’re glad to report that update 4.004 is released. The main additions of this one are a new tank for Tank Crew - Pz.Kpfw.V Ausf.D “Panther” - and improved look and additional airfields for Rheinland map (Battle of Bodenplatte). There are many other fixes and improvements as well:

Additions

1. Pz.Kpfw. V Ausf.D “Panther” for Tank Crew;
2. Better looking river and canal banks on Rheinland map;
3. 13 new airfields on Rheinland map:

• Le Culot East (Y-10)
• Kluis (B-91)
• Mill (B-89)
• Helmond (B-86)
• Amsterdam-Schiphol (B-97)
• Arnhem-Deelen
• Soesterberg
• Strassfeld
• Strassfeld 2 - Odendorf
• Hilversum
• Diest (B-64)
• Nivelles (B-75)
• Bierset–Liege (A-93)

4. 4K quality exterior textures made by Martin =ICDP= Catney added for Yak-1 series 69;

5. The better-looking transition between the river and sea waters;

6. Improved Т-70 tank model and textures;

7. Updated texture cache system, it should reduce stutters in heavy load MP missions significantly;

8. Brightness and size of very distant aircraft LODs made more uniform (it differed too much on some aircraft);

9. Added initial support for SimShaker to be used in conjunction with JetSeats and other audio powered feedback devices.

AI improvements

10. Ground attack aircraft won’t hit the ground when engaging a target with rockets and guns in a tight formation;
11. AI-controlled B-25 starts the engines correctly;
12. AI fighters attempt Immelman maneuver only if they have enough speed;
13. AI fighters open fire more aggressively;
14. AI pilots keep formation on large maps much better;
15. AI vehicle column won’t drive into a river if the last waypoint was on a destroyed bridge or immediately before it;
16. Assault guns (simple and detailed) correctly face a target when set to LOW command priority in the mission;

Aircraft improvements

17. P-51, P-47 and P-39 have correct trimmer animations;
18. A-20 engines won’t trigger wrong overheat messages;
19. Wrong engine overcooled messages on P-47D were corrected;
20. P-51 landing gear covers shouldn’t open and close again and again anymore;
21. Cylinder heads overheat warning will be displayed correctly;
22. Flying Circus planes won’t display a wrong message about engine failure when it is switched off;
23. The time it takes to switch to combat position and back has been corrected for all gunners;

Detailed tanks improvements

24. When the loader is killed, the time it takes to load the main gun or coaxial MG is increased significantly;
25. The visual effect of propellant gases is reduced when the exhaust fan is off or is not present;
26. The time it takes to vent the turret after the shot depends on the operational exhaust fan;
27. Detailed tanks won’t visibly ‘crouch’ at a high speed;

Other improvements

28. All night bombing Career missions with more than 6 planes in the flight won’t start in a map corner anymore;
29. Wrong ground attack German planes in the late Stalingrad Career chapters were corrected;
30. Duplicate ID error message in the dedicated server has been removed (it blocked the server, now it is visible in the console);
31. Correct season in the pre-mission hangar (Winter/Summer);
32. In Mission Editor it’s no longer possible to select a wrong part of a multi-part vehicle skin;
33. Daimler M1914 FlaK 77/L27 and Thornycroft J-type 13pdr AA shells appear in the correct place ().

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

IL-2 Sturmovik Forum

Developer Diary 238 - Discussion

Just now, Han said: 238 Hello everybody, This week we continue telling you about the new Collector Planes, now is the turn of Yak-9 and Yak-9T. .............................................................. Full news - here is a full text and visual...

 

 

238

 

Hello everybody,

This week we continue telling you about the new Collector Planes, now is the turn of Yak-9 and Yak-9T. Yak-9 was the most mass-produced Soviet WWII fighter, more than 14,000 were made on three factories in Moscow, Omsk and Novosibirsk in total. The production started during Autumn 1942 and peaked in 1944, but continued well after the war ended - it stopped only in 1948. They were used in combat en masse for the first time during Kursk battle in Summer 1943, but several documents reflect smaller scale combat deployments of the new fighters on other fronts of 1943, including the Battle of Kuban.

Yak-9, while being an evolution of Yak-7 design, had significant changes: metallic spars instead of the wooden ones, bubble canopy with an improved field of view, forward-and backward-facing armored glass pieces. The fighter armament was standard - 12.7 mm UBS MG and 20 mm ShVAK gun. It was powered by M-105PF inline engine.

We also recreate a special model of this fighter, Yak-9T, that was developed to counter enemy bombers and was also used against lightly armored targets. A powerful 37 mm NS-37 gun with 30 rounds ammo reserve required more space, so the pilot’s cockpit has been moved back to make more room for it and to maintain the pitch balance. It’s interesting to note that while this gun was much more powerful, the total weight increase was just 40 kg and the plane aerodynamics did not change for the worse noticeably.

We’ll start the work on Yak-9T immediately after finishing Yak-9 (the exterior 3D model of Yak-9 is nearly complete while its cockpit 3D model and physical model are in the works and show good progress).

 

[Elsmoko 5]

  I haven't used IL2 for over a decade and have not installed it on my Win 7-64 PC.  Will the currently available IL2 run well in Win 7-64.

If yes, what are most users installing ?  As I recall, there were many options available over 10 years ago and from what I've seen there

is even more available now.

   In Win XP (32 bit) I had Operation Barbarossa, Ostfront and IL2 1946, and Pacific Fighters installed and working great.

Any tips regarding the current programs and updates / fixes and installation sequences, etc. will be greatly appreciated.  Also would like

to know where to go to buy / download the current software.

Best to all,

Ken Boardman

Win 7-64 SP1, i7 930 @ 3.9ghz,  GTX960 4gb, 12gb DDR3, CH Fighterstick, CH Pro Throttle, CH Pro Pedals

[Phantom88 3,287]

Hello Ken,I'm not using Windows 7 so not really sure,Best to visit the official site for more details and tech questions....

https://il2sturmovik.com/

[Elsmoko 5]

Thank you Patrick .  I could not get `1946 to install from my DVD.so I downloaded it from GOG.  The installation went great

and so far I've been very happy with GOG's download.  Even setting up my CH Fighterstick, Pedals, and Throttle

went very smoothly.

Ken

[Phantom88 3,287]

Excellent!! Have Fun 😊

[Phantom88 3,287]

239

Hello everybody,

It’s February already and we continue to improve the project as a whole. In the next update, we plan to significantly improve the airframe damage calculations and the explosive and fragmentation damage calculations for all objects in the sim in general. More AI improvements are in the pipeline too - for instance, further improvements for the vertical maneuvering in a dogfight. We have found and fixed another possible culprit for the missing aircraft hit sounds in multiplayer. There are more other corrections and fixes being worked on simultaneously with the full-scale work on Normandy theater that is already underway.

And of course, we don’t forget about the tank project. While Digital Forms studio creates the assault gun and the tank destroyer that are left, we added a long-requested feature - binoculars for the tank commanders. Other smaller, but nonetheless important improvements are on the way too. Take a look at the binoculars on these screenshots:

IL-2 Sturmovik Forum

Developer Diary 239 - Discussion

1 minute ago, Han said: 239 Hello everybody, Its February already and we continue to improve the project as a whole. In the next update, we plan to significantly improve the airframe damage calculations...

 

 

 

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

Hello everybody,

While working on the Normandy project and finishing Tank Crew, we never forget about the existing ones. Not only the most part of all the improvements we release in the updates are applicable for the simulated world as a whole, meaning they update all our theatres of war at once, but we update the content of the existing modules at every possibility as well. For instance, we’ll be able to show you the first WIP screenshots of the new Soviet pilot soon. And in the next update, among many other things, you’ll see two more aircraft updated to 4K texture quality standard.

The first one of these two planes is the MiG-3 series 24 that is included in the Battle of Moscow. It’s external texturing has been reworked by Martin =ICDP= Catney - it should be noted that wear, specular map, micro features and damage textures were updated in addition to the paint schemes. The plane materials were corrected as well for more natural-looking glare and finish.

The second one is Bf 109 G-4 from the Battle of Kuban that has been reworked by Francisco =BlackHellHound1= Bindraban. Artists did not just redraw the textures in 4K quality - they do the research on the aircraft details and peculiarities of all known paint schemes and add many changes and improvements (sometimes even completely replacing one historical skin with another if needed). So everything possible is made to make the existing 3D models brand new, unlocking the potential our constantly updated renderer offers.

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

Dear friends,

 

The work on the Normandy module is at an early stage, but of course, this doesn't mean you'll have to wait for new updates for too long. Right now we're testing the next update 4.005 which will include a number of improvements for the damage modeling, especially aircraft damage (but it is more general than that, the way weapons affect various objects is also changing). We did a lot of research observing the community opinion on the various aspects of the current damage system that require attention and corrected our priorities basing on it. In the near future, we plan to publish a special Dev Blog issue completely dedicated to this matter.

 

We're also working on further AI improvements, namely on how they dogfight. Update 4.005 will include these improvements. In the future, we'll begin working on its tactical level and on how they follow the commands. 4.005 will also contain new ground vehicles - Soviet and German fuel trucks and ambulance cars. There are many other improvements across the board - for instance, you'll better hear the hits on your aircraft in multiplayer.

 

 

And today, as we promised before, we can show you the first Work In Progress screenshots of the new Soviet pilot in Summer uniform:

 

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

242

 

Hello everybody,

 

Previously we talked mostly about the Normandy project, but today we have something to tell you about Tank Crew. Functionality wise, at this stage we're polishing the implemented modules. The coming update 4.005 will bring a dozen important improvements for Tank Crew and the commander binoculars we showed you earlier. Later we plan to implement the indirect fire capability for self-propelled guns (by inputting the distance and traversing angle) and new quick mission types for the tank commanders. It should be also noted that a lot of the damage calculation changes that are prepared for 4.005 also affect the detailed tanks, this is important for the quality of their damage modeling.

 

Today we have something to show you as well. Our partners from Digital Forms just sent us WIP screenshots of the two latest war machines that are being modeled for the Tank Crew project. The first one of them is German tank destroyer Sd. Kfz. 184 "Ferdinand". Here are some shots of its interior parts. This self-propelled gun is very hard to recreate because there is a little info left and we have to conduct a lot of research to clarify how its internal parts worked and looked. But the result is going to be really good - these tank destroyers which first saw action in the Kursk battle impress with their power - take a look at the comparison of their main gun with the entire T-34/76 tank - and unique design decisions:

 

 

The second war machine that is in the works now is the SU-152 assault gun that was built on the KV-1s heavy tank chassis and armed with 152mm ML-20s howitzer. It was designed incredibly fast - it's hard to believe, but between the decision of the State Defence Committee that a new heavy SPG is needed and the act of putting it into service passed only 37 days and it was ready for production by the end of January 1943. There weren't a lot of these assault guns made, but their combat debut at the Kursk salient showed that the Red Army has something to counter the newest heavy German tanks in the coming battles:

 

 

[Phantom88 3,287]

243

 

Hi, pilots!
And hi gasoline cowboys! 

 

Today I will tell you about changes in the new damage model (DM), which we are preparing for release in the near future. Daniel already mentioned it briefly in previous diaries, and now it is time to talk about the new DM in more details.

 

Well, how many lances have broken in talks about broken wings in our community?  That guns are “not damaging”, that the Pe-2 is “rock”, tails of Messers are “cut-glass”, the P-47 is "way too weak" and falls apart after a few hits, and many many other opinions, claims and expectations. To be honest, we ourselves have long wanted to double-check the DM of all aircraft and put things in order there, bringing them all to a common concept. As you remember, we already went into this river a couple of times when we changed the DM settings and tried to find a “middle ground” solution with strength and vulnerability. However, it was obvious for us that all these accumulated problems could be solved only systemically, and this would require a lot of time. Finally, this time has come.

 

Firstly, from the very beginning we eliminated several fundamental limitations of the DM-core, which prevented us from moving on. This immediately “untied” our hands and allowed us to simulate combat damage to the aircraft structure much more flexibly. After that, a lot of research was conducted and several methods for calculating the damage of airframe elements from various types of ammunition were tried. The goal of this research was set quite ambitious (however, this is not the first time for us). We wanted to go away as far as possible from using the “game” settings of the DM, and use as many parameters and characteristics of the airframe from real life as possible. This work is not yet completed and right now the new DM is undergoing comprehensive testing (big thanks to our beta testers, and please take more ammo in the hangar!). Nevertheless now it’s becoming clear that the result of this whole work is exactly this one we really hoped for!

 

The main news is that our new damage model now uses data taken from blueprints and technical documentation. Such as: the number of structural elements of one or another part of the airframe, their material and geometric dimensions. An engineer who sets up the DM no longer needs to invent anything and rely on dubious empirical data. Now everything is extremely concrete and objective: what figures from documents you put in the model, such resistance to combat damage you get. Our engineering team carefully collected all this data for all 59 aircraft in the simulator. This is a lot of work, and it took a lot of effort and time. But the result was worth it: now all the planes in the Great Battles have such a balance of vulnerability that they, with a very high probability, had in real life.

 

In the new DM of the airframe, various types of ammunition “work” now in very different ways. Previously, their action differed in the settings of the ammunition itself. Now, the difference in calculation methods, which take into account the principle of causing structural damage in more detail, has been added.

 

For example, armor-piercing bullets and shells make relatively small external damages on the skin commensurate with their caliber. They do not cause “large-scale” damage to the structure frame anymore, but they do hits like a point strike, hitting through a wing spar for example, or breaking a hinge of elevator or aileron. A broken spar, of course, loses its strength, that makes the wing more weak and leads to break it under the less G-load (this is not new in our DM, by the way). But now, using armor-piercing shells to make several damages of the spar in the same area, you need to hit it many times, depending on the spar dimensions and the ammo caliber. In the same way, in order to turn the skin into “rags” or to tear off the landing gear wheel, you need to shoot a rather long time to the particular part of the plane. In other words, firing armor-piercing shells will not be as effective against the airframe as before.  The chance to get into the structure frame and break it is not great, and the skin is not particularly affected. Although, with enough desire and having the presence of a sufficient amount of ammunition, you can "cut" the airplanes apart with armor-piercing projectiles if their weight of fire converges and causes enough damage.

 

Explosive bullets and high-explosive fragmentation shells are quite another matter. Only a few hits are enough (depending on the model of the projectile, its caliber, the amount of explosive) to make large holes in that part of the plane where you hit, and everything around it was cut with fragments. Managing such an aircraft will become quite difficult. It will noticeably lose its performances and become not a serious opponent in the battle. The structural frame will also receive “zonal” damage, mainly due to high-explosive impact. So now the effectiveness of this type of weapon against the airframe will be significantly higher than the effectiveness of armor-piercing shells and bullets. The skin will also get damages much faster than the structural frame. Thus, situations when wings or control surfaces fall off an airplane in a battle will arise much less often. To break the rear part of the fuselage by shooting will become very hard. Nevertheless, anything is possible.

 

In addition, in the new DM, we eliminated the problem of inadequate damage to the airframe when firing at those parts of the aircraft that do not contain structural elements. For example, firing at an engine of a twin-engine aircraft or at its propeller spinner can no longer break the aircraft wing. Also, due to the improvement of the DM-core, the old problem of “extra” damages the airframe when the same projectile hit several non-structural collision-zones of this particular part of the airplane was eliminated. A HE shell also will no longer inflict damage on the structural elements of the airframe with its initial kinetic energy of the intact shell, we fixed it.

 

The new damage model now correctly takes into account the type of material of the structural frame or skin. The same bullets and shells will cause different damage to duralumin, wood, or steel structural elements, making “virtual” holes of various sizes in them.

 

It is important to mention that this work is about the calculations of damages, and the visualisation of the DM (textures and 3D-model) has remained unchanged. As you know, all our planes have three fixed levels of visualization of external damage for each part of the airframe. There are “light” damage (bullet holes and small holes from shells), “medium” damage (larger holes) and “heavy” damage (big holes on the airplane). Each of these three levels, switched in sequence. They have been painted by our artists as well as our community enthusiasts with attention to detail for each aircraft. The new calculations in the DM will now switch these three levels of visual damage, taking into account all the features of the action of various types of ammunition and the damage they cause to the skin, which I mentioned above. Thus there is some improvement of DM visualisation too. Because of this new DM fine-tuning the variety of our existing damage textures has improved. They were not properly being expressed in the past. Because of some bugs and errors, parts of the airframe would fly off or fail and a level of damage it should have shown prior to that was skipped or rarely seen.

 

Moreover, there is another improvement of DM visualisation. The visual effects of hitting the plane (sparks, wood chips, etc.), as well as sound effects, will now depend on the part of the plane in which the projectile hit. Even when shooting at the same part, for example, on a landing gear wheel, one can see different effects of hits - sparks from the wheel’s disk (if the disk is metal) or a cloud of “debris” and “dust” from the tire. Also our online players, I think, will be pleased with the news that we found and fixed a bug of no sounds of hitting an airplane in multiplayer (dear God we hope, we hate this problem!).

 

For sure, making such a large-scale work to improve the DM of an airframe, it was reasonable to take a look at the other areas of the DM. Firstly, we slightly changed the settings of the combat damages of an engine from various projectiles. This was only a preliminary step, and I think that in the near future we will conduct an equally thorough review of the DM for engines and various aircraft systems: control systems, fuel systems, onboard weapons, etc.

 

Secondly, we rechecked the data for all types of bullets, shells, missiles and bombs in the game, such as armor penetration characteristics, high-explosive and fragmentation characteristics. Many tests were carried out and many inaccuracies and bugs found were corrected. As well as significantly optimized performance algorithms of DM. The results of this work will affect not only aircraft, but also all other game objects: ground vehicles (including detailed tanks), ships, buildings. The common model of high-explosive ammo was substantially improved. The penetrating explosion (inside the object) has become much more effective than the external one. A model of a "random" fragment for distant explosions was created, which takes into account the distance from the epicenter, the dimension of the target, and of course the type of ammunition.

 

As I wrote above, at the moment the new damage model is undergoing final testing and debugging of core-settings. We are looking forward to completing this work in a couple weeks.  And we really hope that the result will delight you and bring you many new positive emotions from playing the "Great Battles". This is invariably our top priority.

 

At the end I'd like to accompany this boring long-read text with some interesting pictures. Here are the first WIP screenshots of the first Battle of Normandy aircraft - P-47D-22 Razorback. It's a big deal since this is the first time we show you something from this newest project:

 

Yours sincerely,

Andrey “Petrovich” Solomykin – Lead Enginee

[Phantom88 3,287]

***

Pilots,

 

If you happen to be stuck indoors for a while, we've given everyone a unique, single-use discount code for many of our products. Early Access and Pre-Order products are not included. 

 

- 50% Off BOBP and FC1
- 75% Off All other released content

- The codes are good for 30 days

 

You can find the codes in your IL-2 User Account which you can access from the Main Page of the website. You just have to log in. They are easy to find. Just apply them in the Cart. Remember, we don't mean your forum profile.

 

We hope this will give you some new options if you have to stay indoors during this disruptive period. 

 

Stay safe and healthy everyone!

 

Jason

[Phantom88 3,287]

244

Hello everybody,

The progress on many parts of the Battle of Normandy project is becoming more visible with each passing day. We have placed the order on the numerous ground vehicles that will be outsourced while the design document on the buildings for the new map will be finished soon. The list of the airfields and the map borders are final and the work on the map itself has begun in earnest. The list of the squadrons that will be recreated in the Battle of Normandy Career mode and its main scenario are prepared as well. Visual models of the three aircraft and the FM of the first one (P-47D-22) are in the works. Today we can show you the current state of the visual model of the second aircraft in development - C-47A transport plane which will be manned by AI. The famous WWII legend, it was the best known Allied transport plane. Built under license in many countries, its civilian versions are still in service now, in the early XXI century. This workhorse played a key role in the airborne operations of the Battle of Normandy.