We're finishing our work on 2.011 update. It will bring you another Collector Plane - Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb which has been used in Battle of Kuban. These planes were sent to the USSR via the lend-lease program. The update will also include the new historical campaign Blazing Steppe by Alexander =BlackSix= Timoshkov (you can already pre-order on our website).
However, in today's Dev Diary we'd like to tell you what will happen after this update - in update 2.012 that will be released later, possibly the end of July or early August. We already told you about the coming huge update of all aircraft (Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Kuban) flight models which will address such minor effects like oscillations in maneuvers, aircraft banking with full rudder input and control surfaces load changes at different speeds. These peculiarities, while being minor, are caused by deep flight model parameters. Tuning them meant a lot of work, but caused additional positive changes in the flight behavior of every aircraft in our project. We decided it would be the right thing to do to tell you about these changes in advance - what will be changed for each aircraft. We present you the full change list of the coming FM fix (once again, please note that these changes will be published later, in the end of July or early August, in update 2.012).
Another week has passed and we're moving further in the development cycle of Battle of Kuban. There is only a bit more than half a year left until its release, so many of its parts start to look final already. The base of the new Career mode is already there: almost all the historical texts are ready as well as squadron insignias, we're working on the cutscenes. Its internal elements - GUI and mission generator patterns - are being filled with content. The flight physics improvements (enhanced fuselage tail modeling that will make the FM even more realistic at unstable flight modes and when there is a strong rudder input) are nearly finished, we plan to release the corrected FM in July. The work on Hs 129 B-2 (we did show you several screenshots with it last week) flight model is started. We just finished reworking the airfields on the Moscow map and in the coming update they'll be prettier at close and medium distances and, most importantly, the performance hit near them will be lower.
Today I’d like to share some straight talk with you about our current and future plans for the Sturmovik franchise. I took over as Lead Producer in August 2016 with the goal of improving Sturmovik and bringing it more in line with your original expectations, while at the same time bringing the product’s technology into the future. Matter of fact my goal was to improve, what I call the four key pillars combat simulations – technology, features, content and community.
The past 9-10 months has seen Sturmovik be improved in many ways with new technology, more content and additional features being developed with more still to come. I also hope that some new out-of-game initiatives will further strengthen our small community even more.
While the German bomber of the Battle of Kuban plane set is already available to customers who pre-purchased the new theater of war, today we'll show you the first screenshots of the Soviet one. This is the US-made bomber A-20B, these aircraft were sent to USSR since December 1942 via the lend-lease program. A-20B had 2000 kg bomb load (up to 16 bombs in the internal bay and 4 outside) and had two machine guns for defense - 12.7 mm Browning M2 .50 and 7.62 mm Browning M2 .30. In addition, it was armed with two forward firing 12.7 Browning M2 .50 machine guns for some offensive capability. Just like P-39L-1, this aircraft had freely rotating forward landing gear.
Our work on the update 2.010 is finished and we present it to you. The main feature of this update is IL-2 Sturmovik mod. 1943 which has many significant additions.
The update also brings several graphics enhancements: SLI/Crossfire support (which stopped working properly since DirectX 11 support release), rear view mirrors, landscape anisotropic filtering, improved tree shadows, improved visual hit effects on aircraft, particle shader with indirect memory addressing that is a bit faster, better looking clouds on Ultra graphics preset - all of this is already available to you.
