Dear pilots,
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:
- rear-firing turret with 12.7 mm UBT machine gun and 5 mm armor protection from behind is included in the stock configuration;
- because of the increased weight, 4 rocket pylons are installed instead of 8;
- collimator aiming sight PBP-1 has been replaced by the VV-1 mechanical sight that also helps during level bombing;
- lighter, more compact and faster firing 37mm NS-37 guns can be fitted instead of Sh-37 ones;
- bomb loadouts include 192 or 240 PTAB-2.5-1.5 HEAT bomblets;
- the intermediate flaps stop that allows extending flaps to take-off position instead of full;
- flaps indicator on the left wing;
- increased engine power (AM-38F);
- reserve pilot-gunner light signaling equipment;
- compass locator.
Pilot to gunner light signals:
Green light, single flash - fire at will
White light, single flash - return fire only
Red light, single flash - hold fire
Green light, multiple flashes - engage the intermediate flaps stop
White light, multiple flashes - engage the fuel tanks pressurization system (after taking off)
Red light, multiple flashes - disengage the fuel tanks pressurization system (after landing)
Gunner to pilot light signals:
Green light, single flash - the target is far away
White light, single flash - no ammo left
Red light, single flash - we're being engaged
Green light, multiple flashes - the intermediate flaps stop engaged
White light, multiple flashes - the fuel tanks pressurization system engaged
Red light, multiple flashes - the fuel tanks pressurization system disengaged.
Pneumatic flaps system allows extending the flaps to middle (take-off) position only from the fully retracted position. From the middle position, the flaps can be only retracted (Shift-F be default). Press the flaps release button (F key by default) and hold it to move the flaps from retracted to takeoff position. To extend the flaps from retracted to landing position, press F briefly.
2.010 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.
Because of the popular interest, we have performed additional combat durability tests of the various aircraft. Minor discrepancies were detected because of the numerous changes in physics and damage modeling, and they are fixed in the new version.
Changelist:
1. IL-2 mod. 1943 is available for all Battle of Kuban owners;
2. Landscape anisotropic filter option that greatly reduces landscape textures shimmering at medium distances added, performance impact is minimal;
3. Clouds detail increased on Ultra graphics preset, reducing shifting while looking at them perpendicular to an aircraft motion;
4. Tree shadows are more contrast;
5. Rear view mirrors added to Yak-1b series 127 and P-40E-1. Because of the mirrors tech implementation, distant landscape detail option is even more memory demanding. It's recommended to have 4Gb VRAM or more for the х4 option, 3Gb for х3 and 2Gb for х2 detail.
6. The 'lagging hit effects' has been fixed (minimized) both in singleplayer and multiplayer;
7. SLI/Crossfire support has been reworked (it stopped working effectively when we switched to DirectX 11).Note that SLI/Crossfire gives a big performance boost if the game running on your PC is bottlenecked by the graphics card - for example, in situations when your FPS is limited by many light sources in the scene, many particle effects active at once or by an increased screen resolution. If the current scene being rendered is complex and contains many different objects, your CPU is likely to be the bottleneck instead and the performance boost from SLI/Crossfire won't be significant. It is also true that if you have a powerful GPU, game performance will be limited by the CPU already, so adding a second powerful GPU won't give you an FPS boost you want. Therefore, it is reasonable to use SLI/Crossfire in a case of two middle range graphics cards. In our beta version tests, we saw 50-85% performance improvement in the tank mission (where you need to cross the bridge) on SLI or Crossfire enabled PCs. It is also important to note that graphics drivers disable AFR (alternate frame rendering) in VR mode because of the additional delays it causes and we can't control this, so you won't benefit from this support if you play in VR;
8. Basic TacView export functionality added. When you record a track in the game, .acmi file is generated in the native TacView format.
9. Thanks to AMD software engineers who fixed the addressing in certain situations, we were able to return more optimized particle effects rendering. This might give you a minor performance boost;
10. German 20 mm shell fragments have a higher initial speed because of their higher explosive mass to total mass ratio so they cause more damage;
11. Bf 109, Fw 190 and some other planes durability is fixed (it was undeliberately lowered because of the many earlier changes in these aircraft). Now twin longeron Soviet fighters with delta-wood wings are roughly 20% more durable than Bf 109 fighters which have single longeron wings, while Fw 190s with triple longeron wings are roughly 20% more durable than Soviet fighters. P-40 is even more durable thanks to its five longeron wings. Pe-2 and Bf 110 planes are roughly twice more durable than Soviet fighters while IL-2 fits somewhere in between Pe-2 and LaGG in terms of combat durability;
12. Ju 87 D-3 siren can't be turned on anymore if it wasn't selected in the modifications list in the hangar;
13. He 111 H-16 bomb doors won't visually disappear at larger distances;
14. Altimeter and course indicator in the bombsight won't stutter on the Expert difficulty mode.
15. Navigation markers are visible on the map only if object markers are disabled (Expert difficulty mode);
16. RCtrl+i command functionality restored (it turns off bomb and rocket aiming helpers);
17. Altimeter and course indicator in the bombsight won't stutter on the Expert difficulty mode.